36 ■ American Cemetery July 2004

Of all the frustrations that facea funeral dire c t o r, few ex-ceed that of having an un-

named decedent. Interring a “John”or a “Jane Doe” means no re l a t i v e sto notify, no family to counsel and noreal name to engrave. After the Ti-tanic disaster, funeral directors facedthis problem in preparing bodies thathad been re t u rned to Halifax, NovaScotia, the city from which the recov-ery operation was based. Of the 209bodies that were brought there, 150a re interred in three cemeteries andover 40 of them remain unidentified.

One of the most poignant storiesof these victims involves a young boy.Known officially as body #4, he car-ried no identification. The crew ofthe ship that re c o v e red him, movedby his plight, contributed toward sthe boy’s funeral, marker and inter-

ment at city-owned Fairview LawnC e m e t e ry. Set among 120 other Ti-tanic markers, that of the UnknownChild of the Titanic (as the boy cameto be known) reads:

Erectedto the memory

of anunknown childwhose remainswere recovered

after thedisaster tothe Titanic

April 15, 1912

For 90 years, the boy lay unidenti-fied at Fairv i e w. Then in 2002, ateam of researchers finally gave him aname.

Halifax geologist Alan Ruff m a nhas long been a Titanic student. The

author of “Titanic Remembered: TheUnsinkable Ship and Halifax,” Ruff-man has spent hours at the cemeter-ies and at the Public Archives ofNova Scotia, which houses records ofthe re c o v e ry operation. Over 40 fu-neral directors from the CanadianMaritime Provinces, led by JohnSnow of J.A. Snow Funeral Home inHalifax, took part in that operation.

For some time, Ruffman had beeninvestigating the identity of anothervictim at Fairv i e w, body #281, andwas working with the Revere n dCanon David Browning of Fonthill,Ontario. Browning, rector of the An-glican Holy Trinity Parish, is clerg y-man to the family of victim andcrewmember Catherine J. Wallis, andwas serving as a go-between to pro-tect their then-desire for anonymity.They long believed that Mrs. Wa l l i s

A Name at Last:Identifying the Unknown Child

Of the TitanicBY CALVIN SUN

July 2004 American Cemetery ■ 37

C e m e t e r y L o r e

was body #281, and had come toR u ffman (through Browning) forhelp.

In re s e a rching the Wallis case,R u ffman apparently had reached animpasse. Then, in the late summer of1999, he connected with Dr. Ry a nP a rr, at the time co-director of thePaleo-DNA Laboratory at LakeheadUniversity in Ontario. Parr had beenidentifying, via DNA analysis, famil-ial relationships at a Roman-Byzan-tine cemetery in Egypt. After seeing atelevision special about the unidenti-fied Titanic victims, and wanting tobecome involved, he called the Hali-fax-based Maritime Museum of theAtlantic and was re f e rred to Ruff-man, a research associate there.

P a rr described his work in Egypt,suggested that the same appro a c hmight work for the Titanic victimsand gave Ruffman written inform a-tion. Ruffman relayed the inform a-tion to the Wallis family viaB rowning. In 2000, the family ac-cepted Parr’s offer, and asked that hep roceed. Ruffman then inform a l l yapproached Robert Strang M.D., theNova Scotia Medical Officer ofHealth, about the process of request-ing a disinterment. Strang explainedthat he needed the family to establisha strong case for why they believedthey were related to body #281. Hef u rther explained that the exhuma-tion required a legitimate purpose sothat it would not be, in his words, “afishing expedition.”

P a rr and Ruffman then re a l i z e dthat given their intent to disinterbody #281, they might as well askpermission for other unidentified vic-tims as well, to minimize disru p t i o nto Fairv i e w. One such victim wasbody #240 and the other was body#4, the Unknown Child. For this rea-son, Ruffman and Parr asked theWallis family to delay their disinter-ment request. Ruffman then concen-trated on finding relatives of theseother two victims.

R u ffman and many other Ti t a n i cauthorities believed that body #4could be two-year-old Gösta Pålsson,the youngest son of Alma (néeB e rglund) and Nils Pålsson of Gru-van, Sweden. Alma, Gösta and three

other children (all of whom died)w e re traveling to Chicago to joinNils, who had gone before them.None of the children ever were offi-cially re c o v e red. However, the coro-n e r’s re c o rds for body #4 containedthe notation “Baby Pålsson (?),” thuscausing Ruffman and the others toconsider Gösta as a candidate.

