A 77-year-old mum has found the final resting place for her stillborn son after 53 years. Gina Jacobs tracked down her little boy's grave in a cemetery, where ‘hundreds’ of stillborn babies are buried in mass graves.
Gina gave birth in February 1969, and wasn’t allowed to see her son before he was taken to a cemetery in the Wirral. She now also has two other children.
Speaking to the Liverpool Echo, she said: “I asked if I could see him, and they told me they found mothers ‘got over it quicker’ if they didn’t see their babies. It was just appalling. We didn’t even get asked if we wanted to give him a name.”
Gina added: “My husband was told to go and collect the baby and take it to Landican and leave it at the lodge there. We didn’t have a car and we didn’t have much money, so if it wasn’t for his brother coming to our rescue we would have - as one of my friends did – had to travel on the bus with the baby in a box.”
Despite the agony of losing her child, Gina has not wanted to talk about the situation to her family for fear of it being “too upsetting” for them. But after encouragement from her neighbour, Ashley Osborne, Gina plucked up the courage to finally find her son’s grave.
Accompanied by Ashley, Gina visited Landican with details of her son’s birth and, with the help of one of the cemetery’s grounds maintenance team, she was able to find the right plot. Gina said: “It was much quicker than I thought. Right away they were able to tell me where he was buried with 62 other babies. We found the plot, and Ashley produced a teddy and a vase to put daisies in. It was just lovely.
“It’s quite overgrown and there’s about five or six of these graves with hundreds of babies in, so the plan is to clean up the grass and maybe even get something that is dedicated to all the babies.”
Gina took to social media to share her story and has been inundated with hundreds of messages of support, as well as letters from a number of women who went through similar experiences in the 1960s.
She told the ECHO: “I never expected the response I got. I feel for the first time that my baby’s little life is being celebrated. It’s the most wonderful feeling because I feel now that I haven’t let him down. I’m so glad I did it."
