Cole/De La Salle Heir Hunters

Today, a highly competitive case is overrun with obstacles...

It is a nightmare when you do a case and then you find out there is an

illegitimate birth.

..whilst research into a quiet lady from Winchester...

It is strange for half the siblings to be born up north,

and then half to be born down south.

..reveals the shocking story of a fugitive on the run.

He's a wanted man. If he's caught, he will be imprisoned.

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

They have got the mortgage.

It's Wednesday morning.

It is not always going to, obviously, be bank accounts,

could be a mortgage company.

At the offices of Finders International in central London,

the Government's Bona Vacantia list of unclaimed estates has just been released.

And it looks like case manager, Ryan Gregory, and the team,

are in for a busy day.

It has been a huge list...

..released by the Bona Vacantia departments today, so there has been 41 adds.

It just adds a bit of an extra element of pressure and stress.

Competition to find heirs to unclaimed estates is fierce.

Across the UK, rival firms will also be poring over the list,

trying to decide which cases to work.

We don't know how big their teams are and how many people are put on any one case,

so we have to work as quick as possible.

When we are trying to go through the Bona Vacantia lists to figure out which cases

are worth prioritising over the others,

a key bit of information for us is the records held by the Land Registry.

If we can find out someone who is on the list owned their property,

this for us means that this is a case that

we would put above the others.

For Ryan, one case stands out,

the estate of Joyce Marian Cole.

She owned a flat in South London,

and it is a key indication that the case may be valuable.

I think, if it was a whole house,

it could be worth in the region of about half a million,

but I can't get too bogged down with figuring out how much a flat

is worth, but presumably, 250, 300.

It is a healthy estate.

But having lost precious time sifting through the long list

of unclaimed estates, Ryan is keen to crack on with the research.

So I am slightly panicking just in case I'm behind.

-Yeah, it's all go.

-You are always wondering what the competitors that

you facing against are doing.

Are they going to have a representative nearer on the day?

Are they going to get to the beneficiary first?

We really don't know at that stage,

so we have got to do everything with a high level of urgency.

Joyce Marian Cole passed away on the 19th of June 2015, aged 89.

She died in South London, where she had lived her whole life.

Very little is known about Joyce, but at St George's Church, close to where she lived,

she was known by members of the congregation.

Joyce, I understand, from what I've been told, was a very private lady,

she kept herself to herself.

She was a nice person.

She was part of that local road,

and a lot of people would have known her just by saying good morning,

how are you, etc.

The community has changed dramatically over the years,

but Reverend Wells remembers how it would have been when Joyce first moved in.

Years ago there was a great community.

People would know each other, people would knock on each other's doors,

say "Hi, how are you?"

You know, when children was growing up,

people would know who Mrs Brown next door is, and if you were locked out

you could go and see Mrs Brown.

It was like the old scenarios that you hear many times,

but that is what Joyce would have most probably experienced while she was living around this area.

As Joyce's estate has been advertised as unclaimed,

the search for heirs is on.

OK, so, I'm listening, but I'm just trying to do this at the same time,

so just keep talking.

In the office, the team are hard at work.

So, so far, I have found that Joyce Marian Cole, she married in 1964.

I can't find any children.

Having ruled out next of kin,

Ryan needs to find out if Joyce had any brothers or sisters.

If they or their children are still alive,

they would be in line to inherit Joyce's sizeable estate,

and early signs suggest it could be a straightforward search.

Her dad's surname was Dawber, which is an unusual surname.

Likewise, her mum's maiden name was Munt, which is a good surname, too.

The catch with unusual surnames is that...

..someone else, somewhere, could be...

is likely finding the research quite quick as well, so...

Ryan has established that Joyce's parents, Edwin Dawber and Emily Munt,

married in 1921, and as well as Joyce, they had one other daughter,

called Doris.

The key thing actually I need to do first is find out what happened

to Joyce's sister.

If Doris is alive,

she'd be the sole heir to Joyce's estate.

