Simm/Gray Heir Hunters

Today, the heir hunters are in a race to contact relatives.

It's a matter of hours that they'll be followed up

by someone from another firm.

And there's no let-up.

He said that he has already been contacted by

five other companies today.

Another team uncover a family secret.

Yes, he's born in the surname Gray, but there's no father stated

and therefore his is an illegitimate birth.

For the heirs they find...

It's brought the family together a little bit now.

..lost relatives are seldom forgotten.

He was one of the good people in this world,

that's for sure.

Every day, the Government Legal Department

publish the names of people who have died with no known next of kin.

If an estate remains unclaimed on this list,

the proceeds from the sale of any property or possessions

go to the state.

We're confident it looks good, so we'll send someone over to you.

Heir hunting firms, like Finders in London,

investigate cases on this list,

trying to find possible blood relatives

who would be entitled to inherit.

-I'd be disappointed if we didn't get...

-OK.

Senior case manager Ryan Gregory

has spotted a case that's just appeared this morning

that might be worth investigating.

I'm having a look at the estate

of John Leslie Simm.

Some good information in the ads.

It tells us that he was born on 27th July 1945

in Warrington, in Cheshire.

He passed away in Dorset on 26th September 2015.

The listing also says that John had a wife called Dorothy Olivia

who passed away in August 2006.

Ryan's searches quickly reveal that

the area of Dorset where John Simm lived

was the small seaside town of Highcliffe, near Christchurch.

Neighbour Reg Stones remembers him well.

John Simm lived right opposite my house

for some 15 years

along with his wife Olivia,

otherwise known as Olive.

John was actually 20 years younger than Olivia.

They seemed extremely happy together,

and they were evidently well matched, is the word.

Another of the couple's friends, John Woodhouse,

first met John 20 years ago.

He kept himself to himself.

He was devoted to his wife, Olivia...

..and when she died,

he lived a very quiet lifestyle.

He didn't touch on his family at all.

My name's Amy Cox, I'm calling...

Back in the office, Ryan has enlisted the help

of some of the research team...

I checked, and apparently, these have been ordered.

..who've found out that John owned his own house in Highcliffe.

Oh, I do promise it's an actual matter. We do...

They think it could be worth over £400,000.

But then is there any more certs

you can get locally which should help?

With no other family information to go on,

the team have checked Olivia's death record

and found her maiden name was Henss.

If someone's lived there long enough, they should know...

A birth search has told them she and John had no children.

Right. That's brilliant.

We know we're not looking for a spouse

who would be entitled to inherit from him John's estate,

but what I'm doing at the moment is,

given that she was born in 1926 and she married John in 1970,

I'm thinking she married before she married John.

We just want to make sure that there isn't any children

that would be entitled to inherit from John's estate.

Any children from a previous marriage

may have been adopted by John.

Hey. That's under control, is it?

Yeah.

The team have found the evidence about John's wife, Olivia,

they've been looking for.

We assumed that the deceased's wife was married previously.

I've found out that she was married to a Gordon James Stackhouse.

That's been verified by finding them together

on the London electoral roll.

But, so far, I've managed to kind of rule out children.

The next step is to see if John Leslie Simm had any siblings.

If you're confident that the register is going to cooperate

and send through,

-we might as well put him in another place.

-OK.

From John's birth record, the team can see his parents' names -

John Simm and Violet Mary Bridge.

Searching birth indexes in the years after their marriage,

they discover they had no other children.

Check for her.

I'd say that that's probably just because they thought,

"Oh, it's Johnson, it's going to be really hard."

Ryan and the team will have to try and find

aunts, uncles and cousins of John's,

and to do that, they need to go back one generation,

to John's grandparents,

but this is all taking time.

I'm a bit concerned, really, if I'm honest,

how long it's taken me to get to this stage,

but I'm going to carry on.

I just think that it's going to be quite a competitive case.

