Mortonhall Scandal: Independent probe of crematorium records to find truth over baby ashes

CREMATION records from the last 40 years are to be independently audited at a potential cost of more than £100,000 in an attempt to uncover the full truth of the Mortonhall baby ashes scandal.

A team of auditors from the world’s largest professional services firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), has been drafted in by Edinburgh City Council to search more than 100,000 records held by the local authority’s crematorium since it opened in 1967.

It is likely to take two months for their investigation to be complete.

The cremation logs have been removed from the Howdenhall Road institution and taken to the council’s headquarters at Waverley Court while they are audited to discover how many stillborn babies, or those who died within days of being born, were cremated and what  happened to their ashes. For decades, parents were told by Mortonhall staff that there were no ashes to scatter or keep from the cremations of babies, yet the Evening News revealed last month that remains from deceased babies were in fact put in cardboard boxes and buried on site without their parents’ knowledge.

Today, Dorothy Maitland, operations manager at Sands Lothians, the charity which uncovered the scandal, said: “I think it was necessary that PwC or similar were appointed as there needs to be some independent scrutiny at what went on at Mortonhall. It was very obvious from our last public meeting that is what parents wanted. There was a lot of anger felt towards the council, and so parents felt it could not be trusted with carrying out an inquiry as it might put council interests before theirs.

“As far as I know, the auditors will be looking at all the crematorium’s records to try and marry up what happened to which child. It will take some time but hopefully at the end some parents’ questions will be answered.”