And breathe!

But they quickly learned she died in 1998, and didn't have any children.

The team must now turn their attention to Joyce's wider family.

Suzanne, Dawber or Munt?

Unusual names.

-Quite unusual, yeah.

-Munt.

Munt? OK.

Whilst Ryan focuses on Joyce's father's family, the Dawbers...

Initially, then, we can start drafting in other people.

-OK.

-Shall I pass that...

-Do you want to pass that on to Ellie?

-Yeah.

..case manager, Suzanne, starts looking into the maternal Munt side.

But she soon hits a problem with Joyce's mother, Emily.

I'm finding it quite difficult to pinpoint

which Emily Munt that she is.

There is one in north London, Edmonton.

There is one in St Albans, which is just north of there,

so I'm just trying to work out which one that she is.

We need to get cracking on this side, then.

After a tricky search, Suzanne has found records

for Joyce's mother, Emily.

From there, she is able to establish

that Joyce's maternal grandparents were Charles Munt

and Annie Salter, and they had eight children, including Emily.

The year 1911 is really useful,

because it says exactly how many years they were married,

how many children they've had, six who were still living in 1911,

so it is quite a large family.

The team are under pressure to stay ahead of the competition,

and with six stems to research, they are going to need to work fast.

So, Suzanne, do you reckon we should

just get all hands on deck on this one?

Yeah.

Ryan must also carry on researching the paternal side of the family.

Schofield Dawber, so he is the paternal grandfather.

But Ryan's search for paternal heirs is about to be dealt a major blow.

I am going back through the Census records, which were every ten years.

I am picking up the paternal grandparents, and

the only child that ever pops up with them is Edwin.

So, yeah, I mean it is looking more and more likely that the paternal

side dies out.

If one of the sides of the family dies out,

ie there are no surviving descendants,

the thoughts for us go to,

are there actually going to be any survivors that would be entitled to

inherit from this estate?

So, if ever that happens, we really hope that,

if there is no heirs on one side,

we are going to find beneficiaries on the other side of the family.

With the pressure now on to trace Joyce's maternal aunts and uncles as

quickly as possible, the team learns something about Joyce's mum, Emily,

that could throw a spanner in the works.

Just given that you said that Emily was a...

She worked in domestic service, didn't she?

She was a servant. I just want to check illegitimate births as well.

The discovery that Emily worked as a servant

is ringing alarm bells for Ryan.

From experience, and our knowledge of social history, we know that,

if there is going to be illegitimate children born,

one of the areas where they would stem from is,

if a female was working in the domestic service industries.

If Emily had any illegitimate children before she married Joyce's father,

Edwin, it could have a dramatic impact on the case.

It is a nightmare when you do the case to find out there is an

illegitimate birth.

They'd be half blood siblings of the deceased,

and any descendants would have a prior claim,

so it could be quite important.

Worryingly, Ryan soon finds a birth for a Grace Emily Munt,

and is wondering if she could be Joyce's half blood sibling.

I'm going to look into the...

Whoever this Grace Emily Munt is,

just given that the E stands for Emily,

and that is the deceased mum's name.

It could be that Emily has gone back home to have a child illegitimately.

If alive, Grace would be sole heir.

Although he feels sure he has uncovered an illegitimate daughter of Emily,

Ryan needs to confirm that Grace is in fact Joyce's half-sister.

If it turns out there is no half blood siblings,

we will obviously need to do both sides.

Until Ryan can prove whether or not Grace is a half blood sibling,

the team must continue the search for cousins.

Taking a bit of a risk, or just using a different route to something,

is the thing that helps us kind of get ahead of the competition.

But all their hard work tracking down potential heirs...

You are connected via Joyce's mum, Emily Munt.

..will go to waste if it turns out that Joyce did indeed have a half-sister.

The half blood siblings of the deceased would be entitled to inherit from

the estate in priority to the maternal or paternal beneficiaries.

