How are the deaths of people whose names are unknown recorded?

[Smilingwillowb]

A couple of examples that I know of - 1) The body of an unknown sailor, probably British as he was carrying British banknotes, was washed ashore in Morecambe Bay during World War 1. He was buried in the nearest churchyard. 2) A man, whose name I know, tramped around Wales from the early 1900s up to at least 1915, occasionally making court appearances under his real name. A possibility is that he died a lonely death under a hedgerow and was buried somewhere, name unknown.

Does the General Register Office record deaths in cases like these? There's no way to search for deaths in the online GRO records where there's no known name. How about the National Burial Index - is it possible to search for a record of a burial if you know the date and place of the death, but not the name?

[cath151]

I have seen deaths noted on Freebmd as... Unknown  Male/Female and approx age.
Put in Unknown as surname and gender as first name.

Cathy
 

[Smilingwillowb]

Thank you,that's very helpful.

[AntonyMMM]

There's no way to search for deaths in the online GRO records where there's no known name.

As with FreeBMD - on the GRO index, just use the surname "Unknown"

[Smilingwillowb]

Thank you.

[Radcliff]

if you know roughly the place and date of the unknown death you could always spend time reading through the burial records in that area , mind you washed up in Morecambe Bay would take a bit to narrow it down ,covers a large area

[Smilingwillowb]

The Morecambe Bay case was an unidentified sailor who was found near Sunderland Point, about two miles south of Heysham, on Friday 16th August 1918. The name McLeod was stamped inside his trousers, and his age was estimated to be between 40-50 years. The body had on a blue jersey, trousers, and a flannel vest; the only item found on the body was a purse containing £14 in notes and 12s 9d.

It was said at the inquest that an Admiralty representative would take charge of the body and see that the man would get a proper internment, and not be put in a pauper's grave, as it was considered that he died in the service of his king and country.

There's no headstone for an Unknown Sailor that I can find in the churchyards in Heysham and Overton, and the local council has no record of an unidentified man being buried after 16th August 1918 in any of the cemeteries it had responsibility for at that time.

My thought was that he'd been on a ship that had been torpedoed, and had grabbed his purse before abandoning ship. He had no identification disc, so did that mean that he wasn't Royal Navy or Royal Naval Reserve? Maybe on a fishing trawler? I asked about him on the Great War Forum, but no-one could help, so the man's identity and his burial place are mysteries.

[Radcliff]

Kenneth McLeod aged 42
born Stornaway
a Seaman in the Royal Naval reserve
SS Braglass sank in a collision
August 2nd 1918

[Radcliff]

His body may have been returned to his home town