Greatrex/Dick-Larkam Heir Hunters

Heir Hunters spend their lives tracking down the families of people who died without leaving a will.

They hand over thousands to long-lost relatives who had no idea they were in line for a windfall.

Could they be knocking at your door?

On today's programme - the Heir Hunters uncover

the heart-breaking story of a family separated for over 30 years.

If he was alive, I'd probably walk past him on the street and not even know who he was.

And the tale of an 18th-century sea captain, who changed the lives of thousands of young children.

Walking each day to his business in London, he past dung hills along

the way, on which he noticed there were the bodies of discarded babies.

Some of them still alive.

Plus, how you may be entitled to inherit some of the unclaimed estates held by the Treasury.

Could thousands of pounds be heading your way?

The vast majority of people in the UK don't make a will.

If the authorities can't find any obvious relatives,

the money they leave behind goes straight to the Government.

Last year, a staggering £18 million went to the Treasury in unclaimed estates.

That's where the Heir Hunters step in.

Over 30 companies make it their job to track down the rightful heirs to this money.

As they take a commission, it's a lucrative business.

Last year alone, they returned over £6.5 million to the rightful heirs.

Fraser and Fraser is one of the oldest firms of heir hunters in Britain.

It's run by Andrew, Charles and Neil Fraser.

George R Galloway.

Who's got the marriages?

Their team have been reuniting heirs with unexpected windfalls for over 30 years.

Since they began, they've assisted 50,000 heirs,

who've inherited a whopping sum of over £100 million.

It's 7am. The team at Fraser and Fraser are scouring the Treasury's list of unclaimed estates,

which was published this morning.

I'm on the ball this morning.

We've got something in Northwood.

One name is very unusual and has taken their interest. But they've no idea

if there is any value to the case.

We could have a look at this estate of Peter William Greatrex.

Based down in Norwood, and at the moment, I can't find an address for him.

I've got no idea whether it's worth £1 million or worth £5,000.

Peter Greatrex died in North London on 29th September, 2008 at the age of 57.

Originally from Birmingham, he'd worked for Severn Trent Water for most of his career.

A colleague who worked with Peter for many years was Bill Scribbins.

I always found Peter a very applicable guy to get on with.

He was very, very...always turned out smart.

Always wanted the best of everything.

He worked hard and with dedication to get that.

But no, he was a generally nice guy.

I'm sad to hear the news that he'd passed away, to be perfectly honest.

As the authorities have been unable to find any family

for Peter Greatrex, his estate is unclaimed and held by the Treasury.

-Right, Northwood.

-Case manager Marcus Herbert takes on the investigation.

It's an unusual enough name. I think it could stand out.

As they don't know whether Peter had a property, they can't estimate

the value of the estate to know whether it's a case worth working.

Not knowing where Peter lived creates other problems too.

Without an address, we can't do inquiries with all the neighbours and things,

which is the basic stuff that we do to start with.

A lot of people who distance themselves from their family or don't have any family,

the closest people to them will be neighbours who pop their head round the door and see how they are.

The information they get from neighbours is usually what kick-starts an investigation.

The team are currently stumped for leads. To get the address,

they must get their hands on the death certificate.

This is where the team of travelling Heir Hunters comes in. Across the country

are a network of senior researchers, who are ready to go wherever the hunt takes them.

They collect the vital birth, death and marriage certificates,

and interview people who knew the deceased, as they hunt for clues.

But their most important job is finding and signing up heirs.

Ewart Lindsay has been one of Fraser's senior researchers for over 12 years.

Based near London, he's off to the Hillingdon register office to get more leads on Peter Greatrex.

Greatrex. It's an unusual name.

That makes our research slightly easier.

It's just, in terms of research, it's just good, you know.

As Ewart heads off to collect the death certificate, the office hunt for birth records.

While the unusual name means there aren't too many

Peter Greatrexes to search through,

all the ones they found are coming up around Birmingham, not London, where he died.

But if they're not to miss anything, their research must be thorough.

I'm doing it slowly, because the name's Greatrex.

There are variations.

