Riggin/Chenery Heir Hunters

Today, the heir hunters discover a family mystery

stretching back over a century...

We're just trying to figure out who this person was.

He was born in 1911.

-Mr Thandi, nice to meet you.

-Hello.

..while another team investigate the case

of an unusual village character who tragically died in a house fire.

Now, I know at some point when he was younger,

that he didn't live at home and that he lived some of the time

in the woods.

A visit from an heir hunter can change lives.

Hello.

I'm not expecting a million,

it's just going to be exciting to receive it.

The cases that land on the heir hunters' desks

involve people from all walks of life.

One unique case that recently came to the attention of researchers

was that of Stephen Chenery.

Stephen used to paint everything, whatever he saw,

whatever was nature, children, he could paint it just off the cuff.

I've got a drawing of what Steve done of me.

He done that in 1958 and then when I went round there one day,

he gave it to me, which I think is very special.

That artwork is absolutely priceless.

Stephen lived all his life in the village of Shipdham, Norfolk,

and was known for being a colourful chap.

Steve was a small man, wore an old suit jacket

and his trousers were

held up with string,

wore boots, never saw him in shoes.

Those who knew Steve well saw his eccentric financial management.

I was sat with Steve and he got two biscuit tins out of a tea chest.

I actually said to him, "What have you got in there, Steve, biscuits?"

He said, "I sold some land."

And he took the lid off these two biscuit tins

and I've never seen so much money in my life.

In his later life, Stephen Chenery lived alone, rarely venturing out.

Some call him a hermit.

He was restricted to one room,

and the rest of the house, you never got to see it.

And it was quite a shame, cos he was not that mobile.

But on the evening of the 11th of January 2015,

there was a dramatic turn of events and his house went up in flames.

It was quite late at night

and all of a sudden I thought I could smell smoke.

It was chaos out here.

I think there were three fire engines, two ambulances,

a couple of police cars. It was absolutely mad.

No-one knows what caused the fire, it's believed it was started

on the ground floor.

Mr Chenery sadly passed away, aged 87.

Everybody was really, really devastated.

You know, especially the people who had been going in

and keeping an eye on him and doing his bits of shop

and his pension, you know, cos people were kind to him.

Without any known next of kin,

the case reached London-based heir hunters Fraser & Fraser.

It was kind of the end of the day, people were packing up

and I kind of noticed something

about a man who passed away at his house

and then we found out that he actually owned the property.

We had to start working immediately.

So, what was the story behind Stephen?

The search began for his next of kin.

Birth records established his father was a carpenter,

Frederick Chenery, born in Mitford in 1886.

His mother, Rosa Agnes Baker, was born in 1890

and worked as a dressmaker.

I don't think they ever went out anywhere,

but his father, he was...

From what I gather, he was a clever carpenter.

When war broke out, he would have been 28 years old.

Records show that Stephen's father Frederick was called up

and served for 300 days.

Frederick Chenery joined

the Norfolk Regiment in about April 1916,

but he was immediately transferred to a labour company.

With the introduction of conscription,

soldiers who were regarded as medically unfit

for front-line service were transferred to labour companies.

In the war, Frederick's duties would have involved

maintaining the roads that brought essential supplies

and food to the front line.

He would be under the control of a sergeant

and his sole life would be to maintain that bit of road.

But they'd probably be living in an old corrugated-iron dugout

in the ground and they'd be under continual shell,

and if he's further forward, machine-gun fire,

because, of course, the German interest was to destroy these roads

to stop the supplies getting to the front.

For 30-year-old Frederick,

his time on the front line must've been stressful and frightening.

He will have seen numerous dead, rotting corpses,

parts of bodies and things like that and, whatever they say,

it must affect somebody's long-term mental ability.

And some people could cope better than others,

but most First World War veterans would suffer

from post-traumatic stress syndrome.

After the war, Frederick moved back to Shipdham

and married Rosa in 1919.

