Mead/Kushia Heir Hunters

Today, the heir hunters get stuck at the first hurdle.

We're struggling to find births for most of the aunts and uncles.

And doors just keep closing.

Not having a lot of joy at the moment.

The beneficiary isn't in and the near neighbours aren't in either.

While, on another case, common names cause a major headache.

I've gone from Scott to Smith and from bad to worse.

And even basic information proves illusive.

He didn't even know his exact date of birth.

He simply stated his birth was circa 1903.

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

In London, it's all go at heir hunting firm Finders International.

It's going to be highly competitive.

If I can get you on the road as soon as possible.

The government's Bona Vacantia division has just released

a new list of unclaimed estates.

There's a relatively big list on the Bona Vacantia website today.

The team have trawled through the list

to try and establish which cases have value

and the estate of a man called Kenneth Arthur Mead

has immediately jumped out.

This case that we've picked, we have roughly valued it at about £300,000.

This is because we know that Kenneth Arthur Mead

owned his property in Beckenham.

On a high-value case like this,

competition between heir hunting firms will be intense,

so the team need to drop everything and work together

to try and find heirs as fast as possible.

It's important for us, when we're starting off, to reach the person

before the competition, so it can be quite frantic.

Kenneth Arthur Mead passed away on 11th August, 2016, aged 81,

having spent much of his life living on this quiet residential street.

He was a popular figure in the local community

and neighbour Pauline remembers him as a proper gentleman.

He introduced himself as I came through the door.

Very pleasant, very tidy-looking man, very dapper.

But Kenneth wasn't always the quietest person

to live next door to.

Indoors, he was a very noisy man.

He liked his dance music.

That was always going on. He always had the radio.

He'd shout at the telly now and again.

Sadly, though, one day the music stopped.

I'd been on holiday, I'd been away for a week.

And I came home, and it was so quiet and Ken's car hadn't moved,

and I just thought, "Oh, this is really funny."

And the next morning, I said, "I'm going to ring up the police."

And, yeah, they did find him.

So, it was quite sad that he was up there on his own.

Kenneth hadn't left a will and with no known next of kin,

his estate was passed to the government's legal department.

And in London, the search for his heirs is on.

So, it's back on that side of the family that we've been looking into.

Case manager Ryan only has very basic information to start with.

We've got date of birth and date of death.

And the first step is to try and establish

if Kenneth had any immediate family.

We've confirmed he was a bachelor. It's always best to double-check

cos that's a key bit of information that we'll need,

in terms of looking for entitled heirs.

Having ruled out a marriage or children for Kenneth,

the next step is to try and identify who his parents were

to see if he had any siblings.

And Ryan has the information.

His father was Arthur George Mead.

His mother was Lily Mead, formerly Woolcott.

His parents married in 1930 in Southwark.

But when it comes to finding records for Kenneth's father, Arthur,

Ryan hits a snag.

For Kenneth's father, there's a couple of possible births

that tie in with a death in Croydon in 1979.

There's one in Southwark which would, obviously, tie in

with the area where the parents married.

There's also one in Bethnal Green,

which is east London instead of south-east.

So, we're going to go with Southwark for now.

It's a bit of a guess, but it's an educated guess,

based on the area where the parents married.

But although Ryan's confident

he's identified the correct Arthur George Mead,

he can't be certain.

Without actual certificates in hand, we're never 100% sure

whether a bit of research we're doing in 100% correct.

It's a bit of a punt, but it's something we have to do

when we're researching an urgent case.

If Ryan's got it right,

the team have a good chance of beating the competition,

but if he's picked the wrong Arthur Mead,

all their research will be for nothing.

Were you able to get certs from Southwark?

Working from the marriage in Southwark,

the team establish that Kenneth was an only child.

Can I leave these with you?

-When Dee's off the phone, see if she can order them locally.

-Yeah.

Next, they need to find out

if Kenneth's parents had brothers and sisters.

Researcher Holly focuses on his father, Arthur,

and finds six siblings.

