Sykes/Desborough Heir Hunters

Today, our heir hunts travel far and wide

in a bid to discover long-forgotten families.

On there and you might be able to find a death.

In London, a family home goes up for auction...

£170,500. Sold.

..but have the team found anyone to inherit the cash?

While another team are working on a case

which reveals a story of true love born out of war.

It was a romance that lived a long time

and I believe that they were still happily married

when she passed away.

With cases pulling at both heart and purse strings,

it's rarely a smooth ride for the heir hunters.

Today is an important day for case manager Mike Pow

and the team of heir hunters

at London-based probate genealogist firm Fraser & Fraser.

-Go on and find...

-Shall we have a look?

-Yeah, we could check.

They're bringing to a close a case they began some months ago -

that of Enid Sykes, a retired department store worker from Leeds.

I'll let you know if I hear anything.

Enid was born on the 4th of June 1928

and died from pneumonia aged 86 on the 5th of December 2014.

With no known next of kin and leaving no will,

it's Mike and the team's job to track down her beneficiaries,

or her assets will go to the state.

So, I wasn't 100% certain.

Enid's estate included her house,

which is going under the hammer today.

We are offering you a vacant three-bedroom semidetached house.

This has a guide price of £135,000.

£136,000. Thank you.

Enid had lived in her home for several decades

and lovingly tended to her roses.

It was shared passions which drew her to her neighbours.

When I said, "I'm a keen gardener,"

she was delighted and we just became friends from there.

She absolutely loved animals.

-She loved animals and gardening, especially dogs...

-Yeah.

..and...and politics.

She was a very petite, very frail-looking woman.

However, her strength of character shone through enormously, didn't it?

Enid's case was brought to the attention of the heir hunters

via a private referral.

Even though it came to them directly without being advertised

on the government's unclaimed estates list,

Mike and the team have to act quickly

as there could still be competitors hot on their heels.

The first thing that we did, as we do with any case,

is to see if she owned the property that she was residing in,

which it turned out she did.

And then from then, we'd obviously try and find the next of kin

as quickly as possible.

Travelling researchers hitting the road is a great place to start.

On every estate that we look at, it's imperative that we get

as much information about the deceased as early as possible.

The best way that we can achieve that is by sending

one of our travellers to make enquiries at the property

of the deceased.

We can get an awful lot of information

that may help with our research from that.

She was fabulous. As I say, she was a very interesting woman.

She very, very rarely said anything about herself.

She talked about animals, she talked about television

and the programmes she'd watch.

-She'd talk about politics and she'd talk about gardening.

-Yeah.

Other than that, she was a woman of mystery.

From the traveller's enquiries, he didn't really find out much,

although she was a single woman that was living on her own.

It turns out, in this case, that she'd never married,

and she was born Enid Sykes on the 4th of June 1925

in the Leeds registration district.

It was because Enid's surname was the same

on both her birth and death records

the team were able to confirm she had never married.

The next step was to order her birth certificate

to find out who her parents were.

From Enid's birth certificate, she's Enid Sykes

born to Bertie Henry Sykes and Edith Sykes, formerly Dixon.

The next step is to identify her parents' marriage

and then also see if she's got any siblings, as well.

When searching for children of Bertie and Edith, only Enid came up.

Our next step is to go back a generation

to see if we can find any aunts and uncles

and also cousins of the deceased.

As an only child with no siblings

and an unmarried woman with no children,

Enid's family tree would need to broaden in the search for her heirs.

-In that quarter. I mean, that age.

-Well, that's...

Any living aunts or uncles would be entitled to inherit her estate

and if they had passed away,

it would go to their children - her cousins.

The next job was to locate Enid's parents' marriage certificate.

They married on August the 18th, 1923.

Edith Dixon was 22 and a spinster at the time of marriage

and her father was John William Dixon.

Bertie, on the other hand, he was 27 at the time of marriage.

He was a grocer and his father was John William Sykes

who happened to be a motorman.

With this information in their grasp,

the team continued their search

with Enid's father Bertie's side of the family.

It turns out that his surname was quite common at the time

in the North of England,

but luckily, the combination of his first and middle names

were rather more unusual.

The fact that he was called Bertie Henry

is quite a good combination of names,

which led us onto his birth record relatively easily.

From Enid's father Bertie

and mother Edith's marriage certificate,

the heir hunters establish that Bertie was born in 1896.

