Everyone in Scotland will have the utmost sympathy for Lydia Reid.
In 1975, her baby son Gary died at the Sick Kids hospital at just seven days old.
However, Lydia, from Edinburgh, has always maintained that the body she was shown was not Gary’s and she has never given up the fight for answers.
In 2017, following a court order, Gary’s burial plot at Edinburgh’s Saughton Cemetery was exhumed and a leading forensic anthropologist carried out an examination.
Professor Sue Black said there were no skeletal remains and no sign of decomposition.
The expert instead found a shawl, a hat, a cross and a name tag in the burial plot. Black said the “only one possible logical explanation” was that the body was “not put in that coffin”.
Lydia is now ready for a double legal fight in her search for the truth.
She has launched a £75,000 legal case against the Crown Office and Scotmid Co-operative Funerals.
She also wants to force the Crown to return blocks and slides containing samples of her son’s organs taken during his post-mortem examination.
The NHS has previously admitted that about 6000 organs and tissue samples were retained by hospitals between 1970 and 2000 – many from children.
The Crown should do all they can to end Lydia’s misery and provide answers on her baby’s remains.
