Carter/Bradley Heir Hunters

Gillian Carter lived a quiet life in rural Wales.

And her case is proving a difficult one for the heir hunters.

The maternal family is looking quite tricky.

It's a long shot, I think.

Just check.

And a second case begins with a tragic accident.

It was quite a shock.

I don't actually dwell on it because what had happened to him,

it was pretty serious stuff.

It was something that none of us had really thought would happen.

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

In the London offices of heir hunting firm Finders,

case manager Amy Moyes and the team

are starting work on a new case just in.

I am working on today's BB ad.

It's one of the ads from today's list.

It's the estate of the late Gillian Margaret Carter.

We are just looking for information about relatives and family.

Gillian died unexpectedly of a heart attack aged 72

on the 7th December 2014

in the small Welsh village of Llanddewi-Brefi.

She called Wales home for 15 years

after moving from her hometown in Warwickshire.

Here, the residents of the village are proud

of their rural way of life.

It's a very different pace of life to city life.

It is slower.

It's friendlier.

Living in a village, people need connections with other people

because otherwise life can be isolated.

I think we have still got quite a good community spirit.

Although Gillian had friends in the village,

nobody knew of her family.

It is the heir hunters' role to find any living relatives.

I have been taking a look at close family.

She was probably married, but may well be divorced,

and we can see that she appears to have bought property on her own

rather than with a partner or husband.

Gillian owned her property in Wales when she died.

This will make up part of the estate

that Amy is hoping to pass on to her family.

Gillian Carter was in fact married and later divorced.

She had no children.

It looks as though she is probably an only child,

so I have moved on to maternal and paternal family trees.

One thing that has struck Amy as unusual

is that both of Gillian's parents appear to have died on the same day.

Amy's ordered more certificates to help complete the picture

of the maternal side of the family tree.

Initially, the maternal family is looking quite tricky,

so I'm going to leave that side for now and focus on the paternal side.

The surname on this side is looking quite interesting.

It's the surname of Boycott.

So that would appear to be Gillian's maiden name.

Searching for people called "Boycott" in the area,

Amy has found someone she hopes could be a first cousin -

Hello. This is a message for Mr David P Ratcliffe.

My name is Amy Moyes.

It would just be ideal if I could speak to someone

who is of the same generation as the deceased

and fill in the family tree pretty quickly by speaking to them.

Amy has a team of travelling researchers on standby

all over Britain,

waiting to meet potential heirs face-to-face

to gather more evidence.

A lot of times,

people don't know who the deceased is or know very little,

why they actually knew the deceased

and knew the whole family background.

But until she knows where to send them,

she has to wait for someone to call back.

It could be the one you found.

If I can find her with a family, then you know she is wrong.

She has now enlisted the help of fellow heir hunter Ryan Gregory.

They want to reach potential heirs as quickly as possible

before a competing heir hunting firm has the chance to sign them up.

Ryan has been looking into another stem,

another paternal aunt - a lady named Dina,

who actually appears to still be alive.

She would be 100 or 101 years of age.

So what we're trying to do is Ryan is trying to see

if she's got any children we can speak to first

rather than make direct contact with her and upset her

or cause her any distress.

We are actually looking into the Boycott family tree today.

Do you recognise that as your mother's maiden name?

And it looks like Ryan has finally got through to a potential heir.

Right, OK.

It is actually in relation to a cousin of yours

who has sadly passed away.

Her name was Gillian Margaret Carter.

I tell you what we would like to do

is ask one of our local representatives

to maybe come and see yourself and Dina

so we can take her through the paperwork.

Ryan's call has brought some interesting news.

As it stands, we've had a chat with a few potential heirs

or their children.

It's sounding as though the paternal family at least

were certainly aware that the deceased had passed away

and that they were taking steps to deal with her estate themselves.

So it may turn out that services of companies like ours

might not be necessary here

and there could have been just a slight delay in them

dealing with the estate,

which is why it has ended up with the government legal department.

So what we're going to do is keep going with the research

until we've spoken to everybody involved,

get a full picture of what the actual situation is

and take it from there.