Three of the stems died as infants,

so it looks like it's going to be quite small on this side,

and it looks like two of the stems married and had no issue,

so we're relying on one stem to get an heir on this side at the moment.

While Holly cracks on with the paternal side,

Ryan is looking into the maternal side.

First record we found, which is most useful for us, is the 1911 census.

The records show that Kenneth's maternal grandfather,

Charles Woolcott, had a very unusual career.

He worked as a gas lamplighter, patrolling the streets at dusk,

ensuring roads and pavements were properly illuminated.

The actual first gas lamps that we got,

they were installed on 31st December, 1813.

There was 25 lamps installed on Westminster Bridge.

The main difference back from 1890,

when Charles was looking after the lamps,

was it was far more labour-intensive back then from what it is now.

The lamp attendant would have had to go round,

manually pulling them on and off all over London.

Now we've got clocks that do it for us on a pilot light,

so it's all automated, so it's not anywhere near as labour-intensive

as it would have been back in Charles's day.

When gas lamps were introduced to the city streets

in the 19th century, it was little short of a revolution.

Lighting before gas

was oil and before oil was candles.

The main benefits, really, were that you could have

a continuous source of supply and a continuous light.

Obviously, both candles and oil run out.

Gas lighting suddenly gave an ability to cleanly light the streets

to start with, and quite a lot later, for the interiors of houses.

Today, there are fewer than 2,000 gas street lamps in the country.

But in Westminster, Iain and Gary are proud to keep up

the daily tradition of lighting them up.

So, what Gary's doing now is a bit of maintenance on it.

The pilot light needs adjusted on this one.

The mantles are very, very fine.

When they heat up, they become very brittle, like silk,

and that's what gives it that lovely soft, calming light

that the gas lamps give and that's what the people of London love.

25 years Gary's been doing this.

He's become a bit of an expert,

so the pressure's on for him not to damage any of the mantles,

and certainly not to damage this globe, which is thousands of pounds.

Beautifully executed.

He may have played a fascinating role in lighting up London,

but in the office, Ryan has discovered Charles passed away

aged just 48, leaving behind a large family.

Lily's parents had had ten children together,

one of whom had passed away prior to 1911 so, therefore,

we have nine top lines, including Arthur's mum, Lily.

With so many Woolcott siblings to research,

Ryan has to think strategically

if he wants to stay ahead of the competition.

When were researching a big family tree, it's a mixed bag for us.

There's going to be times

when we're not going to be contacting everybody

before the competition.

They could be researching a different part of the family tree.

But the flip side of that is there's an awful lot of research

for us to do in the office. The bigger the family tree,

the less likely it is that we'll be able to contact everybody first.

And the team soon hit another problem

with the Woolcott side of the family.

He marries as Woollcott with a double L.

His first two born are Wollcott with a double L, but without a double O.

Cool.

We are very well aware that people do change their names.

More unusual surnames, if you like,

they have a tendency to deviate over time.

This could be further back,

if we're talking about the literacy of someone.

Maybe if they're filling in forms,

there could be spelling discrepancies, variations.

Likewise, people may just choose to tweak the spelling of their names

and, for us, it does mean that we have a bit more work to do.

Another search, using the alternative spelling of Woolcott

has thrown up a curveball.

So, we've got two more full-blood aunts.

Right, OK, so, yeah, we need to go back to those really.

With even more research needed, now the team must divide and conquer.

Senior researcher Camilla takes the line of Kenneth's aunt Florence.

She was born in 1897 and I couldn't find anything for her past 1911,

so I looked on immigration records

and it looks like she potentially moved to Canada

in, I believe, the '20s.

She's single and she's a cook.

So, after that, we can't find much about her.

It's yet another setback for the team,

as tracing relatives in Canada could be a slow process.

I'm not too sure if she ever married or had any children in Canada.

Obviously, it's important that we look into it and see what happened.

And worse still, the team have now identified

that four of Lily's sisters died without having children.

The worst-case scenario would be if we didn't find any heirs at all.

