The missing gravestones of Merseyside

Dear readers — You may have read or heard by now the mounting scandal about Mackie’s Memorials. If not, it concerns a stone mason who has allegedly not delivered grave markers for dozens of customers, sometimes many months after they paid up front. Those who had tried to contact Mackie’s proprietor Thomas Smith reported that he’d gone to ground and could not be contacted. 

Long before the story broke, we sent Laurence to investigate. But over the course of his inquiries, he discovered something unexpected: that one of Mackie’s very unhappy customers was his own mother. Worried this may prejudice him, Laurence set out to find his own great-grandmother’s grave stone, and Smith himself along the way. Read on to find whether he succeeded.

But first, your regularly scheduled Post briefing — with an update on the Colette Goulding situation.

Your Post briefing

An update on councillor Colette Goulding: On Monday, we published a story about how councillor for West Derby Muirhead, Colette Goulding, retained her position on the council after showing up to her first meeting in six months. According to the meeting’s agenda, she attended as an alternate for Labour councillor Naz Hasan, and sat alongside the public rather than with other councillors. Since then, readers got in touch to raise questions about whether her presence at this meeting counted towards her attendance record — back in 2020, former Labour councillor Sam Gorst was suspended from the Labour Party for alleged antisemitism. Because of this suspension, he was unable to act as an alternate for other Labour councillors. In December, Goulding was also suspended from Labour — but appears to have been allowed to act as an alternate for Hasan. 

Further adding to the confusion around her position as an alternate is the fact that councillor Hasan was already in attendance at that meeting. So does her appearance last week actually count towards her record? Or, after six months of non-attendance, can she be removed from her post? We asked Liverpool Council for clarity over Goulding’s position, and they told us her listing as an alternate was an error. “The current electronic system for registering attendance has limited options for classifying attendance, which is why it is marked as 'alternate', but this is something we are looking at updating,” they added. We asked if Goulding’s attendance at that meeting counted towards her record. The council confirmed it did, and that she is permitted to keep her seat. 

While we hope you enjoyed St Patrick’s Day, the city is now in such a mess that the BBC are reporting on it. Liverpool has long celebrated its Irish heritage going back to immigration caused by the Great Famine in the 1840s, with around three quarters of residents believed to have ancestors from across the sea. As such, 17th March — the feast day of Saint Patrick, a former slave and venerated Christian missionary — has often been an opportunity for even those of negligible Hiberno blood to don Kelly green t-shirts and stupid plastic bowler hats and drink enough Guinness to stun a rhinoceros. "If you were a tourist you might wonder 'what the hell?'" one observer of the aftermath, Gary, told the Beeb. 

And speaking of tourists, £10m raised by the so-called “tourism tax” (actually a £2 levy introduced by hospitality businesses that are part of Accommodation BID) is being used to attract and promote events in the city. The Labour Party Conference, the World Chess Championships and the World Boxing Championships are all events that have apparently benefited from this additional funding. According to Marcus Magee, chairman of the Accomodation BID board, the levy and the fund is all about creating a "sustainable partnership between the Accommodation BID, accommodation sector and the visitor economy".

The missing gravestones of Merseyside

All around me are grave stones — some shiny and new, having never reached their intended burial site; others are decades old, barely legible with lichen, moss and time, removed from graves on the back of a flat-bed truck nearby to be stored here. Some are intact, others cut with such geometric perfection it feels sacrilegious. 

I’m not in a cemetery, but an industrial yard on Cleveland Street in Birkenhead. Next to me is Jason; stocky and bald, with a series of tattoos around his neck and head, Jason is a construction worker by trade. We meet totally by chance. Both of us are here for professional reasons: he was commissioned by the unit’s landlord to clear the yard of these discarded grave markers, me to cover a story of missing gravestones for The Post. But as we begin to chat, we realise we have something else in common, linking us both professionally and personally to the yard’s tenant: Thomas Smith, a stone mason and proprietor of Mackie’s Memorials.

A year ago this week, Jason’s mum passed away. As part of the funeral preparations, he went to Mackie’s for a head stone. Thus began an acrimonious dispute with Smith over delays, evasions and unfulfilled promises. From Jason’s implications, I can only imagine how confrontational these talks became. After many months, Mackie’s finally delivered on what he had paid hundreds of pounds for: a simple head stone for his mother’s grave. 

He’s far from the only one. I’ve come to find a specific stone myself, but more on that later. The unfortunate truth is that dozens of grieving locals have similar stories. In December, fellow customer Rachel Robinson left a foul tempered 1-star-out-of-5 Google review.

“I made an inquiry back in June to have a headstone temporarily removed and an additional name added,” Robinson writes. “I was told the whole process would take no longer than 5 weeks. It’s now been 5 months, and there is still no headstone.” 

Robinson goes on to recount a litany of excuses, false promises and a complete lack of accountability. “If I could give this zero stars, I would.”

Another reviewer, Katie Everson, recounts a similarly dismal experience. 

“We placed an order for two headstones in March 2025, one for my grandfather and one for my grandmother, who sadly passed away just three weeks apart.” 

