Doheny/Cole Heir Hunters

Today, the heir hunters reunite a long lost family...

I spoke to somebody yesterday,

they said when she was younger she looked like me.

..and emotions run high.

I didn't actually know my father had already died.

Whilst in East London, they discover a link to one of

Britain's most notorious crimes.

They may even have known people that were involved with

the investigations, or knew people that were connected to people

that may have got murdered.

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

In Hertfordshire, something amazing is about to happen.

Jacqueline Pearson is about to be reunited with her niece, Danielle,

for the first time in three decades.

30 years is a long time, isn't it?

Not to know how somebody's grown up and...

..obviously got a family and married.

The last time Jacqueline saw Danielle, she was just a baby.

I spoke to somebody yesterday,

they said when she was younger she looked like me.

I do think she would be tall, like my brother.

I don't think she'd be short like me.

Today's meeting has come about thanks to the work

of the heir hunters.

We may be able to reunite people that haven't seen each other

for a number of years, or potentially have never even

met each other. So this is really nice,

it's quite a heart-warming part of the job.

In January 2016, the team at Finders International

took on the the case of Constance Doheny,

who had died in Coventry Hospital at the age of 89.

The retired seamstress, who liked to be known as Pat, always cut a dash.

I would say she was a very talented lady and up until a few years ago

still enjoyed using a sewing machine.

She could go into some of the London shops and look at the fashions

and then she would come home and she would copy it.

Very, very fashion-conscious, I think.

But it was a childhood passion that really defined Pat's life,

particularly in her later years.

Pat did tell me once that she'd always permanently had a dog

by her side from the age of eight.

And she could never live without her dogs.

Come on, boys, come on, boys.

Pat's dogs were her family.

I would probably go so far as to say they were her children.

She used to tell them off quite a bit

and say they were being naughty when they weren't!

But that was, you know... That was how she was.

But Pat took her passion for dogs to a whole new level.

Pat's dogs became champions.

She actually got...

..Best Of Breed at Crufts.

And it was this mutual love of dogs that cemented a firm friendship

between Susan and Pat.

She used to make me laugh with funny stories about the dogs.

She was just...

you know, a real character.

I just loved her. Loved her to bits.

Pat had no known relatives and passed away without leaving a will.

In London, the team had spotted the case.

When we picked up the case of Constance Doheny,

this was advertised on the Government legal department's

Bona Vacantia list.

Aware that Constance owned her own property,

the case jumped out at Ryan.

So we were looking at a case that was worth in the region of

around £250,000, £260,000.

So we knew this case was going to be highly competitive

and there may be a number of companies looking into it.

Yeah, he was very happy to, when I've spoken to him in the past.

With £250,000 inheritance at stake,

Ryan Green lit the case, and researcher Camilla

began the task of looking for possible Doheny heirs.

-Thank you.

-Thanks very much.

With the unusual name Doheny,

the team hoped the search would be straightforward,

but those illusions were shattered when they found

Constance's marriage certificate.

We found out that her maiden name was actually Morse.

Now, this was going to give us a few more problems

than the surname Doheny, given it's a more popular surname

within the country.

But we weren't quite sure how it was going to go and exactly how

difficult the research into that surname was going to be.

Having found a record of Constance's marriage,

the researchers could find out her mother's name.

We knew her father was Robert Morse and her mother was

Beatrice Constance Balch.

Now, Balch was going to be a surname that wasn't going to pose too many

problems in terms of research,

it's not a surname that I've personally come across before.

Armed with Constance's parents' names,

they were soon able to establish that she was an only child.

So they turned their attention to the wider family.

-I don't think I actually...

-We don't need two bits.

Determined to beat the competition, they focused on Constance's mother,

Beatrice, as she had the unusual name of Balch.

-Again, I could have just done two nines underneath.

-Yeah.

With such a rare surname, the team quickly discovered Beatrice

had ten siblings and they located their descendants.

Mostly, it went quite well.

But having raced out of the blocks,

the team were about to be halted in their tracks.

Unfortunately, having spoken to them,

it turns out they were actually going to be seen by a representative

of another firm later on that day.

The bits you've done or the bits you're following up on now.

It was a blow. The competition now had the upper hand,

which could put the whole case in jeopardy.