Hopefully, that's not too far away, is it?

When the Bona Vacantia list is updated,

we have to assume

that other people are going to see them

at the same time as us

and obviously we'll have to work as fast as we can

to get ahead of the competition on those cases.

-And also I ordered that one locally to get her date of birth.

-OK.

To get things moving,

Ryan decides they should look into

John's father's side of the family first.

His parents' names were Joseph Simm and Mary Rudd.

By using the 1911 census,

it looks as though the deceased's father

may have been an only child,

so that's good in terms of limiting the research that we need to do.

With no aunts and uncles to inherit

on John's father's side of the family,

the team now move on to his mother's side.

I've found the records quite easily on this side of the family.

They've found that John's mother's parents

were Ernest Bridge and Mary Kirkham.

-Yeah, I got that, and it gave me...

-OK.

-..this information.

-OK.

Their searches reveal that John's mother, Violet,

was the first of four daughters born between 1913 and 1923

in the North West of England.

Are they meant to still be alive?

She could...yeah, she could still be alive.

Although it's unlikely Violet's sisters are still alive,

the team need to be sure, so they're looking for death records.

OK. Are we good to...?

-I'll just go back and check over them to see...

-Yeah.

Their next step is to look for marriages

which would help them find any children if they had them.

This one

and they had found a better match

-for a different marriage.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

I was initially slightly panicking

given that I couldn't find any marriages and deaths

for the maternal aunts in Warrington,

which is where they're born.

But had a bit of a dig around

and found out there's a different registration district

they have been using for their marriages,

which is Newton-le-Willows in Lancashire.

It's quite near to Warrington.

That was kind of the breakthrough I needed to descend the lines

cos it helped me find the marriages

and then gave me the surnames needed for the birth searches.

It's going to be better to get the one death back

than...all the possible marriages.

-Yeah.

-They might just say...

They might just make us think he's a bachelor or something.

At least then we'd know.

In their searches,

the team has found something interesting

about Violet's youngest sister, Joyce.

She had married a William John Spry in 1956.

They moved from the North West to Devon because of William's job

in the Admiralty Constabulary or naval police.

Begun by Samuel Pepys in 1686,

the force has a long history.

The principles of the Constabulary was to look after MOD property,

to stop theft from the properties.

For centuries, the Navy, Army and Air Force

all had their own constabularies.

At the time when Mr Spry was in the Admiralty Constabulary,

there was around 2,000 employees, constables,

at...I believe it was around 115 different establishments

throughout the country.

But unfortunately for law enforcers like William Spry,

constabulary's days were numbered.

There was several closing in the late '50s and early '60s,

which meant that he had to move with the job,

as any service personnel would have done.

And by 1965, with the formation of the Ministry of Defence,

the constabulary's days were over.

The Navy, the Air Force and the Army services were brought together

and became the Ministry of Defence Police

we still have today.

So, the force

that you see today is responsible for providing

unique specialist policing,

protecting some of the most valuable assets of the nation,

both in defence and in critical national infrastructure,

such as energy installations and places like GCHQ.

The force is very different from any other police force

in that most police forces have a very small number of officers

who are highly trained firearms officers.

For us, it's very different.

90% of our roles and responsibilities

involve countering the counter-terrorism threat,

so therefore 90% of our officers are armed officers.

William Spry was with the Ministry of Defence Police

up until he died in 1970.

But could she have married before? Is this what we're thinking as well?

Back in the office,

the team have discovered that William's wife, Joyce, John's aunt,

had passed away in 2003.

But she had two children, who would be John's cousins

and potential heirs to his estate.

Given that we're a couple hours into the search,

I'd be very surprised if the person I'm about to call

hasn't been contacted by someone else.

But fingers crossed.

It's not going to be a huge family tree,

so...it would be nice just to speak to them

before anybody else, hopefully.

Hello, good morning, this is a message for Mr Derek Spry.