The heir hunters' work can uncover hidden family histories with the power to surprise.

We have got all the details ready,

I have just got to put it on an actual...

And the team often get caught up in the twists and turns of a family mystery.

One of the fascinating bits about the whole job is when you start

discovering about who they're going to be, where they've come from,

what their past is, what they did.

And every now and then, you come across an absolute gem.

One of those situations where you go, "That is incredible."

Case manager at Fraser and Fraser Ben Cornish,

has been working one such case.

So, the case we are looking at is Joyce De La Salle.

It was a case that was advertised by the Government legal department.

With any case that is advertised by the Government legal department,

you're going to have competition on it.

But, as De La Salle is a rare surname,

Ben thought he could beat his competitors.

It is one of those names which is easy,

so we decided to have a look into it.

Ben quickly found that, although Joyce was born in south London in 1931,

she had ended up living in Winchester.

Neighbour Jennifer Parker, socialised with Joyce,

and they had a shared love of their adopted city.

It is a beautiful city to live in.

Residents of the flats often saw Joyce going out on shopping trips.

She was little and grey and always had a great big...

One of those trolleys, with bright colours all over it, you know,

but she tended mostly to dress in grey.

She was just a little old lady.

Joyce was known for being private.

She just seemed to live in her own little world,

and sometimes when we have had coffee, she has been fine,

but she never spoke about anything that was personal to her.

Joyce passed away in 2014, aged 83, with no known next of kin.

With neighbours unable to help en, he had to rely on records,

as he started his search for heirs.

When we initially looked into the case of Joyce De La Salle,

it was released that she was a widow.

So the first thing we did was look for her marriage to Mr De La Salle.

And Joyce Fulbrook married a Peter James De La Salle in 1968 in Croydon.

No children were born to the marriage,

and Mr De La Salle died in 1978 in Witney.

With no children, attention turned to Joyce's parents,

and whether she had siblings.

And Joyce's marriage record gave Ben some crucial information about her family.

From that, we were able to get that the deceased's maiden name was Fulbrook,

so the next thing that we would do, is look for a birth of

a Joyce Fulbrook.

And there was a Joyce Fulbrook born

on the second of October 1931 in Lewisham.

The team ordered her birth certificate,

and discovered that her parents were Albert Fulbrook and Ethel Chilton.

The next step was to find a record of their marriage to see if Joyce

had siblings, and Ben drafted in researcher Katie Peacock.

But she soon hit a stumbling block.

So, originally,

when I was looking for the deceased's parents marriage,

I was looking in the Lewisham area,

purely because that is where the deceased was born.

We were struggling to find a marriage between a Fulbrook

and the mother's maiden name.

Hang on, let me get this stuff up.

Finding this marriage certificate was vital.

The marriage record is crucial for any estate that we look into.

The reason being is it has so much information about the family on.

But after looking high and low for a marriage between Albert Fulbrook and

Ethel Chilton, the team couldn't find anything.

It definitely did make it a bit more tricky.

Instead, they searched for records of children born to a Fulbrook and a Chilton.

When we look into these cases,

we like the unusual combination of surname and mother's maiden name.

It can really help you if the family moves out of the area.

To their surprise, there are only ten which matched,

but were they all Albert and Ethel's children?

The first five were born up north,

and then the second five came down south,

to the Lewisham and Bromley area.

That is where Joyce was born.

Katie was not convinced that the children born in the North were related

to Joyce.

So, it is strange for half the siblings to be born up north

and then half to be born down south.

It was possible they were all Joyce's siblings.

The team scoured records for information on Joyce's father, Albert,

hoping it might explain why the family had moved to the other end of the country.

And Albert's military record started to offer some possible clues.

It gives us his occupation, which was a stoker in the Royal Navy.

Albert joined the Navy in 1904,

at a time when Britain ruled the seas with its coal-fired battleships.

His job as a stoker meant shovelling coal into the ship's boilers,

all day, every day.

