A woman has claimed that Primark sold her “a dead man’s T-shirt” after she discovered a tag bearing the name of deceased man from a hospital in Scotland.

Carrie, who goes by the username sloanonthephone on TikTok, posted a video on the platform showing the unusual tag on the T-shirt.

She said she originally bought the plain white T-shirt from Primark’s Princes Street store in Edinburgh in May, and found that it had an “itchy tag” when she wore it.

The tag had the name Thomas Hay written on it, and the words “Fraserburgh, Brucklay” printed underneath.

“I didn’t think much about it,” said Carrie. “I thought maybe someone had just dodgily given the top back to Primark and I had bee unfortunate enough to buy it.”

She forgot about it until recently, when some friends came to look through a bag of clothes she had been planning to throw away and found the T-shirt again.

“They pulled out a white top, and I said, ‘Oh my god, that white top, I haven’t told anyone’. Being a lot cleverer than me, they were like, Google it,” she joked.

She then showed a screenshot of the Google results, which showed an obituary announcement for a man named Thomas Gray Hay, who died on 8 March 2020 at Fraserburgh Hospital.

Carrie also searched for the hospital and found that the word “Brucklay” on the tag may have referred to the hospital’s dementia ward, which is called Brucklay Ward.

“So I just want to know, why did Primark sell me a dead man’s T-shirt? And what do I do with it?” she questioned towards the end of the video, adding that she had never been to Fraserburgh.

The video, which has been viewed more than 158,000 times on TikTok, drew plenty of attention from other users on the platform who were intrigued by Carrie’s claim.

One eagle-eyed person pointed out: “Tag also has SS19 which means it was from spring summer collection 2019.”

Another suggested: “You have to label all clothes when they go into a dementia ward/home so someone probably bought him new clothes, labelled them, and then he didn’t wear it and someone took all the still-labelled clothes back to the shops for a refund.”

One commenter who said they worked in Primark said the T-shirt could have been swapped. “Some people come in, go to the fitting room, put the new T-shirt on and on their way out they give back the old one,” they wrote.

The Independent has contacted Primark for comment.

Read More