Visitors to Amie Upton’s Leeds home could be forgiven for thinking there was a newborn in the house. The sitting room is filled with teddies, cherubs, life-like dolls and heart-shaped signs.
On the wall are countless photographs – pregnancy scans, images of tiny hands and feet and a close-up of Upton in a hospital gown with an infant in her arms.
Look closer, however, and the child she is cradling is lifeless. In 2017, Florrie-Mae was stillborn at 29 weeks after Upton was assaulted by her partner.
In the wake of that tragedy eight years ago, Upton, now 38, set herself up as an unpaid funeral director and channelled her grief at losing her daughter into ‘Florrie’s Army’, a not-for-profit organisation devoted to helping others who have lost ‘angel babies’ with the offer of free handprints, photographs, baby clothing and a burial or cremation service.
That help has, at times, seen Upton bring the bodies of dead children home to ‘rest’ in her sitting room, where she talked, sang and read to them. It was a gesture which, depending on who you speak to, was either an act of loving kindness or a macabre practice which should never have been allowed.
This week, two mothers came forward to speak of their horror at seeing their dead babies in Upton’s home after believing their children would be cared for in a professional setting.
Zoe Ward, 32, who entrusted her son, Bleu, to Upton in 2021 after he died of brain damage at just three weeks old, told the BBC she had been left ‘screaming’ after seeing him in a ‘baby bouncer watching cartoons’ in Upton’s sitting room.
And Cody Townend claimed that in January, after her daughter Macie-Mae was stillborn at 25 weeks, Upton collected her from the hospital morgue and took her home without permission – an allegation Upton denies outright.
Amie Upton (pictured) set herself up as an unpaid funeral director after the death of her daughter Florrie-Mae, who was stillborn at 29 weeks after Upton was assaulted by her partner
Upton’s home is filled with children’s toys, cribs, pregnancy scans and photos of babies
Upton brought the bodies of dead children home to ‘rest’ in her sitting room, where she talked, sang and read to them
With both women describing gruesome scenes which might have come straight out of a horror film – and both calling for a change in the law to prevent other parents going through a similar ordeal – their alarming accounts have once again placed Britain’s unregulated funeral industry under a highly troubling spotlight.
Upton was once embraced by NHS maternity services which benefited from her fundraising, but she has now been banned by Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust from setting foot in its maternity wards and mortuaries.
West Yorkshire Police, meanwhile, says it has investigated two complaints about her funeral service since 2021 but that no potential crimes have been identified.
So what was going on in the mother of two’s red-brick terraced home in Harehills, a down-at-heel area of Leeds?
This week Upton told the Daily Mail she was utterly blameless and had helped hundreds of grieving mothers in recent years.
She claimed that the two who complained had simply misunderstood the service she was providing and that she is considering taking legal action.
‘I have provided so many families with love and care. I’ve given them everything, literally everything, and it’s only these two who have complained,’ she told me.
She argues she looked after the babies of others to ensure the ‘sleeping’ infants were never left alone.
Zoe Ward, 32, entrusted her son Bleu (pictured) to Upton in 2021 after he died of brain damage at just three weeks old
Ms Ward (pictured) said she was left ‘screaming’ after discovering her baby in the care of Upton, who put him in a ‘baby bouncer watching cartoons’ in her sitting room
‘I’m not saying it’s for everyone, but these tiny babies need a lot of extra care and love,’ she said.
‘Some parents don’t want their little babies put in a morgue, which can be cold and clinical. Instead they can be in a loving home with someone who has been through what they suffered and understands, and that’s what I offered them.’
Upton says she helped parents who wanted to bring their babies home to spend time with them before the funeral by providing them with the use of her refrigerated ‘CuddleCot’.
According to its website, the cooling device uses a ‘discreet pad system’ to keep babies’ bodies cool and allows families ‘to hold, cuddle and spend time with their baby in a way that feels more natural’.
