Gagneux/Wareing Heir Hunters

Today, the heir hunters unlock a family mystery involving

-multiple surnames...

-You mention the illegitimate daughter. OK.

He refused to marry her because he wasn't in love with her.

..and connect an estranged family for the very first time.

Excellent! We're going to get on well.

In Liverpool, the memorial service of a local MP is emotional...

I don't think there's any tribute that could fit

the enormity of what Bob was.

..and the heir hunters bring to light new family members.

Finding out the vast family tree on my father's side

certainly is gobsmacking.

Some heir hunter cases have so many twists

and turns, they can take years to crack.

Today, the end is in sight on one of those cases.

This is the case of Elizabeth Claire Gagneux.

It's a case we started about two years ago,

but we're just about to finish off some of the research on it.

Claire Gagneux died on 10th April 2013 aged 62

and lived in Chelsea, London.

Case managers Ryan Gregory and Amy Moyes took the case on that year

after it appeared on the Treasury Solicitor's Bona Vacantia list...

That's the details. So text her the name, address.

It will be a cold call cos he's not on a phone.

..for people who have died without leaving a will.

Currently working on a case of Elizabeth or Claire,

or Elizabeth Claire Gagneux. Obviously sounds French.

Could be Belgian. We picked up on it

because I don't think anybody's come forward yet to make a claim.

The case is hot off the press and, so far,

researchers haven't received Claire's death records.

So at the moment, the only death certificate we really have is

what's believed to be her mother, a Lilian Maud Gagneux.

She died in Chelsea in 1975.

Although the team know nothing about Claire,

she is missed by friends and colleagues.

Claire worked in the Houses of Parliament as a private secretary

to the MP of Shipley for eight years.

Claire was great at her job.

She was fantastically reliable, she never took a day off,

she would come in at weekends

if she needed to catch up with something, she was really dedicated,

everything was done on time, she was an absolute perfectionist.

I think she loved doing the job and she was brilliant at it.

It was sort of a perfect job for her.

Everybody in Parliament knew who Claire was,

partly because she'd been here for so long, but partly because she was

a bit of a social animal as well in the sense of frequenting the bars.

Mary Hodge was also a secretary in the Houses of Parliament

and knew Claire for over ten years.

She was a very determined, happy person, great sense of humour,

loved dogs.

She talked about her mother, who sadly died

when Claire was a young woman.

She did mention her father but not much about him, just his name,

but not about the sort of life they had.

We didn't hear anything of that side.

Claire's social side was something that all her friends

strongly associate with her.

That's the thing that I really miss now is, you know, on a Sunday

when you sort of have got nothing to do, you know,

you could go out and have a laugh with her

and put the world to rights, which was always good fun,

and somebody that you just actually quite enjoyed being around.

People would want her at a party. She was quite a special person.

Back in the heir hunters' office

and Ryan learns from Claire's mother's death certificate

that her original surname may help them in their search.

The mother's maiden name is good. It's Pavey.

We should hopefully manage to speak to somebody today,

but it depends on finding someone who's not on their summer holidays!

Pavey's a good name for us to work

because it's not very prevalent, it's not going to throw us

many difficulties when we go through the indexes

and when we're cross-referencing the possible marriage searches

and we're going through the birth searches.

It just would not be as time-consuming

or expensive as if the surname was Smith or Roberts or Jones.

Claire's mother's death certificate also lists her husband

as Andre Gagneux,

but they've reached an obstacle in their research.

It seems as if her father may have been a physics lecturer

and a quite well-known author.

We can't immediately find a marriage between the parents as well,

which indicates that they probably married overseas, possibly

in France or something, so there's a lot to unravel over this side.

Can I ask you a question on this, please? Thank you.

I'm kind of stuck, to be honest,

because from what I understand,

the only cert we have is her mum's, death cert,

and it's got daughter, the deceased, basically, her maiden name,

and what she died as is Gagneux.

He's on her death as the husband, so obviously they were married in 1975.

-Yeah.

-Can't find a marriage at all for them in this country.

-It looks overseas.

-It was probably French or Belgian or something.

