Dawe/Williams Heir Hunters

Today, heir hunters race to find heirs

on one of their biggest ever cases.

Look for him because we can't find a family member 1911 census.

-Yeah, I've done that.

-Maybe just stick to marriages 1911 up.

A family receive a surprise inheritance from a long-lost relative...

I've never heard of her, so I hadn't...

I couldn't tell them anything about her.

So I thought it was a hoax, actually.

-Are you Pamela Cousins?

-I am.

..while others appreciate their unexpected windfall.

I wouldn't waste it, that's for sure...

not when someone's, you know, worked hard for it,

perhaps all her life.

It's 10am and, in London,

heir hunting firm Finders are working on a new case.

So, this case has just come in to us from the Bona Vacantia list.

It's the estate of Gladys Joan Dawe.

She was born in 1928.

Gladys worked most of her life as a chambermaid in hotels

and lived for over four decades in the Bristol suburb of Bedminster.

Gladys lived with her sister Doris for many, many years until she died.

They were like...a package, really.

They came together, you know.

Gladys never married or had children

and passed away in April 2015

without leaving a will.

So, Ryan and the team need to investigate Gladys' parents

in order to see if she has any other surviving siblings.

The parents are James Dawe and Mabel Dawe nee Drinkwater.

We found another five siblings to the two sisters,

so there's seven children in total,

which is a bit unusual, seeming that...

it remains unclaimed at the moment.

And the initial guess would be that

these five other siblings have passed away.

We were quite surprised to see that she is one of seven,

just because the cases that usually come in to us

from the Bona Vacantia list...

the person that passed away is usually an only child

or part of a very small family.

It says James O Dawe. He came up in this one.

The dad's called James.

-So, it might be a D or something.

-Yeah, it could be a D.

With so many potential siblings of Gladys' to check,

Ryan needs help from fellow case manager Amy Moyes.

-Well, there's a death for James E...

-Right.

..in '59.

But then, when you look at the record,

I think it's a James G rather than a James O,

-so I don't think that's him.

-OK.

-I'll keep looking.

-So, where is he?

-What was the mum's name? Mabel?

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-OK, he's a... Well, he died aged 27.

-OK.

He died 22nd of March, 1943.

Son of James and Mabel, so I assume he's a bachelor.

Yeah, it should indicate that, yeah.

With Gladys' six siblings appearing

to have passed away without any children,

Amy and Ryan need to go back a generation

further and look for her grandparents.

How's your search going?

Um...

one stem looks quite large.

I'm just having a look at how big the other stems are before I...

get stuck into it.

Amy has found Gladys' grandparents on her father's side,

William Dawe and Susan Harry, on the 1901 census.

She can see they'd had six children,

Gladys' aunts and uncles, by 1901,

but she's missing a crucial document.

It's proving really difficult to track the Dawe family

any further than 1901.

I am trying to find the 1911 census for the paternal family

so we can know for certain just how big it is.

While Amy can see the Dawe family have had seven children by 1901,

without the 1911 census,

they don't know if William and Susan had any more.

I'm playing around with the various children's names,

individually, and the parents, separately.

It's probably going to turn up that they were recorded with a misspelling.

The 1911 census is really good for us

because it has some extra information that gives us how many

children the couple have had and how many have subsequently passed away.

So, it's a snapshot of the family, but, for us,

we can go and fill in some of the gaps on the family tree.

While Amy tries to locate the Dawe family on the 1911 census records,

Ryan pulls in more staff to help research

an aunt of Gladys' they do know about from the 1901 census.

So, if you can maybe start with... Let's go with the youngest,

because we'll be more likely to find cousins,

so if you can do Caroline Dawe.

So, she was ten in 1901.

You can hold on to this for now.

-Just let us know if you find anyone.

-Caroline?

-Yeah. Start with Caroline.

-I'll just work on that one for now, OK?

-Yeah, just that one. Thanks.

Ryan's handed me the 1901 census for the family.

He's asked me to work on the line of Caroline Dawe,

who would be an aunt of the deceased.

So, she's one of the younger people on the census,

so it's more likely to find living relatives from her.

As Amy continues her search, Amy Moyes may have solved the

mystery of why the Dawe family

appear to be missing from the 1911 census.