Amy's company can only help any heirs they find

if Gillian Carter left no will.

And now, this is in question.

One week later,

there's been a development in Gillian Carter's case.

Since I last took a look at the Carter case,

we've made a bit of progress with finding out about

the potential will from speaking to some more of the paternal heirs.

It sounds as though there certainly was a will

and that the Carter estate was almost certainly left to a charity,

but for one reason or another,

the will has been proven to be invalid,

and that's why it's ended up on the Bona Vacantia list.

So what all of that means

is that we're now back at dealing with an intestacy

and we're looking at the maternal and paternal trees as we were.

Since we left off,

I've managed to speak to most of the paternal heirs now,

and if I hadn't spoken to them, they've all had some paperwork.

The majority of those paternal heirs have signed up with us,

so, really, the paternal side is quite safe now,

just one or two outstanding issues.

And we need to then take a look

at the maternal family tree, the Franklins.

We don't have as many signatures

on that side of the family tree as of yet.

With the green light to continue

the search for heirs to Gillian Carter's estate,

Amy's sent out travelling researcher Parmjit

to meet a potential heir face-to-face.

He's heading to Gloucestershire to visit Nora Boycott,

Gillian's aunt, who goes by her middle name, Joan.

She's the sister of the deceased's father,

who's nearly 100 years old, I think.

I believe she's 99 years old.

And we're going to see her, together with her son

in relation to this matter.

What I'm doing today is,

I want to research the full family tree with her.

I've got the details as far as we've got,

so it's a question of really going through with them

to make sure we've got all the details of all the relatives

and go through the family tree.

Good morning. Good morning, John.

I was very surprised,

because I'd spoken to Gillian on the phone

on the Saturday evening of 6th December

and then on the Sunday, another cousin of mine rang up

to say that Gillian Carter had died

and I sort of said, "That's... I'm really shocked,

"because I've just spoken to her last night",

and he said, "You're probably" - she lived on her own -

"the last person to have spoken to her."

And I had to sort of sit down for a few minutes, because,

I said, well, I'd only just spoken to her the night before,

so it was a surprise.

This is my mother. Hello.

Joan Butler. Nora Joan Butler. Hello, Joan.

I've come just to discuss the family tree,

to make sure we've got all the details that we need

for the relatives. OK?

I've got too many! Too many. Too many.

So, we'll start... That's Gillian.

Who's passed away. Yes.

Then we've got another sister called Marion Beryl Boycott. Yes.

As far as... We are happy.

Otherwise, that side of the family tree is fine.

As far as I can see, yes, it is.

Parmjit's visit to Joan and John has proved successful,

and has provided more clues to Gillian's life.

It's also solved the mystery

of the joint date of her parents' death.

Gillian's parents were going in early December...

They were going off to buy Christmas presents and a van driver

came on the wrong side of the road and just hit them head-on.

He was badly injured, but they were both killed pretty well outright.

So that was a real blow for Gillian and her husband.

Sharing such sad news, John's not only been able to paint

a fuller picture of Gillian's past, but the visit has also proved

crucial in helping to complete her paternal family tree.

In the Birmingham area, Keith, another travelling researcher,

is on his way to visit one of Gillian Carter's cousins

on her mother's side.

The heir hunters have had no luck tracking him down on the phone,

so Keith's hoping to catch him at his home.

This is not looking particularly hopeful.

There doesn't appear to be any vehicles on the drive

and it looks a little bit locked up and secure.

But we'll make some enquires.

On closer inspection, it appears no-one is home.

You say he's deaf, is he? Yeah. Does he live on his own? Yeah.

As a result of a visit to the neighbours,

they can confirm that our gentleman does live at this address.

Unfortunately, he's in his late eighties and he's deaf

and he probably is in, but will not hear us.

He has relatives that call on a Saturday who live in Shrewsbury,

so what I'm going to do is,

with the permission of the neighbour,

leave them the visiting letter

so that when they see the relatives at the weekend,

they'll get the relatives to contact the office.

So things are beginning to take shape,

but there's still work to do.

