Charlwood/Jones Heir Hunters

-Today...

-I think I found someone.

..Heir Hunters battle the competition on a tricky case...

We're actually really stuck.

I don't have a clue what's going on.

Coming down.

..the tough lives of family ancestors are explored...

He'd be down here on his hands and knees with a shovel,

cleaning it out manually,

so that'd be an absolutely disgusting place to be.

That's 5,869 results.

..while in Wales, on a case with a common surname,

the search becomes epic...

It comes up with over 3,000 marriage searches.

..and it uncovers the story of an infamous battle.

We're talking about a ship going up in flames, with major explosions.

It's all in a day's work for the Heir Hunters.

When it comes to finding heirs,

sometimes what should be the most straight-forward of family trees

can be complicated purely by the name...

and everyday surnames can be the worst,

especially if it's the second most common name in the UK.

Surnames like Smith, Jones, Evans -

very difficult to research and very difficult to research

in particular areas as well.

The sheer volume of records makes it very difficult to pinpoint

exactly which record is correct.

So when it came to tracing relatives of retired gardener Keith Jones,

the team knew they'd have their work cut out.

Keith died at home in Cardiff at the age of 75.

He was known locally as a nice man

but one who liked to keep himself to himself.

We've only lived here about 18 months,

so Keith was the chap that lived next door.

I wouldn't say that we knew him particularly well.

I think he was just a private chap.

He has a large garden

that had got quite overgrown,

but there's some really nice trees and plants in there,

so clearly at some stage he took a lot of pride in it.

But I guess in recent years he hasn't done so much with it

and unfortunately it got a bit overgrown.

Whilst respecting Keith's privacy, Owen was a considerate neighbour.

We'd been sort of keeping an eye on Keith to check that he was OK

and doing OK and there was a few days in a row

where we hadn't sort of seen or heard of him

and obviously the police came to investigate and found that

he'd passed away, unfortunately.

Keith hadn't made a will and had no known next of kin,

so his case was advertised as unclaimed.

Do you want to just open it fully?

-That is fully.

-Is it?

And in London, the team at Fraser & Fraser

got straight on the case.

If it's a Government Legal Department case,

we know there are going to be other people looking into the matter,

so it's going to be competitive

and when we fist looked into where he was last residing,

we couldn't find any information about his address.

To assess whether it was a case worth working,

the team needed to know the value of Keith's estate,

which meant trying to find out if he'd owned his house in Cardiff.

-There was two addresses, wasn't there?

-Both.

-Both.

And that would prove unusually tricky.

We can usually get things up-to-date,

ie address, quite instantaneously,

but, this one, we couldn't for some reason and I was thinking

was it something to do with how common Jones was as a name?

We had to actually purchase the death certificate to work out

where he lived and, from that, we worked that he actually

owned the property and it was an estate that we would look into.

With the property estimated to be worth around £250,000,

Ben hit the go button and researcher Sinead began the daunting task

of searching for Joneses.

At the start of each case, what you would do is you look for a birth.

Keith Jones obviously is quite a common name, being Jones,

and he's living in Wales at the time of his death.

So more than likely he's going to be from Wales with the surname Jones.

So what I did to start off with is I found his birth.

Now, Keith was born in 1941 in Cardiff.

Having found a record of Keith's birth,

Sinead could now find out who his parents were.

And from that I found his mother's maiden name was Briscombe,

so I could find a marriage for his parents...

..which I did find in 1939 in Cardiff

for Alice Briscombe and Eli Jones.

Next the team needed to find out if his Keith's parents, Alice and Eli,

had any other children.

We conducted another search for any other siblings,

full-blood siblings of Keith.

We were not able to locate any.

But one detail immediately caught the team's attention.

Eli is almost ten years older than his wife.

So he's around 40 when the deceased is born.

The team now wondered if Eli may have been married before.

But when they looked at the certificate of his marriage

to Alice, they got more than they bargained for.

Both lists them as being previously married.

