TWO HEARTBROKEN sisters told this week how Macclesfield Hospital offered to foot the bill for their mother's funeral after she tragically died following a routine operation performed by disgraced surgeon Gavin Denton.

It was a gesture that made Marjorie Malkin and Liz Mason sit up and wonder why the East Cheshire NHS Trust should stump up the costs for their mum to be buried in Holy Trinity Churchyard at Hurdsfield.

"It was totally unexpected," said Marjorie, whose mum Doris Sheldon, 77, died on August 2, 1997 - just one month after a routine bowel operation.

"We were concerned there were so many complications and devastated when she finally died, but offering to pay for the funeral seemed to confirm our worse fears."

"It just seemed like an admission of guilt."

Family spokesman Marjorie, 57, of Westbury Drive, Macclesfield, and her younger sister Liz, 43, from Bollington, have fought tooth and nail for justice over the death of their beloved mother who bore six children - five girls and one boy - during her long and industrious life. An inquest in 1998 recorded a verdict of misadventure.

Since the revelations over the career of stomach specialist Gavin Denton, who is in his forties, and was suspended on full pay for three years pending an investigation into his work, the family are desperate for bereaved loved-ones of other patients of the abdominal consultant to come forward and exchange case histories.

And they feel that the public has a right to know where Mr Denton, who eventually resigned from his post after 36 months, is now.

The Trust has insisted that he was being "heavily monitored and supervised" during a retraining process but it declined to say where he was so as to give his future patients the right to choose whether or not he treats them.

And last night it refused to talk about the case concerning Doris Sheldon, claiming their policy was not to comment on any issues concerning the consultant.

Meanwhile, sisters Marjorie and Liz and the rest of the family, were adamant they wanted to tell their story to ensure others take heed.

They cared deeply for their mum - a modest woman who had worked all her life from being a kitchen assistant at West Park Hospital to becoming a care worker for the elderly while juggling her hectic home life and raising her large brood.

Doris was a popular woman; born and bred in Macclesfield, who lost her mill worker husband Alfred 30 years before her life was tragically cut short.

She had great faith in the medical profession and ironically, her slogan, when one of the family was off colour, was "doctor knows best".

"She was so kind," said Marjorie, mum of two. "If she saw a workman in the street she would put the chip pan on and take him a plate of them out along with a cup of tea."

Doris - who had 15 grandchildren and five greatgrandchildren - spent the latter part of her life in Ivy House Nursing Home on The Weston, regularly visited by her vast and devoted family.

She wasn't given to grumbling or complaining. So it didn't surprise her family when she told them only the night before her operation that she was going into hospital, and then she shrugged it off in her inimitable no-fuss fashion.

As it was the routine surgery, led by Mr Denton to remove a mass of inflammation from her bowel, left a leak between the bowel and bladder, which led to scepticaemia.

That condition, which contributed to her death, wasn't discovered until a second operation performed ten days later by Denton to explore obvious post-operative complications.

But it was all too late.

Days later, while Mr Denton was away on holiday, there was a third operation performed by Dr Quayle who found all her organs had rotted away. There was no hope.

Doris died two days later.

The family complained to the hospital and instructed their solictors to look at the medical reports and get an independent opinion.

They sent their findings to the Trust who subsequently offered to pay all costs - funeral and lawyers' fees.

Marjorie said: "Why would they want to do that unless they felt the blame for my mother's death lay at their door?"

"If somebody dies of natural causes it is a shock but you can come to terms with it. But with what has happened with my mum I don't think there is any coming to terms with it."

"She walked in reasonably healthy for her age. We had no idea what she was having done or how long she would be in for. She never came out."

"She always put a lot of faith in people. And look what happened?"

She added: "I would hate that anybody else would be treated again by Gavin Denton. Why did they never properly discuss with us why he is having to be retrained? What did he do that it takes three years to investigate?

"It must have been something serious."

Sister Liz Mason, who runs a newsagents in Bollington with her husband, said: "It is never going to go away unless we put a close to it."

"The children have all lost a grandmother whom they very much loved."

She added: "None of this should have happened. We should never have been left picking up the pieces."

"If the hospital can say that our mum is the only one who died that would be the end of it, but they can't."