Hopkinson/Cable Heir Hunters

Today, it's all hands on deck in the race to find heirs.

It feels like a lot of the numbers I call don't work.

And the hunt uncovers a family tragedy.

His sister and his mother have been looking for him for many, many years.

Unfortunately, they never found him.

On another case, there's a problem at the first hurdle.

We can't find anyone under that name or within that year.

But the search reveals a leading figure in the community.

You could go anywhere and...people would know him.

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

It's 11am...

I think it needs to be put on the file that that's what you've discovered.

..and, in London, case manager Gareth Langford

from Fraser and Fraser has a new case to work.

So we've just had a referral of a case, John Hopkinson.

We don't know much about the gentleman at the moment.

We've been asked to assist in locating his next of kin.

-Get the birth and marriage...

-Yeah.

-Look at that and then we'll work on it.

-OK.

Gareth is quick to get researcher Sinead on the case as well.

The information I've got so far is that the deceased has died this year

and that he was born on the 18th of December 1940,

and now I'm going to look for his birth.

The case has been referred to them privately

and they need to work fast.

This particular case, it's not in the public domain at the moment,

so it's important that we crack on with it.

It's a race to get it done as quickly as possible

so that no other company will get a look in.

But the heir hunters have scant information to work with.

John Hopkinson died in May 2016,

having spent the last years of his life living in the seaside town of

Margate. Little is known about John and no photos of him appear to

survive, but, living in Margate,

he would have been surrounded by a friendly and close-knit community.

You haven't got the hustle and bustle of living in London.

Do what you like, when you like.

It just suits us, me and the wife, you know?

Nice and peaceful, you know?

And, erm...

We enjoy it here.

John passed away aged 76 without a will and never

married or had children.

So the hunt is on to find any living relatives.

OK, thank you. Bye.

And despite limited information,

Sinead is already making swift progress.

So I've found John's birth.

His mother's maiden name is Walker and, because he's born in December,

on the 18th of December, his birth is actually registered in 1941 in

the March quarter, in...Nottingham.

So, for that, I'm going to...

Now I've got an area to look at.

I'm going to see if I can find his parents' marriage.

Sinead needs to find a marriage in the right area between a Hopkinson

and a Walker. But time is of the essence,

as Gareth has some information about the value of John's estate.

On this case, it is a modest value, so we can't spend too much time,

really, looking at it.

What we need to do is get it up-to-date as quickly as possible,

so we, you know, limit our resources, really.

The estate is worth approximately £20,000.

Gareth knows every second counts with these early stages

of research on a privately-referred case.

PHONE RINGS

-Hello?

-But any day it could become in the public domain,

which means it would then be competitive,

and with a smaller-value estate, that's the last thing we want.

On the front line of research,

Sinead has made good progress with John's close family.

So far on the tree, I've found John's parents there.

They are Hilda Frances Walker and Reginald Verity Hopkinson.

They married in the March quarter of 1932 in Nottinghamshire.

And Sinead soon makes a crucial discovery

which could change the whole case.

John also has one sister called Janice Hopkinson,

who was born in 1935 in Nottingham.

In any case where there is close kin,

the heir hunters know they need to tread carefully.

Something could have happened within the family meaning the brother and sister lost touch.

If Janice is still alive, she'd be the sole heir,

which would allow the team to wrap up this low-value case

quickly and cost-effectively.

-Just start from the beginning.

-Yeah.

But after searching every record she can, Sinead hits a dead end.

Looking at Janice, I've found that she marries a Trevor G Trickett in 1976

in Nottingham, but after that she just disappears.

There is no trace of her on any system I can find.

But Sinead has also spotted something odd

about Janice's mother Hilda.

But there is actually nothing for Hilda.

There has been no death for her, so she's also disappeared.

All can get is, really, is her birth and marriage and that's it,

-because there's no death for her or anything.

-Thank you.

Gareth steps in to see if he can help.

The team has hit a dead end, and desperately needs more information,

but Gareth has a possible ace up his sleeve.

