Francis/Gammon Heir Hunters


Francis/Gammon

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Today, the heir hunters are struggling with a case

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which is proving a tough one to crack.

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It looks as though this family's really very small

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and dies out completely.

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Deceased on birth certificate.

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A second case has its roots in rock and roll.

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He discovered the '80s pop sensation Katrina And The Waves.

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It's all in a day's work for the heir hunters.

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If I'm in Ely now, it always seems strange I can't ring him up,

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say, "What are you up to? Are you coming for a beer?"

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In the London offices of probate genealogists firm Finders,

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case manager Ryan Gregory

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and the team are starting work on a new case just in.

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I was hoping to ask you a few questions

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and then I can give you some information.

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So this is the estate of Violet Francis.

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The case has been referred to us privately,

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and we're just going through the information that we have

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in the initial contact e-mail from the person who referred it.

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So far, we know that Violet Francis was born on the 10th November 1929

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in London.

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She passed away a spinster.

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Her parents were William Francis and Violet Francis, nee Ware.

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Violet Francis lived in Littlehampton, West Sussex.

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She called the seaside town home for around nine years

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after moving there from Staines in Middlesex.

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Edna Smith lived on the same street as Violet

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when she was still in Staines.

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Violet was very much her own person.

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Lived on her own. Never married, as far as I know.

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I never saw her with anybody else.

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Never saw her with friends or anything.

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She just kept to herself.

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And we'd meet perhaps on the way to the shops,

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or on the way back from the shops.

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And we both used to feed the horses in the field up the road.

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Violet Francis died aged 85

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on the 7th of October 2015

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after suffering a stroke.

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As far as we're aware, the estate comprises of a property which

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may be somewhere between £300,000 and £400,000.

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And then there's going to be some shares

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and some bonds on top of that as well.

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So we're talking a large amount.

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All hands are on deck and Amy's also on the case.

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I'm trying to look into the maternal family tree

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just to see what we're looking at.

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Size wise.

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I found a 1911 census for the Ware family.

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And it says that Violet's mother, Violet,

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was one of just three children.

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There was Violet herself and then a sister,

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SFE, turned out to be Sarah Fanny Elizabeth Ware.

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And a brother, John Henry.

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Although the heir hunters have a head start on Violet Francis's case

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with a few clues to get them started,

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they can't rely on it all being fact.

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Even though we've got quite a few bits and pieces here,

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really we have to start from the beginning anyway

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and verify all of it before we even get going.

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As Violet's case is unfolding, Ryan makes a tragic discovery

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when he receives her mother's death certificate.

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Mother, Violet Francis, formerly Ware, deceased on birth certificate.

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It turned out that Violet's mother,

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she sadly passed away during childbirth.

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So she died around the same time that Violet was born,

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in November 1929.

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That means that we only have a nine-year gap

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to fill in terms of any siblings of Violet.

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As the parents married in 1921, we've done a birth search

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from 1921 to 1929 and haven't found any other issue to that marriage.

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So it seems as though there is no brothers and sisters.

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So we are looking at the maternal and the paternal families.

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Confirmation has come in that Violet never married.

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And because she had no siblings,

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the next step is to find out who her grandparents were,

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on both her mother and her father's side of the family.

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Ryan hasn't been able to go that far back up Violet's family tree -

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he's still stuck at her parents,

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and has discovered some more details about William Francis.

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I think I've found the deceased's father.

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In 1911, it appears that he was already serving in the Royal Navy.

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He was down in Portsmouth.

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He was a cook's mate in 1911.

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Violet's father, William Francis, was born in 1890.

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He joined the Navy in 1907

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at a crucial time for the beleaguered British Empire.

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However, he wasn't on the front line -

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and his naval career came from humble beginnings.

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Essentially, throughout

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his career in the Navy,

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he was part of the cooking staff on the ships and bases

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he served aboard.

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He would have done various jobs within the ships or the bases'

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galley, and it would have been everything from initial food

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preparation, actually cooking things up, maintaining the big ovens.

