Bett/Hart Heir Hunters

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

They hand over thousands of pounds 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, two cases involving adoption threaten to stump the heir hunters.

With stiff competition on a £100,000 estate they can't afford to waste any time.

We're the third company to have applied for it and somebody has already been in and got it.

And in trying to find heirs for Daisy Hart,

they uncover the story of a woman's hidden sorrow at giving up her only child.

She'd have loved that baby, I know she would have done.

It must have been really heartbreaking for her to hand it over like that.

And we'll have details of some of the hundreds of unclaimed estates.

Could you be in line for a windfall?

More than two thirds of people die without leaving a will.

If they had no obvious relatives, their money goes to the Government

who last year made a staggering £18 million from unclaimed estates.

That's where the heir hunters step in.

Which is why the cousins, such as you, end up inheriting.

There are more than 30 heir hunting companies who, for a share of the estate,

make it their business to track down the rightful kin. Last year they claimed back

five million pounds for unsuspecting heirs who would have otherwise gone empty-handed.

It's a real life-changing event when that cheque finally does drop on their doorstep.

It's 6.30am in London at Fraser and Fraser, one of the largest heir hunting companies in the UK.

The Government list of people who have died without a will has been announced.

Heir hunters work on commission, so it's all about getting to the heirs

before the other companies and signing them up.

The first priority is to quickly work out which cases are of value.

Today a case worth an estimated £100,000 has caught the eye of partner Neil Fraser.

We're actually working a case of Bett. B-E-T-T.

It's up in the Wirral, or Liverpool, area.

At the moment all we really know is it's Christopher John Bett.

He's meant to be born in 1945, which is quite young really, it's quite a young deceased.

Christopher Bett died in Liverpool in 2008.

He's remembered fondly by his friend of 20 years, Michael Kennedy.

I know we're all unique, it's often said, but he was, you know?

I mean, his appearance, his mannerisms.

Every time you were seeing him he had a cigarette in one hand

and a cup of tea in the other hand, covered in oil and grease.

But he was a very talented man and the main thing is,

in my view, is this thing of not judging a book by the cover.

You know, open the book, look inside and when you looked inside on Chris, he was just a gem.

Chris was gifted at fixing engines, a talent which he was happy to share.

He was very, very helpful to all us as a group of friends.

He was always there for us and he was always there to help

in any problems that we had and we really still miss him.

Chris died in 2008 without leaving a will and with an estate of £100,000,

all of which will go to the Government unless heirs can be found.

Chris spent his life in the Liverpool area and the team know that having someone primed

for action on location could save hours of research compared to what they can do in the office.

There are people they can call on for just this purpose.

The firm employ a squad of travelling heir hunters,

many of them are ex-policeman and use their skills to interview neighbours,

get their hands on key documents and find clues to crack the case, hopefully before other companies.

And when heirs have been found, they speed over to sign them up and get their commission.

Dave Mansell is one of the company's senior researchers, based in Manchester.

We're off to Merseyside today.

We're halfway there. A new case.

The deceased is called Bett, his surname, B-E-T-T. Christopher.

Died earlier this year.

We think there's a property involved so think the case is worth working, so...

While Dave is en route, in the office they're searching for a record of Chris's birth

which, so far, they can't find.

However, they have had some success finding details for Chris's immediate family.

From the old electoral rolls we can see what appears to be the mother, Emily.

She possibly dies in 1995, which probably makes her born in 1907.

Upstairs, case manager David Sleegh

is about to put in some early morning calls to the neighbours.

It's 7.30am, so he'll need all his charm.

It's hit and miss with the telephone enquiries, but sometimes you get lucky.

You might find someone who knew the deceased well.

I wouldn't bet on it, ho, ho, ho.

Did you know if he ever had any brothers or sisters?

He might have been adopted.

Was the family ever visited by other relatives, do you know?

Cousins or aunts and uncles?

Oh, so...

So, his mother had a sister.

Can you remember what her name was?

Thank you very much indeed for your time. I really appreciate that.

Bye-bye, now. Bye-bye.

That's about the best enquiry I've done in ages, that.

David's charm has paid off with several useful pieces of information.

He has found that Chris had at least one aunt and was adopted.

He has also found out information about Chris's father.

Father would have died pre-April 1979 - Frank, or...

John or Frank, but that's...

If we can find some electoral on it.

The father's name gives the researchers vital clues to be working

on building Chris's family tree,

but his adoption throws up problems.

Christopher has been adopted.

It means from a legal point of view,

from a research point of view, we research the adopted family.

