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.

I can see how this can happen.

I've been homeless - close to seeping on the street but luck was on my side - and people just melt away. Truly, that is when you know who your real friends are. Homeless and mentally ill is even worse, and the two are likely to go together. I also know what it's like to fall through cracks in services. In particular, local councils have no duty to house people unless they fall into a 'priority' group. Even being mentally ill is not definitely 'priority', only discretionary.

Plus some people have awful families they have escaped from, so that plus no close friends and they could easily get lost...

I'm in Cardiff, Giles. Unsure if the news of the baby boy was covered beyond the local news though.

There is one where I live at the moment.

www.boston.com/news/local/2015/07/21/police-use-billboard-tactic-try-baby-doe/O2TLLUlSgiGu7J6F2u2WCI/story.html

She is such a beautiful little girl it is hard to believe no one at all in her life has reported her missing.

I've been thinking about this a lot today

And looking around, noticing people,sadness etc. Just wondering

My ex could be a man like those on that list. He's only got his dad and brother, they don't keep in touch much. He also lives 250 miles away now with another girlfriend. They are quite frequent and he seems to like it up north. He has form for suicide attempts. His own brother took his life so he knows about it, how people feel. We are all in the south. Miles away

If he had no ID on him then how would any of us know? 'Us' being me, a distant brother and a father in his mid 90's

Quick update on the Kings Cross unidentified man.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3419647.stm

For anyone who read about the Australian childs body found the other day, they have now said its a little girl, aged between 2.5 - 4 with fair hair and could have died from 2007 onwards. My mind jumped to Madeleine McCann, very unlikely to end up in Australia though.

Canyouforgivehr - I am following that case, are you local? Are there any theories flying about?

Canyouforgiveher-also following that case, heartbreaking.

I am local but I haven't heard any theories about the girl on Deer Island. and it has gotten a huge amount of publicity - her picture has really been publicised as have the blanket/clothes found with her.

On a side note an undertaker has volunteered to provide her a funeral for free. This is the same undertaker who took a lot of flak for providing a funeral for Tsarnaev (marathon bomber) after the bomber's uncle tried and failed for weeks to find an undertaker who would arrange a burial. The undertaker in question has a long history of providing funeral for indigent or unidentified people.

Sounds like an amazing person (the undertaker) to have the strength of character to do that

This thread has stayed with me in the same way the Mount Everest one did.

I think that finding out about someone's death, especially if you've seen their body or the place it was discovered, somehow connects you to them in a different way than knowing about their life does.

Spring what's the Mount Everest thread? Does it talk about all the people who have perished up there that they haven't been able to bring back?

The Everest thread really affected me too.

This thread is very sad. I didn't know about Joyce Vincent and that Norwegian article is terrible. It's hard to think about isn't it :(

I think the Everest thread must have been in chat as I can't find it now. We discussed the bodies that were left on the mountain.

listverse.com/2013/06/13/10-harrowing-stories-of-life-and-death-on-mount-everest/

Yes Queen, it started off with something in the news that due to so many people now climbing Everest there is a lot of mess (including human waste) accumulating and causing problems. Then the conversation turned to the large number of bodies also up there which cannot be safely recovered, although climbers pass them regularly. Some of them are known, some of them not. It was a revelation to me. This was before the recent earthquake so I guess there must be more now

The thread was in chat I think, so not around any more.

It was in chat, a harrowing but sensitively done thread

Cross post Methe. You remember it too. Some threads you just don't forget.

Yes Doe. This one feels the same.

So pleased to hear about the Kings Cross victim. Many many years ago I worked on a play about the person who worked trying to find his identity.

Thank you for the reminder, it sounded familiar and with the explanation I remember the thread

I have been googling lots of the names on this thread now, will also stay with me for a while