In a case when it's referred to us, you know, they've asked for our assistance,

so they are often quite helpful with the questions that we may ask.

Gareth goes back to the people who referred them the case and is able

to get some valuable new information about John's sister Janice.

That's quite crucial, actually, because we need to count it out.

She possibly went to France.

OK. That's all updated.

Sinead now needs to follow up on this major new lead

and hopes of keeping the research costs down are fading fast.

When somebody moves abroad like this,

it does make our research a lot more difficult.

There is a possibility that she may have remarried, which would then...

It would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

It could be anywhere.

But Sinead is undeterred

and wants to explore the French connection as fast as possible.

There isn't a deadline just yet, but it's...

It's sort of like we set our own deadlines,

just to get it done as quickly as possible.

Also you sort of, like,

have your own little race against the other companies,

that you can beat their researchers. So...

With the search for John's sister stalled,

and with questions as to why her and her brother appear to have lost

contact, the team has no choice but to look to the wider family in the

hope it provides some answers.

It really is a challenge for us because, our starting point,

we need to know where they went.

So Sinead is going to have to move to the wider family

to see if they know what happened to John's sister and mother.

So, at this point,

I'm going to go back and look at cousins and see if any of them know

what's happened to Janice and Hilda.

Looking into the wider family means yet more research and more costs,

but Sinead is able to make quick inroads into John's mother's family.

Lucky for me, Hilda is Hilda Frances Walker and, on the 1911 census,

her parents have put her down as Hilda Frances Walker,

born about 1906.

It says that her parents are George William Walker and Daisy Emma.

I've looked through the parents' marriage -

it says that they were married for eight years.

George and Daisy Walker are John's maternal grandparents.

Their children would be his maternal aunts and uncles.

The 1911 census lists George Walker as a herbalist

and, in an era before many modern medicines were available,

he would have sold remedies for a wide variety of medical complaints.

This is the kind of thing he would have very likely had -

balsam of horehound and squill.

Horehound Marrubium vulgare,

to warm and lift the phlegm and tar from the chest.

The origins of herbal medicine stretch back thousands of years

and the ancient Greeks were among the early civilisations that learned

to harness the healing power of plants.

Yarrow - Achillea millefolium...

Named after Achilles, the Greek warrior.

Millefolium is the 1,000 leaves.

It stops bleeding, so a very, very useful first aid plant.

When they would take it into battle, because it's specific for very,

very clean cuts, like a glass cut or a metal wound,

what you would do is chew it.

So you take a piece, and if it's a big wound, you take a large,

you would take it all, chew it up,

out it comes. Pack the wound with your pulp

and then lay another piece,

perhaps a fine piece, across the top of it.

And then that forms the basis of your compress,

and then you would then apply the bandaging on top of...

on top of that. And the idea is they give the flesh on either side of the

wound something to hold on to,

to grip on to and then to start restitching itself,

to re-heal itself.

It's a good plant ally, yarrow.

Everyone needs to know where their yarrow plants are

because they're everywhere. You just need to know where they are, so you can find them.

Herbalism remained popular throughout the Victorian era

and George Walker was well-placed to capitalise.

Through the 1800s and 1900s, herbal medicine was still going very,

very strong. More people were moving into the cities,

increased urbanisation, so, first of all,

people weren't having so much access to their plants.

They were in the city now.

People were hungry for herbs

and so they certainly would have bought their herbs from Mr Walker.

In the office, the team can use this unusual job as a clue

in their search for George's marriage to Daisy.

The right marriage certificate would list him as a herbalist.

Found their marriage and they married in 1902 in Nottingham,

and Daisy's surname is Mortar.

Now, because I've got...

They've listed that they've got four children on the census,

I'm going to do an after '11 birth search to find if they had

-any more children.

-These would be maternal aunts and uncles of John's,

and their children, his cousins.

The team is hoping these cousins might be able to help them track

down John's elusive sister Janice.

But before Sinead has a chance to find any of them,

there's a dramatic development.

Gareth receives a call from someone who knew Janice...

Hello.

-Yeah.

-And it changes everything.