So, we research the Bett family, which is all good with us.

But, it's very, very hard for us to search for these adoptions.

We can't search for siblings on an adoption.

We can't search for other people adopted into the family.

We're still going to work the Bett family, which is good.

And it explains why we can't find a birth for it, with him being adopted, so that all ties in.

Ordinarily, heir hunters would use the deceased's birth records

to find the names of the parents.

They could then build a family tree to find siblings and work out potential heirs.

However, as Chris was adopted,

they can't use his birth certificate to confirm the names

of his adoptive parents, so they have to search

using other resources, such as the electoral roll.

Chris found out about his adoption after his mother died.

The discovery had a powerful impact on him,

as his friend Michael recalls.

It was a shattering blow to him, really, you know?

The realisation of it,

that it wasn't his actual mother was very difficult for him, you know?

Although Chris struggled with the news of his adoption, his adopted family, the Betts,

are legally viewed as blood relatives and will be eligible to inherit his £100,000 estate.

But with no heirs found yet Neil is sending another traveller,

Paul Matthews, to hunt down more information.

So, can you head up to Liverpool and when you get close I'll tell you what you're doing.

OK, cheers. Bye.

What we've done there is just double up on our travellers

and I also want to make sure we've two people on the road to try and beat off some of the competition.

We are bound to get some.

So, that's Paul going up there as well, so Paul and Dave both on the road at the minute to Liverpool.

Like Neil, Paul is aware that the stakes are high.

It won't be a secret by now that it's an estate that's worth looking at.

So, yeah, we'll be doing it, other companies will be having a look, as well.

So, the race is on.

With two travelling heir hunters on their way to the action,

-the office now need to get down to some hard research.

-It is Frank?

-It is.

-It's definitely Frank?

Yeah.

The first finding is that the neighbours were right about Chris's adopted father.

His name was Frank Bett.

Chris's adopted mother was Emily Settle, whose name the team believe is easier to research.

They're looking for Settles who'd be in the right period and location to be part of Chris's family.

Because there's a lot of information on it, we need to throw a lot

of bodies at it initially,

but it's all kind of organised panic.

Hopefully it'll settle down in a minute and we'll start to know

where we stand because a lot of it's very speculative now.

Some of it we know, and it's tying in stuff we don't know with what we do know.

So far the researchers have found four Settles

who could be Chris's aunts

and uncles on his mother's side - Elsie, William, Frank and Hilda.

Until they get a call from David with the relevant birth certificates

they can't prove any of it, but before he goes to pick them up,

he's still got time to do a bit of detective work in Chris's street.

Well, the Registry Office doesn't open until ten o'clock on a Thursday morning on the Wirral,

so we've got time to do it. It's only 8.40am now,

although it looks like midnight with the weather.

But when he gets there, he realises he's not alone.

Morning.

-Morning.

-He's got a rival.

-Paul Marks, Celtic Research.

-With two people on the same street it's getting quite cosy.

Well, that's a good guess that, seeing as we're stood outside the house, yeah.

It's going to be a race to meet the neighbours.

This looks like they're away.

They are only so many houses to go round.

-The gent that used to live across the road that died, Chris.

-Yes.

-I believe he used to go sailing with your husband, didn't he?

-He did, yeah.

For David, it's all getting a bit close for comfort.

We just want to know if you know anything about him.

Barry was very friendly with him and my husband was, as well, because they were both...

They shared the cars together...

While David and the competition are going round the houses, case manager David Milchard

is already working on trying to confirm the information they've got, starting with Chris's Uncle Frank.

Right, we've got an uncle,

a maternal uncle of the deceased.

He's survived by a son called Frank

and he's living in...

Wallasey at the moment, so...

He's not on the telephone so we're trying to contact him and, hopefully, he'll give us a bit

of information, confirm whether we have the right family or not.

Frank Settle is a potential cousin and therefore heir, but as he's not on the phone they'll need to send

someone in person to confirm he's part of the right family.

I've got a possible cousin, Chris.

-You're not in earshot of anyone, are you?

-I'm just walking to my car now.

I'll ring you in two secs. Bye.

He's just walking to his car.

I can't be doing with that.

We've discovered that he's got a relative living in Wallasey,

so we're about to make our way there

to try and be first.

Armed with the information, David could be on his way to his first heir,

but as the competition is hot on his heels, time could be running out.

With £100,000 at stake, can he get to the heirs first?

Heir hunting isn't just based in the hustle and bustle of London.