With this information, they were able to locate his birth record,

which led them to his parents, Enid's grandparents -

John William Sykes, a domestic coachman,

and Mary Tryphena Sykes.

Having found Enid's grandparents,

the heir hunters could then start branching out

to find her aunts and uncles.

This is the marriage certificate of the paternal grandparents.

They married on the 12th of December 1895.

John William Sykes was 23 and a bachelor.

His rank was a groom.

Mary Tryphena Leach was 20 years old at the time of marriage.

She was a spinster.

The certificates that were being uncovered

revealed more than just Enid's relatives' names.

They also showed the steady rise of her paternal grandfather's career.

Living in or near the countryside, as John did,

working with horses was a popular choice of profession.

John, when he was a groom, would be responsible for grooming the horses,

turning them out, making sure their feet were picked out,

that they got the shoes on...

If they lost a shoe, they wouldn't be going to work

and as they say, "No foot, no horse."

..and preparing it in that way.

And then harnessing up and getting yourself ready to go.

In 1896, just one year after John William Sykes' marriage,

his son Bertie, Enid's father, was born.

His birth certificate gives more insight

into John's career progression.

Here is Bertie's birth certificate.

John William Sykes is the father and the occupation is coachman domestic.

So, after much hard graft in tough conditions,

John was rising through the ranks.

A coachman then is actually driving, is in control of the horses.

Whether he is a professional coachman

working for a private family...

Like the Duke of Devonshire

or the Duke of Northumberland or anybody

would have their own professional coachman

and that was quite a high status symbol.

Coachmen may have been respected, but their job wasn't an easy one.

In John's era, it would be a hard life

because you're out in all the elements.

As a rule of thumb, really, for thinking how long

he might have been driving in a day,

40 miles was a good day's work for him.

Very long hours cos when you got in at night-time,

you've still got the horses to see to.

Undo the rein and work your way up.

But the hard workers would have reaped the rewards of their efforts

in a valued profession.

If they were a professional coachman working for a big establishment,

they were very well looked after and he would have a really nice house,

good livery, good food.

His pay would be good.

Not only did Enid's family's birth and marriage certificates

give an intriguing insight into her grandfather's career,

but with her grandparents' names both confirmed,

the team could now check if they had any other children

in addition to Enid's father Bertie.

We tried to locate them on the 1911 census,

which we then discovered as John being the head of the household

with his wife and also living with Bertie,

the father of the deceased, and he had two sisters -

a Florence Ethel Sykes and a Hilda Sykes.

The heir hunters were slowly moving in

and Enid's heirs were now in striking distance

with two aunts found.

And as they advanced further,

another fascinating fact about her grandfather

John William Sykes came to light.

On his son Bertie's marriage certificate, dated 1921,

his profession is down as motorman.

And by 1927, on his daughter Hilda's marriage certificate,

he'd risen to chauffeur.

John William Sykes evidently worked hard and moved with the times.

We'd seen that the father of the deceased

had gone from working with horses

all the way up until working with cars,

which shows the transition in that period of time.

At the auction, Enid's Leeds home is up for sale

and causing quite a stir.

The guide price is £135,000

and the latest bid is already considerably higher.

Third and final time, then, are we all done at £155,000?

Ooh! That was late, wasn't it, sir?

It's against you at the far back of the room. It's here at 161.

-I'm looking to you, sir, for 162.

-161,500.

162, sir.

162 and a half then?

-163.

-Good.

It's fine. It's here, then, at 164,000 for the first time.

-164,000 for the second time.

-166.

166.

169 now, sir.

170, may I say?

And a half.

It's £170,500, then, at the very back of the seating.

For the first time.

170,500 for the second time. This is it, sir.

You're going to lose it. It's going to go.

For the third and final time at £170,500.

Sold... Well done, sir. ..at £170,500.

That's over £35,000 more than Enid's house's guide price,

gone to the highest bidder in the room.

With a sale in the bag and more cash than expected,

all the team need now are heirs to inherit Enid's estate.

He fought everyone else off and he won it

and that went for a good price, I think.

Up and down the country,

heir hunters are on the trail of beneficiaries of people

who have passed away with no known next of kin and leaving no will.

By gathering clues, they can grow family trees

and be led to living heirs.

Hello?

In London, heir hunting firm Finders have taken on the case

of retired store manager Cyril Desborough.

I think it might have been that one that I printed out.