So Eli Jones is a widower

and Alice May Kruger, formerly Briscombe, is a divorcee,

so this instantly says to us, well,

there could be children from their first marriage.

So this is something that we need to look into straightaway before we go

back to cousins, because they have a prior claim as half-blood siblings.

Alice's first husband had the unusual surname of Kruger

so the team were quickly able to search for any potential children,

but it turned out they hadn't had any.

Check around that area to start off with, cos if he's going to

marry young he's going to probably marry around that area.

With that line of inquiry exhausted,

the team turned their attentions to Keith's father, Eli Jones,

and it was looking like a nightmare task.

To look for a marriage...

..if I put in just a simple search into a search engine

just to see if there are any marriages, and just put Eli Jones,

marriage maybe between 1912, when he's 16,

up to 1939, before he marries Alice,

and then do that as a kind of search,

it comes up with over 3,000 marriage searches.

And, well...

I'm not going to be able to go through all of them in one day.

With such a common name, the team were hoping they could focus

their search on one small area,

and Eli's career would give them a significant lead.

Eli Jones is listed age 42,

his occupation is also listed as a motor lorry driver.

During World War I, Eli had served as a driver for the Royal Fleet Arm.

In 1918, he was discharged on medical grounds,

but his driving skills soon came in handy back in Wales,

where he took a job delivering barrels of beer.

In the 1920s, a lot of breweries were still using horse-drawn drays

but the problem was

in the First World War a lot of horses got called up

for the front and didn't come back.

After the First World War,

they started selling off the Army surplus vehicles

so a lot of petrol-driven lorries,

even steam-driven lorries, started coming in as well in the 1920s and,

carrying on after the First World War,

it would have been petrol and diesel lorries there.

Men who delivered beer were known as draymen and it was a job

that required strength and skill.

It was a manual job, it was a physical job.

You had to be fit for it and move those heavy barrels around,

but in the 1920s, 1930s, everyone was lucky to have a job.

The barrels they would have used 100 years ago were made of wood

and this is a 54-gallon barrel.

Takes a bit of handling.

Wooden barrel.

Whereas today, we use the nine-gallon firkin.

So 9 gallons, 54 gallons - a lot easier to use.

Of course it's plastic as well.

Draymen could drive, but they didn't have to be literate.

There are stories of them just making chalk marks on the door

of the cellar, rather than writing it down in a book

or giving a receipt.

Everything's done with receipts nowadays

but that wasn't the case 100 years ago.

Crucially for the Heir Hunters, though, Eli spent his career

as a drayman working for a local brewery called Ely's

and he stayed in the Pontypridd area.

It's really going to help me narrow down the marriages in that area

and I can go through them and find one that probably

could be Eli's first marriage.

And Sinead soon made the vital breakthrough.

So I looked back at Eli and found he was married before

and that his wife, Ivy, had died in 1933 in Cardiff.

What we found is there's an Ivy Jones

that passes away at the age of 32.

She is Eli's wife...

and obviously dies quite young.

But the key question was whether they'd had any children

who would be Keith's half siblings.

Eli's been left with a number of children -

one daughter and a few sons.

So he's now looking after these young children

without his wife.

Eli and Ivy had five children

and, tragically, Ivy died just nine months

after the youngest, Marjorie, was born.

In theory, these children, or their descendants,

would be heirs to Keith's estate.

But the team needed to know what had happened to them after Ivy's death.

I think times back in the '30s,

just after the Depression, were very tough times.

If you were going to lose one parent back then,

very difficult for the family to stay together.

Obviously one person has to work to support

and, without having that family unit,

kids were either given out to family members or put into care.

But the crucial question for Ben and the team

was whether they'd been adopted out of the family.

When adopted, an individual loses their entitlement

to inherit from that family

but gains the right to inherit from their new family.

Were the team closing in on five potential heirs

or were they about to find out they were back to square one?

It's 9am and in London, heir hunting firm Finders International

are working on new cases from the government's Bona Vacantia list

of unclaimed estates.

There's three property cases today, three of us in the office so far,

three property cases, so that's one each.

