Song pays tribute to child Titanic victim

12:50pm Sunday 12th October 2008

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A poignant song about the youngest victim of the Titanic disaster will feature in a concert at Seend Cleeve this month.

The electric folk band Sackful of Sovereigns, with Potterne bass player Steve Sawyer, will debut the song Unknown Child at the concert on October 18.

It follows the success of the band’s 1998 number, Bound for the Promised Land, about a Melksham family called the Goodwins. The band was contacted in 2005 by a relative of the Goodwins, Carol Goodwin Goroff, who had heard the song and said that a grave in the cemetery in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where many Titanic victims were buried, had a grave marked An Unknown Child.

Following DNA testing of a number of victims in the graveyard, the child has been positively identified as 18-month-old Sidney Leslie Goodwin from Melksham.

Mrs Goroff asked the band to write another song about the Goodwins, dedicated to Sidney.

Sackful of Sovereigns will be performing An Unknown Child for the first time at the concert at Cleeve House, Seend Cleeve.

Tickets are £6, from Melksham tourist information centre on (01225) 707424 or Cleeve House on (01380) 827129.