Titanic's Fair Haired Unknown Child

Ask me a question, or leave
me a comment.

The crew of the rescue ship
Mackay-Bennett recovered
the body of a fair haired,
about 2-year-old boy out of
the Atlantic Ocean on April
21, 1912.

The body as well as many others
were taken to a cemetery in
Halifax, Nova Scotia, where
the crew of the Mackay-Bennett
placed a headstone dedicated to
the "unknown child" over his grave.

Researchers feel that they have
solved the mystery of the unknown
child, in that he was 19-month-old
Sidney Leslie Goodwin from England.

The fair haired unknown child was
identified two times before, but
researchers believe now he was
Goodwin.

The quest to identify the child
began over a decade ago, when Ryan
Parr, adjunct professor at Lakehead
University, Ontario, worked with
DNA taken from ancient human
remains viewed videos about the
Titanic.

"I thought 'Wow, I wonder if anyone
is interested or still cares about
the unidentified victims of the
Titanic,'" Parr.

Parr received permission to exhume
the remains.

A 2.4-inch long fragment of an arm
bone and three teeth remained of
the unknown child.

An expert analysis of the child's
teeth concluded the unknown child
to be between 9 and 15 months. Doubts
surrounded the conclusions until a pair
of shoes recovered from the unknown
child and held in the Maritime Museum
of the Atlantic caused the researchers
to question the identification.

Parr tried the identification process
again with the help of the U.S. Armed
Forces DNA Identification Laboratory.

They looked at another, less mutation
prone section of the mitochondrial DNA,
where they found a single difference
that indicated that Goodwin might
actually be the unknown child. The
Armed Forces lab confirmed this when
they found a second, single, difference
in another section of the DNA.

"Luckily, it was a rare difference, so
that is what gives you 98 percent
certainty the identification is correct,"
Parr explained.