So I'm just trying to work out who the cases should go to.

Estates which include a property

are often worth hundreds of thousand of pounds.

Hi, Danny.

Case manager Ryan Gregory will be facing stiff competition

from rival firms in finding heirs to these estates...

..so recruits researcher Holly to help him work one of cases.

I'm looking into the case of Daisy Charlwood.

I've just managed to locate her birth record.

She had no children, so I'm now having to look to see

if she had any brothers or sisters at all.

Daisy Charlwood was born in the seaside town of Hastings in 1919.

She moved to London and worked as a book-keeper for most of her life.

Although this photo survives,

it seems she was a private person

and not widely known in the community.

She retired to Sidcup on the outskirts of London

and lived on this street for 20 years.

Daisy passed away in 2008, aged 92.

Despite having been married three times, including to Fred Charlwood,

she had no children and left no will.

Thank you.

So back in the office, the hunt is on,

and the team have important news of the case's value.

We think it's probably worth about £400,000.

Daisy is now Ryan's number one priority,

so to find her heirs,

the team need to work out as fast as possible who her parents were.

But they stumble at the first hurdle.

At the moment, I can't find a marriage for the parents,

-for Daisy.

-Right, OK.

I've ruled out... There's no kids with either of these marriages.

There was a gentleman living at this address with her.

-OK.

-So I don't know whether it's worth sending a rep.

I think we'll send a rep anyway at this stage.

Try and work it through like that.

Sometimes on a case we send a representative

to the last known address of the person who's passed away.

This is important for us.

It can give us some leads into the wider family.

Like-wise it can help us with a bit of information

which would indicate there is close kin.

Obviously if there's close kin, it'd stop doing a lot of unnecessary

researching into the wider family.

Hi, there. I was just wondering

if you were free to do a visit for me this morning?

The team have an army of travelling researchers

and one of them is Howard Kleinberg.

Today he's on his way to Daisy's former property.

Well, we look at knocking on the doors of neighbours.

We try the actual address,

because the people who sometimes take over an address

know something of the previous residents.

Resident permit holders only.

Howard could find out vital clues from neighbours.

Really sorry to trouble you,

but we're doing a thing about Daisy Charlwood who lived across the way.

Did you know her at all?

No. I see.

OK. All right, sorry to trouble you.

Thank you.

Despite an unpromising start,

suddenly Howard finds one of Daisy's friends.

I'm actually looking for...

I know, sadly, Daisy Charlwood passed.

We was just trying to find out more about her

to track through her family.

Well, the person we did meet was someone who'd lived with her

for quite a number of years,

in fact, for the latter part of her life, was her carer

and looked after her and took her out on trips, even.

They used to go on coach trips to places they used to like,

but he had limited knowledge of her family before he met her.

She was born in Hastings.

No siblings.

No brothers or sisters.

Sadly not many people that could talk of her now.

In the office, the team are looking into Daisy's wider family.

Could you just check and see

if there's any other kids that we're missing on this?

But they've hit a major road block.

They cannot find any trace of the parents' names

and they won't be able to further the research without them.

I can't find much on her, so we might need to get the birth.

They urgently need Daisy's birth certificate,

so Holly calls the register office immediately.

I was wondering whether you did a priority service at all

for any copy certificates?

Ryan desperately needs this information

to get the hunt underway.

So they're going to do the birth the same day.

They said within an hour.

Within an hour, that's as good as we can expect.

I'm going to try and have a look for...

Have a look through some of the marriages for the parents.

OK.

In the meantime, the only snippets of information

they have to work with

are that Daisy's father's surname was Russell

and her mother's name was Brewster.

-Was there any Russell marriages?

-There were loads.

-Was there loads?

-Just in Hastings?

-Yeah. There were 67.

-Really?

OK, all right, that's going to be a bit of a nightmare then.

Ryan gives Holly a hand and checks through possible marriage records

for Brewsters and Russells.

Did you check out Brewster with an "er"?

Um, I think I clicked name differences.

I'm not saying this is right,

but there's two marriages of Russells to Brewsters.

