Health Secretary Wes Streeting to meet families of mass graves scandal
The Health Secretary has pledged to meet with families of stillborn babies who were buried in mass graves, following a shocking LBC investigation.
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In December, LBC revealed that over 89,000 stillborn babies were routinely being buried in mass graves across England.
Despite being offered assurances that their child would be “buried with a nice person who died the same day,” devastated families later learned they were piled up in pits. In some cases, these remained open for over 60 years.
Wes Streeting told LBC the details of the scandal sent “a shiver down [his] spine,” and offered to meet the affected families.
“I think it's really important that we hear from them what they've been through and how we can help to heal as much as possible,” the Health Secretary said.
“I think unless you've been through it, you can't imagine what they're going through… Anything we can do to help provide some healing, I think we owe it to those families.”
For years, many parents and siblings have tried desperately to locate the resting place of their stillborn relative, but owing to patchy record-keeping, it has often proved impossible.
One proposal, backed by five former health secretaries, is for a national memorial to commemorate the babies who never received a grave of their own. Mr Streeting signalled that he would be open to commissioning such a memorial in his conversation with LBC:
“I understand where the call for a national memorial comes from, so I do take that seriously.
“I think the important thing is, and what I'm keen to do off the back of [LBC’s] journalism, and also the calls from my predecessors, is to now listen to what the family groups are saying, make sure we get this right and do this with them. So, we'll take a good look at the campaign.”
Mr Streeting also thanked LBC for bringing the scandal to light.
After the publication of our original investigation, many families contacted LBC to share heartbreaking testimony of their search for answers.
Margaret from Cheshire told LBC of her 68-year battle on behalf of her stillborn sister.
“I knew I had a stillborn sister, born in 1957,” Margaret said. "As we grew up, we knew little about her, but we also knew that my mother had suffered with her nerves during the time after the stillbirth because she had the child at home.
“When my father took the baby in a box or a little coffin to the cemetery and handed it in to be buried, we were told she'd be buried with another person, a lady. But I've since found out that's not true.
“She existed. I know she existed. We all know she existed. But it seems to me like they've just thrown her away.”
Margaret’s concern is that her sister’s body was never buried and was instead used for medical research. Her suspicions are shared by Gina Jacobs, who only discovered the truth about her son Robert’s final resting place 50 years later.
“I have to be blunt here,” Gina warned, “[as] I know this can distress people, but they haven't been buried. It’s as simple as that. So where are these babies now?
“I firmly believe they have gone for medical research without the knowledge of parents or families. Maybe this is why we were told the lie, because [the authorities] wouldn't tell us the truth. Where are they now?”
In 2010, the Redfern Inquiry was published and revealed how research was carried out during the 1950s and 1960s to measure levels of strontium 90 in human bone obtained at post-mortem. It was a national survey, involving more than 6,000 people, mostly children.
Across its entire remit, the inquiry found that families' views about organ retention were not always sought, and that very few families knew that organs were taken for analysis.
As well as the grieving families being left in the dark, it has transpired that many medical professionals were unaware of what had happened to the stillborn babies.
Gloria McQuaid, a retired maternity nurse on Merseyside, said she was “absolutely shocked” to hear about their treatment, adding: “I just took it that the baby went to the mortuary and from then on it was the parents who arranged what happened. I was told that the baby would be buried with somebody else.
“Until I found this out, it never entered my head that anything [happened] other than the baby was buried with somebody. You know, I never questioned it and never thought anything else about it.
“It's heartbreaking because it's gone to the next generation, you know, to the siblings now. And so many of them, they spent their lives looking for these babies and it really is. It's heartbreaking. There's no other word for it. Dreadful.”
The scale and severity of the scandal has resulted in calls for a parliamentary debate, which has received support from a growing number of MPs, including the former Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn.
Sarah Gibson, the MP for Chippenham, told LBC she will request for a Parliamentary debate about the issue:
“All I’m asking for is to try and make some of those burial records more accessible to families, so it's much easier for them to find things, a national recognition and an apology for the fact that nobody considered their children to be anything but something to be disposed of rather than their child, and for government to put a fund together for local authorities to go out, identify these spaces and also put up some kind of plaque or memorial at each one of them.”
John Murphy is a semi-retired painter and decorator from Wiltshire and found his sister to be buried in a mass grave 55 miles away in Reading. He’s told LBC a debate could help provide closure for the affected families.
“We’re not asking for a major inquiry,” he said. “It happened, we can’t change it. But it would be good to acknowledge that it happened and have a point of reference for those children.
“It's one of those things we can debate in Parliament, we can all agree on and we can act on it. It's not going to cost a small fortune.”