We may spend a lot of time researching a case,

possibly days or weeks, possibly research overseas,

then if we find out, actually, the family has no living relatives,

therefore the money is going to remain with the Crown.

With options fast running out, Ryan focuses on Grace,

who was the twin sister of Kenneth's mother, Lily.

So, I know her date of birth because it will be the same as Lily's.

We have that already.

Grace married Albert W Sullivan in 1930 in Southwark. They had a son.

It could be a major breakthrough as, if correct, Grace's son,

Roy Sullivan, would be the team's first heir.

That son, I think, is living out in Essex.

I'm just about to give him a call and, hopefully,

he'll be able to confirm if he's correct.

Ryan has found a number for what he's hoping

is the right Roy Sullivan.

When you're really to a stage where you're starting to think

you are going to contact a beneficiary,

it's quite a tense time for you as a case manager.

The ideal scenario is that you ring someone, they're in,

you can speak to them, you can verify the family.

Ryan gets through to Roy's wife.

I wondered if you might be help me cos I'm calling from a firm

of heir hunters and we're looking into the Woolcott family tree.

Was Roy's mother called Grace?

No? It's a different family?

Maybe his parents are a different Woolcott and Sullivan.

It was the wrong Roy Sullivan and Ryan's hopes are dashed.

The lady I spoke to had the same surname

as the chap we're looking for.

It would have been good to talk to him because he's a cousin,

was a cousin of the deceased,

so he would have, presumably, known more about the family.

But across the office, Camilla has also been looking into Roy

and she's made an important discovery.

He's died. He passed away in 2011.

Having thought they were tantalisingly close

to their first heir, the team now have a whole new branch to research.

We just need to find out whether or not he had any children now,

to find out if there are any heirs.

With the team facing setback after setback,

will they be able to find any heirs before the competition?

This one might potentially die out. I have no-one. Holly has no-one.

Um, well, you know...have faith.

Hi, this is Hector Birchwood. I'm returning your call.

Sometimes, cases take on a surprising twist

and reveal communities steeped in history.

When heir hunting company Celtic Research took on the case

of Myra Kushia, they had no idea what they would unearth.

The estate of Myra Kushia was advertised

by the Treasury solicitor in 2016.

We started to work on it straightaway,

once we knew that she had a property worth £90,000.

Hector quickly came across an obituary for Myra

and, crucially, it mentioned the name of a sister.

So that, combined with the surname Kushia,

made it an attractive case to work.

Initially, the case seemed rather easy.

We had a potential sibling and a very unusual name.

Myra Kushia passed away on 13th January, 2016, aged 83,

in a hospice in Newcastle upon Tyne.

I met Myra

when I took her sister's funeral, Margaret,

in mid-August, 2015.

I got to know her perhaps more deeply than one would otherwise.

Myra was quite a short and forthright lady.

Er, she was also good fun with a good sense of humour as well,

quite a wicked sense of humour.

My understanding is that Myra had been

a delivery driver in her earlier years.

She looked after the car, she was a practical woman.

She could tinker with the car

and the car was her pride and joy as well.

But Margaret's death took its toll.

I think, to be honest, she was...

..preparing herself to be reunited,

that life wasn't the same without her sister.

Myra had never married and didn't have children,

but she was liked among the local community,

and her neighbour Yasmin enjoyed living next door.

Last year, we picked some apples and we took some apples for Myra

and she was very happy and she said she will make apple pie.

If the weather is nice, they used to stand next to their gate

and always say hi, hello, with people

and she was kind and, like, she had good heart.

She is also fondly remembered by Yasmin's son, Ashat.

What I miss mostly is her kindness,

like when she used to throw the ball over.

She used to give us sweets sometimes

and she used to try to get it over the fence to give it to us.

Myra was also well-known for her green fingers.

Her garden is dry now.

Whenever we look, I can from here, or from our back garden,

it is so sad. It is always remind me Margaret and Myra.

Who will look after that garden? Like, it's not nice like before.