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William Francis would have alternated his service

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between land and sea.

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But in the years of conflict,

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during the Great War, he was based on dry land.

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He saw many changes over his 20-year naval career.

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In terms of how his job has evolved...

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As time progressed, it would have got slightly easier

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because of improvements in technologies.

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He even had a chance to serve in one of the Navy's first

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aircraft carriers in the 1920s, HMS Argus.

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So he would have seen the Navy evolving around him

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from this coal-fired, big-gun weapon system

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to one that became much more three-dimensional.

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The records are painting

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a clear picture of Violet Francis's father's past.

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In the office, Ryan is still working on the family tree

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but is struggling to branch out.

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At this time, we don't know who the paternal grandparents were.

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We know the paternal grandmother was called Elizabeth Francis.

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But because she was widowed by 1901,

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we don't know exactly what her husband's full name was.

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I'm just going to try and see if I can do a marriage search

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to see if anything pops up.

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Then we can hopefully piece it together like that.

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The team has just uncovered the identities of Violet's grandparents

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on her mother's side of the family

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from her mother's birth certificate.

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They were Johan Richard Ware and Sarah Naomi Long.

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Married in 1882,

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they had three children,

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including Violet's mother,

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also called Violet.

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Working on the other side of

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Violet's family, Ryan has asked

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researcher Suzanne to try to track

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down siblings of her father, William.

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William Francis...

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He's the youngest paternal uncle.

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-How is Charlie spelt?

-It's just Charles in 1911.

-OK.

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Do you mind seeing if you can find a marriage and a death certificate?

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Yeah.

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Amy's next job is to look for any children of Violet's

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maternal aunt and uncle.

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It looks like only her uncle John married and had children.

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There are two possible children which,

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if correct, would mean that we've got two maternal cousins to look at.

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There are both born in 1910,

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so they've probably passed away some time ago.

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On the other side of the desk,

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Ryan's had a breakthrough

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tracking down Violet's father's side of the family.

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I've just managed to find the bit of information on the

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1911 census that we were after.

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It shows how many children there was in the paternal family.

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Now we know that the paternal grandmother, Elizabeth,

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was widowed by the time of the census.

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But we just found out that she'd had five children,

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four of whom were still living by 1911.

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One of those was the deceased's father.

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Researcher Suzanne is having

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no luck finding living children of Violet's uncle Charles.

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Suzanne's got Charles but...we think it probably has died out.

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But as they're about to call it a day,

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Ryan has some positive news.

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So I think we may have just found a potential...

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Well, we have found a potential beneficiary on the estate

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of Violet Francis.

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One of the dead ends in Suzanne's search for Violet's paternal

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cousins has suddenly come to life.

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I'm looking at the stem of Charles Francis.

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He had two children in Staines.

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One of them I found has passed away fairly recently.

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2009. And he had three children himself.

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So it looks like I've managed to find contact

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details for two of them.

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Now the team has reaped the rewards of their research

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and finally located heirs to Violet's estate, it's over to

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travelling researcher Phil,

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who's in Staines, to tie up the loose ends.

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We are seeing Andrew and David Francis.

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They are both in their 50s.

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I've got the paperwork to sign both up as beneficiaries,

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or potential beneficiaries, to this lady's estate.

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Violet Francis was born on the 10th November 1929.

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You two are the paternal cousins...

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once removed to Violet.

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-Right.

-Your grandfather, Charles...

-Yep.

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-..was the brother to Violet's father.

-Who was William.

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-OK.

-Do you remember uncle William?

-Yeah, no, that's exactly right.

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-Yeah? Mum, do you remember an uncle William?

-No.

-No?

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We had no idea we had a great cousin,

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a second cousin called Violet at all.

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The first information we had was

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when we had a call from the office on Monday or Tuesday this week.

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-Thank you very much. Thanks for your time.

-Lovely to meet you.

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Lovely to meet you.

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A further five heirs were discovered

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on Violet's father's side of the family.

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And a few days later, another heir has surfaced on Violet's

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mother's side of the family,

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bringing the total number of heirs to nine.