It makes sense to just quickly run through the variation names as well,

so you're not having to do the search twice, just in case.

As Dave and Marcus try to piece together parts of the family jigsaw,

they still have no idea if the case is of any value.

Ewart Lindsay is on the road at the moment. He's going to get the death

of Peter Greatrex from Hillingdon Register Office.

From that, that will confirm the date of birth, which we know anyway.

But that will also tell us, hopefully, where he lived.

Hopefully, in a 26 room-mansion worth about 6 million quid and then we'll be laughing.

Not quite a mansion, but Ewart does have interesting news about where Peter lived.

-As we know, he died on 29th September, 2008.

-Yeah.

He was a project manager.

-Yeah.

-Ahh!

He was of 26...

-Yes?

-..Grazebrook Croft.

That's Birmingham, West Midlands.

How come he died in Hillingdon?

That's very strange! Very strange.

Armed with the address, the office make quick work of establishing

that he did not in fact own his own property.

But whilst that usually means his estate won't be very large,

something else has caught their eye - his occupation.

What he project managed, I don't know. But that might explain why he was down in London,

when on the death, his address was given as one up in Birmingham.

But the fact he's a project manager for something indicates that he had a fairly good job.

In fact, Peter was responsible for managing major water projects.

One of his most important was undertaken with colleague Bill Scribbins.

We were both selected to go out with Anneka Rice on the Romanian challenge appeal.

I did, I think I did, four trips out to Romania with Peter.

Peter was leading the projects at the time,

with us ably supporting him.

In 1990, they helped to renovate

a dilapidated orphanage, home to 600 neglected children.

Peter led the team of plumbers.

-Where? Which way?

-There! There!

This way? OK.

This is Raul, who's deaf and dumb. By using Raul and his knowledge,

he's been able to show us the water system for the building outside.

Without his help, we wouldn't be able to find a lot of them.

He really, really slung his heart and soul into that.

He really wanted to change the conditions for the children out there.

THEY SING

You know, to put everything together as we did, and as Peter put together

the organisational things that we needed was actually a massive task

on its own, you know.

Peter's good job leads the Heir Hunters to believe that even though he may not have owned his own home,

it's likely he was well paid,

so may well have had savings or investments.

But they have no way of confirming their suspicions.

Pursuing the case is a bit of a gamble.

They don't know whether it will be profitable for the company or not.

It's not a decision Marcus can make alone.

The only thing I think there could be money in, he was described on the death as a project manager.

-It's up to you. It's your call, mate.

-Project manager?

It could mean anything, couldn't it? Do you wanna go for it? We might as well.

They won't know the actual value till they put in a claim.

But from the little information they have, it seems like a good bet.

He had a good job, by the sounds of it. We think there's a bit of money in it. We're going to go for it.

The team can now really hit the research.

I'm just going back from '51 back to see if I can find a marriage.

One of the first things is to establish who his parents are, in order to find out

if they had any other children, who would be brothers and sisters to the deceased.

Bingo, I think I've got it. There we go. Here we are.

The father's name. We know the mother's maiden name is McKenna.

The district is Birmingham.

This is just the reference details.

We're gonna order the certificate and we know it's in March 1943.

I just need to find that information.

But not all the information they need in is their databases.

Now they have the names of the parents, Dave needs to look elsewhere for more clues.

Dave is hoping to find a will for one of Peter Greatrex's parents.

Just round the corner is the principal probate registry, which has a record of all the wills

and letters of administration for every estate administered in England and Wales since 1858.

More often than not, these documents will name all the children,

so it could be a short cut to Peter's brothers and sisters.

Right, I've just obtained the letters of administration on the estate of William Arthur...

Greatrex, who is the father of the deceased.

The information is the letters of administration were taken out by both the deceased,

Peter William Greatrex and his sister, Mrs Shirley Doris Riley.

Peter's father's will has been a great help in getting the family tree started.

Peter's parents, William Greatrex and Doreen McKenna had three other children,

Arthur, Shirley and Doreen.

Arthur died as an infant, but it seems Shirley had a son, Peter,

who'd be a nephew to the deceased.

