Unclaimed

Each year, the remains of about 150 people are found in the UK. 

Most are quickly identified, returned to their families and funerals are held.

Some, however, remain unidentified creating a lasting disconnect between the facts of their lives, as held in the memories of friends or family, and the facts of their deaths, in which all that is known is rendered down into a police file.

Unnamed and unclaimed, they are denied that final rite of human passage – to be mourned.

Unclaimed is the culmination of dozens of site visits across the UK, use of items found at the locations where unidentified bodies were discovered, research using the National Crime Agency database and interviews both with those who remember the cases and police officers committed to naming the unidentified.