There's a competitiveness that you have as a case manager when you're

working these cases, because you're not quite sure

who's looking into it. Speed is of the essence.

Obviously, accuracy is important as well.

But, you know, we have to just... If we are behind,

dust ourselves off and just carry on.

With a valuable case at stake,

Ryan wasn't about to give up without a fight and had a new plan.

As a team, we decided to switch to the paternal side of the family,

which is Morse. It was going to be a bit of a slower search,

given that the surname was more prevalent,

but, I mean, we use this as a route to hopefully get to some of the

beneficiaries before anybody else who's working the case.

The team needed to know if Constance's father, Robert,

had any siblings.

We were lucky enough to place Robert with his family on the 1901 census

and the 1911 census.

We could find his parents and other siblings on the 1891 census,

which was prior to Robert being born.

So we had three census records.

We had Robert's parents, David John Morse

and Eliza, or Elizabeth, Morse.

Records revealed that David and his wife,

who seemed to be known as either Eliza or Elizabeth,

had nine children, including Robert.

Although all of these children had passed away,

the team were able to trace descendants.

For the second time in the search,

the team thought they were closing in on the heirs.

I managed to find a number, so I gave it a call.

But yet again, they were about to be dealt a cruel blow.

There was more bad news that would set them back even further.

So we're looking at the Morse family on the census records,

we made an assumption that David John Morse was married

to a lady called Elizabeth, who may have changed her name to Eliza.

What later transpired...

Elizabeth and Eliza were actually different people.

Do you know if he was related to the lady that lived there before?

With fierce competition on this £260,000 case,

the team were worried they had blown their chance of a successful result.

Sometimes heir hunters come across a case which gives an insight

into some of the most gruesome events in history.

When we're researching families, you're always looking into

the epochs of time that they actually were born into,

or the times in which they lived.

And when the team took on the case of Gladys Cole in 2015,

their search was to lead them to one of the biggest crime stories

of the 19th century.

They may even have known people that were involved with

the investigations, or knew people that were connected

to people that may have got murdered.

When the case of Gladys Cole was advertised by the Government's

legal department, case manager, Ben Cornish,

at Fraser And Fraser was quick to take it on,

believing it could be a very worthwhile case.

The majority of Gladys's estate is the property,

the value of the property, and that's approximately £250,000.

Gladys died aged 84 in hospital.

She had lived on a quiet street in Dagenham.

And neighbour of 11 years, George, got to know her in passing.

We used to pop in occasionally.

She never let you in her house.

Always spoke to you at the door.

We asked her, "Do you want any help?"

You know, "Any time you need anything, we'll get it for you."

But she never really took... She was a very independent lady,

never took up the offers or anything, you know?

She would say hello and things like that, how are you and

things like that, Christmas cards once a year, that sort of thing.

But never had a deep conversation.

But although George lived near to Gladys for over a decade,

he only saw her from time to time

and news that she had died came as a shock.

She was a lovely lady, nice old lady.

And the horrible thing about it was, we didn't know

till six months after that she'd died.

That's what communities are like now, you know?

And we lived next door to her.

Cos she was in and out of hospital at the end.

One of her other friends actually told us that she had died.

Born in the East End in between the wars,

Gladys appears to have moved to Dagenham,

but had not always lived alone.

In London, aware their competitors would be looking into the case of

Gladys Cole, Josh was trying to piece together the puzzle

of her life.

At the address, it comes up with Gladys living there,

but also an Arthur Cole as well.

We discovered that

Arthur and Gladys lived together since 1983,

but it's possible that they may have lived together for longer than that.

So our first step there would be to ascertain whether or not

that is going to be a blood relative or if it's going to be a husband.

The team needed to find out who Arthur was

and a check of his birth certificate solved the mystery.

We found out that, after looking at Arthur's Cole's birth,

we were able to find out that the mother's maiden name on his birth is

Kendon, which is the same as Gladys Cole.

So we can ascertain from that that they are probably

brother and sister.

But the team needed to find out whether Arthur was still alive.

Arthur pre-deceased Gladys and he died in 2007.

It seems that Arthur and Gladys had lived together for years

and neither had any children.

So now the team needed to turn their attention to Gladys's wider family.

The first thing that we did was try and locate the deceased's birth.

