Baby's ashes

Friday 11th January
Edinburgh

Debi Edward and I met up to do another chapter in the baby's ashes story. 

For many years Edinburgh's Mortonhall Crematorium had been telling parents with babies who had died that they would get no ashes when their babies were cremated.

The parents then discovered that there were ashes which were buried in very small boxes in a grass area on the grounds of the crematorium.

Dorothy Maitland was one of those parents. Twenty six years ago her daughter had died a few days after she had been born and had been cremated at Mortonhall.

At her house Debi did an interview with her. We then went to the crematorium where we did a few shots of her at the place it is thought the baby is buried.

Debi interviewing Dorothy

The light in the cold, grey January sky  was quickly starting to fade when we arrived.

It was a bit of a double edged sword scenario. The quality of the light would give the shots a little bit of atmosphere but, it would not last long. 

I had to work quickly giving an apology in advance to Dorothy because there would be no time for polite niceties.

We got the few shots done with just enough time to get some general views of the crematorium and the gates that have become even more renowned to the people of the city having appeared on the front page of the newspapers quite often over the last few months.

Dorothy was very understanding about the rushed way we had to work given the sensitive nature of the story. Thankfully we were a respectful distance away from a funeral that was in progress when we were bustling around.

On Sunday Dorothy will head down to London to appear on the Daybreak sofa to talk about what had happened and what was being done about it prior to meeting Scottish Justice Minister Kenny McKaskill.

Debi headed to Glasgow to edit a short news report and send the rest of the material to London for a short film that would be played before Dorothy's stint on the sofa.