I think I've finally found the paternal Dawes,

or Dawe family...

..in 1881.

They are listed as Davises rather than Dawes,

it's a mistranscription.

When you look on the actual record,

it's Dawe within an "S", so Dawes,

but the link is that they're still living

along the same street -

they've just moved a few houses down.

With this breakthrough, Amy Breton finds that Caroline

married a Henry Reynolds in November, 1911,

in Bedminster, just outside Bristol.

On their marriage certificate, Henry lists himself as a printer,

a boom industry in Bristol before World War I.

There could have been up to...

20,000 or 25,000 people working in printing of this type -

newspapers - and, actually, packaging was a big thing in Bristol

because we had a big tobacco industry and also chocolate...

A lot of chocolate produced around these parts.

Whereas today, most printing is automated,

in Henry's day, almost all printed material was produced by hand.

Within letterpress printing,

there would have been two jobs that Henry would have done.

One would have been a compositor, who sets the type,

and the other one would have been

actually being with the press and printing.

Just around the turn of the century, there were machines that

arrived called linotype machines, and also monotype casters,

and they actually put a lot of the hand compositors

out of work, so probably about...

over about 15 years from the turn of century to 1915,

I think probably 50% of compositors lost their jobs.

Despite Henry's job being made obsolete by machines,

the skills he had have been kept alive by passionate printers like Nick.

Yeah, well, this is case of type

and this is what Henry would have worked with in...

you know, the early 1900s.

Yeah, so type is laid out.

This is lower case. This is upper case.

This is where upper and lower case comes from.

He would have been super-quick at this.

So, I'm just going to roll the ink on here.

Some presses would have been, you know, would have been

self-inking, but this is, this is hand rolling, really,

putting the ink on.

Not my best bit of printing, that.

Yeah, he wouldn't have been impressed.

It would have headed for the bin, this one.

HE LAUGHS

He would have been happy with that one.

Much better.

Amy, where was your...?

-Where was the mum born?

-Bedminster.

Bedminster. OK.

Ryan has found Gladys' maternal grandparents,

George Drinkwater and Eliza Tucker, had four children.

George and Laura Drinkwater both married, but never had any children.

But Rhoda Drinkwater married a William Godbeer

and had five children between 1910 and 1921.

One of those children dies as a child,

but then, from the other four...

three of those stems and

there's, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine...

potentially...

ten first cousins, once removed.

It's going to be a big tree.

One of Rhoda's children, Ada Godbeer,

married Reginald in 1937

and had two children,

and Ryan thinks he may have found one of them living in Bristol.

Hello, good morning. Is Pamela there, please?

We're researching the Drinkwater family tree,

but it's a cousin of your mother's whose passed away.

And you will be due to inherit from her estate.

We'll be in touch.

Cheers. Thanks a lot, bye-bye.

It appears as though they haven't

been contacted by any other firm at the moment -

that's good for us.

Our research would suggest that you are due to benefit from this estate.

On this line, I'm aware that there's a lot of other research going

on into other bits and pieces of the family,

so it's still going to be...

It's going to at least be a few days

before we can get a good idea of who everybody is, I suspect.

That's great. Thank you very much.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks, then. Bye.

With the team close to finding heirs,

it's time to get the travellers dispatched.

Just send a warning to the reps that we'll probably need visits -

Bristol, Gloucestershire, Somerset...

kind of area.

We send out a representative to visit the person.

If someone is on holiday, we can know straightaway.

If they've recently moved again, we can know straightaway

and we can just amend our searches in the office and

try and pinpoint exactly where that person is.

Travelling researcher Terry is on standby to visit heirs

and he knows it could involve breaking some painful news.

The work involved here is quite varied insofar as

it can be a close relative, who they don't know has died,

or it can be somebody they've never even met.

Are you good with Sellotape?

Back in the office, Ryan and Suzanne start

physically building the family tree.

They look like they're cousins at the minute, but they're not.

This, at the end of the day.

This isn't an end of the day job, is it?

Oh, wait. Oh, this one as well.

So far...

we are looking at about

62 heirs that we've found so far.

I think this might be the biggest stem...

-Ever, ever.

-..ever.

We need a bigger desk.