For him, there's a marriage to this lady called Sahadai...Samaia...

-something...Ramjit... in 1965.

-So they divorced?

Yeah, I mean,

they must have got divorced then he must have married her.

What's perplexing them

is that Lilian's death certificate shows Claire as her daughter

and Andre Gagneux as her husband in 1975, when she died.

They know Claire was born in 1951 but they have uncovered

a marriage by Andre in 1965 to another woman.

-Unless he married her first.

-It says husband on her death.

-Oh. Oh, I see.

Do you know what I mean? So it's really confusing.

I mean, he must have maybe married...

Maybe they weren't married.

Maybe they weren't married and they had her in '51.

Putting aside the details about Claire's father for now,

they concentrate on her mother, Lilian. She was born in 1919.

They discover Lilian's parents are John Thomas Pavey

and Sarah Fanny Edgar.

If John and Sarah had other children, Claire's aunts,

uncles or cousins could be beneficiaries,

and if Andre is Claire's father,

so could any of his siblings or children.

Already, Ryan has found details of a potential cousin for Claire

on the Pavey side of the family.

One of the most important parts of the job of an heir hunter is

to talk to relatives as and when we find them.

That's for obvious reasons, such as asking people about family

members that we maybe would have missed through our research,

collecting addresses for people who would be entitled, and really,

just getting a better idea of the family tree that we're researching.

Hello, good afternoon. Right, OK.

That's interesting because we're actually coming through that

stem of the family, if you like, so we're kind of working

back from Lilian, who you say kind of disappeared off the radar.

We're trying to really find somebody who has some

information on Lilian. Right, OK.

You mention the illegitimate daughter. OK.

So, I mean, with the information that you have

and the hearsay from the family, we can probably piece together

with some of the information that we have.

I have just been on the phone to, actually,

the husband of one of the cousins.

Luckily, he's one of the people you were lucky

enough to come across, who's done some genealogy himself.

So, I mean, the interesting part of it is that everybody on this

Pavey side of the family have been trying to find some

information on Lilian for years.

There's lots of rumours, there's lots of hearsay that she may have

gone to South Africa and she may have had an illegitimate daughter.

The Gagneux case was a good example of why speaking to family members

is always an important part of the job now.

We were speaking to cousins on the maternal side,

but as soon as they told us that the deceased had a half-sister,

it suddenly meant we may be able to find the sole heir to the estate.

But all this digging on Lilian's mother's side of the family,

using the name Pavey, could be an enormous red herring.

Amy and Ryan notice a discrepancy in the surnames of Claire's mother.

Bye-bye.

Searching on the internet,

they find Lilian Maud's maiden name listed as Tresidder,

whilst on her death certificate, her maiden name is listed as Pavey.

-OK.

-It would be good to visit her on Friday.

-All right, then.

-I'll try and arrange something, then.

-Thank you.

With this revealing news, Ryan's team are worried

they've been barking up the wrong family tree.

We don't really know. We're kind of clutching at straws at the minute,

but there is a slim chance that,

when we get the certificate back, the mum could be Lilian Maud and

she's changed her name to Tresidder, you know, to maybe, you know...

Maybe it has something to do with being in wartime France...

To hide from the family or during the wartime or...

she may have been in a relationship with another man at some point

-and she's informally changed her name.

-So there's options.

-Looks as though it's a bit mysterious.

-There's options.

The heir hunters are worried there are two Lilian Mauds

at the right age - one called Pavey and one called Tresidder.

Yeah, I mean, I just did the UK and overseas, yeah.

Nothing jumped out.

If Claire's mother was a Tresidder from birth, then the entire

Pavey family they've already found are completely the wrong family.

Just it will be a cold call but it's play it by ear, see how you get on.

But without more information,

the heir hunters are stuck on the maternal side of the tree.

We're not going to discount the Pavey side of the family for now,

but we've kind of gone as far as we can go without any facts, basically.

After several hours' work, the heir hunters are completely stumped

and decide to call it a day on searching for Claire's heir.

I don't know.