Slowly, Gillian Carter's family tree is beginning to grow.

The 1911 census reveals that Gillian's grandfather,

Edward Henry Franklin, enlisted with the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders,

one of the elite regiments of the British Army, in 1884.

This was during the Anglo-Egyptian War

between Egyptian and Sudanese forces.

The British Army moved into the Sudan

following threats to Khartoum.

Only the capital remained in Egyptian hands,

with about 15,000 European and Egyptian citizens.

Gillian's grandfather, Edward Franklin, would most

likely have been amongst the troops deployed to a troubled region.

In fact, that relief force arrived two days too late.

The city had been... The siege had been successful,

and the whole town had been laid waste.

After this tragic event, Edward Franklin would most possibly

have remained with his regiment.

The Camerons complete a tour of duty on the frontier until 1887.

They return to Britain for several years,

and then are sent to Gibraltar and Malta.

And it is from Malta that they are called back to Egypt

at the end of 1897.

By this time, Edward Franklin had married Mary Morrison,

and they had started a family together.

Gillian Carter's mother, Margaret,

was the youngest of their nine children

and was born in 1912 in Birmingham, after her father had retired.

Back at the office, there have been further developments.

After much in-depth research on the case,

news has arrived which changes everything.

Since we put the claim in with the Government Legal Department,

we've heard back from them, and unfortunately,

they have written to say that a subsequent will has come forward.

This one does appear to be valid.

A situation like this is obviously very disappointing for us,

we've spent a lot of time and effort and also, um...money,

in doing the research, contacting heirs that are

probably not now entitled, but we work on all sorts

of different types of cases,

and this does happen from time to time.

For the cousins, however,

it's not the money that was important,

but their fond memories of Gillian.

I got on quite well with her,

she was quite a pleasant person, you know?

The search is on for unknown heirs

of 68-year-old Robert Joseph Bradley,

who spent most of his life living in the seaside town of Margate.

A pillar of the community, bachelor Robert, known as Bob,

ran a local pet shop, served as a beach warden

and was later curator of Margate Museum.

But he was best known for his hobby, judo.

We never quite understood Bob.

He was a friendly guy,

but he stayed and lived with his mother as long as I knew him.

He was very focused on judo when he came out,

but all the time he was down in Margate,

he was focused on the beach and his pet shop.

He was a great, great fellow.

You had to take him for what he was and by his own admission,

he was only interested in what he wanted to achieve.

He wouldn't consider being married or settling down

or compromising his outlook on life.

With judo, he decided that he wanted to go as far as he could with it.

He was very good at throwing people

who were not only his own weight, but above it.

He was European Champion,

he was National Champion for year after year.

Bob was very close to qualifying for part of the Olympic team

and had there been enough finance

to send both the openweight and a heavyweight,

I think Bob would have been in the team there

and he would have contested for medals in the Olympics.

But after a hugely successful sporting career,

Bob Bradley met an untimely death.

In a shocking accident in his home on 6th May 2014,

he fell through rotten floorboards.

I heard about Bob's death.

A mutual friend phoned me up and told me.

But it was on the news as well.

It was quite a shock. I don't actually dwell on it,

because what had happened to him was pretty serious stuff.

Bob's friends shared their pain at his loss,

but Bob had no relatives that they knew of.

Whenever we talked about family things, as you do when

you're going away, he just simply said, "Oh, I never see anyone."

And that was it.

As Bob died with no known family, his case was referred

to London probate genealogists Fraser and Fraser.

She can do a marriage search, same as we can. We might be lucky.

There are only two Robert Bradleys born in 1945.

One of them was in the March quarter

and we can kind of disprove that immediately,

because our deceased was born in November.

So we've got one in the December quarter,

which then gives us the mother's maiden name as Swift.

So we can then follow that up,

follow it onto finding the parents' marriage

and perhaps double-checking whether or not he had any siblings.

Bob Bradley's family tree was beginning to come alive.

We found a Joseph R Bradley marrying a Rose Swift

in December quarter 1932 in Willesden.

