Legacy Funerals scandal: Robert Bush gave bereaved mum animal ashes after miscarriage

• Video report by Vicki Smith

Warning: Article contains distressing details

• Follow live coverage of Robert Bush's sentencing here

A bereaved mother has told of her "torture" after disgraced funeral director Robert Bush gave her the ashes of an animal instead of those of her unborn baby.

Lucy Ness organised a cremation through Legacy Independent Funeral Directors, run by Robert Bush, after she miscarried two days before her 12-week scan in April 2021.

She had no reason to doubt that the urn she was given contained her child's ashes until news broke three years later that Bush was under investigation.

Ms Ness filled in a form for concerned Legacy customers and was then contacted by investigators.

"Within a week I got a phone call from the police saying they needed to speak to me about the ashes," she said.

"I didn't think these ashes would not be mine. I just thought they'd come round just to speak."

Following tests, Ms Ness was later told the ashes were not even human.

"I've recently been informed by the police that the ashes he actually gave me in the baby urn were, in fact, animals, bones and ashes," she said.

"They've had an expert in to check, and they've managed to open it and realised these are animal, animal bones.

"I was distraught, absolutely distraught.

"It's hard to put into words, because at, at the time, I didn't believe them.

"I didn't want to believe them."

Ms Ness said the police investigation revealed her baby's cremation had taken place two days after she was given the ashes.

"I don't know what he's done with my baby's ashes," she said.

"I'd like to think that he'd handle them with care and given it to somebody, but I, there's always that, you, you never know.

"He could have just put them in the bin or flushed them on the toilet, which is horrible.

"But you just never know what's come through that man's head.

"He had a duty of care with my baby, he promised me he'd look after my child, and.

"Nobody knows where these ashes are."

Thirty-five bodies, along with ashes, were found at Legacy's premises after police were contacted in March 2024.

Bush, 48, is being sentenced at Hull Crown Court after admitting 67 charges, including preventing a lawful burial and fraud.

A plaque has been installed at the Legacy Memorial Gardens in Hull in memory of Ms Ness's unborn baby.

The garden serves as a resting place for more than 100 sets of ashes which were recovered from the Legacy premises.

Ms Ness said she regularly visits the site on her due date and at Christmas in the hope that her baby's remains may have been buried there.

"It's nice to think that wherever the ashes are, if he's given them to somebody else, that they are here," she said.

"It's nice and peaceful...it's a place that everyone can just sort of escape to, just for a bit of peace and to remember things that could have been."

She added: "I'm never going to know the truth, I like to think that they're here."

Ms Ness has called on the government to start putting regulation into the funeral industry in place.

"They're not really taking any of it seriously at the moment, which I think they need [to]."

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