But Marcus is cautious about rushing ahead and contacting him, as he may not end up being an heir.

He may be a nephew, but the team haven't yet ruled out closer family.

The deceased himself, Peter William Greatrex, could've had children.

We may not be looking at his brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces.

We might be looking closer than that.

Only if they find and sign up the right heirs will the case actually be worth anything to the company.

Marcus's hunch about closer family looks like it may be well-founded.

Possible kids before the marriage of the deceased and his wife.

He's not sure if he's actually found some kids, or it's a coincidence.

He's just trying to sort it out now.

Your guess is as good as mine.

But there's a long way to go to sort this case out,

as the children and the marriage are about to make the family tree a whole lot more complicated.

If he didn't divorce her, we need to find her.

Piecing together separated families is the daily work of the Heir Hunters.

But when they came across the case of Julia Dick-Larkam, they were to uncover a tragic family history.

It sounds horrendous, but he gave away four daughters

and walked away and started another life without thinking about them.

In June 1999, the name of Julia Dick-Larkam

appeared on the Treasury's list of unclaimed estates.

Julia died alone in 1998, aged 83.

She outlived her husband by 25 years.

And they'd never had children.

She didn't leave a will, but she did leave a house in Brent, North London

as part of an estate worth around £180,000.

Case manager David Pacifico took up the challenge of trying to trace any living heirs.

We thought very much it was a very good case.

Firstly, because of the value, which is estimated at £180,000.

Number two, the name Dick-Larkam.

Although a married name, her maiden name was shown as Marklove.

It was a name we could research into, hopefully quite quickly.

But for all of his 38 years of genealogical experience,

as he began work on the case, things weren't quite as he'd anticipated.

According to her death, her maiden name was Marklove. Therefore, we assumed, as in 99% of cases,

that was her maiden name and the name under which she was born.

But we, nonetheless, didn't find a birth under Marklove.

Although it was the maiden name given on her marriage certificate,

David couldn't find a full birth certificate for a Julia Marklove,

which was very unusual and raised his suspicions about this name.

We searched for the birth of Julia Marklove, but couldn't find it

and this is when we had real doubts whether or not it was the name she was born under.

Then we contacted the General Register Office, in Southport,

who identified the birth from a special register

and found out that she was given a new identity by the Thomas Coram Foundation.

Julia Marklove was in fact born Grace Constance Carvell.

But because she was illegitimate, she'd been given away at birth,

and taken in by a charity dedicated to bringing up unwanted and abandoned babies.

The Foundling Hospital, in London, dates back to 1739.

Horrified by the poverty on London's streets, philanthropist Thomas Coram

set up the Thomas Coram Foundation, England's oldest children's charity.

Our founder was a sea captain. And on retiring, or so he thought,

to Rotherhithe

and walking each day to his business in London, he passed dung hills along the way,

on which he noticed there were the bodies of discarded babies.

Some of them still alive.

There was no provision at all for discarded children, foundlings.

He decided, as a one-man effort, to do something about it.

It took 17 years of campaigning by Thomas Coram

before George II granted a royal charter

for the establishment of a foundling hospital, with the first foundlings being admitted in 1741.

But the hospital couldn't take every child that, in desperation, was brought in.

So they set up a harsh system of admission.

Women would line up with their infants and they would be...

passed to one of two queues - the girl's queue, the boy's queue.

They'd dip their hand into a bag and if they drew out a black ball,

they were sent away.

If they drew out a white ball, the child was admitted, subject to a medical inspection.

If they pulled out a red ball, they were put on a provisional list,

which, should one of the white ball babies fail the medical,

a red ball might take its place.

It was, quite literally, a lottery.

Even for the lucky mothers like Amy Carvell, saying goodbye to their children was still not easy.

Often, as a parting gesture, they'd wrap modest knick-knacks in their baby's clothes as mementos.

These items might be little labels, little hearts.

A padlock, a key, a coin.

We call them tokens today, but when they're actually noted

in the minutes, they are called "remarkable things."

