CHICAGO (WBBM) - The Cook County Board is considering selling land near Oak Forest Hospital to get some desperately-needed cash.
As WBBM's Steve Miller reports, it's believed that a big part of that land is full of the gravesites of indigents.
The land was a potter's field in Cook County, apparently from about 1912 to the early 1970s.
Tens of thousands of the poor and the homeless were buried there near 159th and Crawford in Oak Forest - near the county's Oak Forest Hospital.
Cook County Commissioner Mike Quigley says a hearing Tuesday is a long-overdue step toward selling land near the hospital.
He says he wants to make sure that the land that gets sold is not cemetery land.
"I'm concerned a little bit, but I don't think there's anyone who wants to... I think once they're properly briefed, there won't be anyone who wants to sell paupers' graves - a cemetery - who might just dig up the entire area. It's bad karma. It's a bad thing to do."
Quigley wants the cemetery land put into the hands of the Cook County Forest Preserve District.
Some say that's easier said that done, since the old cemetery boundaries are indefinite and it meanders through the property, with gravesites scattered over a wide area.
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