Cyril was born on the 22nd of June 1923

in South London

and died in Bognor Regis on the 31st of October 2013 aged 90.

His last years were spent in a care home

where he was much loved.

Cyril had a very dry sense of humour.

He was a very private person...

..but there was a little twinkle there

that he would really sort of get you going

and you'd realise that he was having a joke with you.

Yeah, he was quite a little character in his own way.

Cyril lived in a bungalow in Bognor Regis

before he moved to the care home

and his neighbour Roger remembers him fondly.

I only came to know Cyril when we bought the bungalow

next door to him in 2002.

And even then, we didn't get to meet him straightaway.

And it wasn't until his garden was very overgrown in the front

and I went out and cut the grass down

and pruned his roses for him, which he was very pleased with.

And then we started getting talking to him

and at that moment, he said he'd like us to call him Des

rather than Cyril, which is what we did.

And then he started to...

In payment for doing the gardening,

he used to leave big bags of bananas and tubs of ice cream

on the back doorstep after he'd been shopping,

so I used to thank him.

It was up to Ryan and the team

to find the missing pieces of the jigsaw

that made up Cyril's past,

create his family tree

and begin the search for any living beneficiaries to inherit his estate.

His case arrived by private referral,

but as it also appeared on the government's unclaimed estates list,

other heir hunting firms could also be on the trail,

so the race was on for Ryan and the team to find heirs.

The main job of an heir hunter once we have a new estate in

is really just to get cracking

on finding the correct links

between people and tracing the beneficiaries.

Ultimately, if we can't find any surviving heirs,

the estate would pass to the government.

In the information that was provided to us,

we knew that the approximate value

of the estate was £100,000.

Because the case was a referral,

Ryan was fortunate to have a head start

and a relatively unusual name to aid his research.

So, with a gift of a name on his side,

it didn't take long for Ryan to locate the first vital record.

So, we consulted the marriage indexes

that we have access to in the office.

We didn't see anything that really jumped out at us.

We did see a possible marriage entry for a Cyril S Desborough

marrying in Italy.

The information that we got from Cyril's marriage certificate

was that he had been in World War II in Italy.

Cyril spent eight years representing his country

on more than one continent.

On the 16th of February 1942, in the middle of World War II,

Cyril enlisted in the army, and two months later,

joined the Royal Army Ordnance Corps

and was posted to North Africa the following year.

Here, the Allied forces were regaining territory

captured by Germany and their allies.

This is actually one of the critical and pivotal battles

of the Second World War.

It's the first substantial British victory against the German army

and by depriving Hitler's forces

of access to North African oil,

it had a long-term impact on the final outcome of the war itself.

Although Cyril wasn't a fighting soldier,

his job was a crucial one.

The Royal Army Ordnance Corps really does deal with the logistical issues

of getting supplies to the front line.

So, we're looking about division of the army

that is going to deliver everything

from the individual bullets all the way through to tanks.

So, it's a critical support role

that Cyril would have been involved with.

After little more than a year serving in North Africa

and enjoying Allied success,

the troops moved across land and sea to Italy, one of Germany's allies.

Cyril and his colleagues would have been involved

in the land invasion of Italy.

Based from North Africa, there was engagements with Sicily

and then onto the toe of Italy itself.

Mustering an army to take on the Italians from North Africa

took a great deal of planning

and it meant that the execution at every level

had to be done precisely.

Getting the supplies where they were needed was critical

as part of that process.

And at this time, Italy made an about turn.

What has happened is that Italy has agreed

to actually surrender to the Allies...

..meaning that, to a certain degree,

German forces are now in a "hostile nation."

Although embroiled in the heart of the war,

Cyril did manage to have some breathing space

and socialise with the locals.

Cyril and his colleagues in the ordnance supply

would have had one advantage -

they would have been sufficiently distant from the front lines

to actually have time away from camp

to actually participate in the communities a little more freely

than might otherwise be the case.

And I think the interesting thing from Cyril's records

is that he's been able to pick up Italian in three years.

Being able to interact with those you are working with

outside of an army environment, you know, it makes it home for you.

Italy had turned its back on Germany and its fascist regime tumbled.

Cyril met his Italian sweetheart Anna,

and remained in the country for some years.

It's quite common to see armies stationed overseas

developing relationships with the locals.

Anna may well have found Cyril an interesting prospect

as a Brit who, by that time, spoke Italian reasonably well.