These objects were pinned in to what is called the billet, which essentially, was the admission form

on which the child's sex, general health and the items of clothing

that the mother had actually provided with her baby were recorded

and we have them on display here,

and I challenge anybody to walk past them

without thinking that each one of these represents a ruptured life.

Whilst it would have been heart-breaking to give up a child,

in 1915, Grace's desperate mother, Amy,

would have been grateful when her baby was accepted.

On arrival at the foundling hospital, Grace Carvell would have been baptised.

There was a sense that the child was literally being saved.

A new name was given to bring a new beginning

and extinguish their past life.

Grace's name was changed to Julia Marklove.

In the hunt to find heirs to Julia's estate, David Pacifico

had now uncovered her sad beginnings as a foundling and, crucially for him, her real birth name.

Now, he could move the research forward.

Once we knew the person was taken in by the Thomas Coram Foundation

and therefore given a new identity, we contacted

the foundation and spoke to a very nice lady there, who went through

the records and informed us she was born as Grace Constance Carvell,

on 9th April 1915, which ties up exactly to the date of birth

shown on the death certificate...

..and where she was born as well.

And who she was the daughter of. In this case, Amy Isabel Carvell, which looked like an illegitimate birth.

From records kept at the foundling hospital, it seems Julia's father had disappeared, leaving her mother,

Amy, aged 20, with a baby and no prospect of marriage.

It was then that Julia's ties to her family were severed, as she became a foundling.

It looks like she was admitted to the foundation on 27th May, 1915,

which is only when she was only about a month or so old.

Julia went on to spend her whole childhood

in the care of the hospital, not leaving until she was 14.

Like Julia, John Caldecott also spent the first 14 years of his life at the foundling hospital.

By the time he was admitted, in 1936, it had moved to Berkhamsted.

He remembers what it was like to be a foundling.

That gives you the feeling of rejection,

which is difficult to explain,

but it does tend to stay with you for many years.

His mother lost her job in a laundry and couldn't face bringing up her baby in a work house,

so just like Julia's mother, her only option was to hand her child over to the hospital.

We have to understand that even in the 1700s, right the way to the late '40s,

early '50s, for a girl to have a baby

when she was not married was a dreadful thing

and it was a stigma, not only on the mother, but also on the child.

And it is that stigma that stuck with the children in the foundling hospital.

We didn't know who our parents were.

We knew that we'd been given away, and this is where part of the guilt comes from,

that it was our fault that we were,

as we were, in the foundling hospital.

The regime was strict and life at the hospital was far from luxurious.

I always feel that we were hungry. We never seemed to have enough food.

Perhaps that's no different from children in normal life.

So... We were cared for.

We were clothed. The clothes were of a good quality.

What was missing, of course, was the family love.

There was no family love, and we...

we knew that we had no families.

The children quite often used to dream of their parents coming,

or their mother, in particular, coming and collecting them, but of course, it very rarely happened.

Julia's mother, sadly, never came back for her.

But it was through Amy Carvell that David Pacifico hoped to find living heirs.

It was necessary to try and identify whether or not her mother had any other children.

In other words, brothers or sisters or half-brothers and sisters to the deceased.

That was the next important step.

Do me a favour, can you find this marriage? Grace Carvell

to a William George Dick-Larkam.

Finding out her mother's name was key to unlocking the family tree.

The information given helped us greatly to, sort of, get on to the family, because we could then

identify the birth and from that identify, whether the mother had any other children.

Amy Carvell was the mother of Julia Marklove, born as Grace Carvell.

She had had a child, Audrey, two years prior to Julia.

Six years after giving Julia up to the hospital, Amy had a relationship

with Harry Kynman-Baker and had two further children,

June and Kathleen, so Julia in fact had three sisters.

June's daughter, Nina,

a niece to Julia and a living heir,

was tracked down. It was then a case

of breaking the news.

It's a case, like some others I've dealt with, where...

you're telling somebody that their mother, or grandmother,

had another child that they weren't aware of.

You know, it obviously changes their whole view of the family,

and suddenly, the history is changed.