Upton says: ‘One of the first things I would say to bereaved parents is that you can either have your baby at your own home using my cold cot free of charge, or you can have them at my home in the cold cot, or if you prefer they can go to the funeral home. It’s their choice.’
Her Facebook page features a short video from 2020 of the CuddleCot in action without revealing the dead baby – a girl called Violet – lying inside.
The song Rise Up by Andra Day is being played at high volume and the baby’s cradle looks like any normal Moses basket, except for the blue machine connected to the inside via a plastic hose.
In the post which accompanied the video, Upton refers to the baby as if she is still alive, something which some will no doubt find disturbing.
Pictured: Upton’s living room which features a cradle and toys as well as an ode to her daughter Florence, who was stillborn
‘She’s relaxing to her own funeral music,’ she wrote. And in another post: ‘Early morning cuddles with baby Violet who is resting in my care bless her. She can have whatever she wants.’
It is evident Upton never hid the fact that occasionally she cared for babies at her own home. And many were full of praise, with some grieving parents giving her permission to post images of their stillborn babies dressed in funeral outfits, some of them stitched by Upton herself.
‘You give so much love to the little angels bless you,’ wrote one beneath the video of baby Violet. According to another: ‘I think the work and support you give to other grieving parents is amazing.’ And yet another: ‘So blessed to have a wonderful lady like you in their lives.’
Upton insists she was never ‘storing’ babies at home. She worked with local funeral directors, only ever bringing babies back to her home at the request of parents so they could spend time with their child before a funeral.
On other occasions she lent the £1,700 CuddleCot she bought via donations to be used in hospital. In June 2023, Royal Devon Hospitals Charity publicly thanked Florrie’s Army on social media for the purchase of a CuddleCot for its maternity unit, along with copies of the books Upton has co-written with other mothers who have lost babies, including one called The Untold Stories Of Child Loss.
One mother, who asked to remain anonymous, told the Daily Mail: ‘Without Florrie’s Army I wouldn’t have been able to spend the precious time I got with my baby. The hospital had to put her in a fridge but Amie had a cold cot and that’s what gave me the chance to say goodbye properly.’
In 2021 Zoe Ward was recommended Upton by a friend after the death of her son Bleu.
She said she received a call from Upton while still in hospital, just a day after her son’s death, ‘telling me that she’s got a lovely home-from-home setting and it’s a 24-hour service and it’s a beautiful place for Bleu to rest’.
Upton used a refrigerated ‘CuddleCot’ (pictured) to keep the babies cold and even featured disturbing images on social media of babies next tot he machine
Zoe told the BBC she thought the service sounded ‘brilliant’ and that Bleu’s body was picked up from the hospital by someone on behalf of Florrie’s Army.
But when she went round to Upton’s house the next day, she was ‘terrified’ to see Upton ‘watching’ cartoons next to her son’s body in a ‘baby bouncer’. She said: ‘The first thing I’d seen was Bleu in the chair and her bouncing him.
‘But then I glanced over and there’s a cat scratcher in the corner. I can hear a dog barking and there was another baby on the sofa.’
Upton told me this week it was ‘nonsense’ to suggest she was watching cartoons with the baby. Nor was Bleu in a ‘bouncy chair’.
‘It was a lay-down seat that I would transfer the baby to when I was tidying and cleaning his cot. Where should I have put him? On the floor? The allegation there was another baby on the sofa she said was ‘an absolute load of old s***’.
Cody Townend’s complaint came in January this year. Upton said: ‘She never said anything to me, she just put a post on Facebook.’
Cody wrote that while Upton had been ‘fantastic’ and ‘amazing’ with her stillborn daughter Macie-Mae while at St James’ Hospital in Leeds, things changed ‘when she took my child from the morgue’.
Cody and her husband Liam told the BBC they believed their premature child’s body was being transported to a funeral home, but after a week Upton told them their daughter was at her house.
