Skull sent to researchers despite pleas for burial
ACOUNCIL leader has hit out at a coroner’s decsion to send a mystery child’s skull discovered in a Birmingham home for research instead of burial.
Birmingham and Solihull coroner Emma Brown has released the skull to Dundee University for scientific purposes instead of sending it for burial in Yorkshire where it is believed to have originated.
Councillor Stephen Tulley, leader of South Elmsall Town Council in Yorkshire, said returning the child’s skull to Moorthorpe Cemetery where it is thought to have come from decades ago was the “right thing to do.”
A murder investigation was sparked in March after Valerie Marsh alerted the local vicar to the skull, which had been in her Ladywood home, in Wiggin Road, for more than 30 years.
Her late husband David had been a collector of the macabre and downright weird. He had been handed the skull as “a gift” by a gravedigger at Moorthorpe Cemetery in York- shire more than 30 years ago when the couple lived in South Elmsall. They then moved down to Birmingham and brought the skull with them.
An inquest at Birmingham Coroner’s Court on November 1 revealed the skull was that of a child between four and nine years of age who had died between 1692 and 1944.
The sex of the child could not be established.
Councillor Tulley said: “Bringing the skull back to Moorthorpe Cemetery and having it reburied there is the right thing to do. I am disappointed and a little saddened to hear this won’t be the case.
“It is such a shame it was taken in the first place.
“I don’t think there is any indication of what grave it could have been taken from.
“There is a child pauper’s burial section so it could have been there. But no-one really knows.”
Police were called to the house in Ladywood on March 23 after Mrs Marsh alerted them.
Detective Sergeant John Garbett, from the West Midlands Police Homicide Unit, had carried out a full investigation to discover how skull had arrived at the house.
In a statement to the inquest, he said: “The house outside is strange looking with a black veil covering the front door. The inside was bizarre, very gothic and from a bygone age, macabre in appearance.
“Mrs Marsh’s husband was an eccentric character and collected strange items. She said he had an the interest in the macabre and in particular human skulls.
“The couple had been married for 40 years. Mrs Marsh explained how her husband had come across the skull. The couple used to live in South Elmsall in Yorkshire not far from the Humber Estuary. She said her husband was handed the skull as a gift by a gravedigger at Moorthorpe Cemetery in South Elmsall over 40 years ago.”
The skull was sent to the University of Dundee for forensic testing by scientific experts and that is where it will now be kept for research purposes.
There was no damage to the skull, suggesting the child had not died in an unnatural way.
Examination of the child’s teeth revealed mainly a fish diet suggesting he/she would have lived near the coast.
An open verdict was recorded the time of the inquest.
A spokeswoman for Birmingham and Solihull Coroner’s court said: “Dr Lucina Hackman at the Centre for Anatomy and Human ID at Dundee University was authorised to keep the skull.” at