Ryan thinks he's found two possible marriage records for people

who could be Daisy's parents.

I've got his death. That could be those two.

That looks to me like it might be spelt wrong.

-It might be, yeah.

-Brewster.

So, let's... We'll go with this until the cert comes in.

Yeah, I'm about to call them now.

He's narrowed it down to one couple,

but it will only be confirmed

when he gets Daisy's full birth certificate

with both her parents' names on it.

So, quite often when you're researching a family tree,

the information you need isn't necessary readily available.

Quite often you have to use a hunch or an educated guess

in order to step over the problem in hand.

Ryan thinks one marriage from 1919 is correct

between a Daisy Blanche Brewster and a Frederick W Russell in Bromley,

a few miles from where Daisy Charlwood lived most of her life.

Despite not having confirmation this is correct,

Ryan takes a risk and ploughs ahead,

looking at Daisy's mother's family.

If the marriage I found on this is correct, it's going to be huge.

The mum was one of eight in 1911...

..which can be a good thing.

We don't necessarily have any confirmation that it's correct.

It could be a massive waste of time in terms of, you know,

we're going to have to pull everyone into it now.

It's a huge gamble.

Ryan will have to work both sides of the family tree at the same time,

all based on guesswork.

I would say this is probably 98% correct.

I'll take that risk and say that.

We'll do any other possibilities as well.

Ryan raises the stakes even further and gets the whole team involved.

How's it going with everyone else?

It's OK, but not great.

While he and Camilla look into Daisy's mother's family of Brewster,

he calls in researchers Holly and Ellie to investigate

the father's side as quickly as possible.

So, I'm still trying to put it on the starter tree,

but could you look into the paternal side?

Sorry. Surname Russell.

Frederick W Russell.

Research is difficult as Russell is a very common name.

So, the surname Russell is up there with one of the hardest surnames

for us to be researching.

Could you look for this lady?

If you have a commonly occurring surname,

you have to order more certificates,

you probably have to be more particular

about the areas you're looking at.

The surname can slow us down a bit.

But the team think they have identified a Frederick W Russell

who lived in Greenwich.

We think we have identified her father,

so I'm trying to look through the censuses to find out

how many brothers and sisters he may have, if any at all.

Holly finds the Frederick living in Greenwich

may have had at least five siblings -

a big family to research.

With Daisy's mother's side looking large as well,

Ryan's gamble is getting bigger and bigger.

Presumably there's going to be 20, 30, 40 beneficiaries,

so this one were going to start working now,

we're going to need everyone in the team to look into

the maternal and paternal side.

It's a huge family, so we're not quite sure at the minute

whether some lines will die out.

Ryan is playing with fire.

If he's picked the wrong parents to investigate,

his whole team will have wasted a morning's research.

But if he's guessed correctly,

he could be miles ahead of the competition.

There'll definitely be another couple of companies on it.

We just never know. I mean,

this is always the same thing for day one for a search.

We just have to throw everything at it.

And Ryan thinks he has made a breakthrough on the mother's side

as he's found an elderly cousin.

Speaking to them will confirm if he's researched the correct family,

and whether his gamble has paid off.

I'm just about to ring back

the only beneficiary we've found so far on her mum's side of the family.

I rang him earlier and he was engaged.

Then I rang back and there was no answer so I left a message.

If someone's engaged,

the first thought is they're speaking to a competitor.

As he's the only beneficiary, we need to talk to him.

He's on the phone again.

Hello, good morning. Sorry to bother you again.

We'd be really keen for us to give you a few more details.

Thank you very much. Bye-bye.

So, yeah engaged again.

So, three times I've rung, twice he's been engaged,

once I've left... I've left two messages now so

I think I'll leave it there.

Without speaking to heirs,

the team have no idea whether they're working the right family.

Would it be able to be read to me over the phone?

But there's a glimmer of hope.

I've just heard back from the registry office in Hastings

and they've confirmed that the birth certificate was correct

and the parents that we we're looking into was correct as well,

so we know that we're on the right track now.

