DOZENS of babies are buried in unmarked graves in a Huddersfield ceremony.

Many were buried at Edgerton Cemetery in the 1980s in a way condemned by the father of one of them as ‘Victorian’.

Bruce Jackson has urged Kirklees Council to take urgent action to mark the area where the graves are with a long-lasting memorial dedicated to them all.

The public graves had been used to bury stillborn babies and those who survived just hours or a few days.

Mr Jackson’s baby son was stillborn on March 17, 1984, and was buried in the grave just five days later in one that already contained the remains of 12 babies. Another was buried there as late as January 1991.

Mr Jackson, 61, of Beaumont Park, managed to get the details when he became determined to find his son’s grave earlier this year.

He said: “All I managed to get was a plot number and then find that on a grid reference for the cemetery.

“I was looking for the plot and came across a small memorial for a baby girl who was buried there after living for just four days. Tucked underneath that was a stone with the plot number on.

“Up until this year I just could not face looking. Losing our baby was terribly traumatic as my wife was also very ill after he was stillborn.

“She was being cared for in the intensive care unit at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary at first before she was moved to a ward.

“My son was buried at Edgerton Cemetery while she was still in hospital. I remember signing a form to say a post mortem could be carried out on him, but not one to allow him to be buried.”

He later received a letter from a unit administrator from the hospital which stated: “As we arranged the burial of your baby you may wish to know that it took place on Wednesday, 21st March at 11am at Edgerton Cemetery.”

Mr Jackson was not told the name of the undertaker, the vicar who performed the service or where the grave was in the cemetery.

Mr Jackson and his wife, Chris, had a baby girl, Rachael, in 1987, but tragedy struck the family again in 1992 when Mrs Jackson suddenly collapsed and died aged just 42 while in Huddersfield town centre.

Mr Jackson – who has since remarried – said Kirklees Bereavement Services had been good in helping him to locate the grave.

But he still cannot understand why babies were buried in unmarked graves in the first place in such recent times.

He said: “These were the absolute innocents. I want to know the thinking behind burying them like this in a mass grave with no recognition at all. I want someone to acknowledge that it was wrong to deal with people like that.

“Whoever was in charge of these decisions does not understand the terrible upset and heartache of a miscarriage, stillbirth or losing a newly-born child.

“It was years before I could start to accept what had happened. I strongly feel Kirklees should put a permanent memorial in the cemetery for these babies – not to mention them all by name – but something suitable to acknowledge they are there.

“The grass is cut over these unmarked graves, but nothing more.”

Mr Jackson finally traced the undertakers who dealt with his son’s funeral – and they told him he was not the first person trying to find a baby’s unmarked grave.

“It may be some have been searching for their children’s graves for years and simply given up,’’ he said. “There are more than 70 public graves in Edgerton Cemetery. If there were 12 infants in a proportion of them, that’s a lot of memories for many people.”

A Kirklees Council spokesman said things have now changed considerably.

He said: “There are a number of unmarked public baby graves within Edgerton Cemetery dating back to the 1980s and whilst we have burial records, the sites do not have any memorials.

“We will consider the suggestion being made and what may be appropriate to recognise those buried in Edgerton by providing a suitable memorial.”

He added: “How these tragic circumstances are dealt with has changed since the 1980s. Today, when such tragedies occur and the request is for burial in a public grave, the arrangements are usually made by the relevant hospital via a funeral director and often the hospital chaplaincy who organises the burial or cremation of the individual.

“Bereavement Services works with the funeral director and carry out the expressed wishes. The grave is marked and the family can have the burial remembered by a plaque situated on a communal memorial stone. Both the hospital and ourselves keep records of the burial.

“Alternatively, the family can make their own arrangements for burial in an individual grave plot via a funeral director and would install their own memorial.”