Finding missing persons both currently and in the past in the United Kingdom are usually handled through contacting the National Policing Improvement Agency. The NPIA was only established back in 2007, but it is now the home for the Police National Missing Persons Bureau. While previously, the PNMPB was situated in Scotland Yard, it has since been moved to the NPIA offices.
The PNMPB is a specialised task force of police officials and others whose sole focus is on the cross-matching of missing persons to their database of unidentified John or Jane Does. For persons in the past, this may include things like dental records of the unidentified persons. For recent persons who have come up missing, they are responsible for maintaining the Child Rescue Alert website.
Unfortunately though, when you are researching your lineage, sometimes you will find that one of your ancestors seems to have completely disappeared from any written history. There are many reasons that this could occur and while sometimes it may be possible to check with the PNMPB, this may not always prove beneficial especially in cases where accurate descriptions and dental records of the missing relative are not available.
Furthermore, they can only help you if your ancestor was found deceased and unidentifiable. This could be as a result of suicide or even murder, but this may not be the case for your particular relative and therefore no real data can be obtained through them.
Other possibilities for your ancestors to have come up missing can include things like being shanghaied. While today this does not really occur, in past times it was commonplace; especially in locations near the ports. In these situations, the relative could have headed out to the bars after work for a drink and ended up being forcefully drafted as a member of a ship’s crew.
There is also the possibility of coming up missing while in the service and even the potentials of being a missing person as a result of a drug habit or other dependency. While on the dependency issue, there is not much that can be done. However when it comes to a missing persons who may have been in the military, there are many sources which you can find information on. You have to remember that there were several major wars in past times in which a person may have been drafted into the military. It is possible for them to join up without really informing anyone and therefore the information would appear to stop there.
No matter what you do though, it is important that you never give up hope on finding that missing relative. While the record keeping of the olden days was not as advanced as it is today, there are records for just about anything and when you have a missing ancestor which you cannot seem to find any information on them, it may be possible that this information is still in written form and not available to someone on the other side of the world.
Original Authors: Nick
Edit Update Authors: M.A.Harris
Updated On: 17/11/2008
