From £1.2m deal to pauper’s funeral, tragic fall of Mandy the Octomum
IN death as in their tragically brief lives, all eight premature infants were laid to rest in front of the world’s media.
Six boys and two girls carried in their own tiny white coffins and placed side by side altogether in a single grave.
On top of each was placed a posy of flowers and a note penned by their mother, Mandy Allwood, whowatched on, dressed in black.
Yesterday, little more than a quarter of a century later, the 56-year-old was reunited with her lost children.
But this time there would be nocameras to record the moment – not even a lone mourner.
instead, with just two undertakers looking on, her coffin was cremated. the £1,500 bill for the ‘unattended’ or ‘pauper’s funeral’ will apparently be picked up by the local council.
For a woman whose story gripped and horrified the world in equal measure, Mrs Allwood’s lonely death from cancer could hardly have contrasted more starkly with the circus that preceded it.
Once, the so-called ‘Octomum’ appeared on Oprah winfrey. But in recent years her only audience was fellow drinkers in the saloon bar of her local pub.
She found fame in 1996 after taking fertility drugs and falling pregnant. ignoring medical advice toabort some of the foetuses – to give the others a better chance of survival – she instead vowed to give birth to the lot. At the time she claimed it was because she could not bear to make such a decision.
But others believed she was motivated by money – the late celebrity publicist Max Clifford having orchestrated a media frenzy from which she stood toearn more than £1million from a successful pregnancy.
what happened next was harrowingly predictable.
‘Over three days and nights i miscarried eight times,’ she would recall. ‘i cradled each of them for two-and-a-half hours as they died in my arms. it was horrible. truly horrible. when i felt the last one coming i said “Please, God, let at least one of them live”.’
But it was not to be. And, as can be revealed here today, there would be no happy ending for their mother either – even though she would go on to have three daughters.
As the money dried up, soother problems emerged. Anorexia and alcoholism followed, as did regular brushes with the law – including convictions for fraud, drink-driving and an anti-social behaviour order.
where once she had been able toafford a listed house in wimbledon, in recent years home was a shabby flat in Stratford-upon-Avon.
Recalling their chaotic neighMidlands, bour, a fellow resident said last night: ‘i tried to give her what she needed and to help. it was a shame, i felt sorry for her – but it was just too much to handle.
‘She flooded the flat underneath her when she overfilled her bath. She was just so drunk. it happened three times.’
Another local said: ‘She was certainly a character to say the least, but she never recovered from what happened to her. You can’t even imagine the trauma she went through so it’s understandable, i suppose. But she did have her struggles with the bottle.’
Brought up in Solihull, west as the daughter of an electrician, Mandy left school at 16 to take a business course.
throughout her teenage years, she had irregular periods and was later diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome, which can cause fertility problems. initially it wasn’t an issue, she and her first husband having a son together.
But in 1994 she met and fell head over heels with Paul Hudson, whoran a lettings business.
this was despite his obvious shortcomings as a partner – he openly divided his time between Mrs Allwood and another lover with whom he had a child.
Following a miscarriage, she began taking fertility drugs. But ignoring the strict medical rules under which the drugs were prescribed, she fell pregnant with eight babies. After much agonising she chose to carry on without intervention, a decision many believed was destined for disaster.
‘She phoned us one day in August and said she was coming round because she had something important to tell us,’ her brotherin-law Carl Burgess said at the time. ‘She stood in the kitchen and told us she was having eight babies – she was already three months’ pregnant. i remember clear as day she looked me in the eye and said: “Carl, i’m going tomilk this for all i can get”. i couldn’t believe it, but when she showed me the newspaper contract for £1.25million if she had all eight babies. i knew that’s what she was going for.’
But sordid details quickly emerged about past relationships and fall-outs with family members. And how, the nation asked, could an unmarried couple on benefits and with a history of transient sexual relationships have been given fertility drugs to conceive one baby, let alone eight?
the feared tragedy duly unfolded. On September 30, 1996, Mrs Allwood went into labour and was taken to King’s College Hospital in London. Her first baby died just hours after birth and in the days that followed she would lose all eight. Asked subsequently if she had ever felt guilty, she replied: ‘why should i? i feel proud to have given them life, even if it lasted only an hour.’
in the weeks after the tragedy she met Princess Diana, who got in touch to offer her sympathies.
‘when we first met she said tome “thank you for keeping me off the front pages for a change”,’ Mrs Allwood would reveal. ‘we talked about her depression and my panic attacks and she told me she had been there too.’
Mrs Allwood would soon after fall pregnant, naturally, with the first of three daughters with Mr Hudson. But the money the couple had earned quickly dwindled and not long after they split. in 1999 she was convicted of twocounts of fraud, after telling banks she was a high-powered executive despite being on income support.
then, in 2007, she was arrested for driving while three times the limit with her three daughters in the car. She lost custody of her children and there were several suicide attempts as she battled with alcoholism, depression and phantom pregnancies.
But Mark Beard, landlord of the Yard of Ale pub in Stratford said Mrs Allwood would be missed.
‘She was a bit eccentric and nutty but that’s why we loved her,’
‘It was just too much to handle’
‘Lost custody of her children’
the 58-year-old said. ‘when she came in she’d be very loud, laughing and taking over conversations. She would make her feelings known and never shy away.
‘She sometimes spoke about what happened to her, with the eight babies. People would often ask her about it. when we first met she told us who she was and she said she had been in magazines in the past, but that was it.’
it is understood Mrs Allwood had been suffering from cancer for some time and had an operation to treat it last year. But she still fell seriously ill and died in early December.
A number of her pub friends had wanted to attend the funeral but, for unknown reasons, were told they could not. the cremation went ahead at 9am yesterday – a low-key occasion for a woman whowas once the most famous motherto-be in the world.