R u ffman also believed that body#240 could be 22-year-old Charles J.Shorney. Unlike the case of body #4,no notations re g a rding identity ap-pear in the re c o rds for body #240.H o w e v e r, Ruffman knew from hiswork that body #240 and Shorn e ywere close in age. He knew also thatpersonal effects found on body #240w e re connected to Brighton, Eng-land, a town near where Shorn e ylived, and where he would havebought his ticket.

Ruffman in particular was seekingmaternal relatives because of the ap-p roach that Parr was pro p o s i n g ,which involved mitochondrial DNA(mtDNA). Unlike nuclear DNA

(which is specific to an individual),mtDNA remains the same acro s smultiple generations of a family,being passed from mother to child.The analysis re q u i red a minisculesample of human remains (specifical-ly, only about one gram), so that onlya partial rather than a full exhuma-tion would be required.

Ruffman successfully located livingm a t e rnal relatives of Gösta Pålsson,and also located relatives of CharlesShorney. Because the latter were notmaternal relatives, their mtDNA wasof no use to Parr. However, theS h o rney relatives did give the teamp e rmission instead to obtain DNAfrom the remains of Shorney’s father.In early 2001, the families of thet h ree victims formally petitionedStrang for partial disinterment of thegraves of bodies #4, #240 and #281.Strang granted their request, thus al-lowing The Titanic Ancient DNAP roject (as it came to be known) toproceed.

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the project team wanted publicityabout the operation to be delayeduntil noon on Thursday, May 17,2001, when it would begin. For thisreason, they requested that the news

media embargo any news until thattime. This request pertained as wellto a taped interview that one projectteam member had granted. However,an employee of an Ontario television

station, who knew about the inter-v i e w, telephoned a friend whoworked at a Halifax station, andleaked details about the project. As aresult, that station broadcast news ofthe project at 11:30 p.m. on Tuesday,May 15.

As a result of this action, the teamfaced worldwide media attention ear-lier than planned. One Halifax re s i-dent, who considered himself theg u a rdian of the Unknown Child,chained himself to the marker inorder to stop the project. The matterwas resolved after police officials as-s u red the man that the re m a i n swould be disturbed as little as possi-ble. The police then lifted the chainso ff the marker, and the man simplyleft .

Despite the pre m a t u re announce-ment, the disinterments began asscheduled with bodies #240 and#281, located in adjacent lots at thelower end of the Titanic section. Fol-lowing prayers by Browning, work-ers began to open the side-by-sidegraves. As they did so, they encoun-tered large amounts of water, due tothe low elevation of these graves andthe high level of water table. Thoughthey examined the graves care f u l l y,they found no remains at all. This de-velopment shocked the team, causingthem to ask themselves, in Parr’swords, “What are we going to do?”

Discussing the matter the nextmorning, the team concluded that thec i rculation of the large amount ofg roundwater in the acidic soil hads e rved to completely dissolve the re-mains. On the other hand, they be-lieved they might have some successwith the Unknown Child grave, be-cause it was at a higher point.Though they were concerned aboutyet a third setback, they decided tocontinue after a lunchtime commentby Halifax city official Peter Bigelow,“Well, we’ll never know unless we goahead.”

As the opening of the UnknownChild grave proceeded, the teambegan to see evidence of the burial.Removing the final pieces of earth byhand, they saw small pieces of whitewood from the now-rotting lid of thesmall casket, and the remnants of flo-ral stems. Inside the casket, they dis-

38 ■ American Cemetery July 2004

Burial grounds for victims of the Titanic disaster at Fairview Lawn Cemetery in Hali-fax, Nova Scotia.

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c o v e red what they had sought: re-mains consisting of three teeth (in-cluding two molars) plus a sixcentimeter fragment of bone. Theyalso saw a badly corroded metalmedallion engraved with the word s“Our Babe.” This medallion wasnow in two pieces, and one letter wascompletely dissolved. Their third at-tempt had succeeded.

