Toxic Town: Where are the real people from the town now?

Netflix's Toxic Town is the newest trending drama on the streaming giant's platform that explores the real life events of the toxic waste scandal that started in Corby in the late 90s and ended in the 2010s. Toxic Town focuses on a group of mothers who gave birth to children who had deformities at birth, and the legal battles that followed for justice.

Toxic Town's highlight is the Corby Group Litigation v Corby District Council case that started the whole legal procedure and initiated the conversations that toxic wastes have some form of impact on newly born children. Toxic Town is a powerful narrative, and a compelling one at that, portraying the struggles that mothers face to get justice.

Here's where the people who inspired Toxic Town are now and what they went through during the ordeal.

Susan McIntyre

In the Toxic Town, Jodi Whittaker portrays Susan McIntyre, a new mother who gives birth to a son, Connor, with a deformed hand. She initiated the movement along with other mothers and won against the council.

The real life McIntyre received £14.6 million along with the other mothers after the case. As of now, she's 56 and still lives in Corby after her retirement. She raised two sons, Connor and Daniel, and separated from her husband when Connor was eight months old. Speaking to HIS Education, she spoke about the strain she put herself under after Connor's disability.

“You question yourself and wonder if you did anything wrong in your pregnancy. You know you haven’t, but that’s just a process of dealing with it all. It was a very dark time.”

However, Sunday Times journalist Graham Hind was the one who brought light to the case as she suggested the toxic-waste's impact on the children of Corby. Talking about him, McIntyre said,

“It was a journalist and he said to me: ‘This could be a big problem in Corby. We think there’s some sort of damage that’s causing this to your babies.’ Nobody knew what it was, just that there were a lot of babies that had this.”

Des Collins

Rory Kinnear plays Des Collins, the attorney working on the court case and is responsible for gathering evidence on the case and ultimately winning it.

As of now he is a solicitor and runs Collins & Solicitors. In a recent interview with The Telegraph, he opened up on the decade-long legal case and how the council did everything to get out of it.

"Their attitude was, "We will use every trick in the book to get out of this."We were asking for documents and they were telling us they didn’t exist. They were asking us to specify which lorry load, on which day, on which route had caused the problems with X child."

Maggie and Derek Mahon

Claudia Jessie, and Joe Dempsie star as a couple, Maggie and Derek Mahon, who have a son with deformities, which they pondered upon more as cases of other children in Corby came to light. Derek worked as a driver for the lorries that transport the toxins, which later ends up having an impact on their son.

As of now, Maggie works as a teacher in Corby and an interview with HIS Education recalled their family struggle.

'He had a pair of little boots he had to wear for six months. The first day they put his boots on, the doctors said: "He’s going to hate this, but don’t take it off whatever you do." That night, he was crying and crying. Derek came in from work one day, and I said: "Read this article – you worked among all this, and Sam’s got a club foot – that’s a bit coincidental, isn’t it?"'

Tracey Taylor

Aimee Lou Wood portrays Tracey Taylor in the series, who lost her daughter Shelby Anne shortly after her birth as a result of toxic waste contamination.

Taylor has talked to the BBC about the struggle she went through during the event as she said,

'I don't think the people of Corby realise just how much they have been affected by this. Hopefully they will now, and hopefully they'll see why us mothers had to stand strong and do it.'

Toxic Town is currently available to stream on Netflix.