Rixon/Hall Heir Hunters

Today, the heir hunters are struggling to find a family...

The Rixons seem to be quite difficult to find.

They're keeping themselves well-hidden.

..but the clock is ticking.

With the competitive nature, I need some information from somebody.

It's one of these ones here.

KNOCK ON DOOR

Hello. Mr England?

Another team discover a sailor stopped at nothing

to fight for his country.

From what we know, a lot of young men lied about their age back then

just to get into the Army or the Navy.

Could long-lost family have been living round the corner all along?

Up and down the country, heir hunters search

for long-lost family members who may be about to receive

a surprise windfall.

Hello?

One of these searches involved Patricia Hall,

who died in January 2015 aged 84.

She lived alone in the leafy London suburb of Golders Green.

I've known Pat ever since I was a baby.

She and her family

lived next door to my grandmother.

She was very pleasant, very nice, but she was very quiet

and quite reserved.

Living across the road from Patricia,

I found her to be a very nice, elegant lady.

In her younger years she was always about

and she always knew a lot of what was happening in the area

and stuff like that and very, very good to the elderly people

in the area.

Pat was very close to her parents and she looked after them,

she was very good to them and she worked hard

and kept them when they were older.

When her mother died, sort of lived in the house,

continued living in the house.

Was a bit of a recluse, kept herself to herself.

I think she worked at John Lewis, then retired.

I never saw any friends or family visiting her over a period of

the time I was here.

She kept mainly to herself.

She did have a friend for a while she used to go out with

but he died, I think, quite suddenly,

so from that time on I didn't really know her

to have any other, sort of, partner.

With no known family and without leaving a will,

it's up to case manager Ben Cornish and his team

at London-based heir hunting firm Fraser and Fraser

to track down heirs to her estate.

Just draw a little tree up of that, will you?

The first thing on this case, what we do is search for a birth

for our deceased, so Patricia Louise Rose Hall.

Having a look at that, I've found one which is a Patricia RL Hall,

mother's maiden name, Kerridge.

She's born in the correct quarter, in the December quarter, in 1930,

in Hendon.

As there's always the potential for a rival firm to be on the trail,

the heir hunters need to work quickly...

Right, let me take some notes of these.

..especially as the estate is valuable.

After doing some digging, we found that this estate was worth

just under half a million.

It's quite a big estate,

which meant there was going to be competition on it,

so we have to work fast.

Although we know that Patricia never married

we weren't sure if she ever had any children.

That's something we had to verify straightaway.

Obviously, they would have a prior claim than any brothers and sisters

or nieces and nephews.

So, we had to make some enquiries and we soon discovered quite quickly

that she had no children.

The team then need to look for any brothers and sisters,

but finding records proves a challenge

because of her father's name, Alfred William Hall.

Her mother was Edith Rose Kerridge.

The name Hall is quite a common surname,

it's not just set in one area, like you get area names.

Hall can be across the country,

so it can be quite difficult to research.

So, when we come across a surname, a common surname,

it means the research is a lot harder.

But not just harder for us, harder for the competition,

so we don't mind, it just means a bit more research.

Their research tracks down Patricia's parents

who were born at the turn of the century.

So, I've got the marriage certificate for the parents

for an Alfred William Hall, aged 22, he was a bachelor,

he was a general labourer, marrying an Edith Rose Kerridge,

who's 21, she's a spinster and she's a laundress.

They're both living on the same road.

Alfred, it looks like he lives at 142

and Edith lives at 148.

So, it's quite sweet that they sort of met on the same road

and fell in love.

Records establish that early in Patricia's father's life,

he had a military career.

Alfred William Hall joined the Navy in 1916,

two years after the outbreak of World War I,

when the age of conscription was 18.

And the heir hunter's research found he'd gone to quite some lengths

to ensure he served his country.

I've found a naval record for an Alfred William Hall.

He's born in 1898, he's born on 16th of April

and our Alfred William Hall is born 16th of October in Hendon

and this gentleman is also born in Hendon.

From what we know, a lot of young men lied about their age back then

just to get into the army or the navy,

so he could have put his birth back a few months

to make himself seem older than what he was.

But it gives us a description of Alfred at this time.

We know that he's 5'1", he has a 32-inch chest,

he's got brown hair, hazel eyes and has a fresh complexion

and a scar on his foot.

