Standing on a patch of grass in Royton Cemetery, Linda and Arnold Marsden kneel and place a bunch of flowers next to a dozen other bouquets. They embrace each other in silence, united in a shared bereavement that seems so raw and fresh.
Linda is, understandably, too grief-stricken to utter a word. But her husband, Arnold, tells me why they are here today. The couple, in their 70s, now know the final resting place of their baby girl, who would have been celebrating her 49th birthday this year.
Karen Eva was born on New Year’s Eve in 1975 at the Royal Oldham Hospital, then Boundary Park. She was their second daughter and would have brought joy to their growing family. But Karen died just two hours after he birth. The couple didn’t get to hold her or say goodbye.
‘They just took her away,’ Arnold tells me, fighting back the tears. ‘They probably thought they were helping with our grieving. We didn’t think anything of it at the time, as our child had just passed away. Our only wish was that we could have held her.’
Though they have two other children, a son and daughter, they’ve never quite got over the heartbreak of losing their middle child.
Bunches of flowers rest on the spot where more than 300 babies were buried in a mass grave
Karen didn’t get a proper grave or a headstone. Instead, she was one of the almost 300 babies and children whose bodies were discovered in a mass grave in Royton Cemetery.
The unmarked 12 by 12ft burial site, in Oldham, contains 145 stillborn babies, 128 babies and young children, and 29 adults. The adults are likely to be ‘pauper’s burials’ – people whose families could not pay for a proper funeral. Since then, other mass graves have been uncovered in the town.
Today, when a baby is stillborn, parents are allowed to grieve and spend precious time with their child. Memory boxes are also provided, which include photos and hand prints.
But it was not always like this. From the 1950s until as recently as the 90s, babies were taken away from families and no details of where they were buried were given. Medical staff would tell bereaved parents their children would be buried alongside ‘a nice person’. Instead, stillborns were laid to rest in mass graves. It’s believed they were buried in such a way because they weren’t christened.
‘That’s what they did in those days’ is a common refrain I hear from many residents. There’s no suggestion that this was done out of any malice. Medical practitioners probably took the dead child away to spare grieving parents any further pain. Yet it came at the emotional expense of mums and dads who yearned, for many years after, to have held their baby before he or she was taken away.
The Royton discovery was made by a local resident who had long searched for the resting place of her twin brothers, Nicholas and Lawrence, who died in 1962. One was stillborn and the other only lived for five hours. She had enlisted the help of Gina Jacobs, a campaigner from Merseyside who had found her own baby’s burial site 53 years after his death.
The woman, who wishes to stay anonymous, explains the mental toll it had on her parents, never knowing where their sons were buried.
‘For years they couldn’t find them. There was no record either,’ she tells me. ‘My parents went to their graves not knowing. I keep hearing the phrase ‘pauper’s grave’. My parents could have paid for their children’s burial. But the decision was taken away from them.’
According to Oldham Council, the Royton grave, numbered 1A-360, was first opened in 1924 and the last burial took place in 1972
After making several enquiries she was told that her brothers were buried in Royton.
‘That’s where my parents and grandparents are buried,’ she says. ‘My parents would have walked past that spot, never knowing. I found that really sad.’
What’s more, it was only after probing further that she was told, so casually in an email, that the babies were buried in a spot with 303 bodies.
‘I was mortified. I couldn’t believe it. It’s almost like a baby landfill. It’s a real social injustice.’
About a month ago, she contacted members of her council Maggie Hurley and Jade Hughes, both Independents, who decided to go public with the horrific revelations earlier this month.
‘When she first told me I thought she was talking about a third world country, not something that happened right in our ward,’ sys Ms Hurley. ‘I thought, ‘she’s got this wrong’. How wrong I was.’
Only 147 of the 303 names were online, with 156 missing. The error, now resolved, would partly explain why many parents couldn’t trace their babies. Not all those babies would have had a birth or death certificate. In those cases, names can be found on a stillbirths register, which is only accessible by parents or siblings.
According to Oldham Council, the Royton grave, numbered 1A-360, was first opened in 1924 and the last burial took place in 1972.
While this has come as a shock to many families, some parents have always known about this open secret. Linda and Arnold were told that baby Karen was buried in Royton. They just didn’t know the exact spot.
‘We come here every six months, just wandering around. It’s only today we found out that she was in plot 362,’ says Arnold. ‘It’s upsetting. But it’s good in a way. Now we can feel even closer to [Karen]. We can visit her more often’.
Over the weekend, parents and siblings visited the cemetery to pay tribute. After this mass grave was uncovered in Royton, another 159 were unearthed in a different part of the graveyard, and 50 elsewhere. All in all, that’s over 500 in one cemetery alone.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Days after the story broke, further mass graves were discovered a few miles away in Chadderton Cemetery and Greenacres Cemetery.
The latter is where Anne and Peter Ryan’s daughter is buried.
Anne and Peter Ryan’s baby, Joyce, was born prematurely in 1969, weighing only 1lb 1oz
Joyce was born prematurely at their Oldham home in November 1969, weighing only 1lb 1oz.
