More than 89,000 stillborn babies buried in mass graves across England as parents search for childrens' remains

9 December 2024, 07:44 | Updated: 9 December 2024, 19:40

An investigation by LBC has found there are more than 89,000 stillborn babies buried in mass graves across England.

The figures, obtained by LBC under the Freedom of Information Act, represent just a fraction of what is likely to be the true number of stillborn children in these mass graves as records are largely patchy and inconsistent, date back to the early 1800s and tend to be hand-written.

In September 2024, a mass grave was discovered at Royton Cemetery in Oldham.

The 12ft x 12ft plot contains the remains of 145 stillborn children, 128 babies and young children, and 29 adults.

This discovery followed the unearthing of similar mass baby graves at Landican on the Wirral, and further points to an historical culture whereby grieving mums and dads were routinely being told their babies were to be buried 'with a nice person who had died that day', when, in reality, they were being layered up in pits across the country.

Our investigation has found, up until the late-1980s, stillborn babies were routinely taken from their mothers and either disposed of by the hospital or put in a cardboard box and given to the father to take to a cemetery.

Bereaved parents were told by medical staff that their child was being buried alongside a 'nice person' who had died that same day, but in many cases the truth was they were being put into a mass grave alongside hundreds of other babies. This is a lie that was repeated time and time again over decades.

Gina Jacobs found her son's grave on the Wirral, 53 years after he had died, and told LBC: "People have cried, people have broken down, some people have been told their babies were in a different cemetery to what they were.

"Why would they tell those people that?

"If we had been told the truth we could have been visiting.

"I could have been visiting for 53 years, I could have taken a card at Christmas, a birthday card, I could have put a tribute on, but how do you put a tribute on a grave that you think belongs to a family?

Mothers of stillborn babies were not given first names, the mums were discouraged from holding their babies "for their own good", and, without a burial site, the parents and family members were left without a place to go and lay flowers or say a prayer.

Amanda, 62, has spent decades trying to find out where her twin brothers were buried, only to find out they were in the grave located in Royton Cemetery, a stones-throw from her home.

Her parents died never knowing where their boys were buried.

Fighting back tears, she told LBC: "I live in Royton, my parents are from Royton, and they're buried in Royton Cemetery.

"They would have walked through Royton Cemetery so many times never knowing that their babies were there.

"It was a shock (to find out). A relief, but also a shock. Finally, I was able to give some life to them to say "Yes, they are part of my family, they did exist” and add them to our family tree."

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Amanda added: "My mother was searching for her babies for many years. My twin brothers were born in July 1962.

Nicholas lived for five hours, but Lawrence was still born. I remember stories from my childhood of how distressed my mothers was, when she explained I had twin brothers but they couldn't stay, they couldn't be with us, but never knowing where these twin boys were.

"There was no support back then of how to find these babies so she could grieve and visit and have that connection with them.

"I know she struggled, and for many years it would pop up as a conversation so I knew it was playing on her mind. But sadly both my parents passed quite young.

"I joined the usual places like ancestry.com, I paid into various channels online, social media support, but they never showed up. I started in my later years thinking have I got this wrong?"

Having seen Gina Jacob's story, Amanda reached out to her and eventually made the breakthrough, she said: "Gina contacted me and said: "We might have found your brothers".

"I get emotional at that point, because I live in Royton, my parents are from Royton... I never realised how heavy this had played on me throughout my childhood and into my adult years, until we found them and then I started to cry.

"My mum was told to go home, get on with it, have another baby. That's had a huge impact on her life, and I'd probably go so far as to say it's probably impacted their longevity of life, because we all know the impact of stress and anxiety and how that plays out on someone's health.

"It really is significant to people's lives. It's their family, their babies, their siblings, and it's really important to people that they know where these babies are.”

Amanda, like many other grieving parents and siblings, are eager for the burial records to be recorded and stored online to enable them to have easy access.