It is sad.

In London, the search for Myra's heirs was under way.

Do you know what family that was from?

And Hector decided to pass the case on to colleague Robert Linford,

who is based in Essex.

I started looking in the births, marriages and deaths.

I was obviously looking for Myra's birth,

which would have been 1932, and I couldn't find it.

With nothing showing up for Myra,

Robert tried searching for a birth for her sister Margaret,

but that drew a blank too.

Fortunately, I managed to locate a family friend

who explained to me what had happened.

In actual fact, Margaret and Myra were not sisters,

they were old friends.

The team were right back to square one.

But the family friend had revealed one more vital piece of information.

Myra actually did make a will,

but she still appeared on the Bona Vacantia list

of people who've died intestate.

This is because the person she made the will to,

her old friend Margaret, was someone who'd pre-deceased her.

And no-one else was specified in the will,

therefore she died technically intestate.

Myra's £90,000 estate was likely to have caught the attention

of rival heir hunting firms, so the pressure was on.

But Robert was still faced with the major problem

that he couldn't find any record of Myra's birth.

Without this, the research would stall before it had even begun.

It didn't appear to have been in the birth registers at all, um,

so I decided that it was time to look in the adoption registers

to see if she'd been adopted and, in fact, she was.

This was the vital breakthrough they needed.

Once somebody's adopted into a family, their birth family,

their natural family no longer plays a role

in determining whether somebody has a right to inherit an estate.

So, really, at that point, we only look at the adoptive family.

Robert now needed to determine who Myra's adopted parents were.

Here we see the adoption certificate of Myra Kushia

and it confirms that Bag and Isabella are her adoptive parents.

Bag and Isabella Kushia adopted Myra on 4th March, 1938,

when she was six years old.

I would imagine that she'd always been called Myra

for as long as she could remember

and probably just the surname was changed.

Myra's father, Bag, had been born in India,

during the era of the British Empire.

But, by the time of the adoption,

he had settled in the north-east of England.

Bag is living in Maxwell Street, South Shields,

and he is a marine donkeyman which, apparently,

is a kind of foreman in the merchant marine.

Bag had first arrived in Britain whilst working in the merchant navy.

With booming trade between Britain and the Empire,

a major shipping route emerged between India, the Yemen

and the north-east of England,

with South Shields as a prime destination.

This would have been one of the busiest ports in all of Britain

at the time because, essentially, coal came from Newcastle,

the ships would have come here to bring ballast

and would have also taken away the coal to ship it all over the world.

And South Shields was that port.

They used to say that you could literally walk across this river

from ship to ship to ship and reach the other side.

Bag would have been one of hundreds of foreign sailors

to arrive in the UK during that time.

And, crucially for the heir hunters,

he had stayed in Britain and got married.

Bag is 24, Isabella was 25.

It takes place in a register office,

so there wasn't a religious aspect to it.

And this marriage takes place in South Shields

and Bag is living in East Holborn, which is right by the River Tyne.

Heir hunters often prioritise their research

based on how easy or difficult a name is to investigate.

The more common the name, the harder it is.

But when an uncommon name like Kushia is combined with a county

the size of India, it brings with it a whole set of challenges.

As soon as we realised that Bag was from India,

we knew it was going to be a very difficult case.

Unfortunately, this difficulty was compounded

because from the same source of information,

we were told that he came from both Punjab and Kashmir.

These are two totally different states in India.

What makes this even worse

is that he didn't even know his exact date of birth.

He simply stated his birth was circa 1903.

With the paternal line looking untraceable,

Robert's only option was to examine the maternal tree

of Myra's mum, Isabella Scott, who came from a mining family.

Her mother, Annie Reay, married William Scott, in Gateshead,

in 1885, and had eight children.

Three were eliminated,

as they didn't appear to have had any children.

But the remaining stems were about to cause Robert a major headache.

Unfortunately, Scott is a fairly common surname.

But I thought, at least there are four sisters

and maybe their names changed to something a bit easier to handle

once they're married.