We thought the "R" would be for Robert, the deceased's name,

which later turned out to be true,

so from that point of when that marriage occurred,

we would then look for siblings of the deceased.

Bob did have an older brother, Michael, who sadly died in infancy.

He had also lost both of his parents many years ago.

So with no living immediate family,

the team had to widen the net on their search.

This would point them towards aunts, uncles and cousins.

Yeah, 19 on the '11 census.

Ben's starting point was Bob's grandparents on his mother's side,

Lily James and Richard Charles Swift.

They married in 1902 in Camberwell.

Next, to find further details of Bob's family, the search turned

to the 1911 census, which revealed his grandfather's profession.

We located the family and the father,

Richard Charles Swift's occupation, is listed as fruiterer.

Life in London in 1911 was tough,

and the Swift family at that time was listed as a large one.

Records show that Lily James and Richard Charles Swift

had six children, born between 1901 and 1914.

Lily Swift, the aunt of the deceased,

she married a Charles Periton in 1922 in Willesden.

They, shortly after having their first child,

they emigrated to Canada.

In the '20s, aren't they? Yeah.

With part of the family scattered as far away as Canada,

the team still hadn't found any heirs in the UK.

Bob's uncle, Charles Swift, was the key.

He had married a Rosina Elizabeth May

in 1929 in Paddington, London,

and records revealed that Charles, like his father, was a greengrocer.

Rosina and Charles Swift had one son,

John Richard Charles Swift, born in 1935 -

Bob Bradley's first cousin.

Alive and well and living in Oxfordshire,

the team had found their first heir.

I never knew Bob Bradley because he lived in Margate.

He never really kept in touch with the family

and they never kept in touch with him.

So he was just a mystery,

he was just a complete and utter mystery to me.

Although John didn't have a relationship with Bob

when he was alive,

family ties have left him feeling inextricably linked to him,

and news of his death came as a dreadful shock.

Surprised, because he was a lot younger than me.

I wish now that I'd known him,

because he seemed like quite an interesting guy,

one way or another.

I might have seen him when he was a babe in arms,

but that's all I can remember.

Bob and John may have been first cousins,

but their life paths couldn't be more different.

While Bob was running a pet shop,

John Swift had begun his working life in the family business.

I was working in a greengrocer's shop when I was ten.

And I worked with my father...

Then and as far as I can make out,

my father, my grandfather

and most of the Swifts were all in business one way or another.

Basically, they were in the fruit and veg business,

but...if a little deal came up for something else,

it wouldn't be sniffed away.

Of his uncles and aunts, it was John's father's brother,

Uncle Jack, who was the most successful.

Jack was a sort who'd have a crack at anything.

He was a gambler.

When I say a gambler, not necessarily with money,

but he would take chances with things,

you know what I mean?

And do anything to get a few bob.

I know he had a friend who was a bookmaker's son or something

and Jack said he went to help them at the racecourse one day.

And when he saw the money that could be made making a book,

he decided that's what he wanted to do.

That's what Jack did and he did it well,

when he opened one of the country's first betting shops

in London's Mayfair when they became legal in 1961.

Swift would've identified somewhere like Piccadilly

as being a central area

amongst a lot of working class,

because the working class worked in these areas,

they didn't live in these areas,

and he would've identified that as a good central area

to have a shop to attract business.

Jack Swift's empire flourished

until he had about 20 bookies around London.

But as his star was rising and the money rolled in,

he never forgot his family.

Jack was very good to me.

He gave me a lot of work when I was a cab driver doing different things,

running him about, you know, all over the place.

When my dad died,

I had three kids and I was struggling a bit,

you know, mortgage and all that,

and he was talking to me and he said, "Are you managing?"

And he gave me 50 quid.

And that 50 quid, in those days, got me out of trouble.

I never, ever forgot it.

Jack had one son himself, Brian Charles Swift.

We found a marriage to a Loretta Breasley.

They have a total of three children.

Loretta Breasley was the daughter

of legendary Australian jockey Scobie Breasley.

The union of bookie's son and the daughter of racing royalty

raised more than a few eyebrows.

