Posted by TRUE. Frederick Goodwin was a 42-year-old electrical engineer living in a terraced house in Fulham, England, with his wife, Augusta, 43 and six children, Lillian, 16; Charles, 14; William, 11; Jessie, 10; Harold, 9; and baby Sidney Leslie Goodwin, born on 9th September, 1910, and therefore about 18 months’ old.
Frederick’s brother, Thomas, who had settled in Niagra Falls, New York, notified him of an opening at a large power station there, so Frederick decided to move to America with his family. Selling their home in Fulham, they paused briefly in Marcham, booking passage on a small steamer operating out of Southampton. With few savings, they were travelling Third Class but their sailing was cancelled due to the coal strike and they were transferred to the Titanic.
The entire family was lost in the sinking.
One of the first bodies recovered by the cable ship Mackay-Bennett was that of a small, fair haired boy:
NO. 4—MALE—ESTIMATED AGE, 2—HAIR,
FAIR
CLOTHING—Grey coat with fur on collar and
cuffs; brown serge frock; petticoat; flannel garment;
pink woolen singlet—brown shoes and stockings.
NO MARKS WHATEVER
PROBABLY THIRD CLASS
The sailors who recovered this body were so moved that when
no relative came forward to claim the child, they personally
escorted the coffin to Fairview Lawn Cemetery in Halifax
and paid for a large monument in memory of the ‘unknown
child’. His was the only burial service that day—4th May,
1912—and they buried him with a copper pendant marked
‘Our Babe’. In 2002 the body previously identified only as
‘the unknown child’ was identified as Eino Viljami Panula
by means of DNA technology, but in 2007 the researchers
revised their opinion following further analysis of the DNA
and stated that the body was in fact that of Sidney Leslie
Goodwin.
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