R e t u rning to his laboratory, Parrbegan analyzing the bone, a pro c e s sthat occurred between December2001 and Febru a ry 2002. However,he soon encountered pro b l e m s .Metal from the “Our Babe” medal-lion had seeped into the bone, conta-minating it. As Ruffman re m a r k e d ,the medallion was a “two-edgeds w o rd.” It did complicate themtDNA analysis, but at the sametime pre s e rved the bone. Nonethe-less, Parr still was able to analyze themtDNA and conclude that it was anon-match with that of a matern a lPålsson relative. On May 3, 2002,Parr and Ruffman released the disap-pointing news that the UnknownChild was not Gösta Pålsson.

While the bone mtDNA excludedthe Pålsson boy, its contaminationmade it impractical for further analy-sis. Parr fortunately discovered an al-t e rnative mtDNA source. In talking

July 2004 American Cemetery ■ 39

Unknown Child’s grave at Fairv i e wG a rden Cemetery

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with dental experts, to whom he had sent the teeth, helearned that one molar contained dentin, a material rich inmtDNA. He learned also that the shape and condition ofthe teeth indicated a boy younger than about a year old.

While Parr continued his work now with the mtDNAfrom the dentin, Ruffman set out to locate living maternalrelatives of five other boys that he thought could be theUnknown Child. These five boys were:

• Gilbert Danbom (age five months, from Sweden)• Alfred Peacock (age seven months, from England)• Eino Viljam Panula (age thirteen months, from Fin-

land)• Sidney Goodwin (age 19 months, from England)• Eugene Rice (age 2 years, from Ireland)After much effort on his own and from professional ge-

nealogists, Ruffman managed to locate maternal relativesfor all five boys. All of these relatives agreed to assist, byproviding six drops of blood. In fact, one of them, a firstcousin of the Panula boy, was a man who was 100 yearsold.

The mtDNA testing resulted in a non-match for re l a-tives of three of the boys. The other two — the Goodwinand Panula boys — did have relatives whose mtDNAmatched. However, the Goodwin boy was too old to havethe shape and condition of the teeth that were recovered.Based on this evidence, Parr and Ruffman announced onN o v. 6, 2002, their conclusion that the Unknown Childwas Eino Viljam Panula.

What did the participants think about their work? Ruff-man takes pride in helping reunite the Berglund family,

from whom Alma Pålsson, the mother of Gösta, was de-scended. “There are two branches of the family,” he ex-plained. “One was in the west [of Sweden] and the otherwas in the south.” But for the project, he believes, neitherbranch might ever have discovered the other.

Parr’s strongest impression was the huge personal reper-cussions of the Titanic. He mentioned Catherine J. Wallis,whose descendants provided the impetus for The TitanicAncient DNA Project, and who still believe that she wasbody #281. “The husband [of Mrs. Wallis] had died,” hesaid. “Now the wife died also, and their children were or-phaned. I had to satisfy my desire to help.”

B ro w n i n g ’s greatest concern was for the dignity of theoperation. He spoke almost mischievously about the “catand mouse” games he played with the media in that re-gard. On several critical occasions, he would casually slidein front of a camera to block its view. He also made apoint of wearing his clerical collar. He agrees with Parrthat even after 90 years, the personal tragedy of Ti t a n i ccontinues for victim relatives. Telling the Wallis re l a t i v e sabout empty grave #281, he said, was “heart b re a k i n g . ”But he realized that as a professional, he had to do it.

Perhaps the most succinct comment came from funerald i rector Don MacKay of the J.A. Snow Funeral Home.Said MacKay, “Mr. Snow would have been pleased.”

AC

Calvin Sun is a consultant and speaker who has studiedthe Titanic and has incorporated stories about it into hisp rofessional presentations, including two for NFDA. Hevisited the Halifax Titanic graves in 1998 and interviewedcemetery staff and others connected with them. His articleon the subject appeared in the October 1999 issue ofAmerican Funeral Director. He has interviewed and corre-sponded with relatives of six Titanic victims and sur-vivors. He can be reached at csun@calvinsun.com,www.calvinsun.com

40 ■ American Cemetery July 2004

As the opening of the Un k n own Child grave proceeded, the team began to see evidence of the burial.

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