To get so moved over unidentified bodies?

[TheHouseOnBellSt]

I recently had cause to check a website which lists unidentified bodies found in the UK. It was for a work project...I don't work for the police though and so I was shocked by it all.

I was especially touched by one woman whose body was found last year...almost a year ago anyway...she was found at the bottom of Beachy Head....it says she jumped.

She's aged 30-40 and nobody has identified her. I must be getting morbid in my old age but I keep checking to see if anyone has identified her and nobody has. :(

I know it's unhealthy for me to think too much about things like this but I so wish I could name her. There are so many others of course but maybe this one touched me because she's similar in age to me. There are sensitive photos of her and though they upset me (they're not gory just sad) I keep looking at her and googling missing people to try to find who she could be.

This is one of the truly awful things I think about illegal immigrants, no one knows they're here sometimes. So if they die here, there is no way to contact anyone to let them know, and their families are probably back 'home' believing their loved ones are living a better life.

Hopefully by posting the link on sites such as MN someone somewhere might be browsing and recognise these people so they can be named and laid to rest properly.

I find it very moving too. Homeless deaths, suicides, illegal immigrants and probably a fair few unsolved murders in there as well. There was a woman from the 1960s on that website, found in a cellar in a house frequented by vagrants. Made me think of a less sensationalised Fred West type murder.

I also remember reading about a victim of the Kings Cross fire who was never identified, it's hard to think of a person going through life so very alone that nobody misses them It's very sobering. You do think well someone, somewhere must know them.

I live near the channel.tunnel and there are 2 recent unknowns. 1 jumped off the viaduct and 1 fell from under a lorry as it left a rest stop. Driver never stopped as had no clue. Just a run over dead unknown in the car park.
sad.

This is heartbreaking.

I hope someone knows her. One thing that gives me comfort is that she has clearly been treated with care and respect after being found.

the guy at Kings Cross was eventually identified

the guy at Kings Cross was eventually identified

Ignore first link

I find it hard to get my head around the dead kids that don't get identified. They must leave a trail somewhere, its just so sad.

It's amazing and comforting that, like in the King's Cross link, they go to such painstaking lengths to trace the person.

I'm on a couple of other websites (Justicequest and Websleuths), it's heartbreaking to read of all the missing and unidentified. You just wonder where they all go and then with the miracle of the Cleveland 3 or the young girl found alive after 18 years, you wonder how many are still alive but kept somewhere.
(By the way, if anyone does like an interesting murder mystery to read, may I suggest the Keddie murders -google it and Cabin 28. I've just found a documentary on youtube to watch about it this morning as well)
Thankfully, there are people out there who spend a lot of their free time trying to match the unidentified with the missing. There was a case in America of Sharon Marshall (body found and identified as that name but then they realised she'd been kidnapped as a child and that wasn't her name-decades later they have recently positively identified her).

Does anyone think she could be Charlene Downes? She went missing aged 14 in 2003...that would make her 27-28 last year...the woman in the image is estimated to be between 30 and 40....they often get ages wrong when they estimate them.

Ah. No. Her eyes aren't the right colour.

I also remember reading about a victim of the Kings Cross fire who was never identified, it's hard to think of a person going through life so very alone that nobody misses them sad It's very sobering. You do think well someone, somewhere must know them.

I think there has been an almost positive identification, some family came forward years later, it isn't completely positive because he would need to be exhumed and someone else is buried in the same grave, another unidentified person and they can't disturb their body.

CheeseBored

I think the council pay for a 'pauper's funeral' so there is a burial but no gravestone.

I know when a person who is known but has no family/friends die then parishioners who have time, mainly retired church goers, are asked to attend the funeral.

I think where there is no one at all the undertakers attend the service so there is someone.

Then there are cases like this

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-32545381

200 people attending the funeral of an unknown child. The minister said;

"This baby boy may not have been given a name - we may not know where he came from or who gave birth to him - but the Bible tells us that God knew him even before he was born and his whole being - body, soul and spirit - is engraved on the palm of God's hand"

I imagine there are children who have been sold and trafficked illegally and their parents are either dead, assuming they are somewhere with a distant relative safe or hoping they are living a better life if sold. I can totally see how these children's bodies end up being unidentified. I wish more was being done to tackle people trafficking across the world.

Charlene Downes was murdered.

Sebs I read an article about why so many missing children in the UK are Vietnamese and it said it was because those children had been trafficked in, then taken into care in the UK...then they run away back to their traffickers....because they are afraid their family back in Vietnam will suffer reprisals by the gangs.

Swiss well they say that but some articles say as her body has never been found that's not definite.

*...it's hard to think of a person going through life so very alone that nobody misses them...'

This, so much. That and sadness for those missing loved ones with no idea whether they're alive or dead. I think sometimes hope can be harder to bear than grief.

And no, OP, YANBU. We should care about the lost and the lonely.

Her body hasn't been found, but that's because of what happened to it which is so unpleasant I will not post it here. :)

Swiss but what evidence do they have that this actually happened to her? If it were enough to prove that it happened then surely there would have been a conviction.

Also, it's easier than you might think to end up like that - it's entirely possible the woman doesn't have anyone who will miss her, and it's also possible (though not probable) that this is through choice.

No one would miss me, for instance. That's just how it is and that will change but right now I would not be missed.

It's a lot more complex than that TheHouse - but she certainly isn't alive, I'm afraid. I wish she was.

The sheer number of unidentified bodies in London got me. People heading there for a new life, probably a new country, and find themselves absolutely alone. It's horrible.

There are so many scenarios that could see you dead with no one to identify you. Off the top of my head;

Mental health problems. Parents are no longer alive or totally estranged from any family. Homelessness, no job, no routine. Drug dependency, irretrievable breakdown of relationships and 'normal life'. Illegal immigration so no one wants to report you missing incase you are alive and end up deported. Trafficking where you are given a new identity and no one 'good' knows where you are. Murder, when the people perpetrating the crime are the ones who might report you missing.

I think there are a lot of people nowadays living incredibly insular lives. Even down to using self service check outs so you don't have to communicate with a person. There are lots of instances of the elderly dying in their homes and it going unnoticed for months or years, even decades. Perhaps that's why we feel an increasing need to reproduce, in the hope that we will stay relevant to someone as we age!