Hospital bosses kept the body parts of adults and children for more than a decade without their families’ knowledge.

A total of 21 sets of parents, siblings and friends who believed that they had buried their loved ones have been given the upsetting news by police.

Officers are still searching for the relatives of two more people whose samples were also kept.

The cases relate to a string of investigations by Sussex Police in which post-mortem examinations were carried out by experts at King’s College London between 1989 and 2000 and stored by St Thomas and Guy’s NHS Foundation Trust.

Jennifer Harrington, 35, whose seven-week-old son Joseph died in an accident in 1998, told a national newspaper she was “shocked” and “disgusted”.

The Eastbourne mum, who now lives in London, buried her son in 2000 after years of police investigations and inquests.

However, after being told by officers that Joseph’s heart, ribcage and other tissues were still in storage, she decided to hold another funeral. Sussex Police paid the £250 cost.

She said: “To me the trust is just like Burke and Hare the body-snatchers.”

Calling for a full inquiry, she added: “I want the trust to ensure this can never happen to anyone again.”

In 2011 Sussex Police, along with every other force in the country, carried out a review of body parts and tissue samples it had retained following post-mortems for cases of unexplained or suspicious deaths.

Officers could find no “whole organs or significant body parts” but as they prepared to release the results they were contacted by London’s St Thomas and Guy’s and told it held tissues from Sussex Police post-mortems from 1989 to 2000.

A spokesman for the trust said that it had been handed the various pieces of body tissue when the forensic medicine department at King’s College closed.

The 23 cases relate to 12 murder or manslaughter investigations, one death by reckless driving and ten others in which an inquest returned an open verdict or where the death was found to have resulted from natural causes.

Sussex Police began the task of tracking down the relatives of the people involved in March but has so far only managed to contact 21 of the 23.

The force has refused to reveal who the samples relate to.

Detective Chief Superintendent Steve Fowler said: “At the forefront of our minds throughout this sensitive operation is the need to respect the concerns and wishes of families, to give them a clear, compassionate and open account of the circumstances as we understand them, and to offer advice and support over any decision they make about ethical disposal, or the return of their loved one’s tissue.”

A spokeswoman for the hospital trust said: “The samples and organs held on behalf of the police and coroners were retained and stored in a sensitive and secure way in accordance with strict national guidance and legislation.

“We would like to apologise to the families affected for the distress that this situation has caused them.”