It's Ryan Gregory.

If you could kindly give us a call back in the office.

Like I said, it's in relation to an inheritance matter.

Thank you very much. Bye-bye.

So, get someone to go there and someone to go there.

'Some of the biggest frustrations'

in working a case when you know it's competitive

are the little delays that happen along the way

that are not our fault.

For example, if we're trying to get hold of a particular person

who we believe could be a beneficiary,

and they're out or away or on holiday,

it can really slow things down

and obviously give the competition time to catch up with us.

But it seems Ryan might be in luck.

I have Derek on the phone for you.

The one I just phoned? OK. Cool.

Hello, Ryan speaking. Is that Mr Spry?

Tha...that's OK. Thanks for getting back to me. OK.

Ryan may have made contact with what could be the first heir,

but will the team be able to stay ahead of the competition?

Yeah, it's a matter of hours that they'll be followed up

by someone from another firm.

Or will they lose out?

And he said that he has already been contacted

by five other companies today.

The next case concerns a man called Charles Edward Gray.

He was born on 22nd December 1943 in Glasgow,

but spent much of his life living in Teignmouth, Devon.

A popular character around town,

Charles, or Charlie, as he was known,

was captain of the local bowling club.

Well, I met Charlie

in 2004 when I joined this bowling club

and got to know him reasonably well,

mainly in the little place over there, the London,

where I used to convince him it was a good idea to buy me a pint.

Unfortunately, he had the attitude where I should buy him one as well,

so it used to be quite exciting from time to time.

Another bowling friend, Bev Bell, knew Charlie for eight years.

He was always first

to buy a round, which always went down rather well.

He was also generous with his time.

Whenever we went to an away match,

everyone always came up to Charlie, shook his hands.

They all knew him.

He definitely left an impression on everyone.

But bowling hadn't always been central to Charlie's life.

In 1959, he joined the Army and became a Royal Engineer,

serving in Germany and Yemen.

He later worked as a publican and hotelier

eventually settling in Teignmouth.

Sadly on Christmas morning in 2014, Charlie passed away.

On that Christmas, he was coming to my house

where we'd got a meal ready for him,

and it was all rather traumatic, shall we say.

And testament to Charlie's popularity,

the whole community turned out to bid him farewell.

You've only got to look at when we had the service for him

in the local church.

And that the vicar - not me - the vicar said,

"Well, we've got 260 seats," and I had to bring in more.

He seemed to be memorable to a lot of people

and a lot of people made a big effort

to make sure that they made his funeral.

Having passed away with no known next of kin,

Charlie's estate was advertised

on the Treasury Solicitor's Bona Vacantia list.

The gist of it is we just need to resend agreements to both of them.

It was picked up by case manager Richard Fryer

of London heir hunting firm Hoopers.

The first thing we would do would be

to check if there seems be any potential value in such an estate.

So, the first thing we did then was to look at land registry records

which show that Charlie Gray

actually owned a property in Teignmouth,

which was a guest house

which seemed to contain a variety of self-contained flats.

Charlie's property meant his estate had a value of around £350,000.

Obviously, if there is a property in an estate we're researching,

it gives the opportunity for potential beneficiaries

to benefit in a much larger way than they would otherwise -

in a way that could be life-changing for certain individuals.

Have we covered all the censuses and everything...?

The first thing the team needed to establish

was whether Charlie had been married.

We made some enquiries in Teignmouth,

and we found out that Charlie had been predeceased

by his partner, Wendy Valentine.

And as the team discovered,

Wendy was something of a celebrity -

an actress previously married to

'50s singing sensation, Dickie Valentine,

who was tragically killed in a car crash in 1971.

Yeah, I wrote to her on Friday.

Case manager Abigail Rising looked into the relationship

between Charlie and Wendy.

We found that Charlie had been

living with Wendy up till her death in 2001.