The stoker is the backbone of the Royal Navy.

Without him, it goes nowhere.

It is quite a skilled job, and senior stokers are paid quite well.

It is a dirty, physical process of lifting and moving

large amounts of coal, so you are working in a super tropical heat,

wet, damp, hot, sticky conditions.

Very energy sapping.

While stoking was hard but well-paid work, it wasn't without its risks.

If the ship sinks,

it is highly likely all the stokers will be lost with it,

because they are right at the bottom of the ship in a very difficult place

to get out of, so they are the most at risk if the ship sinks.

When Albert joined in 1904,

the Navy had over 40 battleships spread across the world,

from Scotland to South America.

This meant it was perfectly likely that he may have had to move to a

different part of the UK.

We never know where extended family are going to end up.

They could go very far afield,

they could go abroad simply to give the family more opportunities.

But to be sure all ten children were Albert's and Ethel's,

they ordered the birth certificates for each one.

If Albert and Ethel's names appeared on all ten certificates,

it would prove that Joyce had nine siblings.

Just wanted to check with you a few

-things that...

-As the certificates came in,

the youngest seven were all confirmed as Joyce's brothers and sisters.

But the certificate for the two eldest children revealed a shocking twist.

It turns out the two first children born are Ethel and Elizabeth,

and once getting their certificates back,

we managed to find that the father of the deceased was James Saunders.

It was a bombshell.

With the father's name on the certificate shown as James Saunders,

the search had been thrown completely off course.

Did this mean the eldest two children were from a different family?

When originally looking at the certificate and seeing that the father had

a different name, it made me think, is this father the original father?

But the plot was about to thicken further.

A closer inspection of the birth certificates revealed a surprise

connection between James and Albert.

Actually, on the certificates themselves,

they have a little note at the side, saying,

father's also known as Albert Bartholomew Fulbrook.

This was edited in 1915,

so that would've been four years after Ethel was born.

It was an extraordinary revelation.

Albert Fulbrook and James Saunders were the same man.

The certificate showed Albert had changed his name to James Saunders

before having children with Ethel in 1911.

He had then changed his name back to Albert Fulbrook by 1915.

We don't really often see that, so, yeah,

it was very different on this case.

It was a mystery for the team as to why Albert had changed his name,

but now they had exposed his secret life under the name of Saunders,

they were finally able to find his marriage to Joyce's mother.

We came up with the marriage, which was actually in 1910,

they married as James Saunders and Ethel Chilton.

The fact Albert had married and had his first two children whilst

apparently leading a double life had turned this into a highly intriguing

case for the team.

So, what have we got?

But the reason why Albert changed his name to James Saunders would be yet

another surprise.

OK, thank you.

Researching families, we never know what we are going to get.

I think he has just assumed someone's identity,

and obviously that would've been a lot easier than it would be today,

to obtain someone's identity.

Would Ben and Katie be able to get to the bottom of this mystery?

And, crucially, would they be able to find any heirs?

Every year in Britain,

thousands of people get a surprise knock on the door from heir hunters.

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

the heir hunters can bring long lost relatives back together.

That's how they are connected,

so Charles was first cousin of your late mum.

That's a shock.

But thousands of estates have eluded the heir hunters,

and remain unsolved.

Today, we have got details of two estates yet to be claimed.

Could you be the person the heir hunters are looking for,

or know someone that is?

The first case is Catherine Mary Toye,

who was born on the second of February 1910...

..and died on the 24th of December 1989 in Leicester.

Catherine's maiden name was Cox,

and she married George Frederick Toye in Islington in London in 1937.

She is believed to have had a son.

Is there a chance you are related, or know someone that could be?

The second case is Kenneth Hepple,

who was born on the tenth of June 1936.

He died on the 19th of January 1987, in Newcastle.

Kenneth's parents were Robert Hepple, who died in 1966,

and Bridget Hepple, who died in 1964.

Do you know a Toye or a Hepple?