I was advised that the sister actually died in Spain

with the deceased's mother as well, who also went to Spain.

But they've also unearthed a family tragedy which had haunted John's

family for years.

His sister and his mother have been looking for him for many, many years.

Unfortunately, they never found him.

As John's sister had died, it means the heir hunters

must now continue their search for his cousins.

It's Sinead's job to track them down as quickly as possible,

and perhaps uncover the reason why John's sister and mum had been

searching for him for so long.

-So what have we got?

-So we're looking at the maternal side.

There is a lot of pressure to get this job done so that we can get in

there first, obviously, and beat the competition.

Can Gareth and Sinead find heirs

before the competition gets the case?

No answer there.

No joy. It feels like a lot of the numbers I call don't work.

Whilst they were related to each other,

they weren't actually related to this family.

In the central London offices of probate research firm

Finders International,

assistant case manager Camilla Price had taken on a new case.

This is a case of Clive Frederick Cable.

When the case was referred to us from the council,

they were already in contact with some of the family members.

This occasionally happens when the council refers matters to us,

as they may have personally been referred the case by family members,

so... So therefore they passed these names onto us when...

getting in contact to find anyone else who may be entitled to

-the estate.

-We need to get a couple of possible addresses.

The estate was thought to be worth around £32,000,

and although they'd had a head start in the research,

the threat of the competition was still in the back of their mind.

Whilst we had been referred this case privately,

there was always the possibility that the case could have been released to

the public at any moment, or potentially that the information had been shared to another

competitor, so we had to treat this case as if it was a competitive case,

and therefore act immediately and find heirs as soon as possible.

Clive, who was known to his friends as Fred,

passed away on the 5th of June 2016 in Reedham in Norfolk.

It's a small, rural village,

and Fred was a key figure in the local community,

having set up a tug-of-war team.

People from all over England knew Fred Cable.

You could go anywhere and...

people would know him.

He was such a character.

-Yeah. Sad.

-Once you met him, you'd never forget him.

No. Sad loss to the village.

Fred was always an active man and his school friends,

who he was in regular contact with throughout his life,

remember him as a keen sportsman.

Fred used to win all the running at school when...

In the last years that we were at school together.

He used to run up the road every day, didn't he?

-Yeah.

-He was running every day.

He was one of the most fittest men at 65 I ever knew.

-Yeah.

-Till he got diabetes.

And then, I'm afraid, he went down.

Fred loved to spend time in the company of his friends

and would set up local meetings at this social club.

He enjoyed...

you know, coming up here on a Tuesday night,

get everyone together,

and some of the old boys used to come in and have a good yarn.

And his hospitality wasn't just confined to the social club.

Yeah, he even organised holidays in the early days.

I mean, that must have been late-'60s...

-Late '60s.

-Early '70s.

-Yes.

It was '64 when you went to Spain, wasn't it?

The first... The first time we went to Spain, that was 46 for 12 days,

£46, and that included the train fare from Norwich station to Gatwick.

And that snowballed from then on to about, sort of, about ten years,

and the last time I went there was about 15,

nearly 20 of us in the gang, all went on holiday altogether, you know?

He was the instigator.

But although Fred had a huge group of friends,

it was a very different story when it came to family,

and the hunt for his heirs almost stalled before it had even begun.

There are a few cousins up here left.

When the council referred the case to us,

they passed on the name Clive Frederick Cable and a date of birth.

We couldn't find anyone under that name or within that year.

It was a massive problem.

With no record of Fred's birth, the research would be going nowhere.

And breathe...

But then Camilla made a surprise breakthrough.

We played around with the records a bit and thankfully found a name,

Shirley Frederick Clive Cable,

and the year of birth matched the year we were looking for.

Whilst this wasn't the name we were initially looking for within our

records, we hoped that this would be the right one.

Thankfully his certificate came back

and it was the person we were looking for.

Armed with Frederick's full name,

Camilla was able to carry out searches to ascertain whether or not

Fred had never married or had children,

as a spouse or next of kin would be first in line to inherit.

But in Fred's case, this was far from straightforward.