We were unable to find any marriages for Charlie and Wendy,

and we were pretty confident that Charlie hadn't been married before

and didn't have any children.

This meant the heir hunters needed to expand the search.

We knew that Charlie had been born in Glasgow,

so, knowing this, we contacted our researcher in Edinburgh

in the hope that she would be able to find a record of his birth,

and she came up with the goods and found a record of his birth in 1943

in Campsie, which is just to the north of Glasgow.

So, when we were able to view this,

we found that his mother's name is listed as

a Jean Phillips Stables Gray.

But, interestingly, there's no father

listed on his birth certificate.

But the team could also see quite clearly

on Charlie's birth certificate

that his mother's surname, Gray, was her married name.

Her maiden name was Michie.

Can't think of any off...

I saw something on the list the other day, actually.

I'll make sure we've got it.

They looked for a marriage and found that Charlie's mother, Jean,

had married a Donald Gray in 1929, when she was 22.

They didn't have any children,

and unfortunately, they divorced in 1940.

So, with Charlie's birth certificate,

yes, he's born in the surname Gray, but there's no father stated,

and therefore his is an illegitimate birth.

With Charlie born three years after his mother's divorce

from her only husband,

it's unlikely he was Donald Gray's son.

So, he said we're waiting on one certificate now.

Jean herself appears to have kept the surname,

so it was probably the most socially acceptable name to give her son.

Let me show you this case.

When a mother has divorced and hasn't changed their name

but goes on to have further children with another gentleman,

it's difficult sometimes to identify her children.

Having discounted his father's side of the family,

the team checked to see if they could find

any other children Jean may have had.

It's half-blood from the paternal.

These half-blood siblings would be the first in line

to inherit from Charlie's estate.

A search of the birth records using just Charlie's mother's surname Gray

or her maiden name, which is Michie,

revealed no other births,

and therefore, with no siblings or father's name to work with,

that just left research to do

on Charlie's mother's side of the family.

The search for heirs now had to move back a generation

to any aunts, uncles or cousins of Charlie.

Yep, OK. Great. That's brilliant. Thanks a lot.

But when the team looked for Charlie's mother's birth certificate,

they couldn't find one.

Travelling researcher Jonathan Wright

was despatched to a records office

in the hope of finding out more from certificates.

Jean Gray's death certificate

was to be found in the Scottish death indexes.

Fortunately, Scottish death certificates are very detailed.

They actually give information regarding the person's parents.

So, although we didn't have...we weren't able to locate

a birth certificate for Jean Gray,

nevertheless, we did know her parents' names

from her death certificate.

This enabled us to locate Jean with the parents

on the 1911 Scottish Census.

I've anticipated your call.

'English certificates -'

birth, marriage, deaths -

are pretty good as far as information is concerned,

but Scottish certificates have a lot more information available.

They give a lot more details of parents

and sometimes divorce details.

Just a lot more information that we can use in our research.

The team at Hoopers found that the Census was also useful

in resolving the issue of Jean's missing birth certificate.

Well, a fairly revealing aspect of the 1911 Census

that explains why we weren't able to find Jean Michie's birth entry -

she was actually born in Cape Colony, in South Africa.

And they also found the reason for Jean's South African birth.

It was tied to the career of her father,

Charles' grandfather, Harry Michie.

We were able to locate a copy of an Army recruitment form

for Harry Michie, Jean Michie's father,

dated 15th January 1900.

A month later, he was fighting in the Boer War in South Africa.

This war in South Africa was between the British Empire

and the descendants of Dutch, German and French settlers,

who were called the Boers.

The Boer War was a bush conflict.

The Boers were renowned fighters. They were, after all farmers.

They knew how to shoot and how to run horses,

and that proved very effective in a mobile war,

which this was, against the British.

The British were deeply unhappy of the guerrilla tactics

the Boers used - this was very unsportsmanlike.