Nina Atkin was one of five heirs that the team eventually found.

She not only got a share of Julia's £180,000 estate,

but also discovered the life of an aunt she never knew she'd had.

After visiting her aunt's home,

Nina found an intriguing bit of paper that revealed that Julia had,

during her life, been trying to track down her mother, Amy Carvell.

It was interesting that in the house, just in the kitchen drawer,

was this list, with a note from her friend, called Peggy.

She said, "I thought you might like to have these, not too many, love Peggy."

And a list of Carvells, with their addresses and telephone numbers.

There is some writing next to one of them. So we don't know if she tried to phone them or contact them.

Was she trying to find her mother, or did she think she had siblings?

Did she know she was one of four?

Thank you.

Today, she's visiting the Coram Foundation to find out if her aunt,

Julia, had ever managed to make contact with Amy Carvell, her birth mother, and Nina's grandmother.

In 1987, that would be the first time she was told her original name.

She didn't make any comment about that, that anybody could remember?

No. By that stage, she was Julia, that was who she was.

So that was the first time she would have been told that she was Grace Constance Carvell.

But, obviously, she was interested in the Carvell

and tried to find out whether there might be some Carvells she was related to.

It looks as though she might have been in...

Yes. She's looking in the North London area, the West London area.

It looks like this is very different handwriting to this. So...

-I just imagine that Grace perhaps wrote these in.

-That's possible.

But that wasn't the first time the Coram Foundation and Julia

had been in contact regarding the identity of her mother.

What she was told after that, I've got the letter she was sent in 1953.

"Dear Miss Marklove," because she was Julia Marklove to us.

"It's nearly a year since you applied for information about your mother and I'm writing to tell you the results

"of our enquiries, which I am afraid have proved fruitless."

"Our representative, who made enquiries, did succeed in tracing

"the fact that your mother married in 1919, when she was 25 years old,

"but all further enquiries to find her under her married name have, I regret to say, been unsuccessful.

"Our representative did succeed, however, in tracing a relative of your mother,

"but he said he'd not seen her, or heard from her, since 1928.

"He had no idea of her present whereabouts and thought

"she might even be abroad."

Julia's last visit to the Coram Foundation in search of her family

was in 1987, three years after her mother had died.

Incredibly, Julia wasn't the only one of her family to have been sent to an institution.

Nina's mother, June,

was one of Amy's two later daughters with Harry Kynman-Baker.

Both June and Kathleen were sent to a Barnardo's home,

aged seven and two, when their father died.

When we heard there were two other sisters,

I automatically thought it was a similar scenario, something had happened

to their father, and Amy found herself in a similar situation twice in her life.

It seems that Julia's mother, Amy Carvell, had given up all four of her children.

It's very difficult, when there is no benefit system, to be able to bring your children up,

you know?

How would she have managed?

It sounds horrendous that you gave away four daughters

and walked away and started another life without thinking about them.

But we don't know that.

And I'm not going to judge.

I can't judge.

Although Julia Marklove had been given away as a child and had had

sad and humble beginnings, it seems her later life was very different.

Nina visited her aunt Julia's house shortly after finding out about her death.

It was a lovely house, backed on to a school.

And although the house had been stripped, there are lists of

what was in her house and things that had come from all over the world,

from Russia, from Japan, from China.

It would have been lovely to see the furniture.

But there was a diary that she had hand written that I found,

and a fur coat and little bits of some jewellery left,

and the diary is about a cruise that leaves Southampton

and goes to Cairo and the Bay of Biscay and Ceylon,

and all the things that she did while she was on that cruise.

She's having a lovely time.

She had a great life.

A very harrowing beginning, but what a great end.

For every case that is solved, there are still thousands that stubbornly remain a mystery.

Currently, over 3,000 names drawn from across the country are on the Treasury's unsolved case list.

Their assets will be kept for up to 30 years, in the hope that eventually,

someone will remember and come forward to claim their inheritance.

With estates valued from £5,000 to millions of pounds, the rightful heirs are out there somewhere.

Today, we've got two cases Heir Hunters have failed to solve.

Could you be the key?