We had a lot of options to play with in regards to his name.

Obviously we knew that the deceased was born under Shirley Frederick Clive Cable.

However, he also used Clive Frederick,

and there was a possibility that he also used Frederick Clive,

so we had to consider all these options when looking for marriages.

Hello, it's Ryan Gregory up in London.

We're a firm of heir hunters...

Eventually Camilla was satisfied she had exhausted all combinations of

Fred's name, but news wasn't good.

We discovered that the deceased was a bachelor,

therefore he had never married or had any children

who could potentially be entitled to this estate.

Next, Camilla needed to find out if Fred had siblings,

but she discovered he was the only child of father

Frederick Gunton Cable and Elsie Eva Edwards.

Can you try and trace them through and speak to them and find out

-whether they're related or not?

-Mm-hmm.

But then Camilla made a tragic discovery.

Sadly, the deceased's father died when Clive was quite young.

Fred was just 12 when his father died and,

crucially for the heir hunters, his mother had remarried.

This opened up a new avenue of research.

There's also always going to be the possibility that she had more

children who could be half-blood siblings of the deceased.

Any half-blood brothers or sisters would be sole heirs to the estate.

OK, great. I'll send that through to you. Bye-bye.

But after a bit more digging,

it appeared that, although Fred's mother remarried,

she didn't have any more children.

As soon as we had ruled out full and half-blood siblings of the deceased,

we realised that we had to go into paternal and maternal family trees.

Fortunately, on the paternal Cable side of the family,

Camilla had been given a head start by the council who'd referred them

-the case.

-When the council referred the case to us,

they passed on a few names of relatives

who could potentially be entitled to this estate.

Camilla set about confirming

that these relatives were indeed heirs.

She established that Fred's father Arthur had a brother called Reginald

and a sister called Phyllis.

Phyllis had one daughter and Reginald had a daughter and a son,

and this confirmed the research which the council passed on to us.

But although the team now had three confirmed heirs on the Cable side,

their work was far from finished.

But now we knew we had to face the other side,

which was going to be the surname Edwards,

and we knew this was going to be much harder to research into.

-We need to get cracking on this side, then, yeah?

-Yeah.

-All right?

Edwards is one of the most common surnames in Britain,

meaning Camilla and the team now faced a mammoth task.

With a commonly occurring surname and without certificates,

you are never too sure whether you are dealing with the right people,

particularly the further you drop down the generations

through the family.

If they know less about the other members of the family that connect

together, it can cause problems for us.

And the Edwards surname lived up to its reputation.

After finding out the deceased's mother was called Elsie Eva Edwards,

we then looked up this birth under a circa 1902

and found that there were work 14 possibilities for an Elsie E Edwards.

So this was quite a lot of possibilities just within that small period of time,

and therefore we knew it was going to be quite a struggle to locate

the right Elsie and also find her on the 1911 census.

After sifting through hundreds of records,

Camilla finally found the correct Elsie Edwards

and began looking for her siblings.

After finding Elsie on a 1911 census,

we discovered that she was one of six siblings.

Therefore, we had five stems to look into.

With a large family and the Edwards surname,

the team was facing an uphill struggle.

But against the odds,

Camilla soon thought she had made a breakthrough on the stem of Fred's

uncle, Frederick Charles.

He potentially had three children called Sidney,

Bernard and Hazel Edwards.

After researching into the family a bit more,

we discovered that Hazel married

and had two children before passing away.

We also found potential heirs on the line of Sidney and Bernard.

But as Camilla made contact with these potential maternal heirs,

the search was about to come crashing down.

They were able to confirm that they weren't part of the family we were

looking for. Whilst they were related to each other,

they weren't actually related to the deceased that we were looking for.

It was a sign of just how hard the Edwards name was going to be.

Which was obviously quite unfortunate

and meant that the heirs that we had found were no longer entitled.

But with more calls getting them nowhere...

There's been a couple of mishaps.

She actually passed away as an infant.

..would they reach an heir before the competition?

Every year in Britain, thousands of people get an unexpected knock

on the door from the heir hunters.

