Father-of-five Frank Tully spent the final years of his life scouring Liverpool cemeteries to find his son Paul
The family of a man who spent his final years trying to find the grave of his infant son believe they have finally located the boy’s resting place. Father-of-five Frank Tully lost his eldest Paul, who was born prematurely at Liverpool’s Broadgreen Hospital on December 22, 1973, but tragically died just five days later.
Paul was buried by Broadgreen Hospital, but the family said they were never told where. After a cancer diagnosis in 2022, Frank launched a search to find Paul’s grave before he died in November 2025.
But the search ground to a halt as Frank struggled to find records dating back almost half a century, and he had not found Paul’s grave by the time he also passed away.
His family said he “came up against a brick wall” in his attempts to get answers.
A breakthrough came in January 2026 when Frank’s daughter received a response to a Freedom of Information response from University Hospitals of Liverpool Trust.
The response told her that unnamed babies born at Broadgreen Hospital in December 1973 were buried at Walton Park Cemetery.
Frank’s daughter told the ECHO about the fruitless searches they had made before found the vital piece of the puzzle. She said: “We went to Allerton Cemetery, where I walked up and down the rows looking for a baby grave. We also went to the Alder Hey Memorial for unnamed babies and laid flowers, but Dad said, ‘I don’t feel like he’s here’.”
Frank grew up at The Royal Liverpool Seamen’s Orphanage at Newsham Park. His daughter told the ECHO: “For my dad, family was precious. He was a looked-after child and family was everything to him. My dad died thinking no-one would ever find where Paul is.
“He was a named baby, he had a birth certificate. We don’t know that he’s definitely here, but we feel he can’t be anywhere else. I feel I’ve done my dad proud and he’d be grateful.”
330,000 bodies buried under petting zoo
The footprint of Walton Park Cemetery has been occupied by Rice Lane City Farm since 1979. The ECHO understands as many as 330,000 bodies could be buried on the site, according to managers of the charity farm.
Those buried on the site include those who died at the city’s workhouses, Walton gaol, and city hospitals who could not afford the cost of burial. These include Robert Tressell, author of The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists.
Sheep, goats, and a donkey named Guinness graze the paddocks. Long, raised ridges cross the length of some of the fields. Those on the farm believe these ridges mark the sites of common graves. There are no headstones in these areas.
The imposing Victorian gatehouse of Walton gaol looms over a paddock at the top of the farm. Spindly trees shade ground that is mottled and uneven after centuries of burials.
A memorial has been erected here for Tressell and those buried with him. Tressell, real name Robert Noonan, was an Irish emigrant who became a signwriter in Everton.
He died penniless of tuberculosis at the Royal in 1911 and was buried in a pauper’s grave. His novel The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, was published posthumously 1914 and was such a consequential work of socialist literature that it has been cited as a factor in the landslide Labour victory of 1945.
His grave was rediscovered in 1970 and local socialists erected the memorial.
It is this section of the graveyard that Paul’s sister believes is the infant’s resting place. She said: “I think it’s a lovely place because it’s used for animals. My dad would be happy with it.”
Merseyside’s missing baby graves
Before the 1980s, it was understood to have been common practice across the UK that when a woman had a miscarriage or a stillbirth, hospital staff would quickly take the baby away. Families were sometimes told that if they quickly had another child and didn’t see the baby, they would get over it.
In Merseyside and across the country, stillborn babies were often taken to cemeteries and buried in graves sometimes containing up to 60 or more children or at the foot of someone being buried that day.
In Wirral, at least 1,287 babies were buried in unmarked communal graves between 1935 and 1981, with most of these at Landican Cemetery in Woodchurch.
Last month, the ECHO reported on Gina Jacobs, a Wirral nan who has tirelessly campaigned for an apology from the government over the scandal. Gina’s son Robert was buried in a mass grave after he was stillborn.
Some families have never been able to find their loved ones.
‘Not always possible to provide answers’
Responding to the ECHO, Joanne Eccles, interim managing director of Royal Liverpool and Liverpool Women’s University Hospitals, said: “We recognise how deeply upsetting experiences like this will have been for families.
“Practices around the care and burial of babies who died in the 1960s and 1970s were very different from what we would expect today.
“We understand the lasting impact this will have had on some people who sadly lost babies during this period.
“While it is not always possible to provide all of the answers that families are seeking, we are committed to approaching any enquiries about historical care within maternity services with sensitivity, care and respect.”
Get in touch at [email protected]