She was born as Gladys Cole on 23rd April 1931 in Stepney.

On her birth record, it showed her father's name was obviously Cole

and her mother's maiden name was Kendon.

So from that point, we would look for a marriage for her parents.

The team began searching for a marriage,

hoping that the unusual names would not throw up too many results.

We've looked into Gladys's parents and it is a Cole to Kendon marriage

and that's completely unique.

There aren't any other marriages in England or Wales

at the time as well. So that's a really good indication

that's going to be the couple we're looking for.

The team had immediately struck gold.

We found one marriage, Henry Arthur Cole

marrying a Marie Victoria Kendon on the 19th December, 1925.

From that point onwards, we would look for any other

brothers and sisters of the deceased.

The team established that Gladys and Arthur were the

only children from this marriage.

So the next step was to start looking into

Henry and Marie's families.

The deceased's father was born as Arthur Henry Cole on 17th November,

1897, Mile End, and his parents were John Thomas Cole and Alice Cole,

nee Boother.

They married on 25th December 1886 in Mile End.

But this paternal branch of the family wasn't going to be easy

to research.

The surname Cole is quite a common name.

So we have to be particularly careful when researching it,

just because there are vast numbers of records

and they can be within a particular area.

So this case was one where we had to make sure that we checked it

every step of the way that we were on the right track.

The team needed to find out who Gladys's grandparents were

to establish whether her father, Henry, had any siblings.

The search threw up several Coles,

who could have been Gladys's grandfather,

but one key detail would help them identify the right one.

John Thomas Cole is an artificial florist on his marriage certificate

in 1886.

On the 1901 census, this is exactly the same thing,

artificial flower maker.

And on the 1911 census, it says artificial florist as well.

So it's pretty consistent that he's been an artificial florist

for his entire life.

At the turn of the 20th century, artificial flower making

was booming.

The fashion for accessorising clothes had become a status symbol

for Victorian ladies.

In 1891, there were over 4,000 flower makers in London alone.

And this hugely competitive trade followed the latest trends

from Paris.

Well, this building right here was actually one of the places

where they would actually have made artificial flowers in the East End.

John Thomas Cole would've been engaged in such a factory,

shaping the fabric using special cutting tools.

This was a physically demanding job and was mainly carried out by men.

Once done, women and children undertook the more delicate job

of creating the flowers, a task that could be outsourced.

An artificial flower maker was actually a very easy profession

to have in the 19th century, because it was such a simple way

of doing things.

A lot of the time, people would do them from their own homes.

But such a lucrative industry added to the exploitation

in London's East End, until the upper classes started to step in.

You had a fair few philanthropists around the area.

You had people like William Booth of the Salvation Army,

you had Thomas Barnardo of Barnardo's children's charity,

trying to get the children off the streets.

You also had men like Richard Charrington,

who was a philanthropist who wanted to try and get the prostitutes

off the streets and into better conditions.

This included the Flower Girls' Christian Mission.

They made artificial flowers for charities

and produced the first poppies for the Royal British Legion.

For the heir hunters, knowing that John Thomas Cole had worked in

artificial flowers all his life helped them confirm

they had the right person.

Sometimes through the course of their lives,

individuals change professions.

It can be very difficult for us sometimes to trace the right family,

because we're always looking to match up various occupations,

if we've got a difficult name to research.

In this case, we had one occupation that tied it all together,

which was the artificial florist.

The 1911 census showed that Gladys's grandfather,

John Thomas Cole, was married to an Alice Boother

and the couple were living in Mile End in East London.

They could also see records of Gladys's father Henry,

but surprisingly it seemed he'd changed his name.

The confusing thing about this case on the paternal side

is that the deceased father was born as Arthur Henry Cole,

but went under the name of Henry Cole.

But the plot thickened even further,

when they discovered that Henry had a younger brother.

His brother was called Arthur John Cole and used the name

either Arthur or John. So, weirdly, they were both born as Arthur,

but started using their name intermittently

on various certificates.

Families handing down names is not unusual

and it can make life incredibly difficult for the heir hunters,

but they were determined to rise to the challenge.

When the research is complex, it can create a bit of a buzz

in the office, and in this case, we had

the paternal uncle having the same name as the deceased father,

so, really, really difficult for us

to try and descend and find who this individual was and lots of hands on

deck to be able to try and work out the extent of the family.