I was quite surprised.

A little bit shocked to find out

that I had a long-lost relative who's passed on.

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

they can bring long-lost relatives back together.

That is how they're connected,

so Charles was first cousin of your late mum.

That's a shock.

Currently, there are over 11,000 unsolved cases worth at

least £5.5 million.

And, today, we have the details of two.

The first is Beatrice Svenson,

who passed away in London on the 26th of January 1992

at the grand age of 90.

While her name has Scandinavian origins,

she was born in London and never married.

Are you part of a British-based Svensson family?

If so, it could be you the heir hunters are looking for.

The second case is Keith Vincent Irons,

who died aged 77 on the 7th of December 1992 in Sheffield.

He was born in Shropshire on the 21st of January 1915.

The surname Irons was most prevalent in Northamptonshire in the

19th century,

but is now common in Scotland and Cornwall.

Could you be a relative of Keith's?

If so, there may be a surprise windfall waiting for you.

Hopkinson update? Have we got an update?

In London, Gareth and Sinead at Fraser and Fraser

are on the hunt for the family of John Hopkinson.

Let me print off some trees and then...

-I'll start making calls.

-There's a Linda here.

They've discovered it's a low-value estate and are now

looking to his wider family,

where it looks like there may be many cousins to trace.

That's the family tree.

This is just the paternal side.

With the estate relatively low in value at £20,000...

If you can get these sorted as quickly as possible.

-OK.

-..case manager Gareth is trying to find heirs while keeping research

-costs down.

-When we start a case,

we literally don't know what we are looking at.

But if you start a case, if you start finding heirs,

-we are duty bound to locate all the heirs.

-These two are alive.

Once you've started, you've got to finish the work.

You can't just leave it half-baked.

The heir hunters have discovered John was completely out of touch

with his family and had been for decades.

His only sister had been trying to find him before she died in 2014.

-Yeah. We've got that, haven't we, the husband?

-Yeah.

Although John died in Margate,

research suggests most of his family are in the Nottingham area

and Sinead is getting close to tracking him down.

I've got few people up-to-date. She has two children -

one of them died in 2005.

She is looking at Phyllis Walker, a maternal aunt of John Hopkinson,

who died in 1980.

Phyllis appears to have had three children,

who would be John's cousins and heirs,

and Sinead thinks she has found them.

So we've got just one phone number there?

-Yes.

-Right, I'll go call this lady.

All right, cool.

Gareth is determined to speak to an heir today.

We have made quite good progress on this case.

I am going to try and contact one of the cousins of the deceased,

really just to introduce ourselves and explain why we're involved.

We've got a few beneficiaries now,

but I've only got one telephone number to call.

I might find out a little bit more about the deceased as well.

What we do know at the moment is...

he wasn't in contact with his family.

Gareth's hopes of tying up this case quickly rest on this phone call.

They're the only contact details they have for a potential heir.

This is pretty standard for me.

The only number we've got to call on this case, it doesn't work.

I'm going to ask Sinead if she can find any other numbers,

or a current number. I'm guessing that's an old number.

Maybe she's no longer living at that address.

Try and make contact some other way.

But Sinead quickly manages to find more people for Gareth to contact.

One of his paternal aunts, Florence, had two children -

both of whom have passed away.

But one of them, John's cousin Sheila,

had children who would be his heirs.

-Hey, Gareth.

-Hey.

-So Sheila has two children.

This is the address for Sheila?

-Yeah.

-With an address and a phone number,

there is double the chance of them finally making contact with an heir.

And she flipped between that one and another address,

but that is the only one that I can get a telephone number for.

-Brilliant, thank you.

-You're welcome.

-I'll give them a call.

-Brilliant.

Will it be third time lucky for Gareth?

So we've got a choice of two.

PHONE RINGS

That's a good start.

We've got a ring, but there's nobody answering.

She is probably at work.

One of the biggest problems we have.

We are trying to contact people,

but obviously they are out and about, doing their day job.

But once again, his luck's not in.

My name is Gareth Langford, I am calling from a firm of genealogists.