With Patricia's parents dying in the '70s,

the team continued their search for any brothers and sisters

who could be potential heirs.

I would rely more on the maternal side now.

We're just going to look in the area of Hendon first

because that is where she's born.

I can see that she's got two brothers -

one called Leonard and one called Alfred.

So, when we looked into the deceased's two brothers,

we found out that Alfred, the elder of the two brothers,

was born in 1922 and he died in 2007 without any children.

I did a basic general search for a death for Leonard

from 1916 to 2007.

Nothing came up, so my next search was the Commonwealth War Graves.

I have come across a Leonard John Albert Hall,

who died on 6 June 1944,

which obviously coincides with the D-Day landings

and he is in fact a Royal Marine at this point

and he is buried in France.

So, it would be safe to assume that he probably was one of those killed

on the beaches that day.

They would now have their work cut out

investigating Patricia's wider family,

so the search moved back a generation to her father's parents.

Patricia's grandfather on her father's side was George Alfred Hall

and grandmother Mary Ann Parker.

They married in 1896 in Hendon, north London

and between them had four children

including Patricia's aunts Alice and Emily and uncle John.

So, when we were looking into the aunts and uncles

on the paternal side of the family,

we discovered that the youngest aunt, Emily, had one son, Graham,

but sadly he passed away in infancy.

We soon discovered that Alice and John both had families.

So, when we completed research on the paternal side,

in total we had five beneficiaries descending from two stems.

So, when we had established that there were five heirs

on the paternal side, we then had to look into the maternal family.

Edith Rose Kerridge was the name that we had to look into.

The deceased mother was born in 1900 in Kensington.

We found her on the 1901 census

but couldn't find any records for her parents.

We knew who they were, they were George Isaac John Kerridge

and Elizabeth Louisa Kerridge.

Patricia's grandparents, George Kerridge and Elizabeth Morrill

were married in 1893

and nine months later, a wedding baby was born, George Jr.

They went on to have seven further children,

including Patricia's mother, Edith.

With so many children, there were potentially even more heirs to find

on this side of the family.

Next was William Francis Kerridge, born in 1896 in Kensington.

He later married a Violet Elsie Fisher in 1921.

They went on to have two children.

The youngest son, George Kerridge, actually passed away in 1949.

Their other son was William Kerridge Jr,

who was 16 when World War II broke out.

William Arthur Kerridge married Catherine Fitzgerald

in September 1949, in Hendon.

From his marriage certificate, we know that he was an aircraft fitter.

William worked during the war for an aircraft manufacturer

that pioneered the making of bombers.

I suspect that when war broke out, William was already an apprentice.

He'd probably have left school at 14,

so probably three years into his apprenticeship at Handley Page

and that's probably the reason why,

with all those skills already acquired,

they weren't going to have him go to war.

He might have preferred to fight

but that wouldn't actually have been an option for him.

His skills would have been seen as far too important

to lose in wartime.

William would have done skilled supervisory work

with accelerated responsibilities due to the pressing needs

of the war.

Due to the demand for planes, he would've worked 12 hours a day

often on one of the most notable bombers of the war effort.

Handley Page are particularly known for producing the Halifax,

which is both a bomber and a transport plane and, at times,

an ambulance plane.

There were over 6,000 of them produced and in operation

during the war.

Nearly 300,000 tonnes of bombs were delivered onto Germany

by the Halifax and very much part of the British war effort.

The loss from planes in the air was absolutely huge.

When they were bombing, for instance, over Germany,

about a third of the planes would be lost.

So, production was absolutely huge in that.

Because the government was keen to prevent the enemy

knowing the location of production sites,

William may have worked even longer shifts guarding the site.

There was always the danger that the factory itself

would be a target for bombing and that was a worry for people

and there was such a need for people at night,

maybe after he had done his ten or 12 hours work in the factory,

he would have been expected to be a night firefighter

looking out to see if there were bombers coming over

and prevent the factory actually being bombed

and stopping its production.

The heir hunters' search showed that after the war,

William and his wife went on to have three children,

two of whom are living heirs.

One of their grandchildren, also an heir,

is Sasha Kerriage, who lives in Daventry.