Someone who had the prospect of taking her away

from a war-torn country

and the opportunities of starting anew back in London.

Cyril and Anna were wed on the 2nd of August 1947 in Italy.

It says that he was in the army and was a bachelor

before he got married at 24.

His wife Anna was 17 and she was also a spinster.

This marriage certificate was useful for our research

as we were able to then check whether or not Anna and Cyril

had any children from this marriage.

After they married, the happy couple moved to England together

and Cyril left the army later that year,

but enlisted as a reserve some years later.

Although his army records gave clues to his whereabouts

during the war years,

there was no hint as to whether he and Anna

had gone on to have children after they wed.

Given that we didn't really know anything about Cyril

before this case came into us

and accompanied by the fact that he married an Italian lady,

there's always a strong chance

that he may have had children over in Italy.

Now, having children in Italy is not something

that we would have been able to search from the office quickly

during the initial investigations, so we'd have to come back to it,

carry on with whatever we could do from the offices in London

and that meant, when we were coming back

to search the indexes here in England,

we had two rather unusual surnames to be working with.

We had the surname Desborough

and then the mother's maiden name of Mattiello.

Now, we didn't actually come across any children

in the searches that we undertook

and therefore that meant we were going back

to look at Cyril's birth family.

-See if you can get this.

-Yeah.

And while the team in London

were continuing to look into Cyril's past,

they handed over the search in Italy to an Italian agent

to delve into Anna's early life.

So, the Italian researcher was able to tell us

that Anna was born in Naples in 1930.

It appears that she moved to Orsenigo in 1945,

just after the war.

Unfortunately, she was actually not living with family in Orsenigo,

so therefore we couldn't find out

whether or not they had had any children there.

However, it appears that this is where she would have met Cyril.

It turned out Cyril and Anna had no children in Italy

and the search for heirs returned to the UK,

where the team had to confirm Anna was no longer alive.

We found out, actually, that Anna passed away in 1999.

She passed away in Chichester, which isn't too far away from Bognor Regis

where Cyril was living,

so we were pretty sure that this was going to be Anna's death record

and therefore there wasn't any spouse or any children

that would inherit from the estate.

With close next of kin ruled out,

plus confirmation that Cyril hadn't remarried after Anna's death,

the team now had to widen the net on their search for his family.

That's too old, that's too late, that's too late...

-So, I think we have to just...

-..that's too old.

And when they threw the net out, they didn't expect to catch

the surprising information that came back.

In reality, we almost missed out on half of the heirs because of this.

Every year in Britain,

thousands of people are taken by surprise

when they receive an unexpected visit from the heir hunters.

You tend to sort of think to yourself,

"Well, I'm not sure if this is real or not."

So, it was quite a surprise.

Today, we've got details of two estates

on the Government Legal Department's unclaimed estates list.

The first case is McDonald Best,

born on the 25th of August 1925,

possibly in Georgetown, British Guiana.

He was 85 when he died on the 7th of April 2011

in London in the NW8 postcode area.

McDonald Best was also known as St Clair McDonald Best.

Next, it's the case of Kamal Bhan.

She was born on the 20th of August 1934

in India, possibly in Goa,

and died on the 26th of April 2011 in Barnet, Hertfordshire

when she was 76 years old.

It is believed that Kamal was divorced

and may have a brother living in India.

If you think you may be related to either of these people,

you would need to make a claim on their estate

via the Government Legal Department.

And if you ARE their next of kin,

you could have a windfall coming your way.

In London, heir hunters from Fraser & Fraser

are investigating the case of Enid Sykes,

a retired department store worker from Leeds.

Enid passed away aged 86 in December 2014

and so far, no heirs to her estate have been found.

She was a really intriguing person.

For her absolute starkness and forthrightness,

she had a real warmth about her.

We loved her, I've got to be honest. We really, really cared about her.

Enid's home went under the hammer at auction today

and it was rather a hot property.

So, Stainbeck sold, in the end, for £170,500 - well over its guide.

In fact, we smashed its guide into smithereens.

With cash in the bank, the team were now more determined than ever

to find Enid's beneficiaries to inherit her estate.

After researching her father's family tree,

two aunts had been discovered,

one of whom - Hilda - had married.

If she'd had any children, they would be Enid's heirs.

And while research continued,

the heir hunters were now also looking into

Enid's mother's side of the family.

The maternal side of the family was slightly more difficult,

due to the fact that she had a relatively common surname in Dixon.