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In a case that's certainly taken a long time to bear fruit,

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there's one final twist.

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We were actually notified that the deceased had left a will.

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The first thing we want to do is notify the family members that we've

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contacted that they may no longer be entitled to inherit from the estate.

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So that's what we did.

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Almost as soon as we told everyone that they may not be entitled

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to inherit from the estate,

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we got a call from the executors of the deceased's will.

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They were able to confirm to us that actually two of the residuary

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heirs in the deceased's will had predeceased Violet.

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That meant again that the heirs

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that we'd initially contacted would be

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entitled to inherit from Violet's estate after all.

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-Newmarket.

-Oh.

-What do you think?

-I like that.

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John Gammon, from Ely, in Cambridgeshire.

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He made a name for himself in the music industry in the 1980s

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as a hugely successful journalist and band manager,

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in a career spanning four decades.

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John's friends have fond memories of the early days.

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I met John when I was a teenager.

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About 17.

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John worked, at that time, at the local hotel.

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And we met at a coffee-bar-cum... the sort of thing

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we had in those days, jukeboxes, pinball machines.

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That's how I first met John.

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And we hit it off...from the word go, really.

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In August 2015, John sadly passed away after battling

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a serious illness. He was 63 years old.

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John became a very close friend

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over the last 20 years.

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I got to know him first of all when I was a corporate manager

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at Lloyds Bank. John was a client.

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He had his loves in his life,

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he had his Tottenham Hotspur, that he loved.

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John was passionate about his music

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and about writing and reading, but most of all he loved his music.

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Our friendship just developed from that,

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because he was unlike most customers that you have as a bank manager.

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Although John was much-loved, because he died leaving no will,

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his case was taken up by London-based heir-hunting firm

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Fraser & Fraser.

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The way we source our work has changed

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dramatically over the years.

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And now we rely a lot more on the internet.

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What caught my eye was the fact that John, during his lifetime,

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appeared to have been a successful music journalist.

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And had also been a manager of several successful bands.

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Pull that open and have a look at these different ones.

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He discovered the '80s pop sensation Katrina And The Waves

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and ran a promotions company called Ham Acts during the same period.

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Katrina And The Waves. They were...

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Eurovision Song Contest winners, weren't they?

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I don't know. It's before my time, I think.

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-Yeah. 1997.

-THEY LAUGH

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Before your time. Yeah, it was before mine as well(!)

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There's lots of tributes about Mr Gammon.

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"I shall miss his blunt sense of humour

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"and his general love/hatred of the live industry."

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"Just the worst news. John was an absolute one-off.

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"And the wittiest and most entertaining of company."

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John's entry into the world of journalism

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set him off on his path to following his dream.

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John had a number of career highlights.

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The first of which was he was extremely proud the first time

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he got his name on a record sleeve.

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John was very content in his life.

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Yeah, he was doing what he loved doing,

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which was working from home, writing.

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He had his circle of friends that he would meet up quite regularly,

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chat and put the world to rights with.

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And the world that John was living and working in at that time

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was a thrilling one.

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I think the '80s was THE most exciting time for pop music

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and pop culture, particularly in Britain.

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You had to this incredibly rapid turnover of scenes and styles

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and tribes. You had, you know, the 2-Tone Rude Boy movement,

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you had Goths and New Romantics.

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John Gammon's love of music came at an exciting time.

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He started off working as a manager for live bands.

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John Gammon was a live agent at a time

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when a live agent was a pretty important thing to be.

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The received wisdom with the music industry is

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that 20 or 30 years ago, you went on tour to sell your record.

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Whereas now, you put a record out to sell your tour.

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MUSIC: Walking On Sunshine by Katrina And The Waves

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And as John was pounding the streets

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looking for bands that caught his eye,

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one rock group with its American front woman stood out to him.

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John would have discovered Katrina And The Waves in Cambridge,

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playing a local gig, because they were a local band.