"We do need it online.”, she said: “We need people to have access to it, a support mechanism for people who can't find it, a dedicated officer in the records department to help people search, and that dedicated officer needs to understand how sensitive a matter this is for people, to do it respectfully, to support them with compassion, with care and to provide the right information.

"One of the big things I've come across is the information isn't available online. It shouldn't be that hard. It's so important to connect people's history and family tree together, so people can see who their relatives are, so families can understand the background of their family, health concerns etc.

"On the death certificate it just says "immaturity". That's not a cause of death so there are more questions. We've had no response from the NHS, the midwifery service of the day, what was the whole process of birth to burial? The Undertakers Association, we've not had anything from them, we want to know what the practice was, what was the care and compassion involved?

"We need to get it online, because it will pull through into other software which will rejoin families. We need to recognise people have been really severely affected by the loss of babies, but also the loss of time and not knowing where those babies are."

LBC submitted Freedom of Information requests to 314 authorities in England asking for the number of mass graves, the number of stillborn babies buried in mass graves, the earliest records of such graves and the dates of when the last graves were closed.

For most areas the records appear to be patchy and inconsistent - they date back to the mid 19th century, most are in hard-copies with varying levels of detail and would take days to go through - Manchester for example has 807,000 records dating back to 1866 and told LBC that would take them an estimated 261 days (almost nine months) if they worked non stop.

This highlights the difficulty people are having in trying to locate the final resting place of their baby. How does someone who doesn't know what they're doing, generally older people who may not be as tech savvy, try and work through these details.

In Oldham the information shows the earliest mass grave was opened in 1857 and was open for 60 years before being closed. The most recent was opened in 1987 and closed in 1991 - so what does that tell us about the burial practice? And, while we understand this was the norm back then, it does leave people with lots of questions about how their babies were disposed of and how the graves were managed.

We've also found records go back as far as 1836, are patchy and inconsistent, and in most cases they are not available online.

Jen Coates is the Director of Bereavement Support at SANDS which supports parents after the loss of a baby, she told LBC: "Sadly not surprised, but extremely sad for the bereaved parents who may never know where their baby was taken or buried, or cremated.

"Thinking around bereavement and loss and grief was very different. Babies were taken away, they weren't able to see their baby, they weren't even told if their baby was a boy or a girl. They were told to go away and try again and not to think about their baby.

"We've moved on leaps and bounds, thank goodness, in the last few decades around the importance of remembering your baby and acknowledging loss, but it is shocking what happened to babies and we need to acknowledge that, and to help support siblings.

Some parents have died without knowing what happened to their baby. We need to be able to support them in tracing babies' graves.

"It's just so important to know where your baby or sibling is. I think some babies were definitely buried with an adult, certainly in smaller communities if an adult burial was going on at the same time then the baby would have been buried with that adult. But it's coming to light that that hasn't been the case all the time, and that just adds to the trauma of parents having believed that all this time and now finding out it wasn't the case for their baby. It's incredibly difficult."

A candlelit vigil for the babies will be taking place in Royton on Sunday at 3pm.

In September, the Leader of Oldham Council announced that permanent memorials will be placed in Oldham's cemeteries to remember adults, children and babies who were buried in unmarked graves.

LBC has asked Oldham Council for an update on this, but so far it has not been able to provide further details or any kind of timeline for these memorials.

Manchester Metro Mayor Andy Burnham told LBC that he is working with Oldham council to find out "everything that is possible to find out" and thinks there are "a lot more" mass graves in the area.

He said: "For any parent who's been through that experience, any mother who's had a stillbirth, it will be a traumatic thing for the rest of their life. Then, to have these revelations brings it back.

"We are working closely with the leader of Oldham Council to start to find out everything that is possible to find out. I think that's the main thing, isn't it, having honesty from the authorities as to why these graves were there, which organisations were using those sites, giving people as much truth as we can possibly get, and then perhaps supporting parents with a permanent location, an appropriate location to go.

"I think there's a lot more to come out on this and we need to work to get maximum disclosure, maximum transparency and then an appropriate solution that comes from it."