New York's forgotten finally remembered: Forbidden island where over one million 'unknown' people are buried in a mass grave reveals its secrets in online database

Stack: The bodies, in wooden boxes, are stacked on top of each other. Seen here is an infant grave from 1990

Sitting just off the east coast of the Bronx and a short boat ride from Manhattan is Hart Island, a tiny mile-long atoll and former Civil War prison camp that has for decades, and continues to be, a mysterious mass grave.

Over one million poor or unidentified people have been buried anonymously at the site, with an average of 1,500 fresh corpses arriving each year and put into the ground by inmates from the nearby Rikers Island jail complex.

These burials are of the unclaimed - from stillborn babies, to dismembered bodies and homeless people.

Now, after a slew of lawsuits were brought forward by families of the dead, who claim they should be allowed access to the cemetery - which is closed to public - the stories of those buried on Hart Island are able to accessed by a new interactive website.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2892839/New-York-s-forgotten-finally-remembered-Forbidden-island-one-million-unknown-people-buried-mass-grave-reveals-secrets-online-database.html#ixzz3NY0vFg4H