With just the stem of Gladys's Uncle Arthur to research,

the team were unsure if they were going to find any heirs

on the paternal side of the family.

With a £250,000 estate at stake,

they were hoping the maternal family may have more to offer.

But little did the team know that their research would uncover a link

to one of the biggest unsolved murder cases of all time.

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

on the door from the heir hunters.

I had no idea that we had a branch of the family that we knew

nothing about.

As well as handing over life-changing sums of money,

the heir hunters' work can bring long lost relatives back together.

You know, the more she told me, the more I looked into it,

I thought, "Oh, my God. This is amazing."

Things like this don't happen all the time, do they?

But thousands of estates have eluded the heir hunters

and remain unsolved.

Today, we've got details of two estates that are yet to be claimed.

Could you be the person the heir hunters have been looking for?

First is the case of Edith Darvas,

who died on the 15th of July 1996

in the borough of Lambeth, South London.

Born in 1913, Edith is thought to have come to the UK

during the Hungarian uprising in 1956.

She also went by the name of Edit.

Her estate was advertised by the Treasury's Bona Vacantia Department,

but so far no-one has come forward with a valid claim.

Is there a chance you're related to Edith Darvas?

Or does your family have any links to Hungary?

Next is the case of Robert Wilding,

who died on the 9th February 1996, in Stoke-on-Trent.

However, it is not known where or when he was born.

Robert never married, but the name Wilding has strong links

with the county of Lancashire.

Are you a Wilding?

Do you hold the key to unlocking an estate

that could be worth a fortune?

If so, you could be in line for a surprise windfall.

In London, the team at Fraser And Fraser were looking into

a high-value estate, estimated at over £250,000.

It was the case of Gladys Cole, who had died in 2015 and left no will.

It was up to case manager Ben Cornish and his team

to try and find heirs to this fortune, ahead of rival firms.

When you have a case with a property on it,

you know it's going to have competition.

And on this case, we had lots of competition.

The team had already looked into the Cole side of the family,

where common names had proved problematic,

but they were hoping things would be easier on the maternal side.

Sometimes you can have two really difficult names,

ie - Smith and Jones.

But in this case, we had Cole and Kendon.

Cole, a very difficult name to research,

and Kendon, quite an unusual name,

So it was quite nice to have something a little bit easier

to work with.

The team knew that Gladys's mother was Marie Kendon,

and they needed to establish who her parents were to see if she had

any siblings. The answer would come from Marie's marriage certificate.

On the certificate, the mother is listed as Marie Victoria Kendon,

aged 28, condition of marriage is spinster.

Her profession is that of machinist,

so her parents were Joseph George Kendon and Ellen Rump.

They married in 1886 in Stepney.

But as George and Ellen settled down to married life,

their corner of East London was about to become the focus

of one of the biggest manhunts of all time.

From the summer of 1888, terror swept across the East End,

as young women began being murdered in what was clearly the work

of a serial killer.

Now, the Cole and the Kendon family would've definitely known about the

Whitechapel murders whilst living around here.

I mean, it was like talk of the town.

I mean, the newspapers were daily printing rather crude images

of what the bodies would've looked like.

The victims were all young women and most worked as prostitutes.

And everyone, from the press to the public,

began speculating as to the identity of the murderer.

Now, there was even rumours at the time that whoever

the Whitechapel murderer was, who would later be known

as Jack the Ripper, was, like, a butcher.

Maybe a horse flesh dealer, anything like that.

And because of Gladys's grandfather George's job,

the rumours could've put him in the frame.

The really interesting thing about this case is that the deceased's

maternal grandfather, Joseph George Kendon,

was a horse flesh dealer and he was living around and in the area.

In Victorian London, horses were the main form of transport

and 300,000 were needed to keep the capital moving,

but when horses died or became ill, they needed to be disposed of.

One of the leading slaughter yards in the East End at this time was

Harrison Barber Limited, who would've processed

up to 26,000 horses per year.

Despite the volume, this was still a skilled job.

They would've used similar tools to what a butcher would've used,

so they would've used a long-bladed knife, about 12 inches in length.

It was these knife skills that meant the butchers and horse flesh dealers

like George would've been on the radar of detectives investigating

the Ripper murders.