And lo and behold, Rose Scott, one of Isabella's sisters,

goes and marries a man called John Smith.

So, I've gone from Scott to Smith and from bad to worse.

Faced with two of the most common names in Britain,

the seemingly simple case of Myra Kushia

was now looking harder than ever.

Would the team be able to find any heirs?

Each year in Britain, thousands of people

receive an unexpected knock on the door from the heir hunters.

I found that amazing that I had that side of the family

that I didn't know existed.

As well as signing over large sums of money,

the heir hunters can reunite family members who have lost touch.

-I'm so lucky.

-Yeah.

-Because I've met up with all of you.

-Ah.

Many cases have left the heir hunters scratching their heads

and remain unsolved.

Today, we've got details of two that have yet to be collected.

Have the heir hunters been looking for you all this time?

First is the case of Charles Monk,

who died in Islington on 13th April, 1988.

He was a bachelor,

which is why it's proving tricky to find any living heirs.

Does this name ring any bells with you?

Do you know someone that could be related?

Next is the case of Annie Elizabeth Verrall,

who passed away in Hailsham in East Sussex on 22nd January, 2005.

She was born in Australia and her maiden name was Clarke with an E.

Both estates were advertised by the Treasury's Bona Vacantia list,

but so far, no-one has been linked to either family.

Can you help track down any long-lost ancestors?

If so, a surprise windfall could be coming your way.

Heir hunters Finders are racing against the clock

to find heirs on the £300,000 estate of Kenneth Mead.

I'm trying to find his cousin. He might still be with us.

With one branch of the family having gone to Canada,

the team is desperately hoping

they'll find heirs in the UK before rival firms.

She's born on the cusp of when they would have got married.

But research into the brothers and sisters of Kenneth's parents

is proving very tricky.

We're struggling to find births for most of the aunts and uncles.

A couple of them passed away quite young.

A couple do marry but never have children, by the looks of things.

Kenneth Mead passed away in 2016 at the age of 81.

Over the years, neighbour Pauline had got to know Kenneth well.

But it wasn't until she organised his funeral that she realised

just how active his social life had been.

I tried to find out about people who might have known him.

He played bowls,

so he always would go out looking very smart in his bowls blazer.

And, also, he did dancing.

Loads of people came to the funeral that we were really surprised about,

so it was really nice. He had a nice send-off.

One of Kenneth's biggest passions was ballroom dancing

and Wendy and Kay got to know him at their local club.

We sat down the other end of the hall

because they already had their group of people at the top end.

And Ken would come the whole length of the hall to dance with us.

And it was a long hall!

He just used to like the company,

-to be out with everybody.

-Always looking smart, wasn't he?

-Always had his white shirt on.

-Yeah.

It was a bit of a shock, wasn't it?

-Oh, dear.

-He was always smiling, wasn't he?

-He was, yeah.

-Yeah.

Did you find births for them

to confirm they're definitely half-blood?

In the office, case manager Ryan is still on the hunt

for relatives of Kenneth's mother's twin, Grace,

and he thinks he may have another lead.

We know she married Albert Sullivan and previously,

we thought we'd found her son, Roy.

The team had discovered Roy had also passed away,

but now they believe he had children who may be alive.

When we've gone to Roy's eldest daughter,

she married a couple of times, so it's a bit fiddly to track her down.

But I think we've got a phone number and address for her.

So, fingers crossed, we're the first people to contact her.

It's a crucial call, as she could be the team's first heir.

But she's not answering.

We have another surname on this line of the family of Sullivan

and we're hoping this may have been your maiden name.

If it is, or even if it isn't,

if you could kindly give us a call back.

Thank you very much. Bye-bye.

With no-one answering the phone,

Ryan decides it's time to mobilise the troops.

Dee, could I have a visit for SE2?

I'll do you copies of these so you can explain to the rep

-how they're linked.

-No worries.

The company has an army of travelling reps

based all over the UK

and they're on standby to make visits to potential heirs,

something Ryan believes can be crucial.

