Mother’s shock at baby son’s empty coffin

A MOTHER who has been campaigning for 42 years to uncover what happened to her dead baby has discovered his coffin was buried with no body in it.

Lydia Reid, who has fought to expose how Scottish hospitals unlawfully retained dead children’s body parts for research, has revealed that her child’s coffin contains “no human remains”. Granted permission by a court earlier this year to exhume the coffin, Ms Reid enlisted the help of Prof Dame Sue Black, a forensic anthropologist, who confirmed that the grave at Saughton Cemetery, Edinburgh, had been empty except for clothing and a name tag.

It comes more than 40 years after her son Gary died at seven days old while being cared for at Edinburgh’s Sick Kids hospital in July 1975.

Ms Reid, 68, claims a post-mortem was carried out without her permission and that when she asked to see him, she was shown a different child.

“I objected but they said I was suffering from postnatal depression,” she said. “This baby was blond and big, my baby was tiny and dark-haired. This was not my son. It is devastating to know that all those years I have been coming here to honour my son and he’s not been here.”

Police Scotland have been informed and are believed to be investigating.