The idea of basically hiding behind a hill

and taking a sharp shooter shot at a British soldier

and then hiding behind the hill again

was something you were not trained to do in the British Army.

Military records show that Harry Michie

was in a Scottish regiment called the Gordon Highlanders.

The Victorians identified various populations around the world

as being natural warriors and, for instance, in India,

they found it was the Gurkhas in Nepal

and in Britain, it was the Highlanders.

I think it's very possible Harry Michie joined in January 1900

out of a sort of patriotic zeal

brought on by observing the fact that

Britain was actually doing badly in the war

and there was a need to rise to the defence of the Empire.

It's also important to realise that he's passed as fit,

and nine out of ten recruits

who actually tried to enlist during the Boer War

were found not to be physically fit.

So, the fact he was actually a fit young man

probably gave him an advantage.

In May 1901, Harry headed back to the UK.

But it wasn't the last he would see of South Africa.

It seems reasonable to assume that

Harry's time in the Army in South Africa

led to his decision to go back there.

And in 1905, he married Jane Bisset Steele there in South Africa.

Charlie's mother Jean was born two years later

and census records show a growing family.

By the time Jean's brother Harry was born in 1910,

the family had moved back to Renfrew, in Scotland.

And from these few documents -

birth certificate, death certificate, the census entry -

we're able to build a fuller picture of the family

and their movements during this particular period of time.

Along with Jean and her brother Harry, Harry Sr and Jane

had gone on to have another four children,

making five aunts and uncles

who we've found could be Charlie's heirs.

But as the team delved deeper,

it seemed another overseas war might jeopardise their chances.

Short of killing them, you've got to do something with them.

Every year in the UK, thousands of people receive a surprise

knock on the door from the heir hunters.

It makes me feel very sad that we didn't know

that we had all these relatives.

Today, we have details of two unclaimed estates

on the Treasury Solicitor's Bona Vacantia list.

The first is that of Ernestine Georgina Agnes Burnham,

who passed away at the age of 76

in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, on 14th September 1990.

She was born in Cologne, in Germany, on 23rd March 1923.

Ernestine's German mother, Katherina Walterscheidt,

was a concert singer, and her father,

William Ernest Spencer Burnham,

was a jockey from Thirtleby, near Hull, in Yorkshire.

They married on 22nd September 1920 in Cologne.

Ernestine is thought to be their only child

and came to England in 1947, when she would have been 24.

She lived with an aunt called Evelyn Langston,

a professor at the Royal Academy Of Music.

Could there be links to Ernestine Burnham in your family?

Do you now anyone of that name?

The next unclaimed estate is that of Catherine Dovanski,

also known as Dovancki.

She died on 16th June 2008 in Todmorden, West Yorkshire, aged 81.

Catherine was born on 7th December 1926, in the Irish Republic,

and is thought to have worked in the textile industry.

She was a widow and her husband's name was Guyla Dovancki.

They are believed to have had one daughter

but no other details are known about her.

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

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

you would need to make a claim on their estate

through the Government Legal Department.

Once again, the names of the cases we're trying to solve

with your help today are...

Heir hunting firm Finders have been looking into the unclaimed estate

of John Leslie Simm, who was well regarded by friends

in the seaside town of Highcliffe, in Dorset, where he lived.

I will immensely miss him.

Because of the banter we used to have.

And the camaraderie we had.

Ryan has been struggling to get hold of one of John's cousins, Derek,

but has finally made contact.

He knew John, who passed away. Erm, he knew John's wife as well.

He was able to confirm that John didn't have any children

and that John was an only child.

So, it looks as though there's just five maternal heirs

and it could be that there's just five heirs in total.

Oh, right. Are you OK to talk?

And the team also managed to make contact with Derek's sister.

OK.

Would you prefer if we gave you a call back...later on?

Both have agreed to have visits from the travelling researchers.

I'm after Holly. We're just going to arrange the visit that we need.

