THE identity of a toddler who was found washed up dead on a UK beach may finally have been uncovered 50 years after the tragic mystery began.
The young boy, aged between two and four, was found by a man out for a walk with his son on Tayport beach in Fife, Scotland in 1971.
The lad’s body had begun to decompose and was wearing just a pyjama top with a shirt over it.
No one ever reported him missing – and his identity was never discovered despite leads as far as the Netherlands.
Locals nicknamed him ‘The Unknown Bairn’ – a Scottish word for child – and buried him in Tayport cemetery after locals came together to buy a gravestone for him.
Now the host of a BBC podcast, The Cruelty – A Child Unclaimed, believes he may have uncovered the boy’s identity 50 years after the tragedy.
Presenter Davie Donaldson managed to track down Bob Beveridge, a retired CID, who set him off in the right direction.
Mr Beverage said that he and his colleagues always believed the child was a member of the travelling community.
He explained: “All the circumstances pointed towards that fact. If he was the child of someone living in a house neighbours would have known that this boy was missing.
“And with all of the massive publicity over the years his identity would have come to light.”
With no police reports of the incident surviving today, he went on to explain the strongest lead that they had at the time – a Traveller couple heard crying on a bus nearby.
He said: “The wife was bitterly crying her heart out, crying ‘my bairn, my bairn’.
“She was interrupted by her partner and was told to ‘shut up or you’ll get us both to jail’.”
Mr Beverage said the pair were tracked down by police – but the couple insisted they were only crying because their young lad had been taken into care.
But he never quite believed their story – explaining: “You look at people and you think there is a strong strong possibility for the answer of the mystery of The Unknown Bairn.”
The retired detective knew the male Traveller had a son who lived in a caravan in the village of Gateside and died of motor neurone disease.
Using this information, the podcast team tracked down his death certificate – and finally got a possible surname.
Scouring through files in Scotland's national archives, Mr Donaldson discovered the young boy had a sister – who had given birth to a son in 1969.
This would have made her son two-years-old in May 1971 – the same age as The Unknown Bairn.
It's believed this has finally cracked the half-a-century-long mystery of who the tragic boy was.
And in a shocking twist, Mr Donaldson discovered that his mother is still alive. He was unable to speak to her due to her age and health problems.
However, he managed to track down another relative, Martha, the boy’s second cousin.
She was able to give an explanation of why his mother never came forward to claim her son’s body.
She explained: “The fact that she had other children she would have been scared that they would have been taken away from her.
“Children were taken from Travellers for any excuse at all. I was taken away from my parents for the only reason that we lived in tents. My cousins on both sides were taken into care.”
The wife was bitterly crying her heart out, crying ‘my bairn, my bairn’.
Having solved the mystery, Mr Donaldson, who is also a member of the Travelling community, shined further light on the matter.
He said once he spoke to the Travellers in the area about The Unknown Bairn he realised that it had been an “open secret” amongst the community.
He explained: “What became clear to me was the fear the family had of social work. Extreme fear.
“His parents couldn't come forward, not that they didn't want to come forward.
“If she had been a settled mother she could have come forwards and said ‘my bairn drowned, it was a tragic accident’.
“But because of how Travellers were perceived at that time, if she had come forward she would have had her other children removed from her care.
“Other Travellers were never able to come forward and name him because they were afraid of how it would look on their family and how it could be weaponised against them.”
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