I mean, bar a kind of stroke of luck that the deceased mother changed

her name from Pavey to Tresidder, I'm probably assuming that...

We contacted the Pavey family, just for a bit of information.

Unfortunately, we didn't get it, but I'd be surprised

if there were any beneficiaries on that side, really.

At the end of the day one into the Gagneux investigation, we weren't

quite sure whether we were going to really continue with the case.

The difficulty we faced with the deceased's mother was

the fact that we had these three different surnames that we

had become aware of - Tresidder, Pavey and Gagneux.

Now, there was no paper trail linking these surnames together

and that, for us, poses a massive problem with tying together

exactly who's entitled and what the link is.

At the end of the day, we need to prove everything factually,

and that was something we were struggling with at that time.

As a last-ditch attempt to revive the case,

Ryan orders up a Pavey cousins birth certificate

and moves on to the French side of the family, discovering that

Claire's father, Andre Gagneux,

had a stepdaughter from a marriage later in his life.

He stayed with me for three years.

I looked after him until he actually died.

But during that time, I got in contact with Claire

and we got on quite well, actually, at the time.

But she was telling me that there was resentment

because he'd left Claire's mother for my mother, that he

wasn't married to Claire's mother.

The team find that Shonni isn't a beneficiary as she isn't

a blood relative, but she has recollections about how Andre

and Lilian got together and how Claire was born.

So he did go on a date with her. Hey, presto, Claire!

SHE LAUGHS

Um... She got pregnant, but he refused to marry her

because he wasn't in love with her, he said.

But he did the decent thing.

But he did best he did for Claire, educationally.

Coming up, Ryan's persistence and patience pays off.

So we really couldn't find out why she changed her surname

from Pavey to Tresidder until we had this key bit of information.

Today, a special memorial service is being

held at St Mary's Church in West Derby, Liverpool, commemorating the

life of Robert Wareing and organised by family friend Emma Rowlands.

He was just always there.

Him and my dad, they were like two peas in a pod, always together.

Even though Bob, as he was known, wasn't a relative,

he was part of Emma's family.

Bob's strength was being an uncle, first and foremost,

just being that caring family man.

He never had his own children and he classed us as like...

He used to say, you was like my kids.

And when we had our kids, he was just besotted. He loved them.

He never forgot birthdays, never forgot Christmases,

he was just always there.

Bob was well known in the community,

having been the local MP for 27 years,

and was passionate about football.

Bob was a very, very keen Evertonian.

He was telling me that, in the '50s,

he would go to places like Bolton and Burnley.

In those days, the stadiums, they'd sell out,

and Bob would climb walls to try to get in without paying!

He'd actually try to see the match cos he travelled

all the way from Liverpool to these places and the ground was sold out.

Bob and I went back a very long way.

We were both elected to Parliament in 1983 for the first time,

so Bob and I got to know each other extremely well.

I often used to take lunch with him

and we'd sort of talk over lots of things.

And every time I met Bob, I learnt a different side to his character,

always a good side, cos he had this phenomenal knowledge

of so many things.

A conversation with Bob was always something you would enjoy

and benefit from.

Bob had been married in 1962 to Betty.

But she had sadly passed away just 27 years later

and they had no children.

He loved her.

She was the love of his life and he didn't move on from losing Betty.

He always talked about her.

Every Christmas he went up to her

grave in the Lake District with a wreath.

Every year he was always there

and when he could get there, he was there.

He never moved on from losing her.

In May 2015, Bob passed away in a nursing home.

No will was found and his friends knew of no family, so the case

was picked up by London-based heir hunting firm Fraser and Fraser.

All right, then.

Cheers.

The first step was to try and locate Bob's birth certificate.

We thought the surname was really good.

Wareing is quite a good surname.

It does turn out Wareing

is a common surname up north and in the

Liverpool area, so that could have caused some issues for us.

We did a search for Robert Wareing born in 1930

and it turns out there is only one Robert Wareing born in 1930.

And it gives us a maiden name of Mallon.

Bob's birth certificate showed he was born in Liverpool.

His mother was Florence Patricia Mallon

and his father was Robert Wareing Senior.