We've got long enough to get all the paperwork drawn up,

which is good, for the visit.

To see one of the maternal cousins.

The other one wants a visit in two days' time.

Which is not ideal, but you've got to work around people's schedules.

Where a probate genealogy firm

and we look into deceased people without next of kin.

And I believe that he may be the next of kin.

We're first to speak to the heirs that I've spoken to

but I know that within the next...

It's a matter of hours that they'll be followed up

by someone from another firm.

So far, it's good news with John Simm's mother's family.

The team has managed to make contact with four heirs on this side

and travelling researcher Phil is on his way to meet with Derek.

I think he knew him perhaps as a younger person

and he is a maternal cousin of the deceased.

At the office, Ryan is anxious

Phil gets to meet Derek as quickly as he can.

I'm expecting there to be competition.

It's very rare. I mean...

It doesn't happen that you don't have any competition

on these type of cases any more.

All he can do is wait.

But while Ryan has some lunch,

Amy makes a discovery that could alter everything.

So, Ryan asked me to confirm the size of the paternal family

because originally, he thought that the deceased father

was an only child.

But it turns out that the deceased father was actually

an only child in 1911.

His parents had actually only married in 1909.

So, then they went on to have some more children.

As a result of doing birth records searches after 1911,

Amy has found out that John's grandparents on his father's side

had five more children.

With this whole side of the family opening up, the pressure is on

to try and contact their children, who would be potential heirs.

I just have a few questions for him,

just to check I've got the right person.

Thank you.

I managed to speak to a paternal cousin of John Leslie Simm.

And he said that he has already been contacted

by five other companies today.

Erm, and a company went round and visited him as well.

But he did confirm that he knew the deceased

and he was aware that he passed away.

So we know that we've definitely got the right family.

It looks like Ryan's early decision

to focus on the mother's side of the family was probably the wrong one.

When we work on a case

and we find that the people we believe to be the heirs

have already been retained by another company,

we don't just leave it there.

In many cases, what we'll do is just double-check over the research

to make sure that nothing's been missed.

I think at this point, this side has already...

This side must have been already done by the other companies,

whereas we decided to go for the Bridge family first. I think...

Hopefully, there might be some people

that we're going in there first with.

-It's definitely worth going on.

-SHE LAUGHS

You can't... You can't just give up like that.

Ryan gets the news now he's back from lunch.

The family tree has kind of doubled in size since I've gone.

Erm, now we were always going to come back to the paternal side

anyway, given that we'd only pinpointed them on the 1911 census.

So we are playing catch-up on this side of the family

whereas on the other side, we are the first to contact.

So that's sometimes the way it's goes.

In Woking, travelling researcher Phil

is finally at the home of John's cousin, Derek Spry.

We met Olive, John's wife,

-when we were kids.

-Yes.

And she was quite a bit

-older than him.

-Yes.

So, they never had children.

Yes, and that's why this has gone back up, back up the bloodline.

-It's brought the family together a little bit now.

-Yeah.

-They started speaking to each other a little bit.

-Well, do you know?

-Often these tragedies...

-Yes.

-A death in the family does that.

But one little thing, and it's something they do

at the end of these processes, a family tree.

Yeah, my sister said that.

-And it's... It's just there. It's gratis, it's nothing.

-It's nice.

And it's just for you.

-I will make a note that you would like the family tree.

-Please.

-That's us, business concluded.

-Thanks very much.

Well, thanks very much.

I, I knew John when I was a small child.

He was my eldest cousin, I believe.

And he married Olive and we had a rapport as children.

I also remember him as tall and dressed in a suit

and a smart-looking bloke.

Erm, that's the only memories I can really remember.

He did visit when he was older and he was just

a really, really nice person.

Very polite.

And with Derek signing up with the heir hunters,

Phil gives Ryan the good news.

He was really interested in the family tree side of it at the end.

-OVER PHONE:

-'Of course. OK, that's definitely something

-'we can send one out to him as well.'