There was a few suspects. There was a guy called Jacob Eischenschmitt,

who was a butcher who was actually put forward as a very early suspect,

because he went into this pub,

down in Kent, and was covered in blood.

But despite making several arrests,

the police were never able to find the man known as Jack the Ripper.

And by November 1888, his reign of terror had come to an end.

After the murders, the newspapers made it such a point

that the area was so, like, poverty stricken,

that a lot of people, including the Queen,

said they needed to have better living conditions.

They actually started building adequate accommodation

for the poor of the area.

They lit the streets better.

You had a lot more of the philanthropists coming in

and helping them, feeding the people.

After one of the darkest periods in the East End's history,

there is at least now hope that things would improve in the area.

And for George, it seemed he continued his work

as a horse flesh dealer until his death in 1906, aged 53.

His wife ended up, after he died, taking on the business, afterward.

So she was purveying in it as well.

All right, mate. Cheers. Bye.

But despite the interesting link to one of the UK's

most notorious murder mysteries, the key question for the team

was whether George and Ellen had any children who could lead them

to an heir.

So, the deceased's grandparents on the maternal side

had three further children. The first was a Robert Stephen Kendon.

He married a Jane Hoffman in 1918 in Mile End Old Town.

The next child they had was an Arthur Albert Kendon, born in 1893.

He married a Jessie Spinks in 1918.

And the third child was a Dorothy Rose Kendon,

born in 1895 in Mile End.

The team began looking into the youngest sibling, Dorothy,

in the hope that she may have had children or grandchildren

who were still alive.

She married a Frederick Cooper in 1919 and she had two children,

one that died as a spinster in 1941

and one that died in infancy in 1922.

With Dorothy's stem ruled out, the team hoped they'd have more luck

looking into Gladys's Uncle Robert and his wife Jane.

They had one daughter, Irene Dorothy Kendon,

who married a William Webb in 1945.

From this marriage, the team discovered that Dorothy and William

had one son who was still alive.

He was a potential heir to the estate,

so it was a crucial breakthrough for the team.

It's always useful speaking to heirs on these cases,

because they can confirm your research

and fill in any blanks that you may have.

They can also help identify people that we can't identify through

the usual genealogical process, ie -

family members that have been adopted into the family.

So always a very good source of information.

The team was soon able to establish that there was one further heir

on the maternal side.

And they'd made progress on the Cole side of the family as well.

Gladys's Uncle Arthur had three children, Ivy, John and Leonard.

And all three had one child who would be an heir.

One of them was Leonard's son David, who was last to be contacted.

It was December 2015 when I had a phone call.

So that was the first that I knew anything about this.

The call was a complete surprise for David,

who knew very little about this branch of the family.

My grandad, John Cole...

..he passed away when I was eight.

And my father, obviously his son, passed away when I was three.

David also had no idea that his family had links to the East End.

We're very much a north London family.

So no knowledge, don't know anybody of any side of the family

that lived in that part of London, no.

The actual history of my grandfather and his links into

where he came from was always a bit of a blur. You know, nobody...

It was... Even though we've tried to find out, even my cousins,

who are older than me, say never remember him talking about,

you know, Grandad talking about anything.

In the office, Ben and his team had now completed their research

and had found all of Gladys Cole's living relatives.

But as more details of the estate came through,

there was a surprising twist for Ben and all of the heirs.

The case of Cole was bigger value than we expected,

and I think this is mainly due to her brother's estate

forming part of her estate.

Surprisingly that they had,

together, over £100,000 worth of savings and their property was worth

over £260,000, so a very large estate.

It's good news for David,

who now wants to find out more about the lady who left him this legacy.

It's a nice surprise, but, you know,

I think it's one of those things that it would be

interesting to know... If you knew a bit more about Gladys,

she might have had some ideas of what she would like to have happened

to the money.

You know, whether she supported anybody or did anything,

so there may be something... If we knew about that, then maybe,

you know, some of it could go towards that.

But, you know, I've got two sons,

I've got grandchildren. It wouldn't be for me.

I think something like that should be put to better use.

In London, the team at Finders International were under pressure

to beat competitors in a case with an estate valued at £260,000.

The case was that of dog-loving Constance Doheny, known as Pat,

who died aged 89 in Coventry.