They discover they got married in Liverpool in 1923

and that Bob was an only child.

That meant they would need to find his uncles

and aunts in the hope of finding living relatives.

And the starting point was to search for his grandparents.

So, let's recap there. Just grab me that list.

Looking at the marriage certificate, you can get good clues onto

the backgrounds of families and, in particular, on the maternal

side of the family, so Robert Wareing's mother.

Her dad is Patrick Mallon and he's a farmer.

And with a name like Patrick, him being a farmer at the same time

is quite common for people with Irish ancestry.

A good place to begin the search was the 1901 Census.

This shows Bob's grandfather Patrick living in Liverpool.

The couple are listed as having three daughters at the time.

The census records are invaluable

because they have an enormous amount of information on them.

We've got the entire family

in one place and that, obviously

for a genealogist, is like gold dust.

On the 1901 Census, the deceased's maternal grandfather,

Patrick Mallon, was listed as a blacksmith from Ireland.

Obviously, there was some sort of movement from Ireland to Liverpool,

which was quite common.

Liverpool is Ireland's closest port and workers with

an agricultural background flocked there for new opportunities.

The Irish arrived in Liverpool

mainly in the 1840s, following the famine.

These were poor, half-starved workers,

many hoping to go to America, but many stayed in Liverpool

and Liverpool now has the largest Irish population in the UK.

To find any beneficiaries, they need to identify Bob's aunts

and discover if they had children,

and then find their birth details.

-Only one way to find out.

-Give it a call.

-Yeah.

But the lack of records means finding solid details is

tricky and they end up not being able to locate Patrick

and Adelaide's wedding certificate.

The 1911 census helps them, but also reveals some surprising news.

This would be Adelaide Mallon.

She's the head of the household because she is widowed.

In 1906, Patrick died aged just 37 of pneumonia.

It left Adelaide to bring up her four children,

aged between one and 11, alone.

This meant she needed to find work.

And by 1911, daughters Adelaide and Elizabeth were 16 and 14

and were listed on the census as both working as message girls,

indicating the family were in financial crisis.

A message girl would be a young girl who wasn't strong enough to

do heavy work, so she'd often sweep up in the factory or

the domestic workshop, be sent for errands for the workers,

or maybe just run errands for neighbours for a few pennies.

Young people were expected to do a 12-hour day, work very hard

and it was expected that children did add to the family income from an

early age because of poverty amongst the working class in Liverpool.

In the hunt to find heirs of Bob Wareing's estate,

the heir hunters are tracking down the birth,

death and marriage certificates of Adelaide, Elizabeth

and Margaret to see if their children could be beneficiaries.

So when we looked further into the deceased's maternal aunts,

we found out the youngest aunt, Margaret, born in 1905,

she died in 1957, a spinster aged 52.

Adelaide, she married,

and then it was just wondering what happened to Elizabeth.

We subsequently found a marriage

to William Jones in 1918 in Liverpool.

And on the certificate, the occupations are listed as,

Elizabeth's being a press hand at a factory in Grafton Street

near the docks, and William's as a marine fireman.

At the time of Elizabeth's marriage,

the family were still very much based around the Liverpool docks.

Elizabeth had married at the end of World War I,

but throughout the war had been working as a press hand

from the age of 17.

As a press hand, she probably was a laundry worker who

worked at the docks and would launder work for ships coming in.

This was a quite heavy, steamy, very dangerous,

lots of industrial accidents and very pressured,

because the laundry would have to be made ready for the ship to

turn around and go back on its destination.

With Elizabeth's family history unfolding, back at the office,

the hunt for her children

and any potential heirs was proving a nightmare.

Elizabeth took up a lot of our time.

It was...

A challenge when it became a Jones, definitely, as well.

So, it threw definitely a massive curveball out at us.

We had no idea at that point in the job

that it was going to explode the way it did.

I will. All right, bye.

It becomes pretty difficult to research if you haven't got family

information to help you locate records,

especially if people move out of the area.

It was just one of those cases where we have to wait

and take our time because Jones is a very difficult name to research.

