Heartbreaking mystery of youngest body recovered from Titanic that took almost a century to solve
The heartbreaking mystery of the unknown body of a toddler recovered from the wreckage of the Titanic took almost a century to solve.
The 19-month-old boy was found by the Mackay-Bennett - a cable laying and repair ship that is known for having recovered the majority of the bodies from the sinking of the Titanic.
However, the child was laid to rest with a headstone that read ‘erected to the memory of an unknown child whose remains were recovered after the disaster to the Titanic April 15th 1912’ after his identity wasn’t found.
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In 2002, DNA testing wrongly identified him as a third class passenger named Eino Viljami Panula but it wasn’t until 2007 that the truth was revealed.
Things started to become clear after Canadian researchers at Lakehead University tested the tot’s HVS1, which is a type of mitochondrial DNA molecule.
It was found that it didn’t match the Panula family and so further testing was done with DNA from the exhumed remains.
This provided a surviving relative and led researchers to the answer they’d been searching for nearly a century.
The young boy was Sidney Leslie Goodwin, and he was the youngest recovered victim of the Titanic.
Sidney had been born in Melksham, Wiltshire, England, on September 9 1910 to Frederick and Augusta Goodwin.
He was the youngest of six children, the older ones being Lillian, Charles, William, Jessie, and Harold.
Frederick’s brother, Thomas, was living in Niagara Falls, New York, when he wrote to Frederick and told him about the opening of a power station.
It’s thought that this would have been his employer if the family had made it to the United States.
They’d originally been booked as third class passengers on the SS New York but due to a coal strike, the ship’s departure was delayed and they were transferred over to the Titanic.
Tragically, by the time the family had found out about the collision with the iceberg, all of the lifeboats had already been launched.
All members of the family perished in the sinking of the ship and Sidney’s body was the only one to be recovered.
In 2002, a pair of shoes that are believed to have been Sidney’s was donated to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Sidney’s gravestone has now been updated to include a plaque with his name, date of birth and date of death.