British funeral director jailed for 20 years for ‘dreadful’ practices

LONDON - A British funeral director was jailed for 20 years on July 31 for “dreadful” conditions at his parlour, including bodies stored for months in an “undignified manner” and relatives handed other people’s ashes.

Robert Bush ran his funeral parlour in Hull in north-eastern England for over 12 years, offending on an “industrial scale” and causing “anguish and pain on a scale beyond beyond comprehension”, judge Nicholas Hilliard said.

The 48-year-old undertaker pleaded guilty to 67 offences.

He will serve at least half of his sentence before being eligible for parole.

Police who searched his premises after a tip-off in 2024 found 31 bodies in a cold storage area that should have been cremated months earlier, including a stillborn baby that had been there for almost two years.

Most of the bodies were “uncovered and on racks... of a cold storage area” Hilliard told Hull Crown Court, adding that the conditions on the premises “were dreadful”.

An ex-employee described the funeral parlour as a “horror scene”, the court was told during an earlier hearing.

Police found more than 100 sets of ashes on the premises, and determined there were at least 46 cases where relatives were given the wrong ashes.

Many families discovered they “are left with nothing” of their loved ones’ remains, the judge said.

In some cases, they were only left with “an empty plastic bag or a teaspoonful of ashes the police managed to recover”.

The judge noted that any customer who used the parlour at any time when it was operating “can now have no confidence as to how they were treated, or as to whose ashes they have”.

Bush initially told police that he did not cremate the bodies due to cash flow problems, which the judge rejected.

“Bush took any and every opportunity that presented itself in the course of his work dishonestly to enrich himself at the expense of those who used his services,” said Hilliard.

“I have no doubt that the defendant behaved in such a deceitful way because of financial greed.”

Over a five-day-long sentencing hearing, distraught families recounted the ways in which the bodies of their loved ones were mistreated at the Legacy Independent Funeral Directors.

The shocking details of the case and rampant negligence that was uncovered after over a decade have prompted calls for stricter regulation of the funeral industry.

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said he “backed” calls for greater regulation.

“This needs a proper response in terms of the regulation needed, to make sure no family goes through that again,” Burnham said.

Undertakers in England and Wales can operate without a licence, with anybody free to set themselves up as a funeral director. AFP