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The ferry dock that is run by the Department of Corrections with Hart Island in the background.

Elaine Joseph before going to Hart Island to visit her daughter's grave.

The New York City Council has voted to make Hart...

For the first time, a Queens mom may finally get to visit her infant daughter’s gravesite without feeling shame.

Elaine Joseph told The Post she hopes that the City Council’s vote last week to improve access to Hart Island — the potter’s field off The Bronx where her premature daughter’s body was tossed in a mass grave in 1978 — will erase the stigma and hurdles she and others have faced trying to visit their late loved ones there.

“This is changing history,’’ the 65-year-old nurse said of the new legislation, which passed Thursday. “Everyone’s human and deserves dignity.’’

Joseph’s daughter, Tomika, was born two months prematurely in February 1978 and died within days. The mom couldn’t make it to the hospital in time to claim her baby’s body because of a catastrophic snowstorm, which also caused mass confusion in its wards.

By the time things cleared, Tomika’s tiny body was mistakenly already buried at Hart, although Joseph says she didn’t learn the truth until 2009.

“I wanted to bury my daughter,’’ Joseph said. “I couldn’t find her. She got lost by the city.”

It took 31 years for the mom to learn of her daughter’s final resting place. It was another five years before the city allowed Joseph, a Navy veteran, and others with loved ones buried on the island to begin visiting gravesites there.

Even then, the situation was far from ideal.

Up till last year, visitors had to apply for transportation to Hart Island six months in advance and could only walk around the grounds once a month.

The city made improvements several months ago that upped grave-side visits to twice a month and shortened the application period to just five days.

But even now, visitors are still taken back and forth on the same ferry that helps transport bodies to the island.

The push to improve access to Hart Island gained steam in recent years when activists discovered it was the final resting place for thousands of AIDS victims who were denied proper burials because of the stigma related to the disease.

FX’s groundbreaking drama “Pose” featured the plight in an episode that aired this year.

Hart is the largest cemetery in the nation for indigent, unidentified and unclaimed dead — with more than 1 million people buried there, according to estimates.

Its desolate mass graves hold coffins for about 150 adults or 1,000 babies at a time and are noted only by plain white markers.

The graves are dug by Rikers Island inmates.

The approved legislation transfers control of Hart Island from the Department of Corrections to the Parks Department. And it gives the de Blasio administration a year to come up with better plans to transport visitors, including possible daily ferries.

Melinda Hunt, the filmmaker behind the 2010 documentary “Hart Island: An American Cemetery’’ who has advocated on behalf of families, hailed the council’s efforts.

“Hart Island is an important part of New York City and we should turn it into a place that we can be proud of. It’s the largest natural burial ground in the country, and it is being managed as a liability instead of an asset,’’ she said.

For Joseph, it’s been a long time coming. She lamented the twist of events that ended with her daughter’s burial in a potter’s field.

All these years, “She could have been in a beautiful area, and I could’ve been putting flowers [on her grave],” Joseph said.