At first I thought it was a little bit,

"Oh, is this a genuine phone call

"or is it somebody trying to catch me out?"

But we had a good chat on the phone and it was actually quite a surprise

to think that I'd had a relative that I'd never even heard of before

and I was actually quite excited to find out more.

My father never told me much about his side of the family

and I think that might be due to my father and my mother being separated

and us not seeing him very often.

The chance to inherit unexpectedly is welcome news.

Knowing that we've got a sum of money coming

certainly will help us out.

There's a few things that we'd like to do with it.

We don't get to go on fancy holidays very much, they can be quite pricey,

so we're perhaps looking at going on a family holiday.

So, yeah, just sort of spoiling my little family.

The heir hunters went on to complete the search

with Patricia's other aunts and uncles and their descendants.

We have 19 heirs on the maternal side...

..which compared to the paternal side of only five, is a lot bigger.

In total, 24 of Patricia's living heirs were found.

The case of Patricia Hall was fascinating

and the estate in the end was worth 480,000.

I do miss Pat and she was one of the few people around

that remembered my family, she was a link with my past.

You cannot not think of Patricia and maybe what she's been through,

what her life entailed.

I definitely will be raising a glass of the fizz to Patricia.

It's Tuesday morning in the London office of heir hunters Finders.

Both those certificates have been ordered,

they'll phone with the rest of the information.

Yeah, I might need those. Thank you very much.

Case managers Amy Moyes and Ryan Gregory

are working on new cases that have appeared

on the Treasury Solicitor's unclaimed estates list.

Today, I'm looking at the estate of David Arthur John Rixon.

It appears that David had been living

with his only brother, Gordon, until Gordon passed away in 2012.

Neither of them appear to have married or had children,

so there's no close kin involved.

What I'm trying to do now is to take a look

at who David's parents were and go straight into

maternal and paternal families.

They need to build a family tree and, hopefully,

find living relatives.

Amy has located David's parents from his birth certificate.

He was the son of Leonard Rixon

and Claudine Lillian Kevan,

or 'Kevin'.

They're quite good names to work with.

David's father, Leonard Rixon,

died when he was just 40 years old

and when David was only 13.

His mother, Claudine Kevan, didn't marry again,

so would have brought up David and his younger brother, Gordon,

as a single mother - a rarity in the '50s.

Amy has been using a genealogist's most valuable tool

to research David Rixon's father's side of the family tree -

the census.

And I've located the paternal grandparents on the 1911 census

and I've established that there are probably five paternal stems

to look into.

The census revealed that William Charles Rixon

and Emily Sarah Harris had five children,

including David's father, Leonard.

Amy's challenge is to see which of these aunts and uncles

and their children may be alive and could be beneficiaries.

-I'll give you the rest of the tree when....

-Sure.

So far I've looked at the stem of Albert Rixon.

He married a lady called Katherine and had two children -

June, who would be a paternal cousin.

I'm having trouble finding either an address or a death for her.

She had a brother, Brian, but he passed away in infancy.

So far, I haven't located any actual heirs

and the research is a little bit trickier than I thought it would be.

The names involved are still good, the family itself aren't...

..particularly easy to find.

The 1911 census shows that David Rixon's maternal grandparents

were Donald Thomas Kevan and Florence Mabel Bunney.

They married in 1900 and lived in Stoke Newington, London...

..where Florence was employed as a dressmaker.

At the start of the 20th century,

dressmaking was an incredibly popular profession

for women, it was predominantly a women's profession.

As young girls, sewing formed part of the school curriculum

and so it was a skill that many women had

and then when they went to work in the industry

they tended to start at the bottom, serving a three-year apprenticeship

and then working their way up through the industry,

some going on to becoming proprietresses

of their own business.

Whereas men's clothes were mass-produced,

certainly from the 19th century,

because of the complexity of fit of women's fashionable clothing,

it tended to be made on a much smaller scale

and often it was bespoke for the individual woman,

so it required a perfect body-moulding fit.

It's not known how long Florence was a dressmaker for,

but by the time of the next census in 1911,

she's no longer listed as working.

A lot of women stopped working

when they got married, or certainly when they had children.

There was a social expectation that if your husband could afford

to keep the family, you didn't work.

Florence had four children

and the team now turn their attention to them.

-SHE SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY

-OK.