‘I remember it as clear as yesterday,’ says 78-year-old Peter. ‘She was so tiny. I wrapped her in a little handkerchief to keep her warm, until the ambulance arrived. The umbilical cord was still attached.’
Anne, 73, adds: ‘She had no eyelashes and her fingers weren’t even separated. If she was born now she would have had a chance.’
While Joyce was taken to Boundary Park, Anne was rushed to Monsall Hospital, in North Manchester, with a water infection. Her baby died two days later. Anne never even held her.
The parents, who now live in Bury, Greater Manchester, and have three children and several grandchildren, were told Joyce was buried in Greenacres but didn’t know the exact resting spot.
It was through help from their daughter-in-law Kay that, last month, they were finally given a birth and death certificate from a local funeral director, who also told them the plot number for the grave. Even then, they still don’t believe it’s correct as that area is full of marked graves.
The Ryans also claim they were told by a staff member at Greenacres to pay £47 to be shown where Joyce is buried, something strenuously denied by Oldham Council.
Arooj Shah, council leader, said: ‘Like other councils… we have charged an administration fee when people need help to find an adult grave. This is often to help people researching family history, rather than those searching for immediate family members, and we have never charged people who are looking for the graves of babies.’
As there is no grave to visit, Anne has a small shrine dedicated to Joyce in their garden
And that isn’t even the most tragic part.
‘The undertakers told us that the unmarked plot could be sold on,’ says Peter. ‘So what does that mean, that more bodies will be buried on top? It’s not on.’
As there is no grave to visit, Anne has a small shrine of statues dedicated to Joyce in their garden.
‘It’s how I talk to her,’ she says. ‘I don’t want to blame anybody. All I want to know is, where is my little girl?’
This is not the first time this issue has reared its head. In 2020, a cross-party group of MPs said that families who lost babies more than 40 years ago should be told where their remains are.
‘We owe these mums an apology,’ Labour MP Carolyn Harris said at the time. ‘The place to start is with the government – the system was wrong and we now have an opportunity to make sure that we make amends for the damage we caused.’
The MP for Swansea East’s mother gave birth to a stillborn girl in 1958.
Over the years, several families have been seeking out the final resting places of their lost children, with mass graves of stillborns being discovered in various towns and cities across the UK, including Devon, Middlesbrough and Huddersfield.
Anne and Peter, after 55 years, visited Greenacres cemetery to see their daughter’s resting place. They had a little cry at the spot and will return to place flowers in her memory
Another mass grave was found in Wirral earlier this year, thanks to the tireless efforts of Gina Jacobs. She found her own baby boy at Landican Cemetery, in Birkenhead, more than two years ago, after watching a BBC North West programme featuring Lilian Thorpe, who located the burial site of her daughter Belinda in Manchester.
Jacobs gave birth to a stillborn boy in 1969. ‘In those days you weren’t allowed to see them, hold them, or name them. They were made to get rid of them as fast as possible. Our generation didn’t protest too much. But surely anybody with a grain of compassion wouldn’t stop someone seeing their baby.’
Instead, the boy was handed over to her (now deceased) husband, Jimmy, in a cardboard box and was instructed to take him on the bus to Landican, where he would be buried with someone else – at least that’s what they were told.
‘When I went to the cemetery, a staff member had a map and said he’s in there with 63 other babies,’ says Gina. ‘I said ‘no disrespect but that can’t be right’.’
After finding his grave, she decided to call him Robert. A memorial to all those lost babies was unveiled at the cemetery last year.
Since her discovery, the 80-year-old great-great grandmother has gone on to help other bereaved mothers find over 60 babies at her local cemetery.
‘I want the government to apologise,’ she says. ‘I want someone to say sorry that we couldn’t see our babies, hold them, or name them.’
The tragic subject was raised at last week’s full council meeting, where it was decided that a memorial would be erected at the site where those bodies are buried.
Records and documents about the burials will be made more accessible and digitalised, and there’ll also be a designated member of staff at the cemeteries to guide relatives to the right grave.
‘I hope this news will bring some solace to those surviving relatives who have loved ones buried in our cemeteries,’ says Ms Shah. ‘It is right to face the mistakes of the past and, more importantly, remember those precious lives.’
A spokesman from the Department of Health and Social care added: ‘Our sympathies are with the families affected. We expect all hospitals to provide as much information as they have available to any parents who inquire about what happened to their stillborn babies, no matter how long ago they passed away’.
But this is just the beginning. Who knows just how many more graves of stillborn babies have yet to be unearthed – not just in Oldham, but all around the country.
‘I’ve been very angry,’ says Maggie Hurley. ‘Every MP in every town should be up in arms. This can’t end with just a motion at an Oldham Council meeting.’
In the meantime, Anne and Peter have finally got their closure. The couple, who now live in Bury, Greater Manchester, went to Greenacres Cemetery yesterday where, after 55 years, they finally located their daughter’s grave.
They had a little cry at the spot and will return to place flowers in loving memory of Joyce.
‘I feel better knowing,’ says Peter. ‘It’s such a relief.’
‘These last five weeks have been heartbreaking for us,’ says Anne. ‘At least we know where she is now.’
Oldham Council has advised residents looking for loved ones to get in touch online or by email at env.cemeteries@oldham.gov.uk