-Excellent, that's...

-It all went very well.

-'Good job.

-'Thank you very much for checking it out, mate.'

-No problem at all.

-Thanks, Ryan.

-'OK, take care.'

-Cheers, bye, bye.

This is such a lovely job, working like this. Erm, so for...

I've got nothing particularly planned now so I'll go home now

and see what the day brings.

Back at the office, the whole team are trying to work out exactly

how many heirs there are on the father's side

of John Simm's family.

Proper sleuthing at the moment.

We're just trying to find this paternal heir.

The 70-year-old cousin of John's is in a care home.

But Ryan needs to find out what it's called.

She's not married so I can't just drop down and try

and find any children to contact. So, um...

I feel like if I just ring around the nursing homes in the area,

that she should be in there.

We might find someone that can help us

arrange a visit with her.

We've one down, two to go.

It's been a long day's search and by six o'clock,

time to call it a night for now.

It's all to... To kind of play for, if you like.

There's one person who's signed with the competition.

So, I mean, there's nothing we can do about that. It's...

one of those things that happen in these types of cases.

So, I'm not sure.

It's going to be a matter of coming back into the office tomorrow

and seeing what the feedback is from the representatives throughout

visiting the various beneficiaries.

The next day, after a late night out on the road

for the travelling researchers, Ryan is feeling hopeful.

So, we found out by visiting one of the paternal heirs

that actually, there was about double the number of beneficiaries

in that side of the family than we had thought previously.

Now, he was able to give us

quite a lot of information on the family tree.

The only drawback being that he'd given the same information

to the other firm who were working the case a number of hours earlier.

In the end, Ryan and the team found nine heirs on John Simm's

father's side and five on his mother's side of the family.

On reflection of the case of John Leslie Simm,

it would be potentially easy for us to be disappointed

that whilst we firstly focused our research on the maternal side,

the competition focused their research

on the paternal side of the family.

So, it was just fate, the way that it happens.

Another case that won't remain with the Crown

and we're very happy with the way it went.

But for heir Derek Spry,

he's still coming to terms with the sad news about his cousin John.

I said that, actually.

I'm shocked that there was no-one for him to leave it to.

And I find it sad that the estate's been left like this.

Because obviously, there's no-one to carry it on.

In London, heir hunting firm Hoopers is investigating

the £350,000 estate of Charlie Gray.

I spoke to him around Thursday, I think, didn't I?

A former military man and keen bowls player, Charlie had passed away

at home on Christmas Day 2014 and was sorely missed by friends.

He was...

the sort of bloke who would do anything for anyone.

I think the classic Charlie would be generous,

both of spirit and of money.

With no known father of Charlie's to look into,

the team had moved back through the generations

of Charlie's mother's family in their search for heirs.

What's going on? Anything?

I suppose if you're eliminating one side of the family,

ie the paternal family, then there's more chance

that you're going to end up with no relatives at all

because you're immediately halving your chances.

The team have found that Charlie's mother, Jean Michie,

was born in South Africa in 1907

after her father had fought there in the Boer War.

Well, from that point on, our work was much more straightforward

because, as we'd ascertained that the family had returned to Scotland,

Harry and Jane went on to have a further five children in the area.

And as the families of the five aunts

and uncles were uncovered, so too were the Army connections.

So, Charlie's uncle, Charles Edward Michie,

was born in 1912,

meaning he would be in his late 20s at the outbreak of World War II,

making it highly likely he would have seen service.

The team's searches found that uncle Charles had gone to Malaya

as a mechanical engineer for a tin dredging company in the 1930s.

Someone who came from Scotland, specifically Renfrew,

would have come from a place

with very strong links to Southeast Asia.

The Clyde was strong on shipbuilding

and that included dredges, for dredging rivers

and also for dredging alluvial deposits of tin.