-You've got one, two, three.

-OK.

-You can pick.

-I'm picking that one.

Marcelle, and maiden name Bunney. Yeah, looks good, I'll take that.

Oh, could you actually double-check that I checked

because she adds an E to Bunney sometimes.

-Yeah, shall I just check the variations?

-Yeah, please.

Another researcher joins the team -

Suzanne, who takes on one of David Rixon's uncles.

So, I'm looking at a maternal stem of Archibald Edward Kevan,

or "Keevan."

The key question - are any of his children alive?

It looks as though there's quite a few births in the London area

where he was born and where he married.

So I'm just having a look at that now.

Ryan next tackles David's maternal aunt, Marcelle Kevan...

Bye-bye.

..but can't find any children after her marriage.

That was easy, no-one dies out for Marcelle.

I didn't see any other issue as well with the variations of Bunney.

Amy is still plugging away at the paternal side,

but it doesn't look hopeful.

Is there any other lines to do?

Why, have you... Has it all died down?

I'm leaving that one with Suzanne.

You can try and find June, I can't find her.

Her parents end up in Norwich, but they're originally from Essex.

-I would start again.

-Start afresh? OK.

-Yeah.

So far, the research has not turned up any good leads

to living relatives.

It looks as though most of that side of the family

has completely died out now.

Suzanne is just checking one final stem.

So Ryan has now come back to help me finish up with the paternal tree.

The paternal cousin, June, that I was looking for and couldn't find,

Ryan's actually found a spinster death for her.

-OK.

-Rosalie, that's them.

Why did I miss that?

I don't know, but I didn't want to say anything.

SHE LAUGHS

Amy has a breakthrough and discovers another uncle,

Harry Rixon, had a rather large family.

I have a potential paternal cousin.

There was a telephone number for him but the number just rings,

there's no machine, I can't leave a message.

So, I'm going to try and send a rep

just to make sure he is who I think he is

and hopefully ask some questions about the rest of the family tree.

Ideally, I'd like to speak to him first over the phone.

With the competitive nature, I need some information from somebody.

One of the firm's travelling researchers is on standby.

Phil James used to work as a policeman.

It's only ever a positive experience

unless you get that very odd occasion

when you are actually telling someone

that someone they are very close to has died,

but generally with this type of work

and people appearing on a Bona Vacantia list,

that doesn't often happen.

In the office, Amy puts in a call to one of David's uncle Harry Rixon's

grandchildren to see what she can find out.

Often, it's not just records that provide missing clues -

it's information given from family members.

Hello, am I speaking with a relative?

Oh, it's her partner? We're working on a Rixon family tree

and it looks as though his brothers and sisters,

and I believe he still has two uncles that are living,

would be entitled to part of this estate.

Thank you for your help, bye-bye.

She doesn't know too much about the family

and it sounds as though she's probably not in touch

with all of the brothers and sisters that we're looking for.

I do have some numbers for a couple of the other siblings

of this beneficiary, so I'll see if I can catch any of them.

The problem we've got is that they're prime working age,

so it's probably going to be hard to actually speak to many of them.

But another one of the grandchildren, who is one of six,

then calls Amy.

Oh, thank you for calling back.

Would you like me to return your call to save your phone bill?

Yeah, OK, I'll call you straight back. Bye-bye.

Hello.

David hasn't left a will.

His estate's now going to be split up amongst relatives.

So amongst those it will be any Rixon relatives that we can find.

Thank you for your time. Bye-bye.

This side of the family still haven't been contacted

by anybody else, so we're ahead of the competition, which is good.

On David's mother's side of the family,

there are three aunts and uncles -

Archibald, Frederick and Marcelle Kevan.

Ryan discovers that Frederick has no children

and Archibald has three, two still alive.

But what's puzzling him is whether David's aunt, Marcelle,

has any children who could be beneficiaries.

He calls one of the cousins.

Hello, is that Patricia England?

So, we're researching the Kevan family tree

in relation to a relative of yours who's passed away.

Right, OK. Who had a son called Clifford?

Yeah. Marcelle? Oh, OK.

Oh, really? OK. Well, I might have to go back to that then

having said I've looked at it.

So, if you have any questions, otherwise we'll probably be with you

within a couple of hours anyway. OK, thanks very much.