I look forward to hearing from you.

-Thank you.

-It's seriously frustrating for Gareth.

So... Answerphone.

No joy.

He's found heirs, but he can't speak to them.

It's a frustrating end to the day.

I have been able to leave an answerphone message on one.

At least that is some contact and hopefully they give us a call back.

-Thank you.

-Goodbye.

-The next day,

new information comes to light which changes the case.

I've had quite a few calls from some of the heirs,

which have been really helpful, actually.

There is some extra information I'm going to give to Sinead.

-Right, Sinead?

-Yes?

I've got a little bit more information.

So I have spoken to... I have spoken to someone on each branch now.

Of the ones that we've been able to get up-to-date.

-OK.

-The heirs have been able to give Gareth some intriguing information,

which may explain the mystery

of why John became estranged from his family.

They all knew of the deceased.

They all knew that he was in the military.

I'm getting a mixture of RAF and now I am getting Army as well.

And he left the Army,

and then had absolutely no contact with the family after that.

So they all know that story,

-but they are not...

-That he absconded?

-Yeah. Potentially, yes.

The family believes John served in the Forces until the 1960s, when he

suddenly went absent without leave.

The circumstances of his disappearance aren't known,

but Gareth has also found a friend of John's who says that,

having fled the military, he sought refuge in London's East End.

The East End was the place where you wanted to go and hide.

Sometimes, the police just didn't even want to

come around here because of the rough sorts,

so it would have been an easy place for Hopkinson to hide.

It's even rumoured that, while living in East London,

John played cards with some notorious opponents.

Well, the Krays are legendary around this area,

so much so that they pretty much ruled most of the gambling halls and

a lot of the pubs. Ronnie and Reggie would attend these, go drinking,

play cards. No-one would ever try and beat the Krays at cards because

they'd get taken out the back and given a kicking.

Apparently, as one story goes,

John Hopkinson beat the Krays on several occasions at cards.

Now, they wanted to go and lay into him because they were bad losers,

but one barman said, "No, he's a friend."

You know, "Just leave him be."

John survived his brush with gangsters

and did a variety of jobs for the next few decades,

retiring to Margate.

But for that entire time, he was out of touch with his family,

so Gareth's research into John and his wider kin

is having an interesting effect.

During the course of our research, and speaking to family members or

neighbours, we really built up quite an interesting fact file, almost,

of what the deceased was like.

So, you know, it is always refreshing when you get so much information

about the deceased, and we can pass that information on.

The team have managed to speak to several potential heirs to John's estate.

Take care, bye-bye.

But there is still one stem on John's mother's side of the family to tie up -

the branch of his Aunt Phyllis.

So, Sinead...

-Yeah?

-Up-to-date tree with what we've got so far.

-OK.

-What has been unearthed is that we've got more work on Phyllis.

-Yeah, sure, no problem. I will get on it right now.

-Thank you.

So Gareth has just come down with the tree.

On Phyllis' stem, she has one more child named Angela,

who is meant to be in the Weymouth area.

Unlike previous attempts to contact heirs,

Gareth gets through to Angela immediately.

No problem at all.

Thanks. Bye-bye.

And a few days later,

she is reflecting on the surprise call from Gareth.

I was just stunned.

It brought back a lot of memories.

It was... I was quite upset at the time, actually,

to think that I didn't know where he was.

She still remembers when John went missing in the 1960s.

I just remember

Mum saying to me, "John has disappeared."

I said, "How can he disappear? You can't disappear."

But he did. And he just disappeared and we never heard from him again.

And it's really quite sad.

He was quiet, and I think he must have had a terrible time to go and

do something like that.

Whatever had happened,

it seemed John was determined to avoid the Army.

I know that, every year,

the Army used to come back to my auntie's to find out if she had

heard from him at all.

John may never have known how much his disappearance affected the family,

especially his mother Hilda.

It must have been terrible for her, really, not knowing where he was.

And I often think about that because I have thought about him a lot over

the years. And every year, on his birthday,

she used to put a piece in the paper to say, "Happy birthday,

"John Hopkinson, wherever you are."

