Ashes of our baby found on shelf, 13 years on
A BEREAVED couple have been given the ashes of their baby daughter 13 years after she was cremated – following their discovery in a funeral parlour.
Julie and Bryan Morrison finally received the remains of daughter Erin after the official investigation into Scotland’s baby ashes scandal.
They had given up hope of ever getting them after being told that Erin – who died 36 weeks into the pregnancy – might be too small for remains to be collected after cremation.
Now the funeral parlour where they were kept say they still have 11 more sets of unclaimed infant ashes.
Mr Morrison, 44, an operations manager from Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, said: ‘For 13 years the system failed because the NHS
‘We are angry at the system’
didn’t chase it up. The NHS didn’t follow it up and the funeral director has just left the ashes sitting there. It was a failure of the system not communicating.’
In July 2003, the couple attended a scan at the Princess Royal Maternity Hospital in Glasgow and discovered Erin had died due to a blood clot in the placenta.
Her body was taken to Glasgow’s Daldowie Crematorium – but though the Morrisons believed there were no ashes, in fact they had been collected then stored in a branch of funeral director Jonathan Harvey in Glasgow.
Mr Morrison said: ‘We took it that there were no ashes retrieved. But that wasn’t the case.
‘Now, 13 years later, we have found out there were ashes and they were just put on a shelf. They were found in the funeral director’s parlour. We are happy we now have the ashes but we are angry at the system. All that anguish, for 13 years, it has made us really angry.’
He added: ‘We’re keeping the ashes now, my wife won’t part with them, not after 13 years without them. We have Erin’s ashes in a memory box, so she will stay there.’
The discovery was made by Dame Elish Angiolini during her inquiry into the baby ashes scandal. The family received the news in a call from the former Lord Advocate earlier this month.
In her report which uncovered malpractice at crematoria across Scotland, Dame Elish criticised the NHS and Jonathan Harvey for not being able to provide her inquiry with documentary evidence to explain how parents were not informed that ashes were available.
Commenting on receiving her daughter’s ashes, Mrs Morrison, 36, a home carer, said: ‘It doesn’t give you closure, but it helps.’
A spokesman for Dignity, which acquired Jonathan Harvey in December 2003, told the Daily Record: ‘We’re pleased to have been able to help reunite this mother with the ashes of her baby. There are 11 other sets of infant ashes where we have not received instruction from the hospital, which was our client. The infants were cremated under the contract and the hospital, due to patient confidentiality, would not have provided us with the names of the parents or their contact details.’
An NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde spokesman said: ‘Since this case in 2003 we have reviewed our guidance and issued new advice to parents that they should liaise directly with the funeral director on the remains of their baby.’
A Glasgow City Council spokesman said: ‘We received clear, written instructions to return ashes to the funeral director so the family could have them; which we did. We do not know why they were not then given to the family.’
‘Renewed our guidance’