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A band like Katrina And The Waves would have probably just been

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doing the thankless thing of slogging around the local

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live circuit, just hoping that someone like John might happen

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to be in the room with his notebook and might happen to see them.

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And John's hunch about Katrina And The Waves paid off.

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I think probably the highlight of John's early career would have been

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seeing Katrina And The Waves having a huge international hit record.

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And that happened with Walking On Sunshine.

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Which...it got to the top ten in the States and the UK.

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And this is a time when record sales were at quite a peak,

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so a number one record would be selling millions.

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But even a record at number eight or nine would still sell

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hundreds of thousands. That would have been so satisfying,

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to see a band that you've really invested so much of your

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heart and soul into finally making it big.

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# Don't it feel good? #

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In the '90s, Katrina And The Waves went on to win

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the Eurovision Song Contest - the last British act to do so.

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In the same decade, John concentrated on his writing

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but didn't let go of the music.

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So, in 1995, John became an investigative journalist

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working in the music industry's trade publications.

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And his job, I suppose, would have been to explain the music industry

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back to people working in it, to let them know what was going on.

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To give them all the kind of inside scoops on certainly what was

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happening in the live music side of things.

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John Gammon didn't only make a successful career

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from his love of music, he also gained respect from his peers.

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John's reputation is one of an absolute gentleman.

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And that's actually quite difficult to maintain in an industry

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with so much backstabbing, gossip and resentment going on.

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So the fact that he managed to last for so many years in the industry

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without making enemies and maintaining a lot of friendships

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speaks well of him.

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Hoping to be able to pass on an estate of some value to John's

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next of kin, David's team members

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began looking at the birth and death records.

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Do we know where mamma and pappa were born?

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Coupled with the information we received from speaking with

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some of John's neighbours and friends, we were quickly able

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to establish that John remained a bachelor throughout his lifetime.

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And he was an only child.

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The nearest next of kin to John would be aunts and uncles

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or cousins on both his mother and father's family.

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John's birth certificate would be the starting point

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to unlocking the clues to his family tree.

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First, it confirmed his parents were Lizzie Eden and John William Gammon.

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They married on March 9th, 1940.

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John William Gammon, he was 26 at the time of marriage.

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He was a bachelor.

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His occupation was that he was a builder's labourer.

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Lizzie Eden, she was 24 at the time of marriage. She was a spinster.

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At this time as well,

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it was quite uncommon for women to have professions.

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So that is unfortunately left empty.

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John's parents' death certificates revealed some sad news.

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Both parents, we discovered, died in the 1960s.

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This is the death of John William Gammon.

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He was 46 years old when he died. He was quite young.

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And that was on the 23rd February 1960.

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Just a year later, he was to lose his mother.

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Born in 1951 himself,

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this would have meant John Gammon was just a boy when he was orphaned.

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It must be very tough for a child to go through. Especially at that age.

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Research began with John's mother Lizzie's side of the family.

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We were able to establish that Lizzie was born in 1915...

0:19:090:19:14

in Newmarket.

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And it showed that her mother's maiden name was Sennitt.

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Very unusual name.

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So it didn't take very long for us to find

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the marriage of Edward Eden to a Lydia Sennitt.

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Literally a year before Lizzie was born.

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From there, we then looked to see if Lizzie had other siblings,

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i.e. aunts and uncles to the deceased.

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Now they knew they had found John's grandparents on his mother's side,

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his family tree was beginning to take shape.

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Extensive research of the birth records of both England and Wales

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uncovered just one aunt on John's mother's side.

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Lizzie appeared to have just one sibling called Kate,

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who was born in 1917, also in Newmarket.

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There appears to be lots of marriages for Kate Eden.

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All spread all over the country. But there is one in Cambridge.

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We've got to work on the theory that the family...

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She's born in Newmarket,

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it's going to be the Cambridge marriage that is the right one.

0:20:150:20:18

So we are fairly confident that Kate married Leonard.

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OK, so from this record that I can see right here,

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apparently he was a military man.

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Kate Eden and Frederick Thomas William Leonard were wed in 1939,

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just months before the outbreak of World War II.

