'Our babies were taken away in cardboard boxes and effectively put into landfill - we were lied to for decades'

Decades after her precious stillborn baby boy was taken away forever in a cardboard box, Gina Jacobs realised she had been told a terrible lie. For more than 50 years, Gina carried the grief of not knowing the whereabouts of her baby Robert, having been told that he had been buried “with a nice lady” in the local cemetery. The truth of what really happened, which Gina only discovered a couple of years ago, was horrendous - and happened to hundreds of other families.

Gina, 81, from Greasby, on the Wirral, Merseyside, says: “If you had a stillborn baby you just had to get on with it. My baby Robert was whisked away from me so that I never even saw him. He was put into a cardboard box and we were told that he would be buried with someone who was already being buried that day or the next day. We never thought to question it and we never asked exactly where he was buried out of respect for the family. That family turned out to be fictitious. We just knew he would be in one of the graves in Landican Cemetery in Birkenhead and for decades my late husband Jim and I would walk around the cemetery wondering ‘Where is Robert?’”

Before the 1980s, stillborn babies were taken away from families, who were not given any details of what happened to their child or where they were buried. Ever since that devastating day on February 3rd, 1969, when Gina gave birth to Robert, her third child after a daughter Karen and son David, she believed he had been looked after.

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Then in 2022 she was watching a local BBC news report, during which a woman named Lilian Thorpe said she found her baby after similar circumstances. Gina credits Lilian for giving her the courage to search public burial records and eventually she found Robert’s exact resting place at Landican Cemetery in Birkenhead. But what Gina discovered was like a gut punch. Instead of being buried in a grave, many stillborn infants were buried in shared or mass graves - often in unconsecrated ground, with no plaque or marker and with the families given no information.

Robert was eventually found with 62 other babies. When Gina told local authorities, 'That can’t be right, he is with someone buried that day', she was told, ‘Oh, they told everybody that’. Gina, who has eight grandchildren, ten great grandchildren and two great great grandchildren, has since set up a support group for those affected and is helping other mothers and fathers to find their children. She hears appalling stories nearly every day from traumatised parents across the UK, but says it has been joyful to be able to tell people “Your baby has been found”.

Gina, whose profession was care and youth work, says: “They would not let us see our baby. I didn’t even get a glimpse. They stole that memory. Not even babies that lived for a while were seen. I still dream about it. We were all told the same thing, that our babies would be buried with a nice family, with their permission and a little blessing. We all believed it. We were so traumatised and we were a generation who didn't really challenge authority.

“They played on how vulnerable we were. There was never any consent. It’s a small word but it carries a lot of weight. The hospital staff didn’t know the truth either, I’ve spoken to midwives - they firmly believed it too. But whoever collected that baby that day at the cemetery, they knew they were telling us lies. My now deceased husband had to take Robert in a cardboard box on a bus from the hospital morgue to the local cemetery and hand him over.

“People were struggling and the majority of these babies travelled on the bus to the cemetery in a dreadful cardboard box tied with string, on their dad’s knee. I know one man who had to tie the box to the back of his bicycle. Another was told, ‘Hurry you can catch the next bus’. And another poor man had rope marks on his hands because he had to carry a heavy full-term baby but he didn’t want to put the box on the ground.”

Gina adds: “Nobody consented to our babies going into what amounted to landfill for babies. We did not consent to that. They are all in unconsecrated ground, no blessing and were not even allowed a Christian name on the stillbirth register. We’ve named them unofficially, but when I have asked if they could be named on the register the answer is still no, because there’s no place for a name to be inserted. It’s terrible. I’ve heard from a gravedigger that graves were sometimes left open for a long time - Robert’s grave was left open for 15 months. I’ve heard reports of babies being wrapped in plastic bags and left in dirty sheds until the grave was ready.”

Gina recalls the trauma at the time and how her older children Karen and David, who were four and two at the time of Robert’s birth, were looking forward to the baby coming home. She still remembers “the terrible silence” when a stillborn baby is born. She says: “I remember Karen was talking to David and she said, ‘I wish the baby hadn't died, who's that other bed for now?’ That cut like a knife.”

Gina has since started the Facebook group Gina’s Sleeping Babies Reunited, with help from friend Diana Williams, who got in touch early on and found her own little baby, John. Gina says: “Since discovering where Robert is in the cemetery, I have spoken to other women and it has led to me looking for hundreds of babies. My husband died 15 years ago never knowing where his son was because we were lied to.

"I found Robert because they gave me a map of the graves, it was so hard to find, a grave digger helped me. I was overjoyed that I finally knew where he was. Now I have made the area all straight and nice. If babies are found they can take their rightful place in their families. However, very sadly not all babies can be found. We are among the lucky ones. They have vanished and there are fears they were taken for medical research.”

Gina, who rides her bicycle everywhere and still takes care of the great grandkids, often doing the school run, says: “I have a lot of energy for my age, but it can all be very overwhelming. Quite often the dads have passed away, or a sibling is trying to find a sibling. I know one woman whose baby has been found but she’s elderly and lives abroad now so she can’t visit the grave. I have promised to keep it looking nice for her.

"It’s so heartbreaking when you have to tell people that a baby can’t be found. I feel so responsible. I set these people on this journey with the firm belief they could all be found. But sometimes they can’t be, and it’s horrible. However for those families who have now found their babies, they are overjoyed. They have somewhere to visit, somewhere to pay tribute.”

Gina, who lives with her second husband Arthur, has the backing of MPs in the Wirral and has already received the Wirral Award for supporting bereaved parents and helping them find their born asleep babies and establish new memorials. But she and other parents would like an official government apology.

The issue was raised during Prime Minister’s questions, but while then PM Rishi Sunak expressed sympathy, he stopped short of an apology. Wes Streeting, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, has pledged to meet Gina and any others affected - Gina plans to show him letters from dozens of bereaved mothers. On November 4, Gina has organised a church service and blessings at Landican Cemetery, attended by local religious leaders including the Bishop of Chester, where names of the previously forgotten babies will be read out.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson says: “Our sympathies are with all the families affected. This is appalling and should never have been allowed to happen. We expect all hospitals to act with compassion and transparency, providing as much information as possible to any parents seeking to understand what happened to their stillborn babies, no matter how long ago their loss happened.”

Gina says: “I feel that Robert has not died in vain. We are helping people who have been terribly wronged. We just want closure.”

*APPEAL: If any UK university medical facilities are aware of any stillborn baby research that could help reunite families, please contact Gina’s Sleeping Babies Reunited on Facebook.

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