We had to do the same as we did on the paternal side

and try and locate any brothers and sisters that she may have had.

Mike and his colleagues followed the same path as they had

when researching Enid's father's side of the family

and they discovered a sprawling family tree.

-Check under these addresses...

-Yeah.

-..to see if it pops up.

Enid's mother, Edith Dixon's parents,

were John William Dixon and Jane Elizabeth Cockcroft.

They'd had six children, including Edith.

And see if we can fit a pattern together there...

Once we'd established the siblings,

the next stage is to try and locate marriages for those siblings.

And once that's done, hopefully try and locate

what would be cousins of the deceased.

And by doing so, the heir hunters finally manage

to trace heirs of Enid's on her mother's side.

Her aunt Emily had two children, Gordon and Norma,

Enid's first cousins.

And from this branch of the family tree,

the team found six heirs.

John Henson, from Redcar in North Yorkshire,

is Gordon's son and Enid's first cousin once removed.

I do remember the road that she lived on

and her name was mentioned,

but as far as seeing Enid Sykes, I cannot recall.

John's parents and his four siblings emigrated to Australia in 1973

when he was a young man of 20.

He became estranged from his wider family,

who remained in England,

so the call from the heir hunters came as a big surprise.

Then the inheritance that's involved,

I feel as though it's a bit of a shock.

Not speaking to Enid and not knowing her at all,

I'm a bit confused what to do with the inheritance.

If I get the money,

it will probably go to charity and some of my family

and it will be mentioned to the family where it's come from.

With John confirmed as one of six heirs

on Enid's mother's family tree,

news came in about her father's side of the family and his two sisters.

After locating the paternal aunts of the deceased,

we established that Florence died a spinster without issue,

but Hilda obviously married a Thomas Alfred Hamer,

had children who led to the first beneficiaries on that side.

Hilda and Thomas had two children, Derek and Sheila,

and from this branch of the family tree,

three more heirs had been found.

After concluding the research,

it appears that, on the maternal side,

we have quite a few beneficiaries.

It looks like there's going to be one, two,

three, four, five, six, seven,

eight, nine, ten, 11, 12 in total.

On the paternal side, we know there's three,

so it looks like there's going to be 15 heirs to share the estate.

OK, we're allowed to get someone to do that

if there's no-one to do anything today.

It's been a tough case to crack, but the team have done it

and found Enid's rightful next of kin.

It's quite a successful case in the end.

Obviously, we've located all the beneficiaries to Enid's estate

and also, at the end of the day, the auction went very well

and the property sold for about £170,000.

So, John Henson will be one of 15 to inherit a share of Enid's estate.

Since he received the call from the heir hunters,

childhood memories are slowly beginning to trickle back.

Today, he's decided to take an emotional trip down memory lane.

I'm now on my way to Stainbeck Lane, Enid Sykes' house...

..that she's lived there for many years.

I'm 62 now, so I can remember visiting

when I was about eight, nine, ten, 11,

but I'm sure it's down here somewhere.

It's definitely on a hill, which I remember on the right-hand side.

And there it is, 172.

I do remember, yeah. Definitely.

Yeah, I can remember knocking on that door as a child.

Here we are.

The sad event of Enid's passing

has reunited John with his long-lost cousin.

That's the one.

Nice to be back after all that time.

It must be 50 years, 54 years ago probably.

52 years ago.

Aha. Here we are. I remember the rose bushes.

I always seem to remember there was roses on the right-hand side

as you go through into the back.

So, it'll be lovely to just have a look

and see if the roses are still there all this time.

I'm sure they will be cos there's roses everywhere, yeah.

I'd hoped...

Yes, we're getting in the back here.

A year after Enid died,

her garden sadly isn't as spectacular as it once was.

Yeah, the roses were along here, you can see.

Yeah, they're still here but they're everywhere.

Now John's early memories have come flooding back,

he wants to find out more about Enid in her later years.

-Hello.

-Hello.

-I'm John Henson. Here to talk about Enid.

-I'm Stephanie.

-Hello, Stephanie.

-Hello. And I'm Sarah.

-Hello.

-A very petite woman.

-Yes, yeah.

-She was very robust.

She used to walk up this hill,

-which is a killer of a hill sometimes.

-Yes.

But she used to walk with her little dog.

-And she lost the dog - it died - and she really missed it.

-Oh, yeah.

