Nameless: Be Sure Your Sin Will Find You Out

A look at the origins of a mysterious, anonymous gravestone.

Death is a subject we find difficult to discuss. Strangely, it’s the only thing we all have in common. Though we’ll each feel its inevitable grip, we also experience its tragic totality in the loss of those we love. Usually when somebody dies, we celebrate their passing with a fitting memorial. We hope to receive the same, almost as some grand punctuation mark to our lives. We expect a headstone, of some description, or the grim dust of cremation’s ashes. Whatever we might choose as an epitaph, our hope is that our earthly names may at least remain.

For some, however, such immortality has been cold in its desertion. The unidentified corpses of war sidestep the honour of specific remembrance. Murder victims, abandoned without a hope of exhumation, leave a mere statistic. In bygone times, criminals in receipt of capital punishment had simple initials carved into their stone. The poor can’t afford more than a salute and a blessing. For these, no one plot in our worldly dirt acts as a dedicated tribute. It’s a product of inequality and, under that light, a deep shame and injustice.

The Unknown Warrior, a largely symbolic tomb for an unidentified victim of the First World War, is an example of our sentimentality towards…