We want to speak to people as early as possible

to confirm their identity, to verify the family tree,

to find any other family members we might have missed from the research

so, for us, it's key, at least in the initial stages.

But we're just trying to do everything we can

to get the best results in the quickest time possible.

Today, Ryan has deployed his colleague, Peter George.

I understand it is a competitive case

and there are other companies working on it,

so we want to try and be the first, if we can.

The lady we're going to see is a maternal cousin once removed.

This is a cold call, so she has no idea we're coming.

Peter hopes the heir will be in and he can sign her up there and then.

HE KNOCKS ON DOOR

But no-one is home and it's not looking good.

Not having a lot of joy at the moment.

The beneficiary isn't in and the near neighbours aren't in either,

so I'm just going to go and try some other doors.

Local knowledge is an heir hunter's best tool

and Peter eventually finds a neighbour to speak to.

Does she work locally, do you know?

-Yeah.

-Any idea what time she might be back?

It looks like it's been a wasted visit.

I've just left a pack through the beneficiary's door

and now I'm off to Dartford

to see another beneficiary in the same case.

And as Peter arrives at the address of another heir...

It's a block of flats, four flats.

No answer from any of them, so I can't get access,

so I'll have to put a pack through the main communal letterbox.

It's a bit disheartening.

Hopefully, he'll contact the office when he gets the pack.

It's another dead end.

In the office, the team is starting to make headway

on the maternal side.

This is the stem of Jane Judith Woolcott.

She passed away in 1939, but she managed to have three kids before -

-four kids, sorry - before she passed away.

-OK.

-So far, these two are looking quite big.

-OK.

-So, I'm going to have a look at those two.

-Have a look at these.

It's not long before Peter is despatched once again.

They've identified another beneficiary

who lives, well, not that far away.

But they've got two different addresses for him,

so they're not sure which one he's at.

So, I'm going to go to the one that's in Leigh.

Will it be third time lucky for Peter?

Well, that a wrong address.

He hasn't lived there at least since May, 2015.

But she does get correspondence for him at that address,

but he hasn't lived there for 18 months, 2 years nearly.

So, not a good day, unfortunately.

A few days later, and the search for Kenneth's heirs is still ongoing.

But there have been some unwelcome developments.

It appears a rival firm has beaten them to heirs

on the paternal side of the family.

Whenever we make a call

and we realise we're behind another company, it's never great.

It's a bit demoralising.

You have to pick yourself up and move on.

But it's always nice for us if we can be that first call.

On the maternal side of the tree, though,

things are looking far more promising.

Ryan and the team have made good progress

on the stem of Kenneth's aunt Jane.

So, in fact, most of the beneficiaries

on the maternal side of the family

actually stem down from Jane Judith Reeves.

She was obviously born a Woolcott.

Jane had four children in total, all of whom have passed away.

But out of those four cousins,

we have two, four, six, seven... seven beneficiaries.

We've had three signed agreements

back from these beneficiaries so far.

It's great news and means the team have their first heirs

but today, they're hoping to add to their tally.

I think we go right here.

Travelling rep Stuart has been sent to see two more possible heirs.

They're ready and we'll just turn up at the door and give them a knock.

But will Stuart's visit be a success?

-Morning.

-Good morning.

-I'm Stuart from Finders.

Ron and sister Jacqueline are Kenneth's first cousins once removed

and have been expecting Stuart's visit.

The office have been phoning you, I suppose,

-and you know all about this, I would imagine.

-I spoke to Ryan, yeah.

You spoke to Ryan - great.

And it's a tall order, but do you know the deceased person?

-We did meet him, yeah.

-Oh, good.

-Yeah, when I was younger.

What I did, is Ryan kindly sent me a family tree.

You'll get a posh one in the end.

This is one I've just stuck together for you to have a look at now.

-I think it's this end that might be...

-That's us, yeah.

-Yeah.

-The papers, I believe they've sent you, by the look of it?

-Yeah.

