A funeral director who took babies’ bodies home with her has defended her actions, saying she read them stories and made sure they were ‘never alone’.
Amie Upton, 38, has been criticised by bereaved mums who were shocked to see their babies in her living room while awaiting burial.
One, Zoe Ward, 32, said she screamed down the phone to her mum after being traumatised by the sight of her baby son Bleu sitting ‘in front of the TV watching cartoons’.
Another claimed her stillborn baby ‘deteriorated’ because she hadn’t been placed in a cold cot to keep her temperature down.
Ms Upton set up her funeral service, Florrie’s Army, after losing her own unborn baby.
Speaking through tears, she said she ‘just wanted to help’ bereaved families.
She told The Mirror: ‘I know here the babies were never left alone. I was always here.
‘They were always clean and tidy and were not deteriorating or smelly as claimed on posts I’ve seen today.
‘The babies here were not put in a fridge when staff go home but I was here all the time. Their babies knew nothing but love.
‘You don’t find nurses reading their babies a story. I would. I know I only ever did my best. It is ridiculous.’
Ms Upton denied placing Zoe’s son in a baby-bouncer, saying he was briefly left in a ‘laid back chair’ while she moved him to a bed.
She also described how her own daughter, Florence, who was stillborn at 29 weeks.
The funeral director said she lost her baby after her abusive partner repeatedly rammed a child’s buggy into her.
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Her attacker – the baby’s father Shaun Birchall – pleaded guilty to grievous bodily harm and was jailed for two years in April 2021.
Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust banned Ms Upton from all its mortuaries and maternity wards earlier this year, a BBC investigation has revealed.
Zoe said when she first spoke to Ms Upton about her funeral service, she came away confident it would be ‘brilliant’.
But when it came to meeting her in person, she found her son positioned in front the TV in Ms Upton’s living room.
‘She [Ms Upton] says: “Come in, we’re watching PJ Masks”,’ Ms Ward told the BBC.
‘There was another [dead] baby on the sofa. It wasn’t a nice sight.’
She called her own mother ‘screaming’ before another funeral director was asked to collect Bleu’s body.
Ms Ward said the ‘weird’ experience made her ‘upset and angry’.
The parents of the stillborn baby taken home by Ms Upton said they believed her body was being kept at a funeral parlour in Headingley until she told them she was in her home.
‘I just didn’t know why she was there,’ the mum said.
The couple said they do not think their daughter was stored at the recommended 4-7C temperature because it was ‘really smelly, like she’d been in there and not kept cool’.
The Trust said it received ‘several serious concerns’ about Ms Upton’s services and introduced ‘specific safeguarding measures’ in place since 2021.
Funeral director Philip Gallagher, who signed the bodies out, said he had a ‘working relationship’ with Ms Upton but understood concerns about her ‘have been thoroughly investigated’.
West Yorkshire Police said it has investigated two reports about Ms Upton’s funeral service since 2021 but after ‘extensive enquiries no potential crimes were identified’.
Ms Upton told the BBC she has only had two complaints in her eight years of running Florrie’s Army.
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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