A MOTHER whose young baby was buried in an unmarked mass grave in Barnsley is raising funds to install a memorial in her memory.
Carole Taylor, 69, is the latest in a string of South Yorkshire parents affected by mass graves across the area. Her daughter, Michelle, who died in 1971 from suspected lung failure, had been buried there for 10 years before she discovered it.
She said: “My daughter, when I found her, was buried in a grave with 14 other children. Some of those mothers would never have even held their babies.
“This memorial is a chance to give them the decency and the respect they were never afforded.
There isn’t even a place for people to lay flowers at the moment.”
Carole, a former landlady and market worker, set up her charity shop Angels on Doncaster
Road in Barnsley two years ago to raise money for the memorial. So far she has raised £5,800 of the £11,000 she needs. She will be leaving the shop in September when the lease comes up.
Her memorial follows on from similar projects carried out by the Dearne Memorial Group and Barnsley Cemetaries Project, who raised money for two memorials in Thurnscoe and Bolton on Dearne.
Stephen Davies, 63, a retired miner and former serviceman, set-up the group and works to collate burial records with the actual sites of graves so that parents can trace their lost children.
He said: “A woman came along once looking for her child and it just so happened that she was stood next to where her child was buried.”
He and wife Betty, who live in Thurnscoe, lost two children as young parents in the 1970s. Their son Peter was born with spinibifida, and died in 1970. Then their daughter Dawn, who had congenital abnormalities, died in 1971. Both were taken away from their parents and buried in unmarked graves, but the family did not know their whereabouts until some 30 years later.
Stephen said: “It wasn’t until my daughter enquired into their deaths that we were told that Peter was buried in a cemetary in Sheffield. We had always thought he was in Barnsley.”
Founded in 2002, the group was asked to look after the cemetaries and plots. Stephen decided to go through each individual plot to record the burials, but when he got to plot number 405, he found a pauper’s grave, with 83 children buried together in it.
The group decided to raise £5000 for a memorial, with funds raised in various events including two concerts by the Barnsley male voice choir. When they found more than 750 children in unmarked graves at Bolton on Dearne, they raised a further £1400 for a memorial tribute to them.
Stephen said: “Many babies were buried here after typhoid - there were 1300 in Barnsley alone. Some had small pox, cholerha, whooping cough. In them days people died from the flu and didn’t have the money for separate graves.
“Many of them were brought straight in as still borns or ‘backyard babies’ and just put in there in a mass grave.”
Stephen now runs the Barnsley group’s website which holds records dating from 1801 right up to January 2010. He receives emails from people all over the world who are affected by these mass graves, from Australia to Minnesota, USA.
He said: “Me and my wife lost a baby and in those days it was a case of ‘you go home and rest and we’ll take care of it’, they took the child away from you. There was nothing ceremonial about it.
“Now we receive great support from the community, the council, councillors and the church - the local Father has given services for us before.”
Further funds will be raised for Michelle Taylor’s memorial at a fundraising event at East Dene Working Men’s Club on 8 July featuring bands, a buffet, raffle and bingo.
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