‘THIS WILL BE HARPER-LEE’S LEGACY’
MPS sign pledge to raise awareness of battery dangers
THE mum of a Stoke-on-trent tot who died after swallowing a button battery took her campaign to save other little lives to the Houses of Parliament.
Stacy-marie Nicklin’s daughter Harper-lee Fanthorpe was only two when she died in May last year after swallowing a little disc battery that had fallen out of a remote control.
Since then, Stacy-marie, 36, working with The Sentinel/ Stokeontrentlive and city MP Jo Gideon, has set up the Harper-lee Foundation.
It aims to raise awareness about the dangers of button batteries – which are found in many seemingly innocuous household items including children’s toys – and yesterday the Foundation took its powerful message to the corridors of power.
In the Churchill Rooms at the Palace of Westminster, gathered MPS, government ministers and other policy makers heard of the tragic death of Harper-lee, and the work that has been done by the Foundation since to try to spread the word about the dangers button batteries pose to youngsters.
Stacy-marie, of Abbey Hulton, said: “I knew when Harper died that I couldn’t let that be for nothing, that we had to do something in her name, to help stop other little ones dying the way she did.
“But to see that we’ve come this far in her memory is amazing. The work Jo has done has been fantastic, and to be able to come here and spread the word to people who can take that word away and help make a difference all over the country is wonderful.”
Harper-lee swallowed the button battery and when it became lodged in her oesophagus it burned through the tissue and caused massive, unsurvivable internal bleeding. She died in hospital later that day.
Her death prompted an outpouring of grief in the local community, but Stacy-marie’s harrowing story made national and international headlines. And what quickly became clear was that the dangers of button batteries were not widely known.
One of the most touching moments of yesterday’s event was the meeting, for the first time in person, between Stacy-marie and fellow campaigner Holly Phillips.
Holly, 28, from Watford, nearly lost her baby son Ralphie in an horrific similar incident in August last year.
She posted on Facebook about what had happened to her son and overnight her post had more than 250,000 views.
One of those viewers was Harper-lee’s mum Stacy-marie, who got in touch with her. And yesterday, the pair met for the first time face to face, at Westminster, to help launch the Harper-lee Foundation.
Holly said: “Every day I get messages from people about products that these batteries are falling out of. It’s so important that we raise as much awareness of this as we can.”
Jo Gideon, MP for Stoke-on-trent Central, said: “I was delighted to host this event in Parliament to raise the profile of the work of the Harper-lee Foundation, so that communities across the United Kingdom will become more aware of the danger of button battery ingestion.
“My parliamentary colleagues were invited to sign a pledge to raise awareness in their constituencies so that we can avoid more tragic deaths and injuries from button battery and coin cell ingestion by children. This will be Harper-lee’s legacy.”
Marc Waddington, Sentinel and Stokeontrentlive editor, inset, who is a trustee of the Harper-lee Foundation and attended the event at Westminster, said: “When Stacy-marie first spoke to us about what had happened to Harperlee, so many readers responded to say that the first thing they did after reading about her tragic death was to go all around their houses removing button batteries from devices.
“That meant many more children were safer than they were before, and the chances are that some of their lives were saved as a result of the awareness that Stacy-marie was able to raise.”