A funeral director who took babies’ bodies home with her has been banned from maternity wards and morgues in Leeds.
Amie Upton, 38, placed one deceased infant in a baby bouncer in front of her TV so he could ‘watch cartoons’, according to one traumatised mum.
Zoe Ward, 32, said the sight of her son, Bleu, who was just three weeks old when he died of brain damage in 2021, propped up at Ms Upton’s home was ‘terrifying’.
Another couple who learned their stillborn daughter’s body had been taken home by Ms Upton said: ‘It was just crazy. If I told somebody of this story… they’d think it was a horror film.’
Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust banned Ms Upton from all its mortuaries and maternity wards earlier this year, a BBC investigation revealed.
Zoe said she contacted Ms Upton’s baby loss support and funeral service, Florrie’s Army, to arrange Bleu’s funeral.
Florrie’s Army says it supports bereaved parents and offers free handprints, photographs, baby clothing and a dedicated funeral service.
Speaking to the BBC, Zoe described speaking with Ms Upton and coming away confident that the service would be ‘brilliant’.
But when it came to meeting face to face, she said she was ‘terrified’ to find him positioned in front of the television in Ms Upton’s living room.
‘She [Ms Upton] says: “Come in, we’re watching PJ Masks”,’ Zoe said.
‘There was another [dead] baby on the sofa. It wasn’t a nice sight.’
She said she called her own mum ‘screaming’ before another funeral director was asked to come and collect Bleu’s body.
Zoe said the ‘weird’ experience made her ‘upset and angry’.
The funeral industry in England and Wales is unregulated, with no legal requirements on how bodies should be stored or qualifications required to become a funeral director.
Earlier this year, an inquiry urged the government to introduce statutory regulations to protect the ‘security and dignity’ of people after death.
Warning that the system is fundamentally flawed, chairman Sir Jonathan Michael found the lack of regulation meant anyone could set themselves up as a funeral director, work at home and keep bodies in their garages if they wished.
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The parents of another baby, who wished to remain anonymous, said they believed her body was being kept at a funeral parlour in Headingly until she was to be buried.
But they said Ms Upton later told them their daughter’s body was in fact at her home some five miles away.
‘I just didn’t know why she was there,’ the mum said.
The couple said they do not know how long their daughter’s body was there, but think she was not kept at the right temperature because it was ‘really smelly, like she’d been in there and not kept cool’.
Bodies should be kept in a clean and clinical environment, between 4-7°C.
However, the BBC found evidence suggesting bodies in Ms Upton’s care have not always been kept in a cold cot, which has electrical cooling pads to maintain lower temperatures.
Philip Gallagher, of Gallagher Funeral Services in Headingley which is approved by the Trust, told the BBC he has a ‘working relationship’ with Ms Upton.
He said: ‘We are aware that two families have raised concerns about the service she provides; however, it is our understanding that these concerns have been thoroughly investigated.’
The Trust said it had received ‘several serious concerns’ about Ms Upton’s services over the past few years.
A spokesperson said: ‘When we first became aware of concerns, we implemented extra steps in our mortuary services on top of our already robust measures.
‘Since 2021 we have had specific safeguarding measures in place, including monitoring [Ms Upton’s] attendance when visiting deceased patients at the mortuary in her funeral service role.’
West Yorkshire Police said it has investigated two reports about Ms Upton’s funeral service since 2021 but added that after ‘extensive enquiries… no potential crimes were identified’.
Ms Upton told the BBC she has only ever had two complaints in her eight years of running Florrie’s Army.
Metro has contacted her for comment.
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