But the heir hunters have been able to help Angela and the rest of the

family understands what John's life was like after he vanished,

and Gareth is now at the stage of finalising John's family tree.

I think there is going to be about 17 beneficiaries on this case

and we've got contact details for each one,

and that is the way it will be, really.

At the end of the day, we are a firm of researchers.

So when you have finished the research,

when you've actually accomplished the whole point of us being

involved, it's quite rewarding.

So it's quite satisfying to get it all pretty much finalised

-reasonably quickly.

-But on this unique case,

helping resolve the mystery of John's life for the wider family is

the real reward.

One of the best things that we have brought to the family is

probably closure for what happened to him.

He had always been a mystery, he had always disappeared,

but at least now, you know, that mystery has ended for them.

Angela had always feared the worst about what had happened to John

and now the heir hunters have been able to put her mind at rest.

Just nice to know that John did actually live a life.

And memories of their happy childhoods have returned.

They are so pretty.

At Christmas, going to Grandma's, having Christmas,

all of us together, John was quite quiet, really.

I don't remember him being a naughty boy at all.

I think I was probably the youngest

and I was probably the naughtiest, actually.

But I remember...

I remember him very well.

I remember Grandma's and we were all there.

It was just lovely.

-I did a search for marriages yesterday.

-Mm-hm.

And there were quite a few options.

In London, assistant case manager Camilla Price from Finders International

had hit a stumbling block on the case of Fred Cable,

who had been born Shirley Frederic Clive Cable.

There's been a couple of mishaps with looking in stems

and then finding out it's wrong.

Speaking to potential family members early on in the research is key to

establishing if the team is on the right track.

Sometimes, we will speak to people and they will confirm that they are

actually the incorrect person and the incorrect family

and, therefore, we have to scrap our research and start again.

Having wasted precious time researching the wrong family,

Camilla was back to square one.

She had a lead on three paternal heirs,

but still had three branches of the maternal side to research.

Despite having no known close family,

Fred Cable was surrounded by friends in the Norfolk village,

where he was the founding member of tug-of-war team the Reedham Vikings.

Fred had those skills, that hunger maybe to do some sport or other,

and I think Reedham would have started off as

a village team that competed

in village fetes, sports days, agricultural shows.

But as they got better and began to win more competitions,

they moved across into the Tug of War Association,

where they competed as a topline team there.

Fred would have become involved in tug-of-war during his Army days.

A lot of people were introduced to tug-of-war

in their period within the Forces,

but it goes back quite a long way.

And I have got a page, a cover page,

from the Illustrated London News of 1890.

Where you've got the London Garrison sports day

and there's tug-of-war going on there.

And you can take that through to a little bit more modern, 1947,

you've got tug-of-war being...

a competition on the decks of the aircraft carrier Ark Royal.

And it was important as part of physical fitness,

it was important as part of teamwork, again,

being prepared to obey orders, get on with the job.

And it appeared the Brits were pretty good at the sport.

Tug of war as an Olympic sport first came in in 1900,

but it was only featured in five Olympics.

We were represented primarily by the police forces.

And we actually won gold when the Olympics were in London in 1908,

and we won gold again in 1920 when the Olympics were in Antwerp.

In 1958, having left the Army, and while working at a local brewery,

Fred honed his passion for the sport.

Fred was well known throughout the tug-of-war community as a puller and

also as an area representative for East Anglia with the

Tug of War Association,

so a well-known and well-respected gentleman.

And the team won 600 trophies during their 37-year existence.

Fred as the driving force behind Reedham Vikings...

..amassed over the years a huge amount of knowledge,

training techniques,

skill, motivational skills, and with his passing, those things are lost.

Having dedicated his life to his sport,

Fred had not had a family of his own,

which meant the heir hunters

had to find next of kin to share his £30,000 estate.

-Yeah, it did get a bit bigger.

-That's quite a lot of cousins!

Yeah, a lot of cousins. Yeah.

Fred's mother, Elsie Edwards, was one of six children.

The team had ruled out children from one sister, May.