And we had a Rottweiler at the time,

and she used to want to look after it,

so we'd take the Rottweiler down,

-and it used to sit in the house with her.

-Yeah.

But she'd walk up and down the hill.

Very robust, very independent. Didn't ever want help from anybody.

-So, she was on her own for a long time?

-A very long time.

She once mentioned that she'd had a sweetheart.

-That's the only thing she ever...

-Yeah?

Enid never really talked about herself,

but every now and then, she'd give you a little snippet,

and that was Enid.

The thing is it seems as though she's had a happy life.

That's nice to know. Nice to meet up with her neighbours.

All the best, John. Take care. Safe travels.

'Amazing to find out a lot more about Enid,'

and was a really happy lady till the end, from what I can make out.

So, meeting them two lovely ladies today has been very interesting,

and hope to meet them again

cos they were pretty special in Enid's life, by the sounds of it.

In London, heir hunters from Finders are working on

the case of retired store manager Cyril Desborough from Bognor Regis.

I might give them a call.

Yeah, do you want to give them a call?

Cyril was living in a care home, and he was 90 when he died in 2013.

He left no will and had no apparent next of kin.

So far, clues to Cyril's past are thin on the ground,

but the team do know that he met an Italian girl

when he was stationed in Italy during the war.

There was a girl that used to run messages in between the camps,

and he was saying she was very fit and she used to run for miles.

She was only a teenager,

and it turned out she later became his wife.

But despite a marriage spanning over half a century,

Cyril and his wife Anna never grew their family,

and she passed away 14 years before him.

So, with no spouse or children to inherit his estate,

the team had to move on.

So, the next step for us would be to go up from Cyril,

find out more about his parents,

find out, particularly, what their names were,

when they married and then conduct a birth search

for any siblings of Cyril from that date of marriage onwards.

And Cyril's birth certificate gave researcher Camilla

the information she needed.

We are able to see that he was born on the 22nd of June 1923.

His father was George Desborough,

his mother was Ethel Helen Desborough,

formally Judd.

So, at the moment, I'm looking to see if I can find a marriage

between a Desborough and a Judd in Lambeth

as this was where Cyril was born.

This confirms that George and Ethel were Cyril's parents,

and therefore the marriage between a Desborough and a Judd,

which we found in Lambeth, was the correct one.

Having obtained a copy of Cyril's parent's marriage certificate,

we knew that they were married on the 30th of June 1912.

Now, there's nothing really unusual about the details given to us

on the marriage certificate,

but one interesting point to note was both of the parents

were living in a Peabody Trust property in 1912,

and this was an early form of social housing.

Peabody Buildings was founded in 1862

by George Peabody, an American banker,

diplomat and philanthropist.

His mission, which still stands today,

was to provide a good home, a real sense of purpose

and a strong feeling of belonging to Londoners.

He'd been born in Massachusetts

in 1795,

but came to London to further his business career,

settled in the city of London in 1837

and made a great fortune.

He decided to give money to good causes

in both Britain and America,

and in London, the money he gave to his first five trustees,

which eventually amounted to £500,000,

was used to build model dwellings for working Londoners.

The estates the trustees built

consisted of blocks of flats with shared facilities.

The flats were cleaner and healthier than the slum dwellings

in which many of the people had previously lived.

It was widely regarded as a privilege

to be living on a Peabody estate

and to have better accommodation and better prospects in life

than many of their contemporaries living in the surrounding streets.

Residents were working people on low incomes

being offered affordable housing,

but they had to be respectable tenants

and abide by the estate's rule book.

There was quite a long list of rules which had to be strictly obeyed.

The tenants had to take it in turns every morning

to sweep the steps and the entrance halls.

They had to take it in turns also

to clean the windows of the laundry room and the bathhouse.

It was on a Peabody estate in Stamford Street

near Waterloo in South London

that Cyril's parents Ethel and George's paths

most probably first crossed.

They both lived there with their respective families.

In 1911, Ethel was 22 and George, 21.

By 1911, when we know that Ethel and her family

were living at the estate,

although many of the older generation

were still following the manual occupations

that we find in the early tenants from the 1870s,

the adult children were in, perhaps, slightly more elevated occupations.

They were working as shorthand typists,

bank clerks, pupil teachers

or, like Ethel, a pianoforte teacher.

George worked as a labourer. He probably worked long hours,

but the fact that they both had occupations

meant they were well able to afford the rent for a flat on the estate.