With potential heirs to be found anywhere up and down the country,

the race to find beneficiaries to unclaimed estates can take place anywhere.

In the sleepy suburbs of Burgess Hill, Sussex,

one independent operation makes a point of taking old cases that other companies have overlooked.

One is sort of almost doing a service because you probably

find genealogists won't go after the smaller cases.

Well, quite a lot of them, you do get letters from them, and say they are grateful you have taken the trouble

to discover them after all this time.

Charles, the Lord Teviot, is a hereditary peer with a keen interest in family history.

He and his wife, Lady Teviot, both run their own heir hunting companies.

You've got it? You've found the thing?

-I've found it.

-But although Charles tends to go for the smaller cases,

it doesn't necessarily make his job easier,

as was proven in the case of Daisy Hart.

Daisy Hart died in Hartley Nursing Home in Kent in 1996

leaving a £12,000 estate and no will.

She outlived her husband and had no children.

Daisy's nephew Peter Hart remembers his aunt,

although they weren't close.

Daisy married my uncle,

who was Harold, but in the family

was known as Bubbles.

She was a bit on the timid side.

She was short.

Bubbles was considerably taller than her.

That's all I can say.

Oh, well, I've looked, but I've got no photographs whatsoever of them.

Although he doesn't have any photos of her, a visit to the house

where his Aunt Daisy and his grandparents once lived brings back some memories for Peter.

Well, this is where my grandparents lived

and Bubbles and Daisy...

took the house over...

after Granddad died.

And if I remember rightly, down in that room down there,

there was a table in the window and an aspidistra.

I haven't been round here for years.

Heir hunters frequently deal with families who weren't close or have grown apart over time.

However, in Daisy's case, her heirs would prove to be

in a different family altogether thanks to a secret in her past.

At his home office, Charles found the case advertised on the Treasury's list of unclaimed estates

and began his investigation by looking for Daisy's birth and death details.

We found that Daisy had died in the Tunbridge Wells district,

so we applied for that certificate

and found that Daisy

was born

on 20 January 1923,

and her maiden name was Parkinson.

Once Charles had Daisy's death certificate, the next stage was

to try and find her birth record so that he could trace her parents and then potential siblings.

As you can see, in the marked quarter of 1923

there is no Daisy Parkinson

being born.

Not being able to find her birth record threw a spanner in the works

because it's the starting point for all heir hunters.

Like in all these cases, the first thing you do is you want to find the person's birth.

And then from the person's birth, their parents' marriage,

and then brothers and sisters and you go on like that.

Well, in this case with Daisy Hart you didn't get over the first hurdle.

You were just stuck and unable to find her birth, which I suppose if

somebody else had looked at it in the past would have probably given up.

But Charles refused to admit defeat, and broadened his search to include

all Daisies born in that year and area, just in case she had changed her name.

So, therefore one did come up against a Daisy Billings.

He checked this Daisy Billings' birth certificate and found that

there were some similarities between her and Daisy Hart.

That was interesting when one found the certificate.

She was born on the same birth date, 28th of January 1923.

At 56 Vale Road, Tunbridge.

Not only did the Daisies share the same name, but they seemed

to live in the same area and shared the same date of birth, but this was not all the certificate revealed.

Father, blank.

Mother, Annie Billings, a domestic servant.

Rank or profession of father, blank.

Well, quite frankly, Daisy was born illegitimate, I suppose you could put it like that.

Charles thought he had found the answer to the mystery.

He suspected that Daisy was an illegitimate child and that she had been adopted,

which is why her maiden name was down as Parkinson rather than Billings on her death certificate.

To confirm his theory, he did more research on the woman he thought

was Daisy's biological mother, Anne Billings.

So, the next thing is to find out what happened to the mother.

One never found a marriage for an Anne Billings or Annie Billings,

so then one had to look for the poor lady's death.

Charles found Annie Billings' death certificate.

The person who provided the information on it was her nephew John Waller.

If John knew that his Aunt Annie had had a baby girl and given her away,

this would strengthen Charles' case

that Annie Billings was Daisy's birth mother.

It would also mean that John would be a blood cousin of Daisy's.

When John got the phone call, he was more than a little surprised to hear Daisy's name.

When he spoke about Annie, Annie Billings and had a daughter

called Daisy, I thought, blimey O'Reilly.

Well, if you haven't heard anybody's name mentioned or heard anything from anybody for 30-odd years,

and suddenly, out of the blue, when you least expect it,

start talking about somebody, it is a blast from the past and it knocks the stuffing out of you.