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

Perfect, thank you very much for your help.

Bye.

At Finders International in Central London...

-Are you writing that?

-These three are alive.

..Ryan and the team have spent the morning

frantically trying to find heirs

to the estate of Joyce Cole...

..who passed away in June 2015.

Suzanne, if you want to

start divvying those up, I will make

sure everyone's got a copy of these.

Joyce's estate is estimated to be worth

in excess of a quarter of a million pounds,

but having thought they were looking for cousins,

the team now think Joyce may have had a half blood sister called Grace.

If she or her descendants were still alive,

they would be heirs to Joyce's estate.

Did you look at Harriet?

-Yeah.

-How did it go?

She died as a spinster.

However, Ryan has a new theory about Grace.

He now thinks she could be the daughter of Joyce's aunt Harriet,

which would make her a cousin, rather than a half sibling.

This Grace that I was looking into,

I'm pretty sure I saw something online which said her mum was Harriet,

so this illegit could actually be hers.

-That's what I thought.

-So she married, she died in Southampton.

I think she perhaps passes away,

so I need to find out if she has any children that we could speak to,

to confirm that her mum was Harriet, and the Harriet we are looking into.

As the team research further into Joyce's aunt Harriet,

they discover that in the early 20th century,

she was at the centre of an exciting and lucrative industry.

In about 1905, 1907, across the south-east,

there is going to be about 100,000 people working in the straw hat industry.

And the number of hats they are producing is 30 million hats a year.

Huge quantities.

With straw hats at the height of fashion, the industry was booming,

and the highly skilled women who made them were well placed to capitalise

on this new demand.

Harriet working for a hat manufacturer in about 1911,

around that sort of period,

she is going to be quite well rewarded for her work.

She is going to be earning possibly about 12 shillings,

16 shillings a week.

But unfortunately for Harriet and her hat making colleagues,

their new-found wealth came at a cost.

Women working in the hat industry tended quite unjustly to get rather

a bad reputation.

The problem was that they didn't meet social convention.

They earned a lot of money,

so they were independent women at a time when

women weren't supposed to be independent.

Men from the upper parts of society took a particular dislike to this

change in gender roles,

and a backlash of slanderous propaganda was directed at women like Harriet.

They were accused of being slovenly,

they didn't keep their homes nice.

They were accused of being sort of harlots or tarty, loose women,

and none of that, probably in the majority of cases, was true.

Oaths put out warning mothers not to let their daughters go in to the

hat trade, because beware the plait man!

He would come and get her, and it wouldn't be good if he did.

But despite this,

it seems Joyce's aunt Harriet managed to make a success of her time in

hat making, and crucially for the team,

they have confirmed that she also went on to have a daughter

called Grace.

People will be all over this, basically, so let's get cracking.

They are now full steam ahead in their search

for Grace or her descendants,

but Harriet wasn't Joyce's only aunt.

-Ellie, how's your bit going?

-The team still have five more of Joyce's

aunts and uncles to research,

and they need to find them before their competitors.

We want to use as many people as quickly as possible, really.

The only problem being today was that there was

a few other cases to look at. Me, I think I'm quite competitive,

so there was a nagging feeling that we are behind.

Suzanne has worked the line of Joyce's maternal uncle, Frederick Munt.

She thinks she may have found that he had children who are still alive,

and it could be a major breakthrough.

About to call a cousin of the deceased.

He is the first person I've found,

and he has potentially got a lot of brothers and sisters, so...

I thought, it is easier if I just give him a call.

But Suzanne is not in luck.

The line is engaged.

He's on the phone.

She's worried who the potential heir might be speaking to.

I think he possibly might be on the phone to, potentially,

another company.

So, you know, I will give him a call back in a bit.

When we are trying to get through to potential beneficiaries,

if the phone is engaged,

the first thought always goes through our mind is,

is the person speaking to one of our competitors, a rival firm?

It's always something that we worry about.

