Funeral director ‘took bodies of babies and arranged them in living room’

She is said to have placed the bodies in various positions in her home

An investigation by the BBC found that Amie Upton, 38, left parents "screaming" after they discovered their dead son "watching cartoons" at her home.

Upton says that she only ever had two complaints while running Florrie's Army, a baby loss support and funeral service, in Leeds.

The 38-year-old started Florrie's Army after her own baby who was stillborn in 2017.

Zoe Ward said that she contacted Upton after her baby boy Bleu died aged three weeks old in 2021.

Ward said that she thought the service offered by Upton was "brilliant" when she first heard of it, however she was terrified when she visited Upton's home and found her dead son sat in a baby bouncer "watching cartoons".

“I realised it were Bleu and she [Upton] says: ‘Come in, we’re watching PJ Masks.’ There’s a cat scratcher in the corner and I can hear a dog barking and there was another [dead] baby on the sofa. It wasn’t a nice sight," Ward recalled.

“I rang my mum and I’m saying: ‘This ain’t right’ … I was screaming down the phone [saying]: ‘It’s mucky, it’s dirty, he can’t stay here.’”

She said the experience felt "weird".

"I didn’t want him in that house,” she added.

Another couple believed their daughter was being kept at a funeral home in Headingley, until they found out that she was being kept at Upton's home.

They said that they believed their daughter's body had not been kept at the correct temperature, and that she was “really smelly, like she’d been in there and not kept cool”.

Best practice is for bodies to be kept in a clinical environment at a temperature of 4-7°C.

The BBC said they saw evidence that bodies were not being kept in the correct conditions, despite Upton owning a refrigerated cot.

Leeds teaching hospitals NHS trust said that they had monitored Upton's attendance at two hospitals since 2021, and that she has since been banned from its maternity wards and mortuaries.

Some families have believed services are linked to or supported by the trust. We must be clear that neither Amie Upton or Florrie’s Army is endorsed by, or associated with, Leeds teaching hospitals.

“Since 2021 we have had specific safeguarding measures in place, including monitoring Amie’s attendance when visiting deceased patients at the mortuary in her funeral service role," Rabina Tindale, chief nurse at the trust, said.

"Any visitors to the mortuary are always accompanied by mortuary staff. Any handover of a body is undertaken in line with trust policies and procedures and takes place to an authorised funeral director.”