John's Aunt Annie had been a regular visitor in the Waller household,

but John only found out that she had had a daughter a couple of years after her death in 1970,

when he was at a family celebration.

Eileen, one of the girls up there, told us.

My cousins had said about it, that Annie had had this baby and that was the first we knew.

It doesn't seem as if anybody else knew about it either.

I spoke to my mother when we came back here and she said her name

was Daisy and she went to Tunbridge Wells, we thought, to have this baby.

This information was the first piece of evidence that Charles was right,

and that Annie Billings had given away her daughter, Daisy, to be adopted into the Parkinson family,

but would this piece of gossip be enough to make a case,

and who would inherit her estate?

Her adoptive nephew Peter or her blood nephew John?

For every case that is solved,

there are still those 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 at anything from 5,000 to millions of pounds,

the rightful heirs are out there somewhere.

Maria Esther Gill, born Desilva Garrido, died in Dudley

in the West Midlands in June 2007.

Is this a name you remember from your family?

Could she be one of your distant relatives?

Gladys Mary Glover, otherwise known as Gladys Huxley Jones, died in Clapham in February 2006.

Do you hold the key to the case?

Could you be in line for a payout?

Both these cases have unusual names, Desilva Gorrido and Huxley Jones.

If they belong to your family you could be in line for a windfall.

The heir hunters are trying to trace the family of Chris Bett,

who died leaving a £100,000 estate but no will.

They know other companies are onto the same case so they've got to work fast.

So far they know Chris was adopted so they are on the trail of his adoptive family, the Betts.

They think they've found four aunts and uncles on Chris's mother's side, Elsie, William, Frank and Hilda,

but these are all speculative untill they get proof, either from

a certificate or a family member.

It's only 10.00am and already one travelling researcher is on the way to a potential heir, and a second,

Paul Matthews, has almost arrived in Liverpool and wants to know what his mission will be.

We're about 30 miles from where we want to be,

so it's... I don't know which office manager is dealing, so it's a good time to find out

exactly where they want me

because things obviously can change while I'm on the way up here.

The office are still desperate to confirm which of their speculative

names are right and which aren't, so they need to get some certificates.

The first thing we need then is the birth of the mother,

it's Emily Hester Settle.

Chris's mother's birth certificate

could be all the team needs to unravel the case.

That will tell us the name of her parents.

The office seem to think it's Thomas William Settle and Emily Jane Church.

Although they are still working without proof, the office are pulling in more potential relatives

on the mother's side and the approach is yielding results.

They find a daughter of Chris's Aunt Elsie, Sheila, who would be Chris's cousin.

We've now just identified our second heir, or second potential heir,

because we're still working from a top line up here which is incredibly speculative.

David Milchard is wasting no time in speaking to Sheila to check she's related to Chris.

Oh, hello. Is this that Mrs Knox?

Hello, there. I'm sorry to trouble you, my name is David Milchard.

I'm calling from London.

I'm trying to trace a family in connection with an estate my company is dealing with.

Did your mum have any brothers or sisters at all?

Frances, yeah.

And Cecily.

It looks like they're on to the right family.

Sheila has confirmed that her and Emily had two brothers, William and Frank.

There was no Hilda but there were two more aunts the office hadn't found, Cecily and Frances.

It's great news, but will it put them ahead of the competition?

Dave has managed to lose his pursuer and has arrived at the house

of Frank Settle, who could be Chris's cousin.

If this is the case, he may be the first heir of the day to sign up.

How many children did your parents have?

There was my sister and...

Four...

Five, sorry. Four lads and one girl.

-Five altogether.

-Yeah.

-Right.

Frank is definitely part of the same family, but doesn't know anything about Chris.

He does however have a brother, Tom, who lives just over a mile away.

-If David can get to him quickly, he could have two heirs signed up in succession.

-All the best.

OK, all the best, yeah.

-Cheers, now.

-OK, bye.

-Bye bye.

Bye.

When David gets to Tom's house he learns that there's an explanation

for why the brothers know so little about their cousin Chris.

The real issue is here is that there was trouble between my mother and my father's family

and we virtually had nothing at all to do with any of them.

The only one we had anything to do with in particular was Elsie.

As the family were not close, Tom was unaware of several of his relatives.

Because he's legally adopted into the family he then becomes blood.

If he's adopted out of the family you cease to be blood, but in this instance he's been adopted in,

so he then becomes Settle blood, well, the husband's name of course, he would take.

Dave's visit has been an eye-opener.

As I say, it's been a very interesting morning, I've enjoyed it.

It's nice to learn about people you didn't know about who were in the family.