That's great. Oh, you've already signed. Brilliant.

Nothing for me to do, just have a cup of coffee.

Yes, it's been a very successful trip.

Everything went very well

and they've helped us no end with this case, which is good,

so it was well worth the trip down here.

For the heir hunters, it's been tough,

but ultimately, a worthwhile case.

And in total, they've managed to sign up four of Kenneth's heirs,

each of whom will be due a share of Kenneth's sizeable estate.

But for Ron and Jacqueline,

the real value is being able to find out more about the family history.

Just mind-blowing, really, so I want to try and find out some more

about...all these people that, really, I didn't have a clue.

I didn't have a clue about them.

Heir hunting firm Celtic Research was on the hunt

for an heir of Myra Kushia.

So, that ties in, at least, with him, because he's a cousin of his.

So far, the team had established that Myra was adopted in 1938

by Bag Kushia and Isabella Scott.

So, my task was to trace

the brothers and sisters of Bag Kushia and Isabella Scott.

Researching Bag's family tree was proving virtually impossible.

We really didn't know where to go.

We had to then focus on the maternal side because it was not possible

for us to determine which part of India Bag actually came from.

Myra's mother, Isabella, was the daughter of William Scott

and Annie Reay, who had eight children.

With a £90,000 estate at stake,

the team needed to work fast to trace maternal cousins,

but were stopped in their tracks

when they reached Myra's aunt, Rose Scott,

who married a John Smith.

We initially thought the case was going to be very simple,

but when you're dealing with names like Scott or Smith,

you're dealing with hundreds of possible permutations.

Each one has to be then followed diligently,

methodically and with great determination,

in order to be able to find the ones that are right.

So, we had to just be patient and follow each line through

until we got to the right families.

But finally, they struck gold, when they spotted some unusual surnames.

I found that Rose had two daughters who actually married Yemeni sailors.

These daughters were Annie and Elizabeth

and they married Yemeni sailors who were in the merchant navy,

sailing all over the world.

Two of them put down roots here and married English wives.

It's believed that between the late 1890s and 1930,

up to 4,000 people from Yemen were living in South Shields.

These people represented the first significant Muslim communities

to settle in Britain.

Where we're standing right now is the Customs House

and Mill Dam area of South Shields.

This is where the Yemeni sailors would have most likely come

on ships from Aden

because, essentially, boats that were running on coal

were not able to reach India without docking in Aden.

The captains of these ships would essentially hire the Yemeni men

because they were great workers.

They would also be able to withstand intolerable heat,

working in the coal furnaces of these ships

and being stokers or firemen.

Once the Yemeni sailors had finished on a ship,

they would have stayed in the town's boarding houses,

waiting to hear about their next assignment.

The Yemeni men, when they came on shore,

they were actually part of the community.

And some of the men that had been on the ships settled

and they could settle because, actually,

they were British subjects.

So, some of them set up boarding houses

to cater for the other Yemeni sailors,

some of them opened up cafes, restaurants,

grocery stores, and the community flourished.

The first known and recorded instance

of a Yemeni person in South Shields

is in the South Shields Gazette, and we find that in 1890.

However, it's quite possible that they were here earlier.

It's thought that many of the Yemeni sailors were bachelors

or had to leave loved ones behind.

In the first waves of migration,

Yemeni men probably were single men at the beginning of their careers,

coming onto the shops, or, indeed, if they did have families,

they would have left them in Aden.

Partially the reason for that

was the Yemeni government didn't allow the wives to leave.

The reason for that is they wanted to imagine

that the sailors would bring that money back home to Yemen.

So, the earlier waves of migration, from 1890 up until the 1950s,

the men actually had a lot of intermarriage

because, in one sense, it was so hard to travel.

So, while they were in boarding houses in South Shields,

the men really integrated.

There's definitely a sense

that these dashing, dark, Middle Eastern men

would have been really, um, a catch.