We did a birth search using the names of the parents,

which were Chenery, and the mother's maiden name, which was Baker,

through which we discovered

that there were two sisters of the deceased,

an Ivy Monica Chenery, born the 10th of November 1919,

and a Nora Agnes Chenery, born the 21st November 1920.

Once we looked into the background of the house,

we find out immediately he lived there with his family.

When we'd done our enquiries, obviously,

everyone knew that he had two sisters,

one of them actually died a spinster at the house

and the other one did get married and actually came back to the house

to live with her brother.

The research shows that none of Stephen's sisters

had any children either, so no close family

were going to be beneficiaries.

In 1939, when Stephen was 12, World War II broke out.

Conscription came in and all men and boys over the age of 18

were expected to register,

but for many families this was a terrifying prospect.

The social implications of not registering for conscription

would have been quite extreme

because you'd have been outlawed by your own community.

Other people - your neighbours' children - are listed.

"Why aren't you going?"

And after the war, it would have got even worse

because he didn't do his bit.

So I would suggest that anybody who actively avoided conscription

after the war was not popular.

Despite the severe penalties, Frederick Chenery didn't want

to risk his own son enduring similar frightening experiences to his own.

So he made a remarkable decision.

The theory is that something possibly could've happened

to his father during the Great War.

And it was so horrific that I don't think he wanted

the same happening to Steve.

And although Steve would've only been able to serve

in the end of the Second World War, I think whatever old Mr Chenery saw,

that it was enough to stop him letting Steve be called up.

So he just sent him away from the house

and he was told he had to live in the woods.

No-one knows at what age Stephen lived in the woods from or until,

but perhaps his father believed he was taking every precaution

to try and save his life and his sanity.

There was a big fear in the villages that you might get called up

from the age of 16, and I think that old Mr Chenery's fear

of having him sent off was enough to make them say no.

"You don't exist. Go and live in the woods.

"That way you can't be called up."

Stephen's friends believed he lived in the woods for more than two years

and wasn't seen at all during this time.

I think you'll find that this is the area.

This is where he said that he used to live.

Probably it's all right on a summer's day,

but on a winter's day or a cold day, I wouldn't want to live out here.

For Stephen, as a young lad, it must've been very, very hard

because he would've had to have probably shot what he ate.

He wasn't supposed to be seen but I think it was more to keep

the authorities from knowing he existed rather than from neighbours.

Stephen eventually moved back home,

but in some way, his father's eccentric plan worked.

He never went to war. No-one did seem to be bothered about

him not going to war.

I never did hear any reason why he didn't, you know, from other people

why he didn't go to war,

and I never did hear of anybody talk about it much.

Back in the offices of Fraser & Fraser and the team have

been researching Stephen's mother - Rosa Baker's side of the family.

Out of three siblings, only one had any children.

Rosa's sister Ellen, she married a Stephen Bradshaw

and went on to have three children.

All of those three children had passed away before the deceased

so we then had to look into their children.

On that stem we actually found a total of five heirs,

so it was relatively small, but we got in very quickly

and I think we spoke to them before every other company.

Next, the heir hunters had to try

and track down Stephen's father's family line.

In the end, the team tracked down 34 heirs on the father's side,

making it 39 in total.

One of them - a first cousin once removed - lives in

Barton, in Cambridgeshire.

The first approach, the gentleman walked up the path

and he was very relaxed, very chatty and very friendly

and came in and sat down.

And it very quickly became apparent he knew an awful lot about

the Chenery side of the family, and he knew more than I did.

I think it was my mother's first cousin,

but I didn't know Stephen existed.

John was particularly intrigued to find a part of the family

he wasn't aware of.

It was incredibly interesting

because I've done research on my own family.

I've gone back four generations and written a book

and had it published, mainly for my two children.

Because if I hadn't had done it,

all that history would have been gone when I died.

So the Chenery line only came

into my line when my father married a Chenery.

The heir hunters don't know

when John will receive his windfall or how much it will be.

And John hasn't considered how he will spend this

out-of-the-blue inheritance.

I have no idea.