Obviously, the harder names are the Smiths, the Jones, the Evans.

They are obviously extremely tricky to work.

But then, having said that, you get quite a good name,

that's easier for the competitors, as well.

If anyone's free to trace any of those people?

-That would be great.

-The search was now huge.

Finding heirs from this side of the family was going to prove

a mammoth task.

It was quite manic in the research room.

I think there was quite a few of us working on it.

I think there was a point in which where in a quiet

part of the day, everybody in the research room was working on it.

So, we had quite a lot of hands on deck.

Every year in Britain, thousands of people get a surprise knock

on the door from the heir hunters.

I'm not expecting a million.

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

Today, we've got details of two estates

on the Treasury Solicitors Bona Vacantia list

that are yet to be claimed.

The first case is that of Phyllis Baker

who died on 26 November, 1999

in Billericay, Essex, aged 91.

She was of Scottish descent,

born 540 miles away in Aberdeen on 8 November, 1908.

It's not known whether she was married or had any children.

Do you know anyone of that name who used to live in Billericay?

Could there still be family links to Phyllis in either Scotland or Essex?

The next case is that of Stanley Balch,

who had the middle name of Francis.

He was born just after the turn of the century,

on 25 October, 1902 in Lambeth, London.

He died in Kensington on 30 August, 1987, aged 84.

Do you know anything that could be the key to solving this case?

Perhaps you could be the next of kin.

If so, you could have thousands of pounds coming your way.

Heir hunting firm Finders are trying to track down beneficiaries

of Claire Gagneux, a House of Commons secretary who died in 2013.

-Thank you very much.

-E-mail it across today.

I will. OK, cool. Thank you.

The tricky thing with the information

we were left with at the end of day one was that we had some

information, but not enough information.

But lack of certificates and confusion over Claire's mother's

multiple surnames means they've reached a brick wall.

I'll start with this, I think,

and then if you could just figure out who he was.

-OK.

-Thanks.

We had a lot of questions as to who the deceased's mother was.

Why she changed her surname.

Was it due to a marriage, maybe, in another country?

Had she changed her name by deed poll?

Her she had another relationship with somebody else?

We really weren't sure and it's very key for us

to figure out exactly what is happening to the immediate family

when someone passes away.

But, I mean, we were kind of two steps forward, two steps back.

But a conversation with another family member reveals Claire's

mother may have had another daughter.

Your children might be entitled to inherit from the estate.

Ryan ordered what he hoped was her birth certificate.

It was only once we had that certificate back in the office

that we could see the link between

the Pavey surname and the Tresidder surname.

This information unlocks the whole case.

So the key bit of information on this certificate, which is

the birth certificate of Pamela Jean Tresidder,

is the fact that it says Lilian Maud Tresidder,

formerly Pavey.

Now, Lilian didn't marry Gordon who's the father listed on the birth

certificate, so we really couldn't find out why she changed her

surname from Pavey to Tresidder

until we had this key bit of information.

It reveals why Claire's mother

seemed to use three different surnames.

It shows that half sister Pamela Tresidder was born to Lilian

and Tolmie Tresidder in 1948,

three years before Claire was born.

On registering the birth, Lilian changed her surname to Tresidder

despite not marrying Tolmie Tresidder.

So could Claire's half sister be in line to inherit?

She was brought up by another family and changed her name to Belinda.

Ryan and the team tracked her down.

I discovered that I was adopted on a trip to the States

with my parents when I was about six or seven.

I didn't really know what they were talking about

and I took very little notice

and carried on doing what I was doing.

Belinda didn't know anything about her mother for over 20 years.

My mother had a secretary and...

..one day when I was, I think, in my 20s,

and she gave me my birth certificate

and that was a sort of hint, you know,

I think, from her, saying,

"Do you want to do something about this now?"

So it started from there, really.

Belinda got in touch with the Pavey family who were

able to fill in some gaps regarding her parents.

There was 20 years' difference between my mother and father.

They made it sound that they didn't get married, you know,

because of the age difference.

Then I was shown my real name

and that was actually my father's name.

