The Shrewsbury babies' missing ashes

A pencil drawing of stillborn twins

Shropshire Co-operative Funeralcare and Emstrey Crematorium don't seem to have sorted out their customer care. There are some very upset bereaved parents demanding to know why they weren't given their babies' ashes after cremation.

The review into Emstrey Crematorium in Shrewsbury began after the BBC found the ashes of only one baby out of 30 had been given to families since 2004.

When someone is cremated, what remains (usually called cremains) isn't ashes but pulverised bone. Everything else is vaporised in the intense heat of the furnace. The bones are raked out and put into a machine that grinds them up after any spare parts, such as metal screws and plates, are sorted out. The cremains can then be scattered or buried, or (in some cases) kept on your mantelpiece.

Small babies, whose bones haven't fully developed, don't leave anything to be pulverised after cremation. If there is anything left, it's dust. It's not an easy thing to explain to parents mourning the loss of a baby, even if most people weren't so squeamish, so maybe it's not always done well, if at all.

Sadly, the distress that a bereaved parent will naturally feel can become focussed on the lack of a grave or any tangible evidence that their baby existed. One mother is quoted as saying,

"It's just I have got nothing. I need to go where he is because my life isn't complete until I know where he is."

When I miscarried at 18 weeks, a long time ago, I briefly fretted that my baby's tiny body had been pickled in a jar. I was told that wasn't true, and that he'd been "respectfully" disposed of. What almost certainly happened was that the body had gone into the hospital incinerator. A funeral director I know told me that they are sometimes contacted by bereaved parents decades after they lost their baby, asking where he or she is buried. It's only fairly recently that babies have been given individual graves, so it's not possible to tell them.

The Shrewsbury parents seem to have good reason to complain that they weren't properly informed, but what they need now isn't a box of ashes, which is impossible, but help to come to terms with what's happened.

The drawing (above) was my gift to the young parents of stillborn twins. It was copied from a photograph that was unsuitable for framing. I hope that the Shrewsbury parents have photographs, if nothing else.

Click here to read what SANDS (Stillbirth & neonatal death charity) says about cremation.

Update: 5/6/2015

The story rumbles on in today's Guardian. Parents accuse the crematorium staff of not telling the truth. It sounds more like a breakdown in communication and old cremators.

... by 2009 ... furnaces at Emstrey were decrepit. “The computer control system was archaic,” Jenkins said. “The system ran on obsolete floppy discs and staff had to recycle old computers to keep the system running.”

The report noted the cremators had no infant setting and staff did not realise they could override presets. Lower temperatures would have made it more likely that some infant remains could have been recovered. But Jenkins said environmental regulations may have banned that and other practises, such as cremating young children, at the start or end of the day.

What's meant by "some infant remains"? Burnt tissue? Is that really what you'd want to keep? I wonder if the parents have really considered what this means. Burning a cremator at a lower temperature has been described as "gentle" cremation, a euphemism meant to make the process sound pleasant.

In my experience, funeral directors and crematorium staff aren't unaffected by a baby's funeral. They are keenly aware of the parents' feelings, especially as most will have children themselves.

It seems to me that the buck stops with the funeral directors' funeral arrangers, who are responsible for making all the arrangements. They should know what is or isn't possible, and advise the families accordingly.

The moral is, if you want remains after the disposal of a small infant, don't cremate them, bury them.

Shropshire Council commissioned a report into what had happened. Click here to read it.

A similar babies' ashes story has been told in Scotland - click here to read about it.

It's time to re-educate the funeral directors, again

Funeral arrangers are the people in a funeral director's office who interview clients and make the arrangements. They're the ones who contact us to ask if we'll do a funeral for a client who doesn't want a religious ceremony. At least, that's how it's supposed to work.

We send all the funeral directors in our area a newsletter every year or so, to inform them about our service and remind them what we will or won't do. With staff changes, some need re-educating periodically.

One of our biggest problems is the arrangers who book a venue (such-and-such a crematorium at 11am on Tuesday, say) before they contact us. When it's a fait accompli, there's not much we can do if all of us are already committed elsewhere. There've been times when I've had to tell an arranger, sorry - we can't help you.

Then there are the ones who don't really understand what a humanist funeral is. Their client might have said that they don't want a religious funeral, but they still choose to sing hymns, for example. I've known clients say, "But it's not really religious, is it?" about Abide with Me, Jerusalem, or Morning has Broken. Don't they ever listen to the words? If the arranger is doing his or her job properly, he or she should know better than to steer people like that in our direction. They need a civil celebrant, who's not much fussed about what we call "pick 'n mix" funerals, or one of the many freelance celebrants who'll do the same.

This morning I had an email from an arranger who'd asked me to do a funeral a few days ago. I'd queried whether the client had chosen any music. The email listed four hymns! I spoke to the client on Tuesday. I asked, "You do understand that I provide a funeral that's totally free from religion, don't you? No hymns, prayers, religious readings, or references to an afterlife?" "Yes," he said, "that's what we want. Mum wasn't religious." I haven't been able to get hold of him again today, so far, but what seems to have happened is that the arranger has handed him a list of recorded music and said, "You can choose from this." Not appreciating that they can have anything they want (and I mean anything - the new Wesley system means access to an almost unlimited number of recordings), the client opted for the hymns because he thought that was usual, or didn't have a clue what he wanted.

Meanwhile, I've been backed into a corner by another client, who insists that we sing Jerusalem because her husband loved the song. I can see that this is going to be one of those weeks.