Wrong send

A southern Dutch municipality has admitted losing valuable items by mistakenly disposing of them.

The municipality of Maashorst revealed on 24 April that 46 precious artworks, including one by pop art master Andy Warhol, were “most likely” accidentally dumped during a town hall renovation last year, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.

The rare 1980s Warhol silkscreen print of the country’s former monarch Princess Beatrix was among the artworks that disappeared during work on the town hall in Uden as part of its incorporation into a new local administration, according to AFP.

“It’s most likely the artworks were accidentally taken away with the trash,” the municipality said in a statement, adding that it was unlikely the artworks will ever be found.

The items were discovered missing during an inventory of the municipality’s paintings after the renovation works were completed.

Meanwhile, another case of mistaken “dumping” happened in England.

Staff of the Pilgrim Hospital Boston (PHB) were accused of dumping a “parcel” at the wrong address by the family of Rosalind Armiger, 72, a patient with mild dementia.

Armiger was receiving care at the Johnson Community Hospital in Spalding and was to move to a new care home when she suffered a fall and was taken to the PHB in Lincolnshire for a head injury scan on 20 February.

The family said they were assured by the PHB that Armiger was not to be discharged yet, but then she was put into the back of a taxi-van in her wheelchair and “brought home,” her daughter-in-law said, the Daily Mail (DM) reports.

The grandmother of seven later complained to her sons and daughter-in-law that she was abandoned in the foyer of the flats at Sutterton, near Boston, which was her old address, with no coat or shoes despite telling the driver that she no longer lived there, according to DM.

“I was left alone. They just left me to sort myself out. It was scary. I couldn’t make it to the toilet and I couldn’t go to the door,” Armiger told BBC.

Her sons Marcus, 53, and Paul, 51, rescued their mother from the lobby of her former address two hours later.

“She was dumped like a parcel at the door. It shouldn’t have happened,” Paul complained, according to BBC.

Local health officials apologized to the family over the error.