But the team's excitement is short-lived.

OK, that's bad...

While the birth certificate confirms they definitely have the right names

for the parents, it now looks like they may have looked at

the wrong family for the father.

Let's forget about everything we've done on Russell so far.

The family they had researched for Frederick Russell,

based in Greenwich, is wrong and they have to start again.

A little bit stressful. We've just had to scrap the Russell side

of the family that we were doing.

Will Ryan be able to make up for lost time?

I'm actually really stuck.

We don't know if it's wrong but if it's right...

Anyway, we need to figure it out.

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

the door from the Heir Hunters.

I was quite shocked because I didn't realise that there was

anybody in the family that we could inherit from any more.

But there are still thousands of unsolved cases

where heirs need to be found.

Today, we've got details of two estates

on the Government Legal Department Bona Vacantia list

that have yet to be cracked.

Could you be the heirs they're looking for?

The first case on the list is Amelia Lilian Rissone.

She was born on the 19th of November 1905

in London, and died in Camden in 1998 as a spinster.

It's likely Amelia had Italian ancestry.

Do you have Italian blood and a Rissone in your family?

Could you be the person the Heir Hunters are looking for?

The next case is Edwin Queen,

who was born on the 29th of March 1922 in London

and died aged 70 in Crawley, West Sussex.

His parents were William Henry Queen

and Mary Ann Queen.

Do you recognise the unusual surname of Queen?

Do you know anything that could help solve the cases

of Edwin Queen and Amelia Rissone?

Perhaps you could be the next of kin

and, if so, you could have thousands of pounds coming your way.

In the case of bachelor Keith Jones,

the team at Fraser & Fraser were tantalisingly close

to finding their first heirs.

I just put in Eli Jones.

They'd located five potential half siblings

but were trying to find out what had happened to them after their mother

died, leaving father Eli on his own.

If they'd been adopted out of the family,

they'd be ruled out of the search.

But luckily for the team, it was a very different story.

When Ivy passed away, the family were placed with her family.

Eli would obviously have to try and support five people

and work at the same time,

so they were given to the maternal extended family.

It was great news for the team and meant they could now focus their

attentions on tracing Keith's half siblings or their descendants.

One of them was William.

William George Jones was born in 1921 in Pontypridd.

A search of records revealed that William had joined the Royal Navy

and, during the Second World War,

he was a gunner on a ship called HMS Rodney.

With regard to the roles that William Jones would have undertaken

as a gunner, the Rodney would have had

40mm quick firing anti-aircraft guns, QF2s,

and those would have performed roles

in defending the Rodney against potential attacks.

And William's skills became vital as the battle for naval superiority

intensified in the early 1940s.

Winston Churchill is said to have said that the only thing

that worried him was the Battle of the Atlantic.

The German Navy when now attempting to bring their major warship to bear

to threaten what was happening with the Royal Navy.

The most feared of those German warships was the Bismarck.

Bismarck was commissioned in 1940.

It only had an eight-month service life,

but it was an extremely modern,

well equipped and well armed ship.

It was a threat to British shipping

and the British Navy in the North Sea and potentially the Atlantic.

In May 1941, a British flotilla, including HMS Rodney,

was scrambled to the Denmark Strait

to take on the mighty Bismarck.

But first blood went to the Germans.

The first major engagement with HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Hood

saw the Prince of Wales have to scuttle away,

and we see the Hood sunk.

But the remaining British ships, including the Rodney, fought on.

William Jones and his crew mates,

although they may have been exhilarated by the prospect

of battle, may also have been fearful for their lives.

It was a ship with a reputation for its armament and speed

and, knowing what it had done to the Hood,

there was always a possibility that other ships

would suffer the same fate.

Two days into the battle, though,

the British ships began to strike back and, as a gunner,

William had a front-row seat.

He would have had a pretty clear view of the damage

being caused to the Bismarck.

We're talking about a ship going up in flames,

with major explosions causing a huge amount of damage.

The Bismarck was eventually overcome,

and sank on the 27th of May 1941.