It's like counting your chickens before they're hatched.

No, I have no idea what I'm going to spend it on.

At the same time, Stephen was an old boy who lived in Norfolk and we're

not expecting any large amount of money from the inheritance.

The Chenerys are scattered all over Norfolk.

There must be at least 40 of us, but I'm not expecting a million.

It's just going to be exciting to receive it.

Today, Andrew Fraser is overseeing the sale of Stephen's

burned-out house at auction.

We've gone with a very low guide price in order to track

the maximum amount of interest.

Although there is no planning permission and there's no guarantee

that you'll be able to build

anything other than what's already there.

The house is being sold at the Landmark Hotel in London.

The burnt out property that

we've got, which is lot number 83,

is one of the most interesting lots

in the whole catalogue.

As with all auction lots, the more roughed up they are, the better.

Buyers love to be able to add value.

That particular property has had a ton of interest.

I think we're guiding it around 50,000 and I thoroughly expect it

to go for at least twice that.

I'd like to save face and make sure

it sells for over and above the 75,000.

Anything over 100,000,

someone's paying a true premium for this site.

83. Lot 83 is Quarry View. I'm going to start the bidding at 75.

You want to come in at 80? 90. I'm doing 95. You want to say 100?

-It's gone up very quickly.

-Now give me 126 if you will, sir.

126 is bid. Give me 130 on the phone. 130.

131, yeah? 134 now.

Back to the telephone.

-MAN:

-135.

-135, even better. That's more than I was asking for.

For the first time, £135,000.

Second time £135,000. This is it.

It is going to go then for the third and final time for £135,000.

-Well done. On the phone at 135.

-It's been an excellent result.

That's significantly above where we would consider any developer

would want to be, given it has no planning permission and therefore

there's an awful lot of hope value now assigned to that purchase price.

The money from the sale will now be split between his 39 heirs.

As Stephen Chenery's legacy moves on,

his friends and neighbours

will always cherish the memories they have of him.

My happy days were gone with all the children down the watery lane

watching him paint, watching him draw.

He was a really clever artist.

He was just a good friend of mine, really.

I really was probably as good a friend with him as anybody,

to be quite honest.

He was just could company, really, and everything we did together

and all the things he taught me.

He did teach me a lot, really, cos he was a clever man.

Steve was one of a kind.

He was a man that possibly that years ago there were quite a few

because there were village characters

but Stephen was one of the last of the few, I'm sure.

In Halifax, Christopher David Riggin sadly passed away, aged 70,

on the 6th of August 2015.

He was an educated lad, he finished up an accountant.

Then, when his mother died, he were on his own, same as me.

About three years ago, my wife invited him round for Christmas.

A very intelligent man.

Sat down with him, we spoke for ages about politics, all sorts.

Brought a bottle of drink down with us

and we had a real good time together.

Christopher's friends, however, did not know any of his family,

so his estate was passed to a firm of local solicitors.

From what we've gathered,

he lived with his mother

until she passed away and also he was a recluse in his later years.

His mother, no, she was very nice.

She was always smartly dressed, immaculate.

She used to have the house decorated every 12 months.

She did everything for Christopher, she'd always have his meals ready.

She just adored him. It was a good mum and son relationship.

As no will was found, heir-hunting firm Finders

were called in to search for Mr Riggin's next of kin.

Fortunately, the solicitors passed on personal documents

found at Christopher's home.

The solicitors on this case have informed us

that the estate value should be in the region of around £200,000,

so, obviously, it's a high-priority case for us,

we need to try and find some beneficiaries.

We've been provided with the deceased's birth certificate

and we can see that the mother of Christopher David Riggin

was Maud Riggin, but she was actually formerly Shearn

on the certificate.

She hasn't actually mentioned a father.

It's quite unusual to not have a father.

Usually, when that were to happen,

it would be due to an illegitimate birth

whereby the mother was a spinster when the child was born

and there's no way of really knowing who the father is.

