HALIFAX – Shoes retrieved from the remains of a toddler have helped solve one of the enduring mysteries surrounding the sinking of the Titanic.
The boy’s body was found floating in the North Atlantic after the ocean liner sank off Newfoundland in April 1912.
The so-called "unknown child" was buried in Halifax.
In 2002, scientists using the latest DNA technology and dental analysis, concluded the exhumed remains were of a 13-month-old boy from Finland.
A family from Ontario later donated a pair of shoes that belonged to the boy to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax.
But there was a problem – the shoes were too big for a 13-month-old and were made in Britain, not Finland.
So, another round of genetic testing was conducted using more advanced technology.
Dan Conlin, curator at the museum, says it turns out the child was actually a 19-month-old English boy named Sidney Leslie Goodwin.
The test results have undergone a rigorous peer review process.
It’s resulted in a research paper to be published next month in an international forensic science journal.
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