A funeral director in the UK has been accused by a grieving mother who lost her three-week-old baby of taking his body to her home and placing it in a bouncer to let it “watch cartoons”. The horrific and strange case emerged from Leeds. Amie Upton, 38, has now been banned from NHS maternity wards and mortuaries after it was revealed that she kept babies’ bodies at her home. The woman who walked in on Upton in her living room with her baby in the bouncer said another dead baby was on the sofa. Zoe Ward told the BBC that her newborn son, Bleu, died at just three weeks old of brain damage at Leeds General Infirmary in 2021. She had reached out to Florrie’s Army to arrange for the baby’s funeral, a body Upton set up after she delivered a stillborn daughter in 2017. Ward said the service offered free handprints, photographs, baby clothing and a dedicated funeral service to bereaved parents.

After she arranged for the service, she came to know that the baby was taken from the hospital by someone working for the service. When she went to see her baby the next day, she was horrified to see that Upton had taken Bleu’s body to her home, put it in a baby bouncer in the living room, while a second dead infant lay on the sofa. As she entered the room, Upton said to her, “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,” she said, adding, “It wasn’t a nice sight.” Zoe immediately took her baby away and switched to another funeral service. She said the “weird” experience left her “upset and angry”.

First case of Upton taking a baby’s body home

Another case emerged against Upton earlier this year when a couple, Sharon and Paul, who had a stillborn daughter at a Leeds hospital, let Florrie’s Army take their daughter. Upton had told them that the baby would be kept at a funeral parlour in Headingley, until the day of the burial. After a week, they learnt that their daughter was at her house. They didn’t know how long the body was at Upton’s home, although they are sure it was not stored at the right temperature because it was “really smelly, like she’d been in there and not kept cool”.

Meanwhile, in her defence, Upton claimed she had only had two complaints in her eight years of running Florrie’s Army. BBC reported that Upton supposedly had a cold cot, fitted with electrical cooling pads which she uses at her home. However, the publication says it has evidence that she didn’t always keep the babies on it.

According to local media, the funeral industry in the country is unregulated, and the law does not state anything about how the bodies should be stored. One also doesn’t need to have any special qualifications to become a funeral director. Two trade organisations exist – the National Association of Funeral Directors (NAFD) and the National Society of Allied and Independent Funeral Directors (SAIF) – and require the members to undergo regular inspections. Ideally, the bodies should be kept at a temperature between 4-7C.