‘For years I didn’t know where my baby was buried… now they won’t let me lay flowers on her grave.’

When baby Joyce was born, she was so small they wrapped her in her dad’s handkerchief on the way to the hospital. She lived for two days. 

Joyce’s mum, Anne Ryan, was separated from her daughter soon after her unexpected birth at home. She was rushed to Monsall hospital with a water infection while her daughter, born three months premature, was taken to Boundary Park (now Royal Oldham). Anne never got to see her baby again.

The mother, who used to live in Oldham, was informed by hospital staff that her daughter had been buried in an adult grave on the day of her death. 

But 55 years later, she found out it was a lie. 

“Four weeks ago, we found out she’s in a communal grave. They lied to us,” Peter, Joyce’s dad (now 78), said. The parents reached out to the Local Democracy Reporting Service after the discovery of a mass grave for stillborn children in Royton.

Their daughter is buried in Greenacres, which holds another of the borough’s communal graves for infants. As late as the eighties and nineties, it was standard procedure for hospitals to bury stillborn babies or early deaths in these mass graves.

Parents were usually kept in the dark about the practice. But recently, a number of parents across the UK have been seeking out the final resting places of their lost children. 

Anne, who is now 73 and lives in Bury, said it was ‘a horrible feeling’ finding out about the mass grave.

“At the end of day it’s your baby, your little girl. She lived. Doesn’t matter if she’d been stillborn or if she lived, she was a human being,” she said. “If I’d have known [when she passed], we could’ve had our own little grave. I would have paid at the time. 

“But they didn’t give you the option. They didn’t even tell you who she’d gone in with. They wouldn’t give you any information at all as to what happened from when she left the hospital to where she is at this present time.” 

For both parents, the most difficult part has been not knowing exactly where their baby lies. After their daughter-in-law Kay managed to find the plot number at the cemetery, Anne and Peter spent a day in the rain trying to find the exact location.  

“There’s not a 58 anywhere in that square [where the grave is indicated on a map],” Anne said. “[Cemetery staff] said if we give them £47 they’re going to show us where she is.” 

The Ryans say they’ve also been told even once they find out where she is, they won’t be able to lay any flowers or memorials on her grave ‘because it’s communal and there’s other people in it’. 

“Why? If there’s other little babies why can’t a bunch of flowers just go on,” Anne said. “It’s like she’s a nobody. She’s down there and that’s it.” 

She says it would ‘mean the world’ to her to be able to lay something at her daughter’s grave. “I’ve been ill recently. It’s on my bucket list before I pass away to be able to honestly say I’ve done something for my little girl,” she explained. 

When contacted for comment, Oldham council leader Arooj Shah told the LDRS: “We were really sorry to hear Mrs Ryan’s story. It’s heartbreaking – and no one should have gone through that.

“Sadly, it appears she was given wrong information by medical staff many years ago about the location of her daughter’s grave and this can only have added to her pain.

“We would never stop anyone placing flowers on public graves and encourage people to leave small vases, lots of residents already do this. Mrs Ryan should not have been told she could not leave flowers, and for that we can only apologise. 

“Like other councils across the country, for many years 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.” 

She added that the council are ‘looking at ways to commemorate all those buried in unmarked burial sites’ and that she expected to announce ‘more news later this week’. 

The bereaved parents have echoed calls by local councillors in Royton for a memorial with names to commemorate Joyce and other babies in the area. They have also suggested ‘banding together’ to purchase the plot where the children are buried. 

“It’s an unmarked grave. There’s no name or anything on it. The undertaker said that if somebody buys that plot where they’re buried, then they’re the owner and they can bury someone on top of the babies. Which is just shocking,” Peter told the LDRS. 

“Horrible, horrible, horrible,” Anne added, shaking her head. “They should have their own tiny place for family to go and pay their respects and know in our heads that’s where she is.” 

Anne said she ‘couldn’t describe’ the pain her daughter’s death has caused her over the years. Now a grandmother, and parent to two sons and a daughter, Christine, she says she often thinks of what Joyce has missed out on over the years. 

“It’s hard to put into words how you feel. You feel it from the day it happened. That never goes away. You’re suffering really, for years. Birthdays, weddings, family events, you think of what she’s missed out on. But this was the icing on the cake for me. 

“I talk to her all the time,” she said. “I’ve got a little memorial in my garden with little statues, because I can talk there. Even though I know she’s not there, it’s still a comfort to us knowing we’re doing something for her.” 

But she still feels like she can’t really find closure for her baby girl and ‘won’t rest’ until she finds out exactly where she is. 

“I’d much prefer to know exactly where she is and then we can go visit. Have a little word. Grieve.” 

Anne and Peter wanted to share their story to highlight the experiences of parents affected by the practice. While cemeteries in Oldham are working on digitalising their records on infant communal graves, some need to be requested from registrars.

Oldham Council has advised residents looking for loved ones to get in touch online or by email at env.cemeteries@oldham.gov.uk