Having faced stiff competition from rival firms on the maternal side of

the family, Ryan and the team were hoping the paternal side

would be more straightforward.

But confusion over the name of Constance's grandmother

had cost them dear.

Believing Elizabeth and David's second wife Eliza

were the same person, they had lost valuable time

and were now playing catch-up.

You know, there's a number of names whereby we have to just, you know,

be aware that there's variations and it means that we have to look

for a number of different names in the indexes.

Knowing they now needed to concentrate on the marriage

of David Morse and Elizabeth Watts,

the team established that in addition

to Constance's father Robert, they had three other children -

Eliza, David and another David, who died as a baby.

We were really just looking at two main stems.

One of these was David Morse.

Now, we were really struggling to find any records on him.

We had found his birth, obviously, and we found a lot of

military records, which is our main focus for descending his line

of the family.

At risk of losing this high-value case, the team needed

a major breakthrough and fast.

So they put all their efforts into David's military records.

Having joined up as a private in 1911,

David had no idea what fate would befall him

in the next few years.

He was in the regular army when the First World War broke out,

which is not really an enviable position to be in, in many ways.

Ends up being sent overseas pretty quickly and he's actually

involved in the first battle that the British Expeditionary fights,

the Battle of Mons, in August 1914.

They must have seen some fairly horrific sights

at quite a young age, really.

But within a year, the horrors of the front line were to be replaced

by the confinement of a prisoner of war camp in Germany.

Being captured seemed unfortunate at the time,

but it did mean that he missed many of the engagements which the

1st Battalion of the Lincolnshire Regiment fought in.

And some of those, they took very high casualties indeed.

They were in action on the first day of the Somme

and they were also involved in the Passchendaele campaign of 1917.

So, paradoxically, I suppose this misfortunate

probably saved David's life or at least saved him from serious injury.

David was part of the famous Lincolnshire Regiment.

At Lincolnshire Archives, there's a collection dedicated to the regiment

and it includes items and photographs that belong to

David Morse.

They show the bleak conditions he'd have experienced in the POW camps.

The diet was monotonous and also deficient as well.

Quite often, they had a thin soup to eat.

And the sanitary arrangements, the sewers, were not

particularly good, so you got outbreaks of things like dysentery

and cholera.

David spent the remainder of the war under lock and key.

However, there was great camaraderie amongst the prisoners.

Here, we've got a series of postcards which David owned,

showing life in the POW camps.

And actually in some of them, in the group photographs,

David can be seen, particularly clearly in this one,

where we can see his Lincolnshire Regiment cap.

As time went on, the hardships of war grew greater and greater.

Towards the end of the war as well, the British naval blockade

was starting to bite and this meant that food

was extremely short in Germany.

The situation became so severe that the British government intervened

and came to an agreement with the Netherlands and Switzerland

to take POWs from Germany.

David was one of the, I suppose, the fortunate ones,

who was transferred to the Netherlands.

And, having headed to the Netherlands,

David soon had a reason to stay there.

When David was in the Netherlands,

it would appear that he met his future wife, Jacoba,

and here we have her identity card, actually.

And they were married in 1920.

And David actually went to live in the Netherlands.

He owned a cafe on the outskirts of The Hague.

I think it's an "as soon as possible" kind of thing, so...

For the heir hunters, who are in a race against time,

the news that David Morse had set up home in Holland wasn't good.

He'd had a whole family in the Netherlands.

He'd married there, he'd had children there,

he'd passed away there,

and we just can't search his records within the office.

From the Netherlands, how long do you reckon it would take

to get it back to us?

-I would say, like, a week?

-Yeah, that's what I would have thought.

With the research into David Morse ongoing in the Netherlands,

Ryan's team concentrated their efforts on the one remaining stem

on the paternal line.

So whilst descending the line of Eliza, Elizabeth Morse,

we found out that she'd actually married twice.

From those two marriages, she had five children.

Eliza Elizabeth's first marriage to Benjamin Morrell

produced three children.

Benjamin, who died without having children, Isabel and May.

Now, May would have been a paternal cousin of the deceased had she

survived, but when May passed away

and we had to then descend her bloodline,

we found two children to her marriage.

With the competition fierce on this case,

it was crucial that the heir hunters located May's children

to stop any rival firms from signing them up first.

