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The province's registrar of cemeteries is looking for family members to claim the remains of 15 people discovered last September below a parking lot at the old Don Jail in south Riverdale.

"We're looking for representatives of these people (who) might want to have them buried," said Michael D'Mello, Ontario's registrar of cemeteries.

D'Mello explained that a notice under the Ontario Regulation 133/92, Section 6 of the Cemeteries Act has been issued to declare the site an "unapproved cemetery."

He said he is hoping family members of the deceased inmates will be located so "the remains are treated with respect and dignity."

An initial notice was posted in a Toronto daily on Tuesday, Sept. 2. A second notice will be printed Tuesday, Sept. 9. Representatives will have until Sept. 23 to contact the registrar in writing to arrange to have their relative's remains interred.

D'Mello said that if no one claims the remains, the landowner can assume the right to legally relocate the remains to another cemetery.

Archaeological reports have determined the remains, which work crews from Archaeological Services Inc. found five- to six-feet below a former exercise yard for Don Jail inmates, are from 1872 to 1930.

During that period the jail's gallows were located slightly northeast of the building's wall. They were relocated inside in 1905.

The site was redeveloped into a parking lot in 1986 after the last remnants of a brick wall that lined its perimeter were demolished.

Crews uncovered a total of five burial shafts and three skeletons at the Gerrard Street East and Broadview Avenue site. The bodies were likely buried in wooden caskets.

The identities of the remains have not been released for privacy reasons.

About two dozen people, including some of the city's most sordid criminals, were hanged to death at the old Don Jail. The last two people executed in Canada, Ronald Turpin and Arthur Lucas, died there in December 1962. The death penalty was formally abolished in Canada in 1976.

Bridgepoint Health, the property's current owner, is in the midst of a major redevelopment of the site.

The archaeological excavation was part of a heritage agreement the facility for complex disease and disability had entered into when it purchased the property in 2002.

The Toronto Historic Don Jail, which is next to the former Riverdale Hospital, will be preserved and reused as part of the new health-care facility. The old Don was operational from 1864 to 1977. The newer Don Jail adjacent to the historic building will be closed.

The hilltop site is home to two of Toronto's major public institutions: the former Riverdale hospital, which opened in 1860; and the old Don Jail, which opened in 1864.