A mother who won a court order to find out what had happened to her baby's remains has discovered that his coffin was buried without a body.

Lydia Reid's 42-year quest looked to have come to a conclusion when a court granted her an order for an exhumation.

Ms Reid had been a leading member of a campaign to reveal the extent to which Scottish hospitals used dead children's body parts for research.

In 2001 an official report in England found that 104,300 organs, foetuses and body parts were in storage, the majority at 25 hospitals.

Ms Reid feared that the same thing had happened to her son, Gary, who was only seven days old when he died at Edinburgh's Sick Kids hospital in July 1975.

Following the court order and exhumation was carried out by Professor Dame Sue Black, an eminent forensic anthropologist.

She concluded that the coffin had been buried without human remains, the BBC reported.

Prof Reid reached her conclusion following the exhumation at Saughton Cemetery in Edinburgh.