It was a significant victory for British forces but, tragically,

more than 2,000 men lost their lives.

During his time in the Navy, it appears William met his wife,

a radar operator.

Early on in their marriage, they moved to South Africa,

which caused some headaches for the team.

This brought up quite a few issues.

Very strict privacy laws over there

to trace family members of individuals.

The team established that William had passed away in 1986.

The question was whether he'd had any children who would be heirs.

So, I've been looking into his family to see if he gets married,

has any children, and what I've been able to find is I've actually

been able to find a death certificate for him in South Africa

and a death certificate for his wife.

Unfortunately, his death certificate is actually in Afrikaans.

So, what I have got here is the death certificate

for Dorothy Marie Jones,

who was the wife of William George Jones.

This one is actually in English, unlike her husband.

It lists the date of birth being the 19th of the 10th, 1925,

her date of death on the 30th of the 3rd, 1981,

that she was of nationality South African, she was a housewife,

and he's listed there four children.

All right, then. Cheers.

It was the news they'd been hoping for

and, as they began contacting William's children in South Africa,

they made a quirky discovery.

When we contacted William's family in South Africa,

his first-born had the middle name of Rodney.

The team had now started signing their first heirs,

and they were making positive progress closer to home.

We know that from the first marriage of the deceased's father

there were five children.

One of them is still alive,

so he will be entitled to a fifth of the estate.

He is very elderly and, in that instance,

what we usually do is find sons and daughters of that individual

to speak to them directly.

Obviously, in this case, he is a half-blood sibling

and it shouldn't be me to give that information over to him.

Next, Ben turned his attention to the eldest of the five, Gwendoline.

Half-blood sister Gwendoline Louvaine Jones,

born in 1919.

She married a Gilbert Seaborne in 1937 and had six children.

One of those children was Roger,

and Ben was able to track him down and deliver the surprise news.

I mean, I knew my cousins. I'd met most of my cousins before.

It was the cousins in South Africa that were a bit of a mystery.

I think I first met Keith around about 1967, possibly '68.

I was with my late brother, Glyn,

so we were chatting to this chap and I remember him saying,

"Oh, that's our uncle."

I went, "Oh, why didn't you tell me you had been speaking to him?"

Yeah, he seemed a very pleasant chap.

He obviously knew my elder brother.

Then I bumped into him again in the '70s some time.

I think I might have bumped into him in the '80s

and then the last time I saw him was at a wedding

which would have been around 1990.

They were quite a disjointed family.

For case manager Ben, contacting Roger would prove invaluable.

So when we're looking into a Jones family,

we're always hoping that someone knows about the family.

Roger was able to confirm that, once his grandmother had passed away,

his grandfather Eli went on to marry

Alice May Kruger, nee Briscombe.

That just made sure and confirmed that we were on the right track

and, from that point, we were able to really get our teeth into

finding the other half-blood sibling descendants.

Ultimately, the team were able to trace a total of 18 heirs

to the estimated £250,000 estate.

But for Roger, the inheritance is tinged with regret.

I just felt a bit sorry that nobody from the family was at the funeral.

Myself and my cousin Debbie went to the coroners inquest, you know,

cos we thought somebody from the family should be there.

A great shame, really.

But you can't turn back the clock and change things.

Yeah, I'll keep going with it.

Back in London, it's midday and heir hunting company Finders

are three hours into their search

for heirs to the estate of Daisy Charlwood.

I've got her birth now, so hopefully we can find her.

Daisy was a war widow

who lived in Sidcup on the outskirts of London for most of her life

and passed away aged 92.

Very few people knew Daisy and records are limited

so the team have been forced to work on a series of hunches.

-If you print that out, actually, I can start having a look.

-OK.

But one vital guess proved a disastrous mistake.

The team had wasted precious hours looking into the wrong family of

Daisy's father, Frederick W Russell, based in Greenwich.

We're currently just trying to figure out

which is the right family, the dad.