So Camilla turned her attention to another stem.

Another uncle for the deceased was William James Edwards

and he was one of the eldest of the Edwards children,

being born in 1883, he went on to marry a woman called Harriet Flegg.

Together, they had three children.

One of these children was Alice Edwards

and, having found her child, Camilla quickly got in contact.

They confirmed that they were wrong and weren't actually part of our Edwards family.

Camilla spotted a crucial detail that would make life easier.

A lot of the Edwards family worked within the railway profession, and

this was quite useful when we were trying to descend lines and research

into the family, especially, for example, William James Edwards.

He is listed here as a plate-layer

and also his father is listed in the same occupation,

and this meant we were able to confirm that we had found the right

William and we were able to stem this marriage from this point on.

All right. Cheers, then. Take care. Bye-bye.

The crosschecking paid off. William had had three children,

but sadly two of them, Alice and her twin brother, had died in infancy.

Therefore, we only had one stem to descend -

that was the stem of Rosa Gladys Edwards.

She married an Arthur Larham and together they had four children.

Three of Rosa's children had also passed away.

But when Camilla looked into the fourth daughter, also called Rosa,

she finally had some success.

We were able to find an address and a telephone number for Rosa.

And this time, Camilla's phone call brought good news.

I know this area very well,

only about 15 minutes away from my door.

Today, travelling rep David is visiting Fred's first cousin once removed,

Rosa, and her daughter Julie.

In my possession, I have a big family tree.

It's about five feet long. And what we're going to do is we're going to open it out in front of her

and she can have a good look,

and we'll get a show of who all her relatives are.

Hiya. Good afternoon, my name is David.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Come in.

-All right, thanks very much. Nice to meet you.

-Cheers.

-Thank you.

We started off right the way up here.

Now, the information was that a Shirley Frederick Clive Gable was

-the deceased person.

-So they say, yeah.

-Yeah.

And you can see your family line going all the way back.

I'm presuming this would be, is it, great-grandfather?

-Yes.

-Great-grandfather James George Edward there.

Then you come down to... It should be your grandfather, is that?

William James Edwards.

-It must be.

-And we come down on another level to Rose Gladys,

which I believe would be your mum.

Yeah, that's right, yeah.

Who married Arthur...

-Arthur Larham.

-That's it. In 1926.

And then we come down to you,

and I see that you've actually got two brothers and a sister?

-Yeah, they've all gone now.

-They've all gone now, unfortunately.

-I'm the only one left.

You're the only one left out of those, yeah?

And the tree has revealed a family secret.

We found out these as well.

-Yeah, that's right.

-That your mum had...

It looks as though they were born the same year, so they must have been twins.

-Yeah, that's right.

-My mum had two...

-Infant death there.

Yeah. I think they were twins, but they passed away at birth,

-unfortunately.

-We've never, ever heard anything about that.

That would have been Nanny's brother and sister.

-Yeah?

-Yeah. It would have been.

There you go.

They would have been your auntie and uncle, if they had survived.

With Rosa and her late siblings' children completing the stem

of Fred's Uncle William, Camilla could finally close the case.

We were able to find 22 heirs in the end -

three on the paternal side and 19 on the maternal side.

And the case was solved just in time, as Fred's beneficiaries were

traced in time for his funeral.

It was an interesting experience.

We met some relatives that we obviously never knew we had,

some very nice people over there,

and who talked to us and we sort of managed to establish that Clive was

connected to my mum's grandad.

And that he was a big part of the village there,

of village life in Reedham.

He was kind of Mr Reedham, it seemed to us,

that everything revolved around him, so he was quite an impressive man.

It was really interesting to us.

And it is learning about their relative and wider family that means

more to Rosa and Julie than anything else.

It was never about the money

and, to be quite honest,

having beans to Reedham and seeing the community there and Clive's

sport and all the things that he really loved and were passionate about,

that any legacy of his should lie within there, really.

You know, we are just strangers.

From the little bit I know about him, he kind of enjoyed his life

and I really hope that he spent his money on enjoying himself, really,

and doing what he loved doing.