Mackie’s told them the stones would be ready in six to eight weeks. Seven months later, no stones had been fitted. 

“My mother spoke with Tom” — Thomas Smith — “several times and was given multiple promises of fitting dates, none of which were met,” Katie writes. She describes Smith as “defensive and dismissive”, showing “no empathy despite our visible upset.” When they asked for a refund, Smith “patted down his pockets,” saying he didn’t carry that sort of money. 

Other furious comments abound on Facebook. “We have been robbed of £600,” says one. “It took a year for my son to get my grandson’s head stone from them,” says another. “This has also happened to me,” a third says. 

Yet the same Facebook thread includes confused replies from older customers. “Order placed in 2016 and no problems at all,” writes a woman from nearby Moreton. “They were always so good,” agrees another commenter. “I got me mum’s grave stone from them 7 yrs ago,” says another woman, who had “no trouble whatsoever” from Mackie’s.

I speak to Pamela, whose mum Irene passed away last August at the age of 88. Pam placed an order for a head stone with Mackie’s and paid “pretty much straight away” — a cost of £451. But like Rachel and Katie, months later, no marker was forthcoming for Irene’s resting place. 

When Tom stopped answering, Pam took matters into her own hands. “I contacted my bank,” she tells me. “I thought I might be able to get my money back, but because I paid by bank transfer, they said I couldn’t. But then they froze his bank.”

According to Pam, that rallied Tom to finally get in touch with her, but not about Irene’s headstone. “He was calling and emailing all the time saying, ‘you've had my bank account frozen.’ It was about a week before Christmas, and he said, ‘my staff are not going to get paid.’”

This worsened an already emotionally wrought time for the bereaved Pam. “I felt so awful,” she tells me on the phone. “I was crying. I couldn’t sleep. I was frightened.”

For years, EF Mackie’s was a Wirral institution. A memorial stone masons founded outside Rake Lane cemetery in 1887 — just five years after the cemetery itself — Mackie’s operated as a family business for much of the last 139 years. If you were bereaved and needed a grave stone for a loved one, everyone in Wallasey used Mackie’s: rich and poor, young and old. They built a century-plus reputation for sensitivity and competence that, for some, still holds true to this day. 

“When we were booking mum's funeral at the Co-Op, they recommended them,” Pam says. 

But in 2022, the previous owner, Allen Roberts, retired. His apprentice, Thomas Smith, took on the Mackie’s name. By all accounts an accomplished stone mason — even Katie Everson describes the headstones eventually delivered by Mackie’s as “beautiful” — it seems that Smith quickly found himself in over his head. Delays, evasive behaviour, and broken promises followed, according to the numerous people who spoke to The Post, many of whom shared similar stories of Smith withdrawing from communication or disappearing altogether. 

Like grief, burial is intensely personal. It extends beyond the funeral itself: from the initial conversations with a mortician to the years of cemetery visits afterwards, to pay respects, to lay new flowers or remove old ones. Back in 2024, I interviewed a grave tender, Tony Maher, who impressed upon me the peculiarly human need to look after our dead. 

The heightened emotions during bereavement combined with Smith’s alleged behaviour led to acrimonious disputes. I am shown a picture of Smith looking sheepish as the photographer holds up a handwritten IOU: “full refund of £4000 by 19th Feb”. It’s unclear who this disgruntled customer is or whether she ever received her money. I hear rumours of threats towards Smith, and even claims from four different sources that he was assaulted. I’m determined to hear Smith’s side of the story, but my initial attempts to contact him are unsuccessful.

Then, in the course of my investigation, it becomes unexpectedly personal. Over a cup of tea, I mention to my mum I’m working on a story about missing grave markers. She says she also had all kinds of trouble getting her mum’s headstone installed. And the stone masons responsible? Mackie’s.

My nan had wanted to be buried with her mum, Mary Catherine Sale — my great-grandmother, who died before I was born but who I think of as “Nannie Maria”. Instead of simply having her name added to the existing gravestone, Nan — something of an unsentimental contrarian with a sense of the grandiose — had insisted on removing Nannie Maria’s headstone and replacing it with a brand new one with both of their names. 

Honouring Nan’s inconvenient wishes, Mum obliged, and so did Mackie’s — eventually and after months of excuses, during which Mum describes Smith acting evasively. But more trouble began when Mum wanted Nannie Maria’s headstone back for sentimental reasons. 

“It was a beautiful Sacred Heart of Jesus,” Mum says, showing me a photograph. On top of that, my sister’s middle name is Maria, and by a strange coincidence the stone bears her date of birth: she was born on Nannie Maria’s anniversary and has always felt a strong connection to her. “But Tom said it was in storage, or something, and he didn’t know where. He said we’d have to pay hundreds to get it back.”

Feeling an odd responsibility, I step up my attempts to find Smith.

Hello, Laurence here. Thanks so much for reading this far. From here it becomes more personal and even intense, recounting my own attempts at recovering my great-grandmother's headstone. Because of the amount of shoeleather expended and digital ink spilled on fact-checking and proof-reading, we've decided to paywall the rest of the story.

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