On Friday 8th March 2024, a story emerged in the national media regarding police searches of a funeral parlour in Hull. Reports indicated that they had ‘concern over the care of the deceased’ (see Hull legacy funeral directors news). Subsequent days revealed more details: alongside suspected human ashes, the remains of 35 people had been found in Legacy Independent Funeral Directors in Hull. The media reported that a man and a woman had been arrested, and released on bail, on suspicion of criminal offences including prevention of a lawful and decent burial, fraud by false representation and fraud by abuse of position.
A significant police investigation is still ongoing, there is only so much that can be known and said. However, I believe that, setting aside the specific incident, it is worth taking the moment to reflect on what these events tell us about the treatment of the dead and the ways in which legal processes seek to respond to that.
What does it mean to care for the deceased?
I have previously discussed elsewhere that care for the dead through the treatment of their bodies, is an important theme in the practice, language and identity of many Anatomical Pathology Technologists (APTs) (see my second ever blog here). Indeed it is the focal point of my current longer ‘academic’ writing project. ‘Care’ is a complex term which takes on different meanings depending on context. It can be all of mandated, (un)willing, emotional, gendered, practical and an ethic (and more). I was particularly struck by how central the language of care was to the ways in which APTs described their roles and motivations to me. These encompassed all of these various forms of care, yet underlying most was a deep conviction that ‘care’ of the dead was worthwhile, important and morally required.
I have not worked with funeral directors, but when watching that Stacey Dooley documentary (Inside the Undertakers), I was struck how the language of care was also frequently invoked by those working in that context. Of course, saying something doesn’t mean that you do it, but at least it says something about the sense these people have regarding the message they want to send to the public about their values and practices.
I have come to understand that caring for the deceased has two primary prongs. First, it is emotional; this kind of care is about recognising the deceased as a once- living human who deserves ‘care’ as a living person with welfare would. This includes ensuring cleanliness, treating them with respect and acknowledging their individuality. Second, it is practical. This involves actions such as , for example, it is an act of care to arrest deterioration via proper storage, to eviscerate and reconstruct neatly. These aspects are intertwined; practical measures are necessary to satisfy the emotional care. It is easy to imagine that similar responsibilities are expected in the role of someone working with the deceased in a funeral home.
Crisis and scandal: shouldn’t it have been obvious?
These kinds of fundamental ‘acts of care’ might seem obvious, and yet as the Legacy story which prompted this blog shows, things can go horribly awry. I should note here, that this case is the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation, and I refrain from making any comment or assumption about what happened there other than the facts already in the public domain. However, what is acutely apparent is that the information revealed thus far has been the source of considerable public outcry and individual distress. Just a week after the story broke, the police released a statement disclosing that more than 1000 grieving people had contacted a helpline they had set up. Others spoke publicly of their distress upon learning that cremated remains believed to belong to their relatives were not. For example, The Guardian reported that a woman told them that: ‘“I even collected [her] ashes, to be told months later by police she wasn’t even cremated…I’m disgusted. I feel physically sick.” (see The Guardian, 13th March 2024). The case is, in short, an emerging scandal.
One of the perhaps too common ways in which policies are formed (and subsequently laws enacted) is in response to public outcry when a scandal emerges. Here, I briefly discuss two examples, but this is not to exclude the importance or existence of many others.
Organ retention: The Bristol and Alder-Hay Organ Retention Scandals exposed the lack of care given to the bodies and tissue of deceased persons by several pathologists and labs. As with other contexts involving death care, this highlights the importance of the experiences and views of the living in the treatment of the deceased. That is, the care of the dead is valuable and, indeed the dead themselves matter, at least partly because they hold significance to the still living. The distress felt by the bereaved therefore drove political and legal responses. To put it differently, there are many ways in which to caring for the dead equates to caring for the living.
Mass disasters: In many ways mass disasters involve similar care requirements to some ‘ordinary’ traumatic deaths. Yet, the pressures are exaggerated. With multiple bodies in one place, there is often major fragmentation or damage/deterioration of the deceased. This may be caused by the disaster itself (as is the intended outcome of many terrorist incidents), the difficulties of recovery (say, when a vessel sinks), or because of difficult storage conditions (for example, in hot countries with limited infrastructure). It could also just be because mistakes are made, for example, the removal of all deceased persons’ hands following the Marchioness disaster. Under pressure, the allocation of time for care may become less of a priority, and this leads to public outcry when these shortcomings are learned about by the bereaved and publicised to wider society.
When things go wrong, official responses are often triggered – death can quickly get political, and that requires a formal response. Politicians need to be seen to be ‘doing something’ (and, for the avoidance of doubt, they also ought to actually be doing something!).
The role of the law
From the details already in the public domain, it is reasonable to surmise that, in addition to the cremated remains, at least several of the 35 bodies found at Legacy were significantly decomposed to the extent that they could not be easily identified (as DNA samples were requested). I have already noted that storage of the deceased is an important form of practical and emotional care. Keeping a deceased body at the right temperature to delay decomposition is a requirement of the regulated post-mortem sector (see HTA Guidance B). I wrote at length about these regulations in my previous blogs on the Brennan case, which concerned serious errors in the storage of a deceased body, leading to serious decomposition. These regulations however only apply to ‘licenced establishments’, and whilst there are moves to regulate the funeral industry, they have not yet been implemented.
These provisions as well as those in the Human Tissue Act 2004, were themselves responses to the organ retention scandals referred to above. Typically, following a scandal, the pattern tends to be along the lines of a public inquiry leading to recommendations, potentially leading to legislative and/or regulatory reforms thereafter. That could happen in this case, or it is possible to imagine that it might find its way into the remit and report of the Fuller Inquiry. All of these are legal processes.
However, as I noted at the outset, in the absence of regulation, in the current instance two people had been arrested on suspicion of criminal offences. Two of these related to fraud, presumably taking money for services (such as cremation) that were not provided. The other was the common law offence of ‘prevention of a lawful and decent burial’. This offence, which together with Muireann Quigley, I wrote about extensively here, is an old offence with limited boundaries, primarily targeting acts that delay disposal. That certainly seems to be the case here, and this is a very rare circumstance where the offence may match the mischief. That is, indeed, if we agree that what was wrong here was the delay of the disposal, rather than the lack of care leading to decomposition of the deceased and secondary harm.
If we feel that criminal law should be invoked in cases such as this, then there is, I believe, a good argument for legislating accordingly. I have previously suggested that England and Wales should follow almost every other jurisdiction in having a corpse desecration offence. I hinged that on the concept of (dis)respect. Clearly, it remains to be seen if this was the case here or if these circumstances are better suited to regulation.
Until more details emerge, we cannot know what the response ought to be. However, this much can be said: care of the dead matters. It matters because we care about the dead, it matters because we care about how we will be treated after death. It matters because it can affect legal outcomes (decomposition or damage can affect the quality of evidence available in a homicide investigation, for example). Importantly, it speaks volumes about who we are as a society. Hopefully it won’t take another scandal for this to be officially recognised.
Dead Bodies and the Law 