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A grieving mother has revealed the harrowing moment she walked into a funeral director’s living room and found her dead son sitting in a baby bouncer watching cartoons.
Zoe Ward, 32, was left ‘screaming’ in a state of panic after seeing her baby Bleu, who was just three weeks old when he died of brain damage at Leeds General Infirmary in 2021.
After her son’s tragic death, Ms Ward asked Florrie’s Army – set up by 38-year-old Amie Upton after her own daughter was stillborn in 2017 – to arrange his funeral after a recommendation from a family friend.
She said the service sounded ‘brilliant’ when she first spoke to Ms Upton, with Florrie’s Army offering free handprints, photographs, baby clothing and a dedicated funeral service to bereaved parents.
But what followed rocked Ms Ward to the core.
She was led to believe Bleu’s body had been picked up from the hospital by someone on behalf of Florrie’s Army and it was her understanding that his body would be kept in a ‘professional setting’.
However, when she went round to visit the next day, she was ‘terrified’ to see Ms Upton ‘watching cartoons’ with Bleu’s body next to her in a baby bouncer in the living room – with a second dead infant on the sofa.
She told BBC News: ‘I realised it were Bleu and she [Ms Upton] says: “Come in, we’re watching PJ Masks.”
‘There’s a cat scratcher in the corner and I can hear a dog barking and there was another [dead] baby on the sofa. It wasn’t a nice sight.
‘I rang my mum and I’m saying, “This ain’t right’… I was screaming down the phone [saying]: ‘It’s mucky, it’s dirty, he can’t stay here.”‘
Ms Ward immediately arranged for Bleu’s body to be removed from Ms Upton’s care, arranging for another funeral director to intervene.
She said she was left ‘upset and angry’ that her son was being kept in the house like that.
The Daily Mail has contacted Ms Upton for comment. Her response to the BBC was that she had only had two complaints in the eight years since she set up Florrie’s Army.
Shockingly, the funeral industry is unregulated in England and Wales, meaning there is no legal requirement about how bodies are stored. Funeral directors do not need a qualification to set up a business either.
Ms Upton, according to her Facebook, set up Florrie’s Army after her own daughter – Florrie – was stillborn at 29 weeks in 2017. She lost her unborn baby after her abusive partner repeatedly rammed a child’s buggy into her, causing her tummy to crash into the corner of an open freezer door.
The baby’s father, Shaun Birchall, was jailed for two years in April 2021 after pleading guilty to grievous bodily harm on Ms Upton. On her Facebook, Ms Upton says she wants to be Florrie’s ‘legacy’ and ‘voice’, adding: ‘You live on in me so I’ve made the choice to honour your life by living again.’
The National Association of Funeral Directors (NAFD) and the National Society of Allied and Independent Funeral Directors (SAIF) are the two main trade organisations and they have a code of conduct for members who undergo regular inspections.
But Ms Upton is not a member of either organisation, which are voluntary to join.
Another couple told the BBC investigation that they met Ms Upton via a family friend after their daughter was stillborn at another Leeds hospital, St James’, earlier this year.
They said Ms Upton told them their body was being kept at a funeral parlour in Headingley until the burial.
But more than a week later, they were shocked to discover their daughter was being kept at her house despite them never giving consent for this.
The couple have no idea how long the body was at Ms Upton’s, but they said it was ‘really smelly, like she’d been in there and not kept cool’.
It’s understood Ms Upton uses a cold cot with electrical cooling pads at her house. But the BBC found evidence which shows the babies were not always kept in the cold cot.
Bodies should be kept in a clean and clinical environment between 4-7C.
The bereaved couple, who raced across Leeds to bring their baby home and transfer her to another funeral director, described their experience as being similar to a ‘horror film’.
Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust banned Ms Upton from its mortuaries and maternity wards in spring this year.
Rabina Tindale, chief nurse at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, told the Mail: ‘Over the past few years we have received several serious concerns about services provided by Amie Upton.
‘Given these concerns, and the fact that some families have believed services are linked to or supported by the Trust, we must be clear that neither Amie Upton or Florrie’s Army is endorsed by, or associated with, Leeds Teaching Hospitals.
‘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 Amie’s attendance when visiting deceased patients at the mortuary in her funeral service role.
‘Any visitors to the mortuary are always accompanied by mortuary staff. Any handover of a body is undertaken in line with Trust policies and procedures and takes place to an authorised funeral director.
‘Actions were further strengthened this year, including Amie no longer being allowed to be present in our Maternity services unless as a patient herself.
‘Over the past few years, our concerns have been raised with the police, external safeguarding services and relevant regulators.’
West Yorkshire Police said it had investigated two reports about Florrie’s Army since 2021, but after ‘extensive enquiries… no potential crimes were identified’.
A spokesperson added: ‘We recognise the concerns raised by these two families will have added to the distress they felt during an already incredibly difficult time. Our thoughts remain with them.’
Scotland introduced a statutory code of conduct for funeral directors in March.
A recommendation has been made to the government to do the same in England, but there has been no response yet.
