Titanic's Unknown Child Victim Given a Name

More than 90 years after the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic, the identity of one of the victims has finally been discovered by means of DNA matching.

The "unknown child" buried with other victims in Halifax, Nova Scotia, has been identified as Eino Viljami Panula, a member of a Finnish family which died in the disaster.

He was 13 months old when the Titanic sank on April 15 1912.

His mother Maria and four brothers also drowned.

Relatives arrived in Halifax this week to visit the grave, where they have decided that the child's body will remain.

Magda Schleifer, 68, the granddaughter of Maria's sister, said she had agreed to a DNA blood test when she was approached by a television company planning a film on the Titanic's "ghosts" which will be shown in the Channel 4 series Secrets of the Dead.

Maria Emila Ojala and her five sons were on their way to the US to join her husband, John, who was working in Pennsylvania.

The crew of the Canadian recovery ship Mackay-Bennett found the boy's body a few days after the Titanic sank and took it to Halifax for burial. There was no means of identifying him.

He has been in Fairview Lawn cemetery, along with 120 other Titanic victims, ever since, with a gravestone reading "Unknown Child".

Relatives were unaware that any of the bodies had been found until approached by television researchers.