Because my mother had started to call herself by his name.

I found details of him very, very easily.

But my mother, who had...

Well, had a habit of changing her name when she felt like it, really,

was extremely difficult to find.

And I think it has actually taken me over 30 years of

research before I had a breakthrough

and, you know, things suddenly became clearer.

She never knew her half sister Claire

and only found out about her just after she died.

I was a bit disappointed that I had missed her by only two months.

But I missed everybody, really.

I missed my mother. Obviously, I missed my mother

and I also missed my father.

Back in the office, the heir hunters' checks confirm

that as she has been adopted out of the family,

she isn't entitled to inherit.

If Pamela Jean Tresidder hadn't been adopted out of the family, then she

would have been the sole beneficiary of the deceased's estate.

With Belinda now not in line to inherit,

the team had to go back to the drawing board.

He may have been overseas.

Discovering that after taking on the surname Tresidder,

Lilian also took on the surname Gagneux,

despite not marrying Andre Gagneux,

they carry on searching the Pavey line.

I can't think of any other way that we're going to get hold of them.

After a few months, our research into the deceased's maternal

family was complete,

but what we had to do was go back

to the paternal side of the family, which is Gagneux.

In order to do that, we sent everything over

to one of our researchers in France

who were able to carry on with that side of the family.

Could you just ask the rep to go to

this address and then just make some door-to-door enquiries?

Along the way, the heir hunters discovered that more

secrets lurked in the Pavey family tree

involving Claire's grandparents, John Pavey and Sarah Edgar.

Having spoken to some of the maternal beneficiaries in this

case, they told us that, actually, their parents had all been

raised separately in children's homes

because the maternal grandparents had passed away quite young.

That was something that was made easier in the '70s.

I believe the family had a reunion together.

They found out some information about one another

that they probably wouldn't have known from their parents

given the disconnection between them growing up.

One of Lilian's brothers was Dennis Pavey, born in 1923.

His daughter, Annette Pavey, who lives in Fareham is an heir

and was shocked to learn about Claire's death.

I knew nothing whatsoever about Claire Gagneux

and I actually thought that Finders had got it wrong.

When I was younger, I remember my dad searching for his family

and when you suddenly find on the records in Somerset House

that you've got these brothers and sisters that you know nothing of.

But being reunited with long lost family

wasn't the first time for Annette.

My dad finally discovered his family

because my mum used to do a lot of charity work and stuff like that

and she...knew this reporter from the local Stevenage Gazette

and this reporter said to her one day,

"I haven't got much news at the moment."

So, my mum jokily said, "Well, Dennis", my dad,

"is trying to find his long lost family."

"Perhaps you can put an article about that in the newspaper?"

My uncle Jim, James Pavey, and one of his sisters read the article.

The phone rang and my dad grumpily said, "It's for you, Annette."

So I got up and answered it and this guy on the phone was saying,

"I think I might be your Uncle Jim."

"Yeah. OK. I'll put you onto my dad, then!"

My dad was very happy and he changed completely once he found them.

It was amazing. They were all really pleased to see each other.

In the end, the heir hunters found seven paternal heirs in France

and 11 maternal heirs.

We were able to then add in another missing person from the family.

This half sister of the deceased who we came across in our research,

being able to put her in contact with a family she never knew she had

is a really rewarding part of the job.

For Ryan, an 18-month heir hunt has come to a close.

When we started researching this case,

we weren't quite sure how much the estate would be worth,

but we found some assets which we weren't aware of previously

and this estate's probably going to be in the region of around £35,000.

But for some members, it's not about the money,

it's about a chance to reconnect with long lost family members.

Today, heir Annette is travelling to meet Belinda,

the half sister of Claire, who was adopted out of the family

to help her learn more about the family Belinda never knew she had.

It will be very nice to actually meet a real, kind of, relation.

I think she will actually be the very first...

..Pavey relation that I have ever met.

It's quite muddling being adopted.

It might make me feel a bit, sort of, calmer, maybe,

and more... Better informed.

I'm excited, but it's also, sort of, nerve-racking,

cos I don't know what she's like.