Out in Bristol, travelling researcher Terry Nixon

is about to visit heir Pamela Cousins.

-Oh, good morning. Are you Pamela Cousins?

-I am, yes.

Oh, good morning. My name's Terry Nixon.

How well did you actually know the deceased?

I didn't know her at all.

No. These things are...it's very common not to know somebody

and you might feel slightly strange that you're named as a beneficiary

without knowing the person,

but it happens purely because of bloodlines.

Well, very surprised to receive such a call.

I mean, it's interesting.

I do see one of my cousins.

We send Christmas cards

and that's all I know about that side of the family.

-OK. Thanks.

-Lovely to meet you.

-Bye-bye, then.

-Bye-bye.

Back in London, Ryan still had some doubts at the back

of his mind about the outcome of the case.

We still don't necessarily know if all of these people

will definitely be entitled.

I mean, this is the nature of the work, really.

And three weeks later, Ryan's worst nightmare became reality.

We received the bombshell from the government legal department

that, actually, they had admitted the claim

on behalf of a closer entitled relative.

After all that research,

it appeared that one of Gladys' siblings was still alive after all

and would inherit the estate ahead

of the cousins Ryan and the team had found.

Good news for me, as the case manager of this estate,

was that the family have been very understanding.

What we were able to do for them

is to send them a very large family tree.

The response have been very positive.

This is...

grandpa Godbeer.

Despite the lack of inheritance, Pamela and her husband were

still keen to get to grips with Pamela's ancestors.

We know him.

That would be my mum's dad.

I see. Well, we know him, don't we?

That is my mum, who was a twin,

Ada Godbeer.

Looking back into family history is a very interesting thing,

but my sister and myself would be

very interested in finding out more.

And the reconnection with her past has got Pamela

thinking about what's important in life.

Gladys' passing has made us more aware of our family around us.

As...

I'm getting older,

it just leaves our children to know more about

the side of families that are around us.

All the family, I believe, that I keep in contact with,

is appreciative of it.

Sometimes, complexities in cases can leave heir hunters struggling

until new research tools suddenly unlock previously closed doors.

One such estate was that of Mary Margaret Williams,

born on 11 September 1914 in Cardiff,

but who spent much of her adult life living in Cheshire

with her husband and son.

When Mary came, I was only,

approximately eight or nine.

Jean Benson remembers Mary

from when she came to live with Jean's family

after fleeing the Cardiff Blitz in the 1940s.

There were only two bedrooms, so I was the one who had to give

up the bedroom and sleep on the couch in the sitting room.

I think that was the reflection of the war spirit.

People did tend to do the best they could.

If there was something they could do that was helpful,

they did it.

Mary passed away on 8 December 2005 in a nursing home in Crewe,

but it wasn't until 2009

that heir hunting firm Celtic came across the case.

Right, can you check something on the electronic file?

Case manager Saul Marks led the research.

At that time, the information on the Treasury's list was

still fairly basic.

We had the deceased name, Mary Margaret Williams,

we had her date of death and place of death.

We knew also that she was a widow, but we didn't know anything

about her husband, her husband's name, anything like that.

And due to the age of the case, Saul had extra tantalising information.

This particular case had first been advertised by the Treasury

in 2006 and that was in the era when they were still

including values and they actually assigned a value to this of

£40,000, so it was definitely going to be worth our looking into it.

If we don't find the rightful kin to

a deceased person's estate, the government seizes the assets.

During his initial inquiries, Saul uncovered Mary had an interesting

early career in Cardiff,

which she continued when she moved to Cheshire

and met Jean's aunt Peggy.

Mary and Peggy appeared to have been part of the golden age of

chorus girls in the 1930s.

Large troops of young women would perform dazzling

synchronised dance routines in theatres across Britain,

including those in Crewe, influenced by dance crazes from America.

Being a chorus girl was an escape from everyday life, really.

You have the glitz, the glamour, the showbiz,

and you have an audience.

Mary may not have been selected to be

a chorus girl for her skill on the dance floor.

If people wanted to join a theatre and become a chorus girl,

if they had any dance ability at all,

they could go along and audition for shows.

But sometimes, if they saw somebody who looked pretty

and who would look good on stage,

that was half the battle, because, prewar days,

it was more quantity than quality,

they would pack a lot of dancers on the stage in very pretty costumes.