And there's some accounts written in the Gazette

about how these women were defending their intermarriages,

saying these men are good, they don't drink,

they don't beat their wives,

they come home and give them their salaries

and that they were really honoured

to have these kind of ideal husbands.

But their integration into the local community wasn't always smooth.

With jobs scarce after the First World War,

the National Union of Seamen started to become hostile

to the Yemeni sailors.

It was a time of economic depression

and the Yemeni had actually already been there since the 1890s.

In 1919, an amended Aliens Restriction Act was introduced,

which restricted the employment rights of foreign workers.

It had an especially big impact on foreign sailors

and in the Mill Dam area of South Shields,

riots broke out between the Yemeni seamen and their white counterparts.

Essentially, the riots was jostling, it was fights, it was bloody.

There were police with truncheons.

After the 1950s, the ships were no longer running on coal,

so required less workforce.

Leyla Al-Sayadi's great-grandfather was one of the men

who migrated to South Shields

and was the chairman of the local mosque.

The Yemeni community have done a lot for South Shields.

They've intermarried, they've given themselves,

they've given their lives, they've given their children.

Some of them wanted to go back to Yemen but never did

and I think that's to South Shields's gain.

But, on the other hand,

I think that South Shields gave a lot to the Yemenis as well.

People received the Yemenis largely very well

and the reason they were such a successful community

is because of their ability to make friends,

to integrate, to connect to other people.

And Yemenis are the type of people who can just adapt to anything.

Along with Leyla's grandfather,

two other Yemenis made South Shields their home

and married two sisters, who were Myra's cousins.

Annie Scott-Smith married Mohamed Nasir in 1928

and they had a daughter called Ruth, but she passed away in 1941.

So, Robert was able to rule out any heirs there.

Next, he moved his attention to Rose's other daughter, Elizabeth.

And Elizabeth Smith married Moosa Amar,

who was a merchant seaman from the Yemen.

And they had, ultimately, a grandson, Joseph Amar,

whom they adopted.

Joseph was born in 1953 in South Shields.

I contacted Joseph and he told me

the interesting story of his own personal history.

He, like Myra, had been adopted by his own grandparents.

This happened because the relationship

between Joseph's parents had fallen apart

and his grandparents stepped in.

I seemed to be going round in circles.

I started off with a deceased person who had been adopted

and now I had an heir who had been adopted.

When Joseph received the phone call, he was completely shocked.

They mentioned Myra Kushia

and I went, "Oh, my God, I forgot all about Myra."

Because I used to visit her with my grandma when I was a child.

She was the cousin of my grandmother.

I knew her well.

We used to go regular, at least once a month.

I was surprised, really, to tell you the truth.

She just went out my mind completely till I got the phone call.

Joseph remembers Myra fondly.

The images I have of Myra is quite a young, pretty girl,

really beautiful, I would say.

But she was very cheerful, very happy.

I enjoyed going there.

I looked forward to going. When my grandma used to say,

"Do you want to come to Newcastle with us?"

and I'd say, "Yes, great."

It was as a young boy he found out he had more in common with Myra

than he first thought.

Me grandmother told me one time on one of the visits,

on the way back, on the journey back,

she mentioned that Myra was adopted.

I was very surprised because I thought they were her parents

and I found it very similar to my situation because I was adopted

and this gave me more connection to Myra,

cos I would understand her feelings and what she was going through.

It was really a surprise to me.

I felt closer to her because of that.

In the office, the team had finally found an heir

and were able to locate over 30 more.

All in all, this was a very complex case.

You opened one door and another door was there

and you had to open that

and the names were fairly difficult to deal with

and there were a lot of people on the tree.

Sometimes I felt like I was going round in circles

but I'm glad I did it cos it's a very interesting case

with lots of interesting aspects to it.

And it's Myra's kindness that will always be remembered.

I think Myra, if she knew about the people

who are inheriting her estate,

I think she would be pleased, I think she would be happy.

Joseph last saw Myra in 1979 at a family funeral.

And as the years gone by...I've never really give it a thought,

but it's sad that I could have kept in touch with her.