Mother’s anguish over baby’s brain

THE brain of a baby boy who died of cot death was removed during a post-mortem examination and kept for 13 years without his mother’s knowledge.

Julie Middleton, 40, said police gave her the news earlier this week after the organ was discovered “in a jar” at Southampton General Hospital during a nationwide audit of retained human tissue samples.

Ms Middleton, from Poole, Dorset, who buried six-week-old Regan in 1999, said she had been devastated by the information. “It feels like they stole a piece of my baby,” she told a newspaper.

The mother of four said that, because Regan’s death had been “unexplained”, she knew tissue had been taken during a post-mortem examination.

But she said she had no idea that his complete brain had been removed at the request of Dorset Police and the local coroner. An inquest found the baby died from cot death.