And their details can be seen in the original record book.

This is the tenant register for the Stamford Street estate,

which shows all the tenants living in each flat from 1875 onwards.

And it's open at the page for Flat 10 in Block M,

which consisted of two rooms.

The rent was four shillings per week.

And on the 13th of March 1911, George Desborough became the tenant.

His occupation is shown as labourer.

George Desborough's weekly wage was 27 shillings,

and the family consisted of himself, aged 26, and his wife, aged 24.

By the time Cyril was born in 1923,

his parents had left the estate

and had moved further south to Herne Hill.

In the heir hunters' office, now Cyril's parents had been found,

the search for any siblings of his could begin.

When looking up births for a Desborough

with the mother's maiden name Judd,

we are able to see...

..that there were three possible births.

First of all, Cyril,

then he perhaps has a brother called Kenneth

and also another brother called Leslie.

Next was the search for death records for the brothers,

and when they were traced, there were marriage certificates to find.

These, in turn, would lead to Cyril's nieces and nephews -

his heirs.

Leslie passed away in the Lambeth area in 1976.

He married a Hilda in 1945, and they had one son called David.

Therefore, we had found our first heir to the estate of Cyril.

Well, when they said that

Cyril Desborough had passed away,

it immediately came to mind that I knew who he was -

my uncle Cyril.

My first feeling was, "Oh, what a shame,"

because I hadn't known the guy for so many years.

My memories were of a very nice chap and his wife.

And for this to come out of the blue was quite a bit of a surprise.

David also remembers Cyril's wife.

Anna, when I first met her, she didn't speak hardly any English.

I think she was only about 15 when they met.

But it was a romance that lived a long time,

and I believe, as far as I'm aware,

that they were still happily married when she passed away.

So, when we found David, we were able to give him a call

and just really speak to him about the family tree.

In this case in particular,

it was very useful for us to have done that.

Without speaking to David,

we wouldn't have found the extent of the family

that, eventually, we did.

Next for the team was to research Cyril's other brother

to see if he had any surviving descendants

who would also be Cyril's heirs.

We then started to look into Kenneth.

He passed away in 2002 and married an Irene in 1942.

He had four heirs to his estate.

So, Cyril's family tree had now come alive

and sprouted new branches providing a total of five heirs.

But after speaking to the heirs,

Ryan and the team discovered that this wasn't the end of the story.

Having spoken to the family, they actually informed us that

there was a further three siblings that we'd missed

during the initial research.

So, the names of the three siblings was Alice, Alfred and Ruby.

Now, we were initially using the surnames Desborough and Judd,

which were the surnames of Cyril's parents when they married.

Now, the reason that we didn't pick up on

these three birth records initially

was because Cyril's mother was actually registering them

as her maiden name being Payne,

and this left us wondering, "Why Payne and not Judd?"

I think the Desborough case highlighted the importance

of speaking to and questioning thoroughly the beneficiaries

because having established there were nephews and nieces,

we really had to be sure that they were either the only ones entitled

or that something hadn't been missed.

It seemed that Cyril's maternal grandmother,

whose married name was Judd, may have remarried a Mr Payne.

So, it looked as though Cyril's mother Ethel

had switched between both maiden names when registering her children.

The key information we use along with dates

when we do the research is surnames,

so, you know, there was no reason for us to suppose

that we should be checking for Desborough Payne

as well as Desborough Judd.

The team had all of the information they needed

to complete Cyril's family tree and locate all his heirs.

This was a satisfying case to complete.

We were able to identify and locate nine heirs

who will all be due to a share of an estate worth about £100,000.

So, you know, it's really rewarding financially,

but also really satisfying that we managed to overcome

the problem with the surnames and crack the case.

And Cyril's nephew David

is glad to have been given the chance to remember his uncle.

It would have been nice to have met him

and just to be able to shake his hand

and say, "Hello, old chap.

"I'm the son of your brother Leslie."

But sadly, that can't happen now.

I think he would have been happy

that the money has gone to blood family.

It wasn't a huge amount.

Probably worked very hard through his life to get what he got.

And I spent what I got on a roof repair,

so I put it to good use.

I think Cyril was one of the residents

that we all remember for a long time

because it was just his own personality.

He just shone, really, and so he really sticks in your memory.

Cyril may be gone, but he's not forgotten.

I think this one's my favourite,

where he's got that twinkle in his eye,

which he never, ever lost.