Jack Swift, his son's profession as a jockey

and the marriages that his family made,

which actually elevated him into a racing set,

which was much more middle-class than working-class.

With his business booming, Jack's friend William Hill,

who had not been so bold as to take his bookmaking business

out on to the high street, made an offer to buy Jack's shops.

It was an offer that Jack couldn't refuse.

Swift was the pioneer and took the risk.

He felt that the bookmaking industry,

licensed bookmaking was going to be successful,

and it took a long time for William Hill

to make the decision that he was going to go the same way.

By 1966, his 20 shops and his business

was sold to William Hill in its entirety for ?850,000,

which, in today's money, equates to close to 15 million.

But it wasn't all good news for Jack Swift and his family.

In 1985, his only son Brian died suddenly of a heart attack

aged just 48,

leaving three children, all potential heirs,

who at first couldn't be traced.

One of them had quite a unique name and once we followed that up,

we found all three children living in Australia.

When we located the three Australian heirs,

it took the number of heirs on the maternal side to 12.

With all living heirs on Bob Bradley's mother's side

of the family now accounted for,

it was time to turn to the paternal family tree.

This is a bigger challenge

simply because there were more aunts and uncles to descend on this side.

Bob's grandfather, Charles Bradley, had married Bob's grandmother,

Mary Ann Hopkins, in 1888.

They had nine children over a 24-year period,

including Joseph Robert Bradley.

So when we had completed our research into Charles Bradley,

the paternal uncle of the deceased,

um...it had almost doubled the amount of heirs

that we already had from the maternal side of the family.

But as Bob's paternal family tree continued to reveal itself,

a further ten first cousins came to light.

We were just finding heirs left right and centre.

And these heirs were spread all over the globe.

Let's just have a look on another system,

just to make sure.

With Ben's team hard at work,

an heir closer to home had been found.

Bob Bradley's uncle Harry had six children.

His son, Peter Bradley, Bob's first cousin,

was alive and well and living in Kent.

My memories of Bob are very small cameos.

We used to take holidays, we had a couple of holidays in Westgate.

On one occasion, we stayed with Aunt Rose

and we played in the garden.

And then I saw him on another occasion on the seafront

and we played in the sand together.

And that was really the last time.

Um, that was it, really, basically.

And then they just disappear, you know, you go from your memory

and you get on with your own life.

With so many years having passed since they last met,

Peter was surprised to hear he was entitled to a part

of his late cousin's estate.

When I heard of the circumstances of his death,

it was tinged with a bit, quite a lot of sadness,

because, you know, all right, you're going to inherit some money,

but it would've been much nicer to think that I'd come across him

in passing and met up with him and spoke to him...

..that type of thing.

With the final piece of the puzzle

that makes up Bob Bradley's family tree in place,

Ben and his team's job is done.

So the case of Robert Joseph Bradley was really interesting.

There were many heirs all around the world which we had to trace.

We found 35 people entitled to benefit

and the estate at the end was worth ?125,000.

So, this is where it is...

Today, Peter and his son, Matthew,

have travelled to Bob's hometown of Margate,

to his beloved judo club,

to meet his friends and find out more about their long-lost cousin.

Certificates, trophies. Oh, I bet you've got a few of those.

Yeah... Where is he there? There he is.

That was at the Ramsgate club...

The ethos of our sport, and he took on board so strongly,

was that you could compete with anyone of any standard

and if you behaved yourself properly,

you looked after them.

You see he's wearing a black belt there, don't you? Yeah.

Well, he got higher than that.

He got to 7th dan eventually. Seven dans...

When you're refereeing, you don't expect the referee

to be cracking jokes, but he was always...

He got into trouble with the authorities

quite a number of times, cos he wouldn't stop cracking jokes.

It was lovely to see how loved he was...

Yeah. ..and how well-liked and how many friends he had...

That was one of the most important things,

discovering his humour.

It brings our family back together again,

even though we were separated through just...life, really.

You suddenly realise that family is important

and everybody should look to their family.

It's always nice to remember them and know what they did,

because there's a lot of missing links out there.