The certificate indicates that the mother was married previously,

but, obviously, she'd separated from the father,

whether they got divorced or not, we don't know,

but she subsequently had a child with another gentleman.

Already with mystery surrounding Christopher's parentage,

the heir hunters will only be able to build half a family tree,

and trace heirs on Christopher's mother's side.

Ryan delves further, and unearths Maud's marriage certificate

from 1937 to George Riggin, a civil servant.

He was 41 when they married and she was 27,

but she was a domestic servant.

It's a profession where illegitimate births were more prevalent

than some other professions.

Among the papers Ryan has been given

is a letter Christopher wrote to one of his mother's friends.

He's used the electoral registers to find out more

about his mother's life before he came along.

It seems Christopher was also using records to get answers

that he was never given by his family.

He's established that his mum was living with her husband

up until the Second World War.

In one of the last paragraphs, he says,

"Frankly, I consider it extremely unlikely that George Riggin

"was my biological father.

"It would take DNA evidence to convince me otherwise."

I guess he never really got the answers

as to who his father really was.

Ryan is keen to see if his mother Maud had any other children,

as they would be the first in line to inherit from his estate.

Ryan discovers that Maud did have a second son, Michael Riggin,

but, again, no father is listed on the birth certificate.

He sadly only lived for four days.

With no living brothers or sisters,

the search for Christopher's heirs

has now moved to his aunts and uncles.

Well, this is the bit where it gets interesting, really,

because we can delve a bit further back into the history of the family.

We can go across along the maternal side of the family

and try and hopefully find some beneficiaries.

I've just found the deceased's mother on the 1911 census

with her parents.

The copy of her marriage certificate says her father was William Shearn.

William Shearn, a coal miner, marries Beatrice.

They've been married about seven years, they've had three children.

Obviously, one of those is the deceased's mother.

There's another child mentioned on the census as well,

her name is Annie Shearn,

so she would have been a sister of the deceased's mother.

Ryan and the team now need to check the 1911 census

and see if any more children were born after it was compiled.

We can do a birth search from 1911 onwards

until roughly when the deceased's maternal grandmother, in this case,

was about aged 45.

It looks as though there's probably five more siblings

of the deceased's mother.

So, we're looking at maybe, so far,

seven aunts and uncles on the maternal side.

Ryan now needs more manpower,

and for his team to focus on the aunts and uncles one by one.

The census is there.

Can I just give you a line of this?

And there's a complication surrounding one of the aunts

listed on the census.

Mysteriously, her birth certificate is missing from the records.

It's good news. We've managed to find a couple of beneficiaries,

I think.

These heirs appear to be aunts of the deceased.

We're looking at the sisters of the deceased's mother.

Ryan is calling one of the heirs.

Christopher's aunt, 85-year-old June.

Hello, is June Brown there, please?

Would you want me to call you back or is it OK to hang on?

-HE WHISPERS:

-She's gone to put her lunch in the oven.

The beneficiary I just spoke to was really helpful, really friendly.

I had a really nice chat with her.

She was able to give me some more details on the family.

We're kind of struggling to get any quick leads

on one of the maternal aunts

and she said that this maternal aunt called Aida M Shearn,

known as Margaret, may have been adopted out of the family.

That means one less stem to research,

but the mysterious aunt Elizabeth could still be a beneficiary,

and June had news on her, too.

One of those she was able to clarify who the mystery person was

who was missing from the 1911 census.

The lady I spoke to did say that that person was called Elizabeth.

The team need to dig from before 1911

and look at Christopher's grandparents William and Beatrice's life at this time

for more clues.

METALLIC CLINKING

Back in 1905, records show that Christopher's grandfather William

was already a miner in Wakefield.

He and Beatrice had married two years earlier

and had a child, Annie,

but life was tough, and William, then 26,

was determined to do well for his family.

Around this time, Pennsylvania, in the USA,

was advertising for experienced miners to work in its new mines.

William Shearn would have been looking for new opportunities

to increase his wage packet and his quality of life.

And Pennsylvania and the anthracite coalfields there

could well have been one of them.