Could you be in line for a payout?

Rita Kathleen Bartley of Selby, North Yorkshire, passed away on 15th November, 2005.

In the search to find her heirs, all leads have come to nothing.

Do you know anything about her?

Could you be a long-lost relation?

Sylvia May Cherrett died in Barking, Essex, on 22nd September, 2005.

Does her name mean anything to you?

Could she be your long-lost aunt, or cousin?

Could you be the one person entitled to her legacy?

With the estates of Sylvia Cherrett and Rita Bartley and hundreds of others laying unclaimed every year,

only new information from you can help their money reach entitled family members.

Unclaimed estates, which appear on the Treasury's list, often end up

being inherited by distant family, who didn't really know the deceased.

Usually, close family, such as wives and children, are either aware of

the death or have been easily found by the authorities. But not always.

Sometimes close family are, sadly, not close at all.

-You can pick her up from '79 onwards.

-Yep.

That will sort those two out.

Since this morning, the team have been investigating the estate of

project manager Peter Greatrex, who died on 29th September, 2008.

My abiding memories of Peter is he was genuine,

he wanted to help people, erm,

genuine in all that he did. He wanted to do his best out in Romania.

Definitely wanted to do his best for the children out there and for the poor people out there.

And I think generally in his job, he wanted to please people, you know?

So that will always be a lasting memory of Peter for me.

The team don't know how much the estate is worth, but as Peter had a good job,

they're taking a chance on pursuing the case. For most of the morning,

they thought the family tree was straightforward, but they've just discovered

that Peter had been married and may have had children, which will change everything.

Possible kids before the marriage of the deceased and his wife, but he's not sure whether

he's found some kids, or it's just a coincidence! He's just trying to sort it out now.

Your guess is as good as mine!

My thoughts on this is...

we don't know whether they're divorced or not.

So we don't know what the value is. If they're not divorced,

we'll have to sign her and that daughter up, aren't we?

The daughter may not be entitled if it's a modest estate, then it will just be the wife.

If there's no divorce. That's my thought. Yeah.

They'd previously established

that Peter had a brother,

two sisters

and at least one nephew,

all of whom, if living,

could have been potential heirs.

But they've now discovered that

Peter married a Shirley Hanson,

who, it appears, is alive and living in Birmingham.

As a spouse, she would have the greatest entitlement,

but if they're divorced,

she has none. If together, they had any children,

which is now looking likely,

they would also be heirs.

Trying to work all this out is testing their skills to the maximum.

We're going to get Bob Barrett to go over and see if he can make contact

with the family, the wife/ex-wife of the deceased, plus the daughter

and two sons, brackets - possibly adopted sons. I can't be bothered with this, this is too complicated.

As Marcus doesn't have a phone number for Shirley Greatrex,

he asks travelling Heir Hunter and ex-police officer Bob Barrett to go to Birmingham and visit her address.

As he heads up the motorway, Bob tries to get his head

around the family, as everything rests on this meeting.

The first thing I'm going to need to do when I see Mrs Greatrex

is find out whether or not she was divorced from her husband.

Because if she was divorced from her husband, then she won't inherit anything,

and her daughter will be inheriting. I'm also going to need to establish

whether or not the two children she had by a previous marriage

were adopted by our deceased, Mr Greatrex.

As an adopted person, you assume the same rights as a blood relative.

Peter Greatrex's wife, Shirley,

has at least three children - Anthony, Steven and Samantha.

The two boys, born prior to Shirley and Peter's marriage,

have taken the name Greatrex, so may have been adopted.

Samantha, born just after the marriage,

looks to be their only child together.

Close-kin cases which involve wives and children aren't very common.

Most of the time, we're dealing with far more distant relatives,

cousins, or cousins once removed.

It's not rare to deal with a closer relative, but it's a bit more unusual.

You can't help wondering why...

why people lose touch. Why would a father and daughter lose touch?

You wonder, why doesn't she know that her father's died?

So... It's a bit sad, really, that families lose touch.

What Shirley can tell Bob about the family relationships will change the inheritance significantly.