Um... I'm kind of hoping she's...a bit like me,

that she's quite open and friendly.

-Hello.

-Hello.

Nice to meet you.

-At last.

-Very nice to meet you.

-Do you want to see any of these pictures?

-Yes.

-That's what I'm here for.

-Yes.

This is, apparently, Claire.

Although, I've never, obviously, seen her.

I think she is quite like me, actually. In a way. Do you think?

I don't want to scrutinise but, yes.

I think she is, actually.

The first thing I knew about Claire was when somebody came round

and knocked on my door and said she'd died.

What do you know about her? As she's your half-sister?

I knew absolutely nothing about Claire. It was a complete surprise.

I was quite pleased, actually, in a way.

You know, that my mother had had,

you know, another...child. Yeah.

That is stunning, isn't it? That picture.

And this is another one.

Of Lilian, which is obviously a different side to Lilian.

Very like me, she's sort of scoffing an ice cream.

That's definitely Paveys, scoffing ice cream!

And...that's me, as well.

Oh, right. Good. Excellent! We're going to get on well.

I've got some pictures of my dad, actually. Here we are.

That was him in the Air Force.

That was him when he got married.

That's them on their honeymoon, I think.

It was very interesting...

to meet Annette.

It hasn't quite sunk in yet.

I really enjoyed meeting her and seeing all the photographs

and I'd like to stay in touch with Annette. I like Annette, yes.

I hope it has helped Belinda in some way, this process.

I imagine it's brought up quite a lot of, um,...

feelings and emotions for her.

I think it's been...

interesting.

As heir hunters Fraser and Fraser were discovering,

life in working class Liverpool in the '20s and '30s was tough

in Bob Wareing's family.

Who's free? Anybody?

The search was now on to try and track down

the children of his Aunt Elizabeth,

with the very common surname of Jones,

to see how many beneficiaries there may be.

Just to work on that side. Don't do anything on the paternal.

When we conducted the birth search from the marriage,

we discovered that all births were in the Liverpool area.

We couldn't find another marriage which corresponded to the births.

So we knew they all belonged to the same family.

When we discovered that Elizabeth had 12 children,

it was more work for us to do.

So, we had our work cut out, really.

But in the end, the search surprised them

by being easier than they thought.

Mallon being quite an Irish name in Liverpool

and Jones being very popular in England and Wales,

we thought that there'd be lots of records

but, when we searched for birth records,

12 came up and they were all based in Liverpool

and they were all part of our family.

Birth records show that Elizabeth and William

had their children over 23 years, until Elizabeth was 44.

This meant that throughout the '20s and '30s, William's job

as a Marine Fireman kept him away from the family for long periods.

That idea of the breadwinner

going away to sea

was a very real one.

Men could be away for years at a time.

It could be a dangerous life, as well. That idea of separation.

The seamen's orphanage was a very busy place in Liverpool.

Men were lost at sea. Women often died in childbirth.

It was easy to be left

without a parent for a period of time, as well.

Elizabeth, with 12 children, was left to manage on her own

running a family, a home, and holding down a job.

It was difficult for families when the breadwinner was away.

They'd fall back on friends and family, as well.

There was very kind of strong communal links within the city

and within the seafaring community.

So, you might be on your own in terms of the family,

but the family had people they could call on as well, often.

People did tend to look after each other on the docks.

It was a very close-knit community.

But Elizabeth and William survived these hardships

and so did 10 of their children.

Back at the office and the heir hunters

are now working down the family tree looking for their children

and children's children, who would have been cousins to Bob Wareing.

In general, people stayed in the Liverpool area,

or in the North of England.

There were a couple of heirs from the maternal side

that went to Australia and some to Austria.

They found that William and Elizabeth's first-born,

Thomas was born in 1918, and married Winifred Murphy in 1944.

They went on to also have, also, quite a lot of children, as well.

Nine children, they had in total.

That was quite a large one.

Interestingly, a lot of the people from Elizabeth Mallon's stem

ended up having over three children, or four children, at each point.

So, I think, congratulations in order.

I think they're very good people.

