Sir, - Here in Halifax, Nova Scotia, we have three graveyards with 150 victims of the sinking of the Titanic on April 15th, 1912. Some 40 of these are unidentified, including the body of a male child who was estimated to be two years old. This child was buried by the crew of the cable ship Mackay-Bennett - who had recovered him, as the fourth body found - in a special service on May 4th, 1912. His gravestone in the Fairview Lawn Cemetery here in Halifax is identified only as "An Unknown Child."
At the time, the records suggested that the child might be Gosta Leonard Palsson, a two-year-old Swedish child lost with his mother and three siblings in the disaster. Recently, however, an American writer has suggested that the unknown child might be Eugene Rice, the two-and-a-half-year-old child of the widow Margaret (Mrs William) Rice of Athlone, Co Westmeath, who died in the tragedy along with his mother and four male siblings. Margaret Rice's body was recovered by the Mackay-Bennett, and it was finally identified some five months later through a label in a shoe, a locket, and a pill-box. She is buried here in the Mount Olivet Catholic Cemetery.
I would like to locate modern-day relatives of Margaret Rice (nee Norton) and of her brother Michael Norton, children of James and Mary Norton (nee Garty), presumably all of Athlone. Perhaps photographs or other data on the Margaret Rice family may survive to further connect the Rice family relatives to the Titanic plots here in Halifax? I may be contacted at 5112 Prince Street, P.O. Box 41, Station A, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada B3J 2L4; phone (902) 422-6482; fax (902) 422-6483. I would be pleased to hear from people with information on the Rice family. - Yours, etc.,
Alan Ruffman, President, Geomarine Associates Ltd, Halifax, Canada.