We were given stranger's ashes instead of our mum

POLICE PROBE FUNERAL HOME AS DEVASTATED FAMILY TELL OF SHOCKING DISCOVERY MONTHS AFTER SERVICE 

- IMOGEN CLYDE-SMITH

POLICE are investigating a funeral home after claims a woman was given ashes of a 'complete stranger' instead of her mum in a horrifying mix-up.

Anne Gibson, 66, who lives in Harpurhey with her brother Brian, 61, claims she was handed a box of ashes from A Milne Funeral Directors in Scotland in September - five months after her mum's funeral.

Anne said she and her brother, originally from Scotland, placed the box of ashes on a shelf alongside their mum's favourite teddy at their home.

The grieving siblings kept the urn there for months. It 'never crossed their minds' it may not contain their mother's ashes.

Anne claims that in February of this year when she decided to scatter the ashes she noticed the box did not include any paperwork or a plaque that identified her mother and became suspicious.

"I thought that's strange there's nothing saying that that's my mum," she said.

She said she called West Dunbartonshire council to check whether a lack of identification was common practice and was put through to bereavement services who she said advised her to call Clydebank Crematorium, near Glasgow, where her mum Patricia Allison was cremated.

It was then, Anne claims, she found out the devastating news that she had been given the ashes of a stranger.

She said: "A gentleman there [at Clydebank Crematorium] said to me 'I have never experienced this in the 20-odd years I've been here. I'm very sorry, I don't know whose ashes you've got but it's not your mum because I have your mum sitting in front of me.

"I was absolutely raging. We had put lights up for her and bought her favourite flowers and it wasn't even her.