But on the eve of World War II in 1938,

he was enlisted into the Allied Volunteer Forces.

By February 1942, Charles had been captured by the Japanese

and became a prisoner of war.

The Japanese didn't have any choice taking prisoners.

They had defeated a large British force,

they had in excess of 110,000 men.

Short of killing them, you've got to do something with them.

And the Japanese approach was to put them in huge holding camps

and then distribute them to places where they could put them

to work in a way that would help the war effort.

The Allied prisoners of war were sent to many types of camp.

The main one being Changi, in Singapore.

Changi ranged from about 50,000 peak prisoners to 5,000 at its minimum.

Prisoners were sent out either to working parties to build

the Thai Burma railway, or to elsewhere in Singapore

to build monuments, to help with aerodromes.

By the end of the war, more than 30,000 prisoners,

almost a quarter of those captured, had died.

As the Japanese got more desperate, they speeded up the work

until people might be working 12, 18 hours under severe pressure.

The most common causes of death would have been things

such as dysentery or cholera, possibly malaria.

But all of this contributed to by severe state of malnourishment

as the war went on.

So that people just wouldn't have had the resistance

and the ability to fight off these diseases.

In the office, the team have discovered

that Charlie's uncle Charles was one of the lucky ones.

He survived being a prisoner of war and on his return to Scotland,

went on to marry Elizabeth Bannatyne Dickson in 1946.

They had their only child in 1950.

I think that one's tied up now, isn't it, more or less?

I believe it is, yeah.

The team had found their first heir.

And from Charlie's remaining aunts and uncles, there could be more.

So, I'll let you know if there are any developments in that regard.

The team had found that Margaret Michie died aged two,

but Harry, James and Mary had all gone on to have children.

One of Mary Michie's three children is Pat Hall,

a cousin of Charlie's who was shocked to hear of his death.

Well, it was...

It was devastating.

Because we'd been trying to get in touch with him.

You know, because it was his birthday

and it was Christmas and everything.

And we were going to go down and see him after the New Year.

But we hadn't been able to make arrangements

because we hadn't been able to get a hold of him.

We'd phoned but we hadn't heard from him.

And then to hear that news.

Well, it was just so shocking, it was terrible.

And to think that he was on his own. That was what was the horrible part.

You know, that he was on his own when it happened.

I know it happened quick.

But...it...

It just seemed so sad. We were sad, really sad.

There's Charlie.

Pat is less than a year younger than her cousin Charlie,

who was godfather to her children.

Charlie and I were close.

I mean, we didn't see each other for years in between

but...you know, when you are close to someone,

it doesn't matter if you don't see them for years, does it?

You know, you... You're just there, it's like yesterday.

We'd see Charlie maybe once, twice a year.

Erm, we went down to Devon as a family.

We had a lovely time when we saw him.

There we are. No more.

Back at the office in London, the team are making contact

with the rest of the heirs to Charlie's estate.

Our business is to trace the beneficiaries

in the estates where...

In the end, it was a good result for Richard and his team.

Well, this was a very interesting,

satisfying case.

Although, in theory, we only had half a case to research

because Charlie's father wasn't stated on his birth certificate,

there was still some challenging research

and we found 12 heirs in all, two of whom had emigrated to Australia.

And I'm pleased to say that the family will be inheriting

Charlie's estate rather than it eventually passing to the Crown.

But for Charlie's friends and family, it had been a time

to reflect and remember the man who had been a big part of their lives.

He knew a lot of people in this village

and a lot of people knew him.

Erm, and he was respected by all.

I will always remember Charlie with a certain amount of affection, yes.

I miss him tremendously, and the club misses him tremendously.

He's been a terrible loss to the club.

He was a glue which held the three sections of the club together.

He was one of the good people in this world. That's for sure.

He was very kind.

He was happy-go-lucky as well.

Also quite serious about things too.

But he was a lovely person.

One you would really call the salt of the earth, Charlie was.