Toxic Town: The true story of what happened to baby Shelby

10 March 2025, 17:09 | Updated: 13 March 2025, 16:45

By Alice Dear

Here's the real story about what happened to Tracey Taylor's daughter Shelby Ann as the tragedy is portrayed in Netflix's Toxic Town.

Toxic Town, written and created by Jack Thorne, tells the story of the Corby poisonings and the 2009 lawsuit against Corby Borough Council, including the heartbreaking story of Tracey Taylor and the death of her baby girl, Shelby, at just four-days-old.

The Netflix series is based on the true story of Susan McIntyre (played by Jodie Whittaker), Tracey Taylor (played by Aimee Lou Wood) and Maggie Mahon (played by Claudia Jessie), among others, whose children were born with disabilities and limb differences after they were exposed to toxic waste in the Corby area.

In Toxic Town, they dive into the heartbreaking story of Tracey Taylor whose daughter, Shelby Ann, died just days after being born, as well as the devastating blow that saw her excluded from the lawsuit over fears it could be singled out as a "flaw" in the claimants' argument.

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As people continue to delve into the true story of Toxic Town, here's everything you need to know about Tracey's story and what happened to Shelby.

What happened to Shelby?

Shelby Ann, who died when she was just four-days-old, was the first child of Tracey Taylor and her husband. Their baby girl is believed to have died as a result of the toxic waste that Tracey was exposed to in Corby while pregnant.

Tracey, who is played by Aimee Lou Wood in the Netflix series Toxic Town, relived the moments after she gave birth in an interview with the streaming service.

"Shelby was beautiful," she said: "They wrapped her up and then gave her to me, and I gently pulled a piece of the blanket away because I wanted to see her face, and that's when I noticed she'd got a deformed ear.

"They took her down to the special baby care unit and put her in, on oxygen, and that's when and the doctor said, We honestly do think there's something seriously wrong."

Tracey went on: "We called our priest who had married us and asked him to come and baptise her and give her a blessing. And then they came back, took us into a room and they said, "Look, we're really, really sorry, but unfortunately, she's only got a two-chamber heart as opposed to a four-chamber heart. There's blood being pumped straight into her lungs as opposed to her heart."

Tracey and her husband asked if surgery was a possibility, however, the medical professionals told her that there was a 90 per cent chance she wouldn't come out of the operation alive.

"We had to make the decision of, did we put her through that and any more pain? Or did we let her go?" she said.

After asking her mother and father to come to the hospital to meet their granddaughter, Tracey and her husband decided to take Shelby off of life support.

"If she lasted a little while, then we would give her the chance of going in to surgery and being operated on, knowing that there'd be many years of surgeries for her," Tracey explained: "But if she went, at least she went in our arms lovingly, and she only lasted five minutes."

Why were Tracey and Shelby left out of the lawsuit?

Tracey Taylor was one of the women who rallied alongside Susan McIntyre for justice following the discovery of the link between toxic waste and children born in the area with deformities, however, she was later removed from the case.

In heartbreaking scenes in Toxic Town, we see the moment their lawyer, Des Collins (played by Rory Kinnear), tells the grieving mother that she would not be part of the lawsuit, explaining that "her involvement could weaken the case" as Shelby was born without any "limb-related differences". He explains that the prosecution could single her case out as a flaw in the claimants’ argument.

While Netflix's Jack Thorne could have left Tracey's story out of the series, he has explained why it was so important for her experience to be portrayed alongside the other affected mothers.

Thorne said that production research consultant, Meroë Candy, made the choice to include Tracey and Shelby's story, explaining: "Lots of people would have just included the mothers that won the case, but [Candy]’s clever enough to know that breadth of the story was really important here. Tracey was interesting because of her exclusion from the case, which felt so important in telling these stories of justice.”

Aimee Lou Wood, who portrayed Tracey, said on the matter: "What’s amazing about Tracey’s story is that she wasn't going through the same thing as the other mums. They all had to go through the horrible, gruelling court process too, of course, but the other mums still had their children with them, and Tracey didn’t have that.”

The actress went on to say: "She’s the one who worked at the factory, so she has really key evidence about the dust and what it was like to work there. So Des needs all of her information and needs her to talk about everything she’s been witness to, and she does it. She goes through all of that, pouring her heart out, knowing it isn’t even for her and Shelby, it’s for the other mums and children.”

Tracey has also spoken about her experience being excluded from the case, sharing: "When we were dropped as a case, it was upsetting. I still went to court, I gave my evidence, to help the other children, even though I was no longer a claimant.”

She added: “If anybody’s the hero of this story, it’s Shelby. Without her and what she gave up, obviously dying and being affected by the toxic waste, then I wouldn’t have been able to support and help these other mothers and children.”

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