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ANGRY and upset: Sarah Hall and brother Paul Knowles with a picture of their dad Frank Knowles (also inset) and the wrong death certificate
Family upset over death details muddle
by Kate Weir26/11/2008
A GRIEVING family were given the wrong death certificate after a typing error got the name of their father wrong.
Frank Knowles died aged 64 on 10 November following surgery.
An inquest was needed to establish the cause of death and his family had to wait for an interim death certificate before the body could be released.
But when the certificate arrived in the post, they were horrified to see that most of the details, including age, address and the date he died, were incorrect.
"He should have been at the chapel of rest on the Wednesday, but when the funeral director went to the hospital they were still doing the post mortem," said Mr Knowles’ daughter, Sarah Hall, 28. When I phoned the coroner’s office on Thursday they told me he didn’t have a post mortem, then the lady said he was born in 1932, and that my dad died from Parkinson’s. She told me he died on 11 November and she said that he lived in a nursing home, none of which was right."
Despite Mrs Hall trying to give the correct details over the phone she still received a death certificate with the wrong details.
Because of the delay, Mr Knowles’ family could not take his body to the funeral home until the following Monday — five days later than expected.
"To have this on top of everything else, it’s just terrible. I can only imagine that if I’ve got the details of this other man who died then his family must have my dad’s details. It could have been another man lying there in my dad’s clothes in the funeral home."
Tameside coroner John Pollard apologised for the anguish caused to Mr Knowles’ family.
"It was the result of an inputting error following a computer crash last week," he said.
"As a result of the crash, information had to be put in manually. I really am very sorry that this happened."
Mr Pollard has since met with Mr Knowles’ family and been issued with a new interim certificate.
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27/11/2008 at 04:14