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The war raged for six years,

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in which time over 60 million lives were lost.

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In 1945, towards the end of the conflict, as the British Army

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and other Allied Forces moved into Germany, John's uncle

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Frederick Leonard was thought to be part of the liberating forces

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of one of the most notorious of the Nazi concentration camps.

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The liberation of Bergen-Belsen happens right towards

0:21:050:21:07

the end of the war.

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So we are looking at April 15th, 1945.

0:21:090:21:11

Frederick Leonard arrived at Bergen-Belsen as a member

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of the military police.

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But the camp wasn't always a death camp.

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In 1935, it was actually a military training camp for the Wehrmacht,

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the German Army.

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Then World War II starts. It's a prisoner of war camp.

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And then, towards the end of the war, 1944,

0:21:300:21:32

it becomes what's called recovery camp.

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So again, it changes its nature.

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And the idea of a recovery camp is, inmates in other camps that

0:21:360:21:41

were too ill or sick to work would be sent to Bergen-Belsen to recover.

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But in actual fact, the title is ironic because very few of them did.

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The camp had some notable inmates suffering within its confines,

0:21:540:21:58

including Anne Frank and her sister Margot.

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What British troops were faced with when they arrived

0:22:010:22:04

they would never forget.

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There were 60,000 people at Belsen when the British got there.

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The camp was actually only designed for 10,000, so you can imagine

0:22:090:22:13

just the overcrowding that must have been there.

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It's quite horrific.

0:22:160:22:17

Conditions in the camp were awful.

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There were two things in particular the British had to contend with.

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One was there was a massive outbreak of typhus in the camp.

0:22:220:22:25

So what the British did is they placed

0:22:250:22:28

a quarantine around the camp.

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The other appalling loss

0:22:290:22:31

from death was just simply through starvation,

0:22:310:22:33

because these people arrived in the camp

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and had just been left with no provisions.

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Without actually being there, I can't imagine how horrible it was.

0:22:370:22:41

But it must've been absolutely horrific.

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And I know many of the accounts of the British soldiers

0:22:430:22:46

when they first arrived,

0:22:460:22:47

they just struggled to come to terms with what was actually going on.

0:22:470:22:52

And there was this dawning realisation of just what

0:22:520:22:54

they had discovered.

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While the liberation of Bergen-Belsen was unfolding, John's

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uncle Frederick would have played an important role in proceedings.

0:23:000:23:04

The military police,

0:23:040:23:06

their key function is being a police for the military.

0:23:060:23:10

And their job was purely with the Army, rather than with civilians.

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So the kinds of jobs that he may have been

0:23:130:23:16

doing around the camp would be guarding, patrolling,

0:23:160:23:19

checking in and out of the camp, that kind of thing.

0:23:190:23:22

After the camp was emptied of its abused inmates,

0:23:230:23:26

the British concentrated on holding the perpetrators

0:23:260:23:29

accountable for their actions.

0:23:290:23:31

I believe about 80 guards

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and the commandant of the camp, Josef Kramer,

0:23:330:23:36

were arrested by the British

0:23:360:23:38

and the British then held a trial called the Bergen-Belsen trial

0:23:380:23:43

after the war.

0:23:430:23:45

Out of the 80 guards that there were, 20 actually died from typhus.

0:23:450:23:50

So the number was actually shrinking and a small number fled and escaped.

0:23:500:23:55

Kramer and the guards were convicted for their crimes.

0:23:560:23:59

11, including Kramer, were sentenced to death.

0:23:590:24:03

The team had John's uncle Frederick's war records

0:24:080:24:11

but now they needed to discover

0:24:110:24:13

if he and Kate had any children during the war years or soon after.

0:24:130:24:17

There's two births in Cambridge that look really spot-on

0:24:170:24:23

for the time that the parents get married.

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We've got Carl Leonard and Anthony R Leonard.

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John's first cousins, if living, would be his heirs.

0:24:320:24:36

Tony Leonard was discovered alive and well and in his 70s.

