Undertaker charged with cremating wrong woman

AN undertaker is to appear in court after a 58-year-old woman was wrongly cremated and a 97-year-old woman buried in her place by mistake.

David Turner, 54, of Thetford, Norfolk, will appear before Thetford magistrates on 2 July, charged with breaches of the 1902 burial and cremation Acts, police said.

An exhumation last week showed that Edith Kemp, 97, was lying in what was thought to be the grave of Sheila Gent, 58, at Fulmodestone, Norfolk.

Both women lived in Thetford and were laid out in Mr Turner's funeral parlour after dying within a day of each other in December 1996.