But behind the scenes, life as a showgirl could also be hard work.

She would be rehearsing in the daytime,

she would have possibly two shows an evening.

And then it would be back home, feeling quite tired, and then

starting to do the same thing all over again the following day.

You would have had possibly a sort of minimum wage.

But it was probably better than working in

a factory or an office, and there was the thrill of being in

a dressing room with your friends, having nice costumes to dress up in.

Offstage, Mary would also have found real support

from her fellow dancers.

She would have relished the fact that she had

a built-in family in the dressing room and I think there was

a lot of camaraderie, and I think the girls would have all

supported each other, and I'm sure she would have loved that life.

But her dancing friends weren't Mary's only family.

Knowing Mary had a husband and son,

Saul's first job was to verify their names.

We were able to use the electoral rolls to find the exact

address where Mary and her husband and her son were living in Crewe.

And that obviously gave us the husband's name and the son's name,

which was John Williams and Brian Williams.

Jean Benson remembers Brian.

I only understood that Mary came from Cardiff

because of the Blitz in Cardiff,

and the fact that particularly had frightened her son.

That Mary had a son Brian was potentially crucial for Saul.

Brian had died in 1999, but if he'd had any children,

they'd be entitled to Mary's estate.

We had it on authority from the care home where she had lived

at the end of her life that her son was actually

a bachelor so there were going to be no grandchildren

and we were able to corroborate that with the evidence.

Records showed that Mary's husband had also died before her.

It transpired that Mary had actually registered both their deaths.

They'd died within a month of each other in 1999.

With no close family to inherit Mary's estate,

Saul now needed to look at her wider family.

What we really needed to find more about Mary's family

was her maiden name, and there were two ways of doing this.

We could find her son's birth listing,

or her and John's marriage listing.

And for some strange reason,

we couldn't find either of them anywhere.

So, it really was quite a head scratcher.

Without these vital certificates, Saul had no way of finding Mary's

maiden name, which would allow him to find Mary's birth record.

There are a number of different events that can occur

that will help us to solve a case.

Sometimes, it will be new census information.

Sometimes, it will be a new database.

At other times, maybe, we can look with greater clarity at a case,

and maybe look somewhere where you hadn't thought of looking before.

Saul decided to dig deeper into Mary's history

to see if there was a clue as to why

no records seemed to exist for her marriage or for her son's birth.

We spoke to the group of ladies

who all came from an area of Crewe called Sydney.

One of the ladies who we spoke to, who knew John and Mary,

had said that John had actually served in the Army in World War II.

When we applied to the Army Records Centre,

we provided John's date of birth.

When they came back to us,

they said that they did have a John Alexander

with that date of birth

but his name wasn't Williams, it was Manzaris.

And that was the breakthrough,

because we could now establish

that Manzaris and Williams were the same person.

And we could look for the marriage, not under Williams,

but under Manzaris.

Most of the time,

illiteracy and ignorance changes a person's surname.

And that's not uncommon.

Sometimes, there can be cultural reasons.

People are Anglicising their name, if they came to the United Kingdom.

Right, I've been advised to speak to you...

Saul had his fingers crossed that any marriage records would

have all the info he needed to start finding Mary's heirs.

OK, well, whatever you can do will be great.

We were hoping that the marriage certificate would give Mary's

father's name and we could then use that to find her birth

more easily and start to put together a family tree.

However, having spent so long to find the marriage certificate,

it turned out the father's name was left blank.

Thankfully, at least the marriage certificate gave us

Mary's maiden name, which was Brien or O'Brien.

This meant they could find Mary's birth record

and begin to look for heirs on her mother's side of the family.

When we got hold of the birth certificate, it corroborated

the marriage certificate in that there was no father's name.

It did give us her mother's name which was Beatrice Brien or O'Brien,

so at least we had some lead on the mother's side of the family.

And we did find a Beatrice Bryan,

born in Cardiff in 1897,

and that would have made her only 17 when Mary was born.

Beatrice died very young.

She died in 1920 and Mary was only five at that time.

Beatrice had no other children, meaning Mary would have no

siblings or nephews or nieces to inherit her estate,

so Saul needed to go back further on Mary's family.