When they went to collect her to take her themselves to another funeral director, Cody claims Upton ‘was smoking weed on her doorstep whilst my dead child was laid on her sofa’. She also alleged her daughter hadn’t been cared for.
‘She didn’t store her in a cold cot and she deteriorated. I couldn’t see my first and only baby that way; that’s not how I wanted to remember her.’
Upton denies these allegations and says Cody’s baby was collected from the hospital by a local undertaker. ‘She wanted to spend the weekend with her at home before the funeral but couldn’t collect her from the undertaker, so I offered to collect her and bring her here for Cody to pick up. The baby was in a closed casket. She’s made it sound like I’ve snatched her baby from the hospital morgue and kept her at home for a week. That never happened.
‘I don’t understand why she is saying it. No funeral home or mortuary would let you take a baby without the parents’ consent.’
Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust says it only allows bodies to be signed out of its mortuaries by authorised funeral directors. Both babies were signed out by Philip Gallagher of Gallagher Funeral Services, one of the Trust’s authorised funeral directors.
Mr Gallagher told the BBC he had a ‘working relationship’ with Upton for five years, including ‘providing funerals for people’s loved ones that have sadly passed away’.
He didn’t respond to questions about why or when Cody’s daughter had been moved to Upton’s house, but added: ‘We are aware that two families have raised concerns; however, it is our understanding that these concerns have been investigated.’
West Yorkshire Police said it investigated two complaints about Upton’s infant funeral services but following ‘extensive inquiries . . . no potential crimes were identified’.
Upton is adamant ‘at all times, the babies I looked after had a cold pad beneath them’.
She says she has been trolled online and her family are receiving death threats, saying: ‘I can’t go through the heartache any more.’
And she has experienced her own share of tragedy. Her former partner Shaun Birchall was jailed for two years at Leeds Crown Court in 2021 after pleading guilty to grievous bodily harm on Amy while she was 17 weeks’ pregnant.
He had repeatedly rammed a pram into the back of her legs and pushed her into an open freezer door, and the impact caused the rupture of her baby’s amniotic sac.
Upton has always been adamant that Florrie, who was stillborn 12 weeks later, was also a victim of that attack. Florrie’s Army was born as a result of her grief. But Upton says she no longer operates as a funeral director.
This latest controversy is by no means the first to hit the industry.
Funeral director Robert Bush appeared in court earlier this month charged with 65 offences across more than ten years, including 30 counts of preventing a lawful and decent burial, and fraud, after police removed 35 bodies and human ashes from the premises of Legacy Independent Funeral Directors in Hull last year.
In light of his case, the Government last year called on councils to carry out spot checks on funeral parlours. While there is no national regulator, 80 per cent of undertakers sign up to voluntary organisations such as the National Association of Funeral Directors which has codes of conduct and dispute-resolution services. But this July, a Government inquiry recommended a statutory regulator be set up to stop rogue funeral directors.
Both Zoe and Cody back calls for an urgent change in the law. So, too, does Leeds MP Mark Sewards, who told me this week: ‘I had assumed there would be something in place to stop things like this from happening and it turns out there isn’t, which is what we’ve got to fix.’
Upton’s sitting room remains a shrine to Florrie, who would have turned eight this year. As well as the balloons and name decorations covering the walls, there are dozen of images of her, many of them also appear on the Florrie’s Army Facebook page.
One of them shows Florrie’s hands clutching a pink dummy. Her tiny finger nails have been painted bright pink.
Many will no doubt find these graphic images of lifeless children unsettling, but what is clear is that Upton and many other mothers draw comfort from remembering their babies this way.
Upton certainly dismisses the suggestion that overwhelming grief has led her down a troubling path. ‘People are trying to say I’m mentally ill, but I’m one of the strongest, happiest people you could meet,’ she said.
‘Helping others helps me to cope with my own grief. I’ll never regret the work I’ve done for all those other bereaved mothers. Florrie’s Army will carry on, offering them all support.’