And it didn't take long to find one - her daughter, Jacqueline.

When Ryan asked about Constance, I had no idea.

I'd never heard of the name.

You come off the phone and you can't take it all in.

But Jacqueline wasn't the only relative on this stem.

She also had a brother called David and Ryan needed to find out what had

happened to him.

We found out through the records and through speaking to Jacqueline

that he actually passed away.

Jacqueline had lost contact with her brother, David,

but she knew that he had a daughter.

However, she also thought David had left the family

whilst the daughter was still very young.

We had to then try and trace David's daughter.

Her name was Danielle.

Now, we had a good idea that Danielle was going

to be estranged from her father.

The heir hunters needed to move fast.

But aware that Danielle and her father had lost touch,

they had to proceed with caution,

as this was potentially a very delicate situation.

What struck us when we spoke to Danielle was,

she wasn't aware that her father had actually passed away.

He had passed, I think when I was 18.

It is sad, not to ever get to meet him.

I have one photograph of him, which is quite an old photograph,

but I would like to see more.

I didn't know anything about Constance until I got the call

telling me that she passed.

And that she had no living relatives and that it was

being passed down to the rest of the family.

Having been disconnected from her father's side of the family,

news of the inheritance was a complete surprise.

I didn't know much about my dad.

I knew his name, I knew he had a sister

and she had daughters. I knew that they lived in an area

near where we was, but that's as much as I was ever really told.

My auntie I knew that lived nearby, but I never got to meet her.

It came as a shock to Danielle.

And it's always something that...

..kind of throws you a bit when you are doing your research.

Often, it's more distant relations

and when it's someone closely linked to the person we're speaking to,

it's difficult news to give.

But after the initial shock,

Danielle has had time to gather her thoughts.

My children are really excited.

They've asked me lots of questions about who Constance is,

and more so who my auntie is.

And the funny thing, they keep asking me, "What is she to them?"

Which, I think they're more excited than I am.

That aunt was Jacqueline.

And for her, the discovery that she an heir offered an opportunity

to meet the niece she hadn't seen for 30 years.

I don't know anything about Danielle.

I've got one photo of her at the time she was three.

It must have been hard when Danielle got the call,

because even though she didn't see him...

..they're always there, aren't they?

You always know, somewhere out there, I've got a dad.

Today is a big day for Danielle and Jacqueline.

They've arranged to meet and try and reconnect after 30 long years.

It's been playing on my mind every day,

the day getting closer and closer to meet my aunt.

Butterflies set in.

Lots of questions to ask.

It's just more wondering just what she looks like.

It's a long time to not meet somebody.

The more I think about it, the more butterflies I get.

Hopefully some good can come of it, it'll be nice.

Family is important. I believe family's important.

You only get one chance at it.

As Danielle arrives, Jacqueline is waiting nervously inside.

Hello.

Oh, hello! Wow!

I knew you'd be tall!

I knew you'd be tall!

-Are you all right?

-Yeah.

-Come and sit.

Do you want a tissue?

Here.

So, tell me about yourself.

-Are you married?

-Yeah.

-You've got children?

-Three.

-Three?

-Three boys, yeah.

-Three boys.

I've got one photo...

..of my dad.

That's the only one I've got.

-That's him.

-Yeah.

-Yeah, that's David.

It's amazing that Constance has brought us all together.

I know, I know.

Like Danielle, Jacqueline had also lost touch with David

and hadn't been aware of his death.

I don't know what happened.

I think they said he had a heart attack.

-Really?

-Yeah.

-You don't actually know?

-No.

-I think he was 58 when he died.

-Yeah.

They may have lost touch, but Jacqueline has some fond memories

of her brother.

He loved his animals.

I've got animals. I've got two dogs.

-I've got a sausage dog.

-They sound lovely.

I've got a cocker spaniel and I've got a snake.

-A snake?

-Yeah.

She wasn't nothing like I expected.

To be honest, I didn't know what I expected.

I thought she'd be taller.

Danielle said her sons want to meet me.

They're excited cos obviously...

..I'm Daniel's aunt, so they want to know more.

It's been an emotional reunion and both Jacqueline and Danielle hope it

will be the start of a much closer relationship.

It was really nice and she's lovely.