There are lots of potential Frederick Williams it could be,

so really just trying to figure out the right one,

which is posing a bit of a struggle at the moment.

I don't have a clue what's going on.

Worried they are behind the competition,

the whole team are looking for the correct Frederick Russell.

Did you see one on the Russell side?

Ryan has three families to pick from

so calls a crisis meeting to see if they can figure it out.

So I think I've found someone on my bit.

We don't know if it's wrong, but if it's right...

It's interesting anyway. We need to figure it out.

Everybody needs to look for clues in the records to point out

the right family for Frederick,

otherwise research will grind to a halt.

So we're actually really stuck.

-This is the one that made the most sense, though.

-It did.

Hi, there. I think I spoke to you earlier this morning about

getting a certificate read to me over the phone?

But Holly makes a major breakthrough.

A closer look at Daisy's birth certificate

reveals an address for her parents.

The address that she was born at,

we found another Russell living on that street in the 1939 census.

It's the best link they have for a Russell family

and moves their search for Frederick's family

from Greenwich to Hastings,

but it's still a huge gamble.

We're trying to still figure out whether it's correct,

but let's just say it's correct for now.

The only way they'll confirm they have the right family

is if they speak to heirs.

Ryan spurs the team into more action.

We just need to find some more beneficiaries, please.

So I think the Frederick William Russell in Hastings, well...

Can we get some certs from Hastings?

We can.

The certificates will verify who's who in Daisy's father's family

and, when they do come in,

they reveal an intriguing detail about her father.

Frederick Russell was a sewer man in London during the 1920s,

and today the sewers in London

are maintained by people following in his footsteps.

We're off to the Fleet Sewer, in Calthorpe Street.

This is our safety tripod and winch.

This wouldn't have been around when they actually built these,

they'd have been going up and down the ladders on their own, probably

with hobnail boots on, maybe a rope if they were really, really lucky,

but generally, no, they'd have had nothing like this.

I don't even think they knew what health and safety meant.

Coming down.

London hadn't had a sewer system until the 1860s

and, before then, the River Thames had acted as the main drain

for raw sewage in London.

The real problem of

sewage filth in the River Thames

was of course that the River Thames

was, at that time,

the main source of drinking water for the population.

This led to all the problems of disease, cholera, typhoid,

typhus and so on, and the government was, in the end,

compelled to do something about it.

The solution was over 1,300 miles of sewer tunnel under London

to divert sewage to treatment works in the east of the city.

Frederick's job would have been to keep the sewage flowing east.

Filth and muck off the roads would tend to collect

in the bottom of some of the sewers

and it involved men necessarily going into the sewers

and digging this detritus, muck, out by hand.

The sewers today are probably a lot nicer place,

if you can call at that,

than they would have been about 150 years ago.

When they were built,

there would've been a lot more sewage coming down here.

But they still wouldn't be flushing as much water

as we do these days into the sewer system.

So it would be a lot more solids coming through.

Down in places like Smithfield Meat Market,

I wouldn't even think about going downstream of that.

That would be an absolutely disgusting place to be.

Today, it's not quite so bad.

100 years ago, Frederick didn't have the advantage of machines

to help clear blocked sewers.

Frederick, originally, would have been called a flusher.

He'd be down here on his hands and knees with a shovel,

cleaning it out manually.

So, hot, nasty and very physical work for him.

And the sewers contained hidden threats.

Working down here was very dangerous.

Sewage, when it starts to degrade, gives off various gases.

So a good couple of deep breaths of that and, yeah,

you'll be lying on the floor unconscious.

Today we've got gas monitors, hard hats and PPE on.

They would be down here in a pair of hobnail boots and a felt cap.

No, they were a lot braver than I, at the time.

Frederick's death certificate shows he died from bronchopneumonia,

possibly brought on from working in the sewers.

But his marriage certificate gives the heir hunters more valuable clues

about Frederick's family.

His father, Daisy's grandfather, William Russell,

married Caroline Edwards in 1881

and they had five children,

four of which are Daisy's aunts and uncles.

Five kids, so four lines.