They would have been building new housing,

so living standards should have been, hopefully,

a lot better at the time.

It looks like William upped sticks

and headed to Pennsylvania for a new job.

His young family followed shortly afterwards.

This is the shipping records which show the maternal grandmother,

Beatrice Shearn, going over with her baby daughter Annie.

That was in 1905,

so not long after William settled over in America.

But life in the New World was not all the family had hoped for,

and three years later, records finally shed light on

Christopher's missing aunt.

Now we've got another record of an incoming passenger list this time.

This is in 1908, so a few years later.

And this is the most interesting one for us.

It was actually Beatrice, William,

along with the baby Annie that they had,

and now this Elizabeth Shearn,

daughter that had been born in the States.

The life that they'd hoped for in Pennsylvania didn't quite

work out the way they'd hoped,

and they missed the old life so coming back to West Yorkshire,

getting back in with wider family and also with colleagues

and other friends as well was probably something of a comfort.

I don't think that emigrating is the right thing for everybody.

Having now found birth records for Christopher's aunt Elizabeth in the

USA, if she was alive, she would be an heir to Christopher's estate.

We had no reason to suspect that the person missing

from the 1911 census was in fact born in the United States.

Birth records show William and Beatrice

went on to have six more children in the UK

and William carried on as a miner.

With the Shearn family tree now complete,

the team have found eight heirs to Christopher's estate.

The next day, Parmjit is sent to Yorkshire to meet some of the heirs

and explain the case to them.

June Brown is Christopher's youngest aunt,

born in 1930 and living in Leeds.

KNOCKING ON DOOR

-Hello, June. I'm Mr Thandi. Can I come in?

-Yes, dear.

-Thank you.

I want to explain to you why we're here.

-Yeah, it's about my nephew Christopher.

-Yes.

-Christopher David Riggin, who passed away on the 6th August.

-This year?

-This year.

-This year?

-This year.

Oh, has he been ill for a long time?

I honestly don't know what he died of, but the office will do.

We can always ring the office later and they'll tell you

what he passed away.

I can just remember a little bit when he was small,

but for the past few years,

we haven't seen much of him, really, at all.

When he was young, he wasn't interested in lots of storybooks.

He preferred to look through an encyclopaedia.

He was intelligent.

Parmjit is now on his way to see June's older sister.

Eileen Lawrence, Christopher's cousin,

and the daughter of the American aunt Elizabeth, and her husband,

have both travelled from Nottingham to be here for Parmjit's visit.

-Christopher was quite shy.

-Yes, he was a very private person, actually.

-So he never really...

-Didn't have many friends.

-He didn't have much to do.

-No, never married, of course.

And lived all his life in that little house in Halifax.

He's died alone, hasn't he? It's...

I mean, I've had a lot in my lifetime, deaths, anyway.

49 years next week since my husband died. Well, what do I want?

I mean, I'm 88. I mean...88 and a half.

So, I didn't know what to think. I don't know what to think.

But Parmjit's work still isn't done. Now he has to head to York.

The time now, it's just gone 7.10.

We have to see the last two beneficiaries on our list for today.

They are maternal cousins of the deceased, brother and sister.

Hello, Mark.

It's Mr Thandi. Nice to meet you.

I couldn't believe it when they rang up and said that they got in touch

with us about some inheritance, they wanted to get in touch

about the family tree.

So just one of them things. I never expected it coming to us.

If we do inherit a bit of money,

I'm sure my partner and kids will be wanting a holiday.

Mortgage is due to be paid off,

so hopefully get a bit of that paid off.

I have two horses and I need a new horsebox

so some of it will probably go towards that.

And then... I don't know, really, just other little things.

Might be worth going through the family tree

to see what else we can find out.

Overall, the team are happy they've been able to find

eight beneficiaries for Christopher Riggin's estate,

which is estimated to be worth £200,000.

I just think it's sad when you...

Another member of your family has gone.

It's...

Puts everything in perspective.

Yeah, he's going to be missed. He will be missed.