There's a possibility of four heirs,

or three heirs, or one heir.

So, it's a bit of suck it and see, really.

The nephew they found earlier in the day will now not be entitled.

But who is depends on whether there were adoptions or a divorce.

-Hello, Mrs Greatrex?

-Yes, it is.

My name is Bob Barrett. I'm from a firm called Fraser and Fraser.

We're probate researchers. We trace people that we think are heirs

to money that's been left by people who've died without leaving a will.

-Can I get a few details from you?

-Certainly.

-Thanks ever so much.

The heirs to Peter Greatrex's estate are hopefully about to be revealed.

Now I know that Mr and Mrs Greatrex divorced in 1979, 1980, thereabouts.

I also know that...

Mr Greatrex never adopted his wife's two children by a previous marriage.

So there is only...

..one heir to Mr Greatrex's estate, which is his daughter, Samantha.

As is often the way, it just takes one visit to the right person

to quickly solve what had seemed like quite a complicated case.

It's a nice result. We've been running around on this one all day.

And finally, we've got it down to the person

that we know is entitled, which is - not blowing me own trumpet here - but it's the person I expected would be.

But whilst it's good news to have found an heir to Peter Greatrex's estate,

hearing about her dad's death has been difficult for Samantha.

Peter Greatrex divorced Samantha's mum when Sam was only a baby.

Now in her 30s,

and with a family of her own, sadly, she has only seen him twice since.

I wasn't quite sure what to feel.

I know that he's my father, but I know nothing about him.

So it was strange that there was a loss. I felt a loss.

It was a loss for somebody that I've never known.

So although you've lost somebody who was a part of you,

you know nothing about them, and...

that's quite difficult.

I always thought I'd get the chance to at least say goodbye.

That sounds a bit strange,

saying goodbye to somebody that you don't know.

Regardless of whatever happened, that's my father,

and, erm...

I'm a part of him.

Problem is, the old pipe work...

One of the only memories she has of him

comes from a fluke glimpse

on a television programme.

I don't know whether I was reading a magazine.

I wasn't really paying attention to the programme, and then I heard this voice,

and something made me look up at the TV, and when I looked, my mum says, "That's your dad."

When I looked, it was my dad, and it was like, "Well, what's he doing on the telly?"

Then I took notice and saw what it was about.

As a teenager, I was quite angry.

I thought, "What's he doing over there, helping kids

"that don't belong to him, when he couldn't be bothered to help me?"

As an adult, I realise it was a really good thing that he was doing.

Samantha's mother has given her the few pictures she has of Peter.

The recent news has got Samantha thinking about

her relationship with her dad.

It's sad really, isn't it?

And the fact that there's not one picture of me with him,

not one, that's sad.

And these are from years ago, like 30-odd years ago.

So, you know...

If he was alive, I'd probably walk past him on the street and not even know who he was.

That's a sad fact.

But Samantha will now inherit

all the estate her dad left behind,

which amounts to around £6,000.

The first thing I have to do is put a memorial in place for my dad.

I'm not sure what that will be,

but that's the first thing that I have to do.

And then, after that, who knows?

I don't know.

I haven't thought about it really.

I just know that I need to put a memorial in place for him.

Cremated at the Lodge Hill Cemetery, near Birmingham,

Samantha goes to pay her respects to her dad.

I just feel that it's something... I need to come here.

I needed to come here to see.

I just...

It's just something I had to do.

And I've done it now.

Coming here, it's strengthened my beliefs in being a parent,

that being there and seeing my kids grow is one of the most

precious things in the world, and it also makes me thankful to my mum

for sticking around and putting up with my behaviour

as a child growing up.

She, in turn, gets the joys of now being a grandmother...

..which is something that my father not only missed out on my life,

but he also missed out on my children's lives too.

I'm glad that I know where he is.

For the first time in my life, I actually know where my father is.

I can come here when I choose to come here

and spend as little, or as much time here, as I wish to.

And, erm, he's there.

If you would like advice about building a family tree,

or making a will, go to bbc.co.uk.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

E-mail [email protected]