Testimony in the Allegheny County Common Pleas Court that a former Jewess, converted to the Roman Catholic faith on her second marriage, was reconverted to Judaism during her recent fatal illness, resulted in a decision today by Judge George V. Moore allowing the father to bury his daughter.
The Court’s ruling was made in an equity action instituted by Thomas Butler, second husband of the dead woman, who sought to restrain relatives of his wife from burying her. The action was brought against A. K. Birnkrant, the woman’s father, Bernard and Wilbert Rice, sons of the woman by her first marriage, and Walter S. Willig, an undertaker. The case is unusual in the legal annals of western Pennsylvania.
The woman died yesterday at her father’s home, where she had lived since her discharge from the hospital. Her husband was with her at the time of her death. Butler said he had made arrangements for the funeral and had engaged an undertaker, but when the latter called for the body, the woman’s father declined to let him have it.
Mrs. Butler is said to have married Butler in the Roman Catholic faith in McKeesport in 1920.
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