OK, cool. A bit smaller. OK. All right.

I mean, it seems to make the most sense.

To trace the aunts and uncles, the team need to divide and conquer.

So at the moment we've just split each potential child up between us

and we're going to have a look into that one instead.

If these aunts and uncles had children, they'd be crucial heirs.

Frederick's dad. I'll do Herbert.

-Yeah.

-I'll get Camilla to do Walter.

I'm going to copy this. I'll do a few copies of this.

The team are confident they're ahead.

The Russell surname,

you can easily go and follow the wrong line, pretty much.

I think we're on the right track.

Although the team are confident they've found the correct family,

they won't know for sure till they make contact with them.

I just really want to speak to someone, but we need to know

whether anyone is going to want to retain our services.

We want to know if anybody has got some info on the family.

If we can speak to someone who can verify the info or the tree we're

working on, it would be great.

Ryan manages to find a phone number for a potential heir.

This is going to be...

..a first cousin once removed on the Russell side of the family.

It's a call which could make or break the case.

Have the competition beaten Ryan to the heirs?

Hello, there. It's Ryan Gregory. We're a firm of heir hunters.

We're actually looking into the Russell family tree.

Have you been contacted about this at all?

That's quite good.

It's satisfying news.

Ryan is first to this potential heir.

But Ryan still needs confirmation he still has the right family.

It's going quite far back.

Do you know whether your grandfather had a brother called Frederick?

No. OK, I mean that's really the link

cos Frederick would be Daisy's dad.

But essentially the way we're working, Russell's quite

a common surname so there's quite a lot of different possibilities.

The potential heir can't confirm his grandfather was related

to Daisy's father. Only certificates will be able to prove that.

Yeah, yeah, I hope so.

But all the other information adds up and Ryan is quietly confident

he's on the right track.

All right, we'll see you later. Cheers. Thanks a lot. Bye-bye.

OK, finally after five hours I think I managed to speak to a beneficiary,

a potential beneficiary we should say,

because we're still not 100% sure

whether the Russell side of the family is correct.

But if it is correct, then we were the first to contact him.

He's given me some details on this line of the family.

You know, happy days.

-Hello, Camilla. How's it going?

-Yeah, it's going OK.

Ryan and the team soon contact some more potential heirs

and it's a satisfying end to the day.

We've had at least one signature, which is good.

We've contacted them first.

They've been really amiable with us

so we're visiting them later on today and tomorrow.

But Ryan can't celebrate just yet.

You're never really 100% sure whether someone is a beneficiary

until you get the documents back in.

These are the documents you need

linking the heir to the deceased, or vice versa.

A few days later, two of the heirs they visited

are reflecting on the surprise knock at the door.

A man knocked on my door and I had no idea what he was talking about.

In fact, I wasn't going to let him in to start with.

But it was just so out of the blue.

Well, Barbara phoned me in absolute shock.

We had no idea.

Well, we just didn't know they existed.

If they do inherit some of Daisy's estate,

Valerie has already made plans for the money.

However much it is,

I've decided that I'll probably share it with my children.

My children would probably like a little slice of the cake.

-I'll do the same thing.

-Yeah.

But their inheritance isn't guaranteed

until Ryan has verified he definitely has the right family.

After two more days of research, he finally has the answer.

We've had all of the certificates in that we need now

and we've spoken to family members

and the good news is that both sides of the family is correct.

Against all odds, it has turned into a very successful heir hunt.

We found at least 17 beneficiaries and, you know,

the majority of people have chose to retain our services.

We seem to have been ahead of the competition on this one I'd say.

OK, that's cool.

Heir Barbara is coming to terms with learning about Daisy

and the family she never knew about.

There he is. That's grandad.

I would've loved to have been in contact with her when she was alive.

I really do feel bad now

that we didn't keep in touch with the family.

Well, there's loads here.

-Half of them, I don't know who they are.

-I know.

It could be a new chapter in her family history

as she learns more about Daisy's life.

Well, I am a great lover of my family.

We might be able to meet family that we didn't know we had.