But, as the team keep finding more beneficiaries,

they keep hitting the same problem.

A couple of the beneficiaries we spoke to had either been contacted by another firm,

and were reluctant to give us any information,

or just didn't really want to confirm any details.

Sometimes, we need,

as a team, the odd kind of bit of

good luck, really. I mean, that someone we speak to hasn't talked to anybody else,

someone we can get a bit of information from.

Not only for information from the tree, but also as a bit of a lift,

as a bit of a boost.

Just when the team think they have hit a brick wall,

Ryan discovers something of interest.

Basically, I was looking into a

maternal cousin, Ernest Munt,

he was one of the children of Amos Munt.

I think I have found two daughters to that marriage,

and they would be first cousins once removed.

But I'm hoping...

..that if I ring one of them now,

then one of them will be able to do some info on this section of the

family tree.

It is a long shot, but with pressure from the competition,

Ryan's hoping this time he will get there first.

I mean, the luck we are having speaking to beneficiaries today,

I'm not going to hold my breath, but fingers crossed.

But early signs are not looking good.

No, OK, thank you.

Bye-bye.

There we go.

One wrong number, one no answer.

It's kind of the theme of the day so far.

All is not lost.

Ryan has another lead on the stem of Joyce's uncle Amos,

and he thinks he's found a number for one of his great granddaughters.

Hello, it's Ryan Gregory.

I'm with Heir Hunters, and we're looking into the Munt family tree.

Will it be second time lucky?

I'm really pleased to have got you, actually, because I've been trying...

We, as a team, have been trying to get hold of people all morning.

After a tough start, Ryan has finally spoken to a potential heir.

Thank you so much for your time.

Speak soon. Bye-bye.

It, kind of, couldn't have gone any better, which is nice.

So a bit more research to do, erm, but,

kind of, quite satisfying to have finally got to that stage.

And there's more good news on the horizon.

Hello.

Hi. Yeah, I'm good. How are you?

Ryan's just had a call from one of the team's travelling researchers

who's just been to visit another potential heir.

Cole. Joyce Cole.

Yeah.

They're what, sorry?

But is it the good news Ryan's been hoping for?

I'm going to let the team know. Bye-bye.

Good news - signature.

It's a triumph for all involved.

Boosts morale within the team.

It's obviously great news to know that we've had a signature from one

of the beneficiaries that we've been out to see that day.

As the day draws to an end,

Ryan and the team have contacted several potential heirs.

When we started the day with quite high pressure,

with the number of cases that have been released by the Bona Vacantia department,

if we can carry on the success from the initial stages of the case through

to having signatures from beneficiaries,

it means that the team can leave the office

at the end of the day on a high.

And over the next few weeks, things get even better,

as the team manage to sign up

the majority of beneficiaries to the estate.

One of them is Diane, who is Joyce's cousin twice removed.

It was exciting when I got the call,

because then I can now find out that I have got relatives out there that

I didn't know anything about, and I can, sort of,

fill in that side of the family history.

Last year, Diane spent some time looking into her family tree,

but she had no idea just how large her extended family was.

I had no inkling at all about being part of a bigger family,

as I didn't even know that my nan had any relatives whatsoever.

I didn't know she had brothers or sisters,

so it's going to be interesting to find out

and hopefully meet some of them.

But just as things are looking good, there's a sudden last-minute twist.

We heard a rumour from a friend of Joyce that she may have left a will.

Now this has just been confirmed by the solicitors that were appointed

to deal with her estate.

We haven't seen a copy of the will yet,

so there could still be some money in for the family, but, unfortunately,

it looks like a lot of work would have gone to waste on this occasion.

Whilst it is disappointing news for the team,

they are pleased that Joyce's estate will be going where she intended,

and for cousin twice removed Diane,

being contacted by the Heir Hunters means she has the chance to reconnect with relatives.

It's definitely a big family and I believe it could be

getting bigger,

so it'd be nice if we can meet up with some of the relatives.