And one of them has remained in Liverpool - Daniel Jones,

who was Bob's first cousin once removed.

I don't know how I really feel about it

cos, you know, to be truthful, I didn't know him.

So it's not as if it was someone that was close to me.

Erm, but in the same thing, it's like a...

It's weird. A little bit of excitement, really, because...

you, like, start looking into who they were

and what they got up to.

The revelation that he has many relatives he doesn't know,

has left Daniel curious.

I'm interested in the family tree more so now.

I think, my mum's done her side.

So I'm more intrigued to do stuff about my dad's side of the family.

Especially because my grandad was on the naval ships.

So it's a bit more interesting.

The heir hunters discovered 20 beneficiaries

from Bob's Aunt Elizabeth's stem alone.

I'll give her a call and see if she knows exactly where he lives.

All right. Cheers. Bye.

I had no idea that this family tree would go on to have

so many beneficiaries on it.

You know, I thought there was only going to be

three sisters at the top.

They're going to have, maybe, two or three children each.

Those kids are going to have one or two children.

But no - she has 12,

I think the others had quite a few children each

and the next generation went on and had even more.

I'm very competitive, so I find this quite exhilarating.

I relish the challenge, really, to get cracking on it.

With Margaret dying a spinster, the heir hunter's next task

was to track down Bob's Aunt Adelaide's children.

Right. Let me take some notes of these.

Adelaide married John and their son William,

unlike the rest of the family, moved to Birmingham,

where he later went on to work for a car manufacturer

which made Spitfires during WW2.

Adelaide. She married in 1919,

just after the end of the First World War.

She went on to have four children, in total.

From their children, the heir hunters

managed to trace ten heirs - all first cousins once removed.

One of those was Peter O'Hare.

Shocked, really.

Erm, I didn't know anything about Robert beforehand.

Or, you know...

we was never told anything about him.

My father and his brother found out he'd had another brother

and a sister - they was all separated when they was young.

It was probably

because of that that my father didn't talk about it whatsoever.

Yeah. Me dad made the Spitfires during the Second World War.

And, erm...

..he worked nights.

He worked hard.

Oh! I got a lump in my throat then!

Where the actual family tree's concerned, I'm seriously gobsmacked.

Erm, because we only knew my mother's side.

Finding out the vast family tree on my father's side,

it certainly is gobsmacking.

I'll certainly raise a glass to Bob's memory.

The heir hunting team are pleased

they managed to find so many beneficiaries for the case -

53 in total.

I enjoyed the challenging nature of this case. Definitely.

It surprised me a lot,

from such a small number of people to have such a massive tree.

This is the largest job that I've personally worked on.

So, it was quite fun for me.

There's always a first

and it's going to be a job that I'm not going to forget easily.

Unfortunately, after all their work on the case, the Heir Hunters

were unable to confirm any value in Bob's estate

to pass on to the heirs.

Some of the cases that we look into,

we find at the end that they have little or no value.

It's not very good for us, obviously, but for the family,

at least they have a full copy of the family tree

and they found a little bit about their family

that they weren't previously aware of.

Peter's come to Bob's Memorial service in West Derby, Liverpool,

to learn more about his cousin.

I don't think there was any doubt that Bob was a lovely man,

..but he was also a mine of knowledge.

Peter has been pleased to learn so much

about his cousin's life as an MP from his family and friends.

It was unbelievable. It was fantastic.

The service for Bob was absolutely brilliant.

I learned quite a few little bits of stories,

not just from the service itself, actually talking to other people.

I don't think there's any tribute that could fit

to the enormity of what Bob was,

but I'll live every day to make sure I try and make him proud

and I'll make sure my kids know what an amazing uncle they had.

In the end, Bob may not have left anything material to his 53 heirs,

but his legacy is far more important.

Bob was somebody who was very committed to many, many causes

but he was very committed, firstly, to the people of Liverpool

and supporting the people of Liverpool

and that was his number one priority,

supporting the people of this area.

I'm pleased with how it went.

That I can go back and say I did it.

I just hope he's up there looking down at me and proud.