Daughter 'traumatised' to be shown wrong body at funeral home

A woman who was shown the wrong body during a visit to a funeral parlour to see her late mother has said the experience "traumatised" her family.

Michelle Maher said she "screamed in shock" when she was presented with a complete stranger during the visit to the home on Saturday.

"My stepdad was about to kiss her. It has mortified us all. All I can see is this little lady," the 42-year-old from Wythenshawe, Manchester, said.

Arthur Gresty Funeral Homes in Altrincham said it was investigating and added: "We are deeply sorry this distressing incident occurred and have offered our sincere apologies to the family affected."

Michelle said she arrived for the visit with her sister Angela, step-dad Phil and nephew.

"When I walked into the room and looked at her I screamed, 'What have you done to my mum?

"Why does she look like that? I didn't realise it wasn't my mum.

"I was touching her leg and I said 'mum I'm here now'. My stepdad was about to kiss her.

"All four of us were taken by the shock, we didn't know anything."

Michelle said her sister then raised concerns after noticing the stranger had much darker hair.

She said: "We ran back out to tell the staff and we were told 'it is your mum'."

After insisting, Michelle said two bosses came down and apologised.

"They said there was nothing they could do but say sorry," she said.

"I can't get my head around how a mistake like this could have happened. It was traumatising.

"I contacted police and the coroners."

The family were later taken to see Rita, but Michelle said the goodbye visit had already been "100% spoilt".

"All we could see was the image of this little lady," she said.

"And all we had in in our heads was that if the funeral had taken place sooner and my mum was under a different name, we would have completely lost her."

She added: "I hope that family of the lady we were shown can reach out to us so we can let them know we respected their family member that day.

"We respected her as if she was our mother and left the room as soon as we found out."

A spokesperson for Arthur Gresty said: "We have been in contact with various family representatives since this incident came to light.

"A formal written apology is also being provided."

The company said it has "established procedures" in place to identify those in its care and it had contacted the other family concerned.

The spokesperson added: "We are conducting a thorough investigation to understand how this happened - our initial findings suggest that the incident resulted from human error.

"We recognise the trust families place in us at an extremely difficult time and are committed to understanding what went wrong and taking any necessary steps to prevent a recurrence."

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