I'd be really interested and pleased to meet them.

In London, Heir Hunters Fraser and Fraser were researching the case of

Joyce De La Salle.

I just want to clarify with you if we're on the right track or not.

Manager Ben and researcher Katie were working as fast as they could to

find living relatives.

It's a case, when we first looked into it, we couldn't establish what the value was.

Ben and the team were hoping to find heirs,

but still had no idea whether Joyce had any surviving family.

All right. Thank you very much for your time.

Take care. Bye-bye.

From her marriage certificate,

they'd learnt that her father was Albert Fulbrook,

and he had served in the Royal Navy from 1904.

We managed to find a birth in the Kent area for an

Albert Bartholomew Fulbrook, which matched on age with the Naval records

we actually had for him.

They believed that between 1911 and 1931,

Albert and his wife Ethel had ten children, including Joyce.

But they'd also uncovered an astonishing secret.

Just before 1910,

Albert was actually going under the name of James Saunders.

We know this because when in 1910 he married the deceased's mother,

he was registered as James Saunders on their marriage,

and again for the births of his first two children.

It was a complete mystery why he'd changed his name.

When we're researching families, we never know what we're going to get.

So it's pretty puzzling, and we were trying to figure out why he would have changed his name.

The team were keen to get to the bottom of why Albert had changed his name,

and his naval records started to offer some clues.

They showed that in 1906 Albert had gone absent without leave whilst

working on a ship that was docked in Sheerness in Kent.

The ship he was on wasn't sailing anywhere.

It was a training ship with some engines in it,

and they were just practising stoking the boilers.

He may well have taken quite a rational decision that he didn't want to do

this any more, and left.

But Albert was taking a huge risk.

If he's caught, he will be imprisoned,

so the Navy will now lock you up for being a deserter,

put you in a prison and make you do hard labour.

So Albert changed his name to James Saunders and fled 300 miles north to

Newcastle upon Tyne.

It's less likely that he's going to run into the Navy in the north of

England, so a change of name, a change of address,

and a move as far away from the Navy as possible.

Yeah, he's thought about this.

It seems that Albert met his wife, Ethel, in the north-east and the couple

married under the name Saunders.

But Albert's life as a naval fugitive was far from glamorous,

as he ended up working in a coal mine.

He is hiding in a coal mine.

He's not moved up socially.

He's actually a step backwards.

He's a wanted man. The state would like to lock him up, to punish him,

and he's working in a far more unpleasant environment than he would be.

He may have come to regret his decision.

But fate would step in for Albert.

In 1914, Britain went to war against the German Empire.

Determined to boost numbers,

the Navy offered an amnesty to all deserters.

They could come back and re-enrol and would avoid any punishment.

Albert was one of them.

By going back to the Navy, he...

Albert redeems himself in his own eyes, I'm sure.

Not only did Albert go on to serve in the Navy for another four years,

he was involved in one of the biggest naval battles of the 20th century,

the Battle of Jutland.

As long as the British don't lose this battle,

they're going to win the war.

Deep below the water line,

Albert would have been in the most vulnerable part of the ship,

as he kept the fires burning in the engine room

whilst the guns raged overhead.

After six hours, the British fleet had the upper hand.

They don't lose the battle.

They drive the Germans back and the Germans never come out again,

so it is the decisive battle of the First World War.

Albert retired in 1919 with an honourable discharge,

and would have been welcomed as a hero back on dry land.

By serving through the war, he's expunged that mark from his record.

He's... He can hold his head up high now.

He's a First World War veteran and he's part of

the Navy that wins the war.

He even made sure that records, including his marriage certificate,

were changed from James Saunders back to Albert Fulbrook.

So that's not just a case of, well, I can, sort of, hold my head up again.

I'm now really proud of being who I am rather than this assumed identity

that I lived under for this four-year period between leaving the Navy and

rejoining it. So he's...

He's recovered his sense of self.

All right, then. Cheers.