From Beatrice's birth certificate, Saul established that Mary's

father was Patrick Bryan and her mother, Mary Driscoll.

Saul then discovered they'd had another daughter.

Beatrice did have a sister named Elizabeth,

but she seemed to die under her maiden name as well in 1924

and she didn't have any children.

So, we started to think,

"Well, maybe there aren't any heirs to this case at all."

When the death certificates for Mary's mother and aunt arrived,

Saul discovered a horrible coincidence.

We realised that both of them had died of TB.

80, 90 years ago, it really was a major killer

and this family had been terribly badly affected by it.

But with both Mary's mother and aunt dying without further children,

Saul was struggling to find any living family.

But Saul then discovered Mary had an older uncle, John,

but he couldn't immediately find any of John's descendents.

However, a family tree posted online included John's mother,

Mary's grandmother,

and, amazingly, it included details of John's family.

This tree was quite extensive, which was a great relief to us

because we had something to then crosscheck.

It did show that there were

a number of descendents of John

and he had quite a number of children,

who had quite a number of grandchildren.

So, at last, we were able to establish that there were

going to be cousin heirs on this case.

From John Bryan's marriage to his first wife,

the team found four children - Joan, Raymond, Louisa and Cyril...

who between them, produced a total of 12 heirs.

One of those cousins once removed is Christine Pugh,

who remembers the moment Celtic called her.

I was sat watching TV and the telephone rang, and this lady

rang up and said...

They asked, first of all,

my father's name and my grandfather,

and then they asked if I knew anybody by

the name of Mary Margaret Williams.

I had never heard of her, so I hadn't.

I couldn't tell them anything about her.

Well, I thought it was a hoax, actually.

Keen to learn more about Mary's early life as a dancer,

Christine is visiting a dance school to learn more about the types of

dances Mary would have entertained audiences with over 80 years ago.

-Hello!

-Hello!

-This is Christine.

-Got some...

-Hey!

Can you tell us what sort of dance you're going to be doing today?

We're going to show you our Charleston dance.

Oh, good. And would the Charleston have been around in Mary's time?

Would they have been doing that?

Yes. The popular dances that they did were often

danced on the stage as well.

The Charleston was a fast-tempo dance craze from America,

which hit the shores of the UK in the 1920s

and would have been a popular choice for dancers like Mary to perform.

I wish I had been around in their days to be able to do that.

If Mary was doing that type of dancing in her day,

she must have been a very vibrant young lady and

it must have been really exciting to have known her.

Well, it must have been good fun in the '20s.

-We know there was a lot going on...

-Yes.

..after the war, and then the depression...

There was a lot of poverty.

..but I'm sure this must have lifted people's spirits,

doing dances like that.

Really enjoyed it and the girls were fabulous.

Yes, I wish I had taken up dancing when I was younger.

But for Saul and the Celtic team,

even after finding 12 heirs

and submitting their claim to the government, there was one final

hurdle over Mary's husband's name change

from Manzaris to Williams.

The Treasury came back to us.

They wanted definite proof

that Manzaris and Williams were the same family.

The Army Records Centre were not prepared to release

the page of John's Army records

that included the proof that

Manzaris and Williams were one and the same.

They asked us to apply through

their usual channels and follow their regular procedures

in order to obtain John's full military service records.

But to get the records would take eight months for them

to be delivered to Saul,

so he had to wait...until a bit of luck finally came his way.

I was able to find Mary and her husband and her son,

on a 1939 register, living on the south coast.

The 1939 register records subsequent changes of name,

through marriage or any other reason,

and it had them down as Manzaris.

And it had it crossed out and it had Williams above it, and you could

clearly see Manzaris and Williams together on the same record.

So, we were able to then submit this record to the Treasury and say,

"Look, here's the proof you wanted.

"Manzaris and Williams are the same."

With the case cracked and money winging its way to the heirs,

Saul could finally relax.

To finally crack it open, and find heirs,

and the heirs were thrilled,

honestly, satisfaction factor puts it right up there.

Oh, what shall I do with the money?

It's such a lot, I don't know.

No, I haven't got any plans of what to do with the money.

I'll raise a glass and say,

"Thank you very much, Mary, that's very nice of you."

I appreciate it, even though you didn't know me.