HANG on a minute, we’ll find it for you,” the secretary at St Pancras and Islington Cemetery waved a map and smiled cheerfully.

“2002 was when we stopped writing records by hand and switched to computers, and our system has gone down this morning, so we’re a bit lost today.”

In the end, with a few thorn scratches from scrambling through undergrowth, it wasn’t that hard to locate the broken cross, even if there were no names on the headstone. 

Here was Number 144 in Section 9K – a common grave – with bodies buried four-deep under the words: “Thy Will Be Done” after a cut-price dawn funeral with no mourners. They call those services the “9 O’Clock Slot”. But the cemetery’s records aren’t the only things that were temporarily misplaced in 2002.

Paul (left) saying goodbye to his brother Willie shortly before flying back to the UK after visiting his parents’ grave in Canada

On May 6 that year, Paul McDonald walked out into the road in Camden Street, Camden Town, and was hit by a motorcycle. He lay in a coma with internal bleeding, a fractured leg and pelvis for six weeks at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead before dying six days after his 50th birthday. 

For four more months his body was preserved in an industrial freezer while Camden and Islington councils squabbled over who should foot the heavily discounted £200 funeral bill.

An inquest in January 2003 at St Pancras Coroner’s Court recorded a verdict of “accidental death”. He was later shovelled in with the rest of the forgotten, another of the capital’s unclaimed bodies in common graves.

Absent from all of this are any of Mr McDonald’s relatives, who, until March this year, weren’t even aware that he had been dead for more than a decade.

Paul McDonald, second from right, with his siblings Phyllis, Marian, Willie and Suzanne

In two months, with the help of the New Journal, they completed the job the police had failed to do 12 years ago, uncovering a catalogue of failures by public authorities to give those who die on the streets a dignified end to their life, and answered their most burning question: “How come no one told us?”

Paul Anthony McDonald only weighed 3lbs when he was born prematurely in Belfast in 1952.

His younger sister, Suzanne O’Hagan, now 60, likes to think he came out fighting. 

“And he continued that through life as he was a little scrapper of sorts, always getting into some sort of trouble,” she told the New Journal. 

By the late 1960s, Northern Ireland was a tough place for a head-strong apprentice butcher who lived fast and drank a little too much. 

“It was hard to have a troubled teen in Belfast back in those days, so it was thought that England would be best for him as having a little rebel in the middle of the Troubles going on, I dare say, was a recipe for disaster,” said Suzanne.

“My father, who was not political in any way, wanted him out of Belfast for fear he would get himself in trouble with those policing the area at that time – or worse, someone talk him into getting politically involved. My dad’s hope was to get him to England, with all great intentions to save him.”

But if Paul was capable of “saving” himself, the reports from the inquest into his death don’t show it. They paint a deeply tragic picture of a depressed adult with mental health problems fighting tooth and nail to support himself but frequently failing to do so.

He had begun to develop psychotic symptoms and had once jumped out of a third-floor window. If he reached out for help, he didn’t do it regularly, and more often than not he simply disappeared.  

Then in the 1970s his parents and six siblings emigrated to Canada – and Paul stayed behind. 

“Over the years Paul would write, asking for photos and letters. Then in 1990 our parents died, but we couldn’t find him,” said Suzanne.

It took two years, but his younger sister Marian finally tracked him down and took him over to Canada so he could visit his parents’ grave. Before he got on the plane home, he hugged his brother Willie tightly and they parted tearfully, with Willie urging him to stay in touch. 

“Contact after that was minimal,” said Suzanne.

“Paul never asked for anything, not once did he ever ask for help, just pictures. 

“We last heard from him five years before he died. Over the years we asked around to see if anyone had heard from him and some of the family tried to connect with a friend of his but he had moved. 

“It crossed our minds and we wondered, maybe he is dead? So hence instead of looking for someone who was alive, I eventually decided to look at deaths in Camden, and there he was. We didn’t actually know he was even homeless.”

It isn’t difficult to die on the streets in London. Of the 1,731 known homeless deaths that took place in England between 2001 and 2009, nearly a third lost their lives in the capital, according to a study by the homeless charity Crisis. Without a permanent address a person is up to 10 times more likely to be dead by their 47th birthday, with the cause three times more likely to involve a traffic accident. 

In 2002 Paul was one of 105 people who were buried in common graves in the St Pancras and Islington cemetery in East Finchley. There have been 23 so far this year.

Peter Kennedy, End of Life Co-ordinator for homeless charity St Mungo’s, told the New Journal that from his experience local authorities go to great lengths to locate families, but that in Paul’s case it looked like he had “fallen through the net”.

“But given that it happened 12 years ago, I wouldn’t be surprised if they never manage to find out,” he added.

A decade of time has devoured many of the answers the family were looking for. Both police officers whose job it was to find Paul’s family have retired, with records shredded in 2009. 

The Met’s Central Traffic Garage, which carried out the investigation, was disbanded in 2011, with paperwork lost.

The vicar who conducted the funeral died in February last year. 

The paperwork that survived is littered with errors – including the wrong date of birth. Blood samples taken from Paul on admission to hospital were also “destroyed” before his post-mortem with the results not recorded.  

Pathologist Dr Freddy Patel, later struck off after a series of botched post-mortems, did not carry out a toxicology test at all, and failed to accurately note the condition of Paul’s body, including marks left by stomach surgery.

Perhaps worst of all, a report from Dr Laurence Mulleague, of the Royal Free, indicates that Paul died from a sepsis infection and multiple organ failure after surgeons who repaired the internal bleeding failed to notice a puncture in his bowel for nine days.

And when questioned as to whether notices were placed in the Irish press, or contact was made with the Belfast police or any of his extended family who lived in Ireland and the UK, the police appear to lay the blame at his relatives’ door. 

In an email seen by the New Journal, Chief Inspector Penny Mills of Camden Police told Suzanne that they based their decision not to contact the family on the advice of an alleged unnamed ex-girlfriend who claimed they were “estranged” from him. It would be “time-consuming”, she said, to look for his family, because he was “homeless”.

Paul’s family have questioned whether the police would have relied on the unverified word of a non-relative if he had been “dressed in an Armani suit”.

Suzanne is clear on one thing, though – they were never estranged. 

“Paul was not alienated by our family, nor was there any hostility or indifference between any of us,” she said.

“Paul broke the connection not because there was any hostility or arguments, more than likely because he was down and out and ashamed, maybe that was the only pride he had left. 

“He may have made a choice in life to break contact for his own reasons but that does not mean he would not have appreciated his family those last 41 days in the hospital. 

“I really feel like they let him slip through the cracks because he was homeless. They tossed him into a common grave like a pauper when he had loving family who cared about him.”

She added: “As kids we all used to sit during the week and watch Crossroads and then on a Sunday night our dad, or daddy as we called him then, would pull over the sofa in front of the fire and one of us children would go to the local ice-cream store and get a huge bowl of ice-cream scoops. And, if we were lucky, we had Cadbury’s flakes to go with it. 

“We would all watch Peyton Place or Bonanza – Paul loved Elvis with a passion. What they forgot back then was that these poor homeless girls and boys had a family at one time and families who have treasured memories. He deserved to have us with him but, just as important, we deserved to be with him.”