Where is my baby buried? Parents search for remains after Oldham mass ‘fuck’ scandal

October 14, 2024, 07:47

The discovery of a mass grave full of dead babies in Oldham has left parents of other stillborns now scrambling to find out where their babies are buried, LBC can reveal.

Until the late 1980s, stillborn babies were routinely taken from their mothers and disposed of by the hospital or placed in a cardboard box and given to the father to take to a cemetery.

The grieving parents were told by medical staff that their son was being buried next to a “nice person” that very day, but the truth was that he was placed in a mass grave alongside hundreds of other babies. This is a lie that has been repeated over and over for decades.

Babies had no first names, mothers were discouraged from holding their babies “for their own good”, and without a burial place they were left with nowhere to go to lay flowers or say a prayer.

The discovery of these mass graves has left families angry and in need of answers. Who decided that these babies would be piled up in a well? How were the tombs managed? How long were they open? How do other parents find out what happened to their baby? Will the government apologize? Will the local authorities digitize the records of these graves?

Gina, Diana and Diane share the same pain, were told the same lie by the authorities and are left with more questions than answers.

Gina Jacobs found her baby after 53 years, told LBC: “Realizing what we were told at the time was a terrible lie, it effectively stopped us from visiting the places where our babies were. It wasn’t just me, every story was the same lie repeated over and over.

“Every time a baby was taken and left in the cemetery, usually in a box tied with a string, the lie was repeated: ‘They’re going in with someone buried that day.’ The parents were ordered to collect the baby, inside a cardboard box tied with a string.

“We were pretty much told they weren’t allowed to talk about it, and the fact that they told us they were with a buried person that day, it kind of deters you from trying to find the baby because you’re going to be thinking, what if the people who own this grave are there? How would most people not know where their babies are?

Read more: Mass grave of more than 300 bodies, including hundreds of babies and children, found in Oldham cemetery

After she was able to trace her son’s resting place, Gina discovered that there were 63 other babies in the grave. She said: “I have called him Robert ever since, he was not considered worthy of a name at the time.

“People have cried, people have broken down, some people have been told their babies were in a different cemetery than they were. Why would they tell these people that?

“If they had told us the truth we could have been visiting. I could have been visiting for 53 years, I could have got a Christmas card, a birthday card, I could have put a tribute, but how do you put a tribute on a grave that do you think it belongs to a family?

“They asked me from the cemetery not to call them ‘common pits’… and I’ll go, I’ll call it a pit, because it was a pit.”

Diana Williams had her baby stillborn in August 1971, she told LBC: “The horrible part is thinking ‘I’ve passed you by my son for years’, not knowing, not recognizing that this little package is on this ground.

“I hate to think how much dignity there was, would someone say a little prayer? There’s no way to know these things now because it’s been too long.

“The lies we were told, I’m devastated by it now. We believed everything. It destroys your faith in human nature.

“There are all sorts of horror stories out there, missing twins, a lot of the babies may have been clinical waste, especially if they couldn’t survive.

“They’re just a dump. They’re thrown in there and that’s it. You cover one layer, and then the next layer goes on. They just go in as layers and layers and layers, sealed off.

“This is all over the country, and there are more mass graves around. Something needs to be done. Oldham’s is small, a motion has been passed and all these records must now be online, you can search line instead of having to go to the graveyard and see, I think it’s a big step forward.

“This is a scandal because it has been constant for decades, the systematic disposal of the bodies of babies. There is no dignity of a funeral, no one remembers these babies. You cannot escape disasters, but this was not even a disaster . “Put it aside. There are so many babies it’s amazing.”

Another mother, Diane, had her baby in Tameside in 1982 but now lives in Brighton and has been unable to find where he is buried.

She told LBC: “The hospital asked me if I wanted them to take care of the arrangements for the baby, so in my grief I said yes, because one minute you’re pregnant, the next minute your baby is dead , so I told him yes, but I didn’t ask what that meant, I didn’t know what would happen.

“They couldn’t find any records, was it a cremation? Was it a mass grave? They basically gave you an hour to go to Manchester and look for the records. Because my baby’s death was early, it wasn’t recorded, it was not in the register of stillbirths.

“I was excited at first, but you can’t afford to be when you’re looking, because you have to talk about some pretty nasty things, talk about fetal deaths and call mortuaries.

“I know a lot of the women say we want an apology, but I’m not at that point yet. I want these people who can help us, to help us. Anyone, a government or a local authority, someone who does. put these things online so we can access them There must be women all over the country in the same situation.

“I can’t say if I’m angry, more disappointed, it all happened. For me it’s 42 years, but for some of the women it’s longer than that. Are these lies still going on now? People used to say no You don’t want to look the baby because 42 years later you’re going to be upset and you’re still looking for where your baby is buried, how can you not be upset?

Maggie Hurley, a councilor in Royton South, told LBC: “We are standing next to a grave that holds the bodies of over 400 babies and stillborn babies. No one knew they were here. The mothers had been told these babies were buried in graves with other adults, but now we know that is not true. They were put in mass graves all over the country.

“These graves were basically large pits, in this particular grave there are also 26 adults, 12 square feet of babies and children. When I first heard about it, there are times in your life when you think you’ll never forget where you were , I will. Never forget where I was when I heard that story.

“I didn’t want to believe that this could happen, that we as a society could be so cruel and take the babies away and tell the mothers to forget about them. I hope we find out why, but it seems like a directive which was projected across the country. This happened everywhere, not just in the North West or Royton.

“There’s a directive somewhere that said take these babies and never let the mothers see them. One was told to go home, get well and have another baby. This was the medical advice.

“All the local authorities knew these baby graves existed, it’s like there was a massive cover-up that everyone picked up on.

“My struggle initially was getting all these records online, and we saw the number of babies in these mass graves, and it’s terrifying.

“For many mothers it is too late, they died without knowing where their babies are. Mothers feel robbed and angry that they were not allowed this information. Someone somewhere decided she shouldn’t know.

“This has been something that happened for five decades, starting in the 1950s and the last baby was put in the grave in 1987. We were still doing this in 1987 and we think it’s fine.

“This is never about blame, the people who made those decisions are probably no longer here, but what we can blame is a system that knew this was happening and knew that in every cemetery these graves existed, and never did nothing to correct it, he ever thought for a moment of returning these babies to their mothers.

“Now in 2024 the whole country knows this happened. Everyone in the UK knows this happened and now they’re looking for their babies. All authorities must help. The cover-up stops now, they must return these babies to their mothers.

“I wish a government would stand up and do something. This has been raised in Parliament and the House of Lords, now it’s Labor and they’ve known for months. There’s a government brave enough to take it on. fight back on behalf of the country?

“We are looking at probably the worst historical mismanagement of burials in this country ever, and somebody has to take responsibility and return these babies to their mothers.”