A woman searching for her brothers in 1962 discovered the 12 by 12 foot burial in Royton Cemetery; one of the brothers had died within five hours after birth.
Council members Maggie Hurley and Jade Hughes, who made the discovery public in a statement, said that 128 infants and young children and 146 stillborn babies made up the bodies.
Up until the middle of the 1980s, parents of stillborn babies were frequently abducted from their homes without their knowledge or consent.
The council members said it’s a glaring injustice that parents were deprived of their basic right to bury their children, a right that ought to be inalienable and uncontested.
They said that the woman was “in tears” after discovering the object and was “feeling a profound sense of loss and injustice”.
They claimed she required both practical and emotional support to deal with the shock of her finding.
The council members added that there are three more graves in Royton Cemetery that are comparable in size to this one.