Good phone call with one of the maternal cousins.

She's definitely entitled, she's confirmed some details

on the family tree, which her sister was unable to.

We're going to see her later on this afternoon.

She mentioned her father had a sister called Marcelle

and I was quite proud that I'd looked into that line

but she said that Marcelle had a son called Clifford

who I don't think I did find, so I'm going to have a look at that again.

Clifford Williams is the missing and only child of Marcelle Kevan.

Clifford took the surname of his mother's partner,

who Marcelle didn't marry.

The reason that we couldn't find Clifford Williams in the searches

we were undertaking on the Rixon case was simply because -

one, he was born illegitimately

but he wasn't even born using the mother's maiden name.

She'd actually changed her name via deed poll from Kevan to Williams

and there was actually no way we would have found that birth

unless someone else in the family had told us about it

or unless we'd received her death certificate back into the office.

Clifford Williams lives in Herne Bay, Kent.

He's married with two children and is one of David Rixon's heirs.

I would say David was a very good-looking man...

..and I was very surprised that he never married,

because he was that good-looking, but he never seemed to.

Clifford has fond memories of time spent with David

when he was younger.

We grew up more or less together. Even though they lived in London

they used to spend their holidays with us in the summer

because we lived by the seaside and they used to love the seaside,

they came down every year.

Clifford wants to now find out more about his family tree.

What I had hoped to achieve with this would be a history of my family

because I know very little about the family,

because when you're young, you just don't seem to ask the questions,

and then in later life when everyone's gone, you know,

it's too late to ask.

Across the country,

Phil James is hotfooting it to Chesham, Buckinghamshire,

to meet Patricia England.

Ryan has learnt another heir hunting firm had spoken to her,

so time is of the essence.

The staff in the office have identified this lady

as a potential beneficiary, so if all goes well,

we should have a new client within the next half an hour.

Phil is close to Chesham but has somehow got lost.

This is a big problem with this job is driving on sat nav

cos you don't know where you are. It is an absolute pain in the neck.

Hemel Hempstead, it looks like we're going to.

Oh, it's through here.

No, I've lost it now.

I've lost where I was supposed to be going there.

We're on the wrong road.

It should be here somewhere.

It's one of these ones here.

Phil finally makes his 3pm appointment,

arriving at the home of David's cousin Patricia England

and her husband.

KNOCK ON DOOR

-Hello. Mr England?

-Yes.

-Hi, Phil James.

-Come in.

Thanks very much indeed, thank you.

-OK, Patricia...

-Yeah.

-..I know you were contacted by lovely Amy.

-Mm-hm.

I need to just confirm a few things with you before we move on.

The person who died -

-that person is David Arthur John Rixon...

-Mm-hm.

..and he was your cousin.

-Do you remember him at all?

-No, I don't remember him at all.

-Do you think you ever met him?

-No.

-No?

-And his mother was a lady called Claudine.

-Claudine, yeah...

-Do you remember her?

-..which was my dad's sister.

-That's it.

Well, I was quite shocked, actually, yeah.

I didn't know I had a cousin, what's the name...?

Er...what his name was, David Rixon.

The couple find it strange to be receiving a windfall

from someone they didn't know, but any money could come in useful.

-Have a nice holiday, I think.

-Yeah.

A nice holiday, we haven't had one for a few years.

SHE LAUGHS

That would be nice.

Where will we go?

-Er...

-Madeira was nice, wasn't it?

-Yeah, Madeira or...

We went to Madeira a few years back. Yeah, that would be nice.

-Or Cyprus, or Malta.

-Or Cyprus, Malta, hm.

-Lovely to have met you.

-Thank you very much. OK, bye.

-Cheerio now.

At the end of the research into David Rixon,

the heir hunters are pleased they found several heirs

and can pass on what is entitled to them.

It looks likely that the estate may be in the region of around £400,000.

Now, given that there's only 11 beneficiaries to the estate,

then it's a nice feeling to think that hopefully

there's some life-changing sums of money due to the people

that we've been dealing with.

There was an inheritance.

We're not one for going on holidays.

We don't want for anything.

We'd just probably put it aside for our children

and hopefully do some good that way.

I can't believe this is happening, you know?

Amazing.

But there you go, there you are.

Life's full of surprises, isn't it?