Eino Viljami Juhonpoika Panula was a young Finnish boy who died during the sinking of the RMS Titanic. From 2002 to 2007, he was believed to be "The Unknown Child," the name given to the remains of a small boy recovered after the disaster.
Early life[]
Eino Viljami Juhonpoika Panula was born on March 11, 1911 in Yliharma, Finland to Juha (John) Juhonpoika Panula and Maria Emilia Abrahamintytär Ojala, who were farmers and possessed a large farm in Finland. Eino was their youngest child. Three of his siblings had died young, two of them at infancy, Juho Eemeli being one year old or less, Lyytia died the same year as she was born, after contracting influenza. They were born in the USA, since Juha and Maria lived there from 1892 to 1901. Their sister Emma Iida was only 9 years old when she drowned in a lake in 1910.
Eino had 4 surviving older brothers, Ernesti Arvid from 1895, Jaakko Arnold from 1897, Juha Niilo from 1904 and Urho Abraham who was born in 1909.
Eino was traveling with his mother, Maria Emilia Panula and his 4 brothers. His parents had been residents in the USA but had returned. They wanted to emigrate once more in 1911, and Eino's father had gone ahead aboard the Lustiania.
In February 1912 his mother sold the family farm in Ylihärmä to Kustaa Kujala, who was married to Selma Panula, a relative. She received a good sum of money for it, between 6500 and 30.000 marks.
Two months after his father, Eino, Maria and the other children left Finland on 3 April. Along with the family came a neighbor girl, Susanna "Sanni" Riihivuori, who would help look after the children.
RMS Titanic[]
On April 7, the party arrived in Southampton. They took voyage on Titanic in Third Class, and left the Southampton docks aboard the ship on April 10. The family was heading to Coal Center, Pennsylvania to join their father, Juha. Eino's older brothers traveled in the bow section of the ship where all the single steerage men were housed.
On April 14, Titanic had fatally struck an iceberg which meant she would sink. After midnight, on April 15, onne of the older brothers had came to see them from all the way down the long corridor connecting the bow with the stern. He warned that the ship was going to sink and urged Maria and her children to go up to the main deck.
Maria and her children most likely arrived on the Boat Deck very late, and she lost some of the children in the general commotion. She was confused and would not leave without finding her children. She probably didn't succeed and all six members of the family perished in the disaster, as well as Sanni Riihivuori.
Eino's body was thought to be found from 2002 onward, but in 2007 the body found was proven to be someone else's. The real body of Eino, if recovered, was never identified.
The unknown child = Eino?[]
The American PBS television series Secrets of the Dead played a key role in the initial 2002 identification of Panula's identity as the "Unknown Child" when they featured the story of the unknown Titanic victim on an episode and traced the child's DNA to a Finnish woman by the name of Magda Schleifer whose grandmother's sister was Maria Emilia Panula. Another relative of the Panula family, Hildur Panula-Heinonen has written several extensive articles related to the family.
On August 1, 2007 it was reported a test on the child's HVS1, a type of mitochondrial DNA molecule, did not match the Panula family. The original DNA testing was proved wrong and researchers from Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario identified the boy as a 19-month-old English child, Sidney Leslie Goodwin, who was traveling on the Titanic with his family to start a new life in America.