0:24:370:24:42

PIANO PLAYS

0:24:420:24:44

One day, out of the blue,

0:24:440:24:46

I had a call to tell me that John was deceased.

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And I was quite shocked.

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Well, it did come out of the blue,

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because John, you see, didn't tell us

0:24:540:24:57

that he was even ill.

0:24:570:24:58

Or contact any of the family.

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And none of us knew that he was ill.

0:25:010:25:03

You see, that was the kind of relationship it was.

0:25:030:25:07

Tony and John may have drifted apart in adulthood,

0:25:080:25:11

but in their early years, their lives were very much entwined.

0:25:110:25:16

John's parents passed away when he was about nine years old.

0:25:160:25:19

His father died, then two years later,

0:25:190:25:23

his mother died.

0:25:230:25:25

And he came to live with our family.

0:25:250:25:28

We were turfed out of our rooms,

0:25:280:25:30

we had two single beds in the same room, and he came in the bedroom.

0:25:300:25:35

But he didn't fit in too badly and we got on reasonably well.

0:25:350:25:39

You know, as a family. But we were both interested in literature.

0:25:390:25:43

And we discussed this quite a lot.

0:25:430:25:45

We had quite a good lot of discussions on that sort of thing.

0:25:450:25:49

After his troubled childhood,

0:25:500:25:52

the road wasn't always smooth for John.

0:25:520:25:55

As John got into his teens, he became rebellious

0:25:550:25:59

and there was a personality clash between him and my mother.

0:25:590:26:05

And this resulted in John eventually leaving.

0:26:050:26:11

And taking lodgings...

0:26:110:26:14

And he went to Cambridge and found some lodgings there.

0:26:140:26:18

As he spread his wings,

0:26:180:26:20

John's passion for music and writing began to make him a name

0:26:200:26:24

and earn him a living, but he and his cousins lost touch after that.

0:26:240:26:28

Tony had no news from John

0:26:280:26:30

until he received the call from the heir hunters.

0:26:300:26:33

In the heir hunters' office,

0:26:360:26:38

the team had also located an heir on his father's side of the family.

0:26:380:26:42

Bringing the total number of heirs to three.

0:26:420:26:46

The heir hunters were successful in quickly finding

0:26:460:26:49

John Gammon's beneficiaries.

0:26:490:26:51

However, they didn't go on to represent them in this case.

0:26:510:26:56

What we did establish from our point of view was that John

0:26:560:26:59

appeared to live a real rock and roll lifestyle

0:26:590:27:02

and spent all his money.

0:27:020:27:04

So the estate was fairly modest.

0:27:040:27:07

So, from our point of view, it was nice that we were able to locate

0:27:070:27:11

family that weren't already known so they could attend the funeral.

0:27:110:27:15

And John's friends made sure he had a fitting send-off.

0:27:170:27:20

I found out that he would have a council funeral.

0:27:220:27:27

Um...

0:27:270:27:30

I felt that he was too much of a good friend to actually let him

0:27:300:27:33

go that way. The band I was in at the time said,

0:27:330:27:36

"Well, we'll do a benefit gig for John at a local pub here in Ely."

0:27:360:27:41

We had a fantastic turnout.

0:27:410:27:43

It was just incredible.

0:27:430:27:45

The place was just packed.

0:27:450:27:47

Fantastic. You know, almost tearful, you might say.

0:27:470:27:50

To just think that people would do that for a friend.

0:27:500:27:53

I mean, it's hard to put into words, really.

0:27:530:27:55

It restores your faith in humanity.

0:27:550:27:58

-To John.

-The boy Gammon.

-It was a pleasure knowing you.

-Cheers, John.

0:27:580:28:01

-John.

-To John.

0:28:010:28:03

If I'm in Ely now, it all seems strange

0:28:030:28:04

I can't ring him up and say, "What are you up to?

0:28:040:28:07

"Are you coming for a beer?"

0:28:070:28:08

But, yeah, he'll always be remembered very fondly.

0:28:080:28:11

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