A family has been left devastated after a grandfather's body decomposed when a funeral home fridge broke down.
Zayed Martin's grandad's body was affected by a fridge that struggled in hot weather, causing it to decompose and making an open-coffin funeral impossible.
Staff at the funeral home had to clean-up bodily fluids from the floor when they turned up for work.
Ashton Funeral Service, part of Dignity Funerals, in Brixton, London looked after Uriah Pryce's body because of the fault.
MyLondon reports seven bodies began decomposing, and the company has since offered the family a free funeral service and waived their £8,500 costs.
They are no longer able to have Mr Pryce's body embalmed, dressed, or have an open-casket funeral they had hoped for.
This is because his body has suffered from skin slip - a part of the decomposition process when the top layers of skin become disconnected from his body.
Mr Pryce died of natural causes at the age of 81 on July 1.
Zayed, 22, said: "We’ve been advised not to see grandad and not to have an open-casket funeral. We are only allowed to place clothes on top of him and slip photographs inside the coffin.
"It's horrible to think about your family members like this. And his dignity.
"We are so unhappy about this; it was meant to be our last goodbye.
"They’ve stripped us of that right. We trusted them and the trust is broken."
The family, who are of Jamaican heritage, said being able to dress him and have an open casket was an important part of their culture, and not being able to do that will be a huge blow.
The funeral home said they cannot see the body even if they wanted to, because a chemical powder has been put on him to stop further deterioration of the body, which is harmful to breathe in.
Zayed claimed Ashton Funeral Service took two days to contact the family to explain what had happened.
Initially, it apologised and offered to take £578 off the family's bill, given embalming can no longer take place.
But Zayed said it just "wasn't good enough".
She added: "It is not acceptable. They should have some standard regulations where the fridges are being checked. Some backup procedures."
Ashton Funeral Service staff told the family that the fridge was checked on July 29, but because no one works at the weekend, nobody noticed a fault that caused the fridge to switch off.
Only one of the home's 60 fridges were affected, but an estimated seven other bodies were in the same fridge, affecting seven other families.
Zayed lived with her grandad Uriah in Brixton to care for him in his final years.
She said, along with her mum, she was there for him "everyday, every minute" tending to his needs, and that the small, but close, family are finding it difficult to come to terms with what happened.
Dignity Funerals manages more than 650 funeral directors at different locations across England, 66 of which are in London.
The firm has now offered the family a free funeral service and will waive all costs.
A spokesperson for Dignity Funerals said: “We are wholeheartedly sorry for the distress and upset this has caused, and we have directly apologised to each of the seven families affected.
"Caring for deceased persons in a professional and respectful manner is at the core of everything we do.
"We accept that in this instance due to a fault with our equipment we have fallen far short of the standards we strive for, and that our clients rightly expect.
"We continue to provide each family with support to ensure the funerals can be held in a dignified and meaningful way, and we will provide full reimbursement for all related costs.
"Arrangements have been made to continue to care for the deceased at another local dignity mortuary that is operating to our usual high standards.
"We are now investigating internally the cause of the fault and will be ensuring robust measures are put in place to ensure this does not occur again.”