The mystery of the name change may have been resolved,

but it was still making life hard for Ben and the team.

So, when individuals have changed their name,

it really impacts our search for their children.

The team had initially found ten possible children for Albert and Ethel,

but now they had to cross-reference these births against the name Saunders.

So the issue with this was that I had to do a lot more searches.

So it was, kind of, double the work, you could say.

After hours of cross-checking records,

they confirmed Joyce was one of the youngest of ten siblings.

-Thank you.

-Bye.

And there was a further surprise.

What was also unusual on this case was that there was two sets of twins.

It's very unusual for there to be two sets of twins within one family.

-I've personally never seen that before on a job.

-Gordon.

The team now focused on tracing descendants of Joyce's siblings.

Her eldest brother was also called Albert Bartholomew Fulbrook.

As Britain went to war again in 1939,

it seemed Albert Junior was ready to serve his country,

just as his naval father had done over 20 years earlier.

He became a pilot in the Royal Air Force.

And he would have flown over Germany on night bombing raids of ports and cities.

Aged only 27, his role would have been a tough one.

He captained the aircraft.

He was responsible for the other crews,

and that will have arguably weighed on his shoulders.

And, of course, at the other end of the spectrum,

there would have been fear. It would have been scary to fly over Germany.

Germany was a well-defended country.

He was fortunate enough to survive 32 bombing raids and was awarded the

distinguished Flying Cross in 1944.

But clearly, by the fact that Albert reaches 32 missions,

there's probably more skill than luck involved.

Joyce's pilot brother and naval stoker father had both risked their lives

to protect Britain.

It was an incredible family legacy.

Hello?

And as the team research Joyce's siblings,

they continue to find more surprising twists in her family history.

It's very unusual for a family of ten to all have survived the early part

of the 20th century, all to have gone on to marry.

The next task was to see if any of the siblings' descendants were alive

and therefore heirs to Joyce's estate.

And especially for this family we...

We had them having their first children in the north-east,

and then they moved down south, so we had to be extra careful in this case.

Initial searches revealed that eight of Joyce's siblings had passed

away, and the team were now busy searching for their descendants.

Could you print a clean scatter tree for me, please?

But there were still one sibling, Mary Fulbrook, to trace,

and when they conducted their searches, they made a major breakthrough.

What is quite unique about Mary Stern is she's the only sibling of the

deceased that still alive.

And her daughter, Alison, is acting as power of attorney for her,

as she is very elderly.

It was great news in the office.

They'd found one of Joyce's heirs.

For Alison, it was a shock to hear from the Heir Hunters.

Well, we received a phone call saying that a relative of ours had died

and there was no will, and her name was Joyce De La Salle,

so we realised that that was our aunt, Auntie Joyce.

Joyce was Alison's aunt, but she hadn't seen her for many years.

It's a big family, lots of cousins and second cousins,

but we had a meeting a few years ago of some of us, us cousins,

and we were chatting about the family, and when it came to Joyce,

nobody knew at all where she was or what had happened to her.

It's quite sad. In a family I know it happens sometimes that...

especially a large family, that not everyone can keep in touch.

Back in the office, Ben and the team were rounding off the heir hunt.

They had discovered that all of Joyce's siblings had children,

which meant there were many heirs to her £18,000 estate.

-That would mean that...

-There would be 21 beneficiaries to be entitled in this matter,

ranging from sibling of the deceased to nieces and nephews and

great-nieces and nephews, so for a near-kin case,

quite a number of individuals to trace.

And for Joyce's niece, Allison,

it's an opportunity to reflect on her family.

There is quite a sadness that that person is no longer there.

There is a part of you that you lose, in a sense,

when one of your close relatives dies.

Hearing about Joyce again has made her cherish what family she has.

There is that family wisdom that I think is quite important.

You learn a lot from your parents and your grandparents as well.

I think we all like to know where we've come from,

and we have a sense of identity when we look at our families.