And as well as learning about their cousin Chris,

Tom and Frank will inherit a part of his £100,000 estate.

The researchers have now confirmed family members on Chris's mother's side, so the complicated work

of building up a family tree will have to begin all over again with his father's relatives.

With the competition in mind,

all manpower is being put on to the Betts inside and outside the office.

OK, on the maternal side now, but now I've been

moved across to the paternal side, where we're not up to speed with, so it's the Registry Office,

get some certificates and, hopefully,

we can get an early breakthrough.

The team needs Paul to get Chris's father's birth certificate.

The grandparents' names on it will allow them to check that

all the siblings they found are part of the same family.

Most of our efforts at the moment,

and I think we have four, five...

Five or six people looking at the Bett side of the family

and they are entirely working on speculative information.

There was quite a few of them and we can't identify

the siblings of the father like we were able to on the mother's side.

Neil won't have to wait long.

Paul is next in the queue at the Registry Office.

OK, there you go, sir. There's your certificate.

-OK, that's great.

-If you just want to check over before you leave.

OK, that's fine. Absolutely perfect. Thank you very much indeed.

Cheers, thank you.

Hello, Dave, got that birth now.

We are the third company to have applied for it and somebody has already been in and got it.

Right, this is 3rd September 1906.

128 St Anne Street.

Plain Frank.

Dad was John Bett.

Mum was Lydia Bett, formally Maw.

M-A-W.

Knowing that two other companies have this information, the researchers will have to work

quickly to firm up Chris's aunts and uncles on his father's side, the Betts.

At the moment the father of the deceased has three siblings, so he's one of four children, which,

in the sort of time period, we're talking, that's perfectly fine.

They've found that Frank Bett, Chris's father, was the eldest son and had a younger sister, Lydia,

and two younger brothers, John and William, and they think there may be even more siblings to find.

It is possible that...

Frank being born in '06, he's definitely the oldest

because the marriage is in 1905, it is possible that the next child after is Lydia, born in 1912.

But I would expect another one. That may one may, of course, die off in infancy, we don't know at the moment.

To get to the bottom of the age gap,

the team get Paul, who is still at the Registry Office, on the case.

A search through the archive proves the heir hunter's hunch was worth following up.

We've found two of the births.

OK, which two? Do you know which ones they were?

-One is Ivy and one is Ellen.

-Ellen.

OK, well, that's a good start, then.

Now Chris's family tree is filling up.

His father, Frank, had five siblings

who would all be Chris's uncles and aunts, and the latest find is that

one of them, Lydia, had two sons who would be cousins and heirs.

But these are not candidates for the travelling heir hunters to see.

We've them up to date and we have them up to date in Australia.

It's in South Australia, which is the best part of Australia for us because

it's got a greater time difference, so it means we can now phone them.

It's 10pm in Australia, but with rivals on the tail, the team can't afford to leave it until tomorrow.

Oh, hello. Is that Jeffrey Sommers? Hello. I'm sorry to trouble you.

My name is David Milchard. I'm calling from London in England.

I don't know if it's too late in the evening there, but I'm trying

to trace a family by the name of Sommers that originally came from Liverpool.

Now, would you be a Jeffrey Peter Sommers

that was born in Birkenhead in 1942?

-Correct, is it?

-Another heir found and he gives David details for his other brother in Australia,

also entitled to a stake in the £100,000 estate.

With other heir-hunting companies on their tail, the team are not leaving anything to chance today.

David Milchard is ditching his plan to write to Chris's cousin Sheila to sign her up

and instead he's sending a third travelling heir hunter to see her.

I've phoned Sheila Knox up earlier this morning.

She's the daughter of the deceased's aunt, Elsie Jones,

and we're now trying to get back in touch with to see if Dave Hadley, now he's free, can go and see her.

-Hello, Mrs Knox?

-Yes.

David Hadley from Fraser and Fraser.

-Do come in.

-Thank you very much.

I've been expecting you.

Thank you.

I've got a fair amount of information about you, but what I'd like to do is

just ask you a few questions about your family background.

I mean, that will confirm that we've got the right person and that the information we've got is accurate,

but you might be able to fill in some bits of information that we have got.

Sheila and her husband know a little bit about Chris's branch of the family and even though

he spent many years not knowing that he was adopted, it seems that it wasn't a family secret.

-He was never ever told he was adopted.

-Was he not?

-Everybody knew in the family.

-Right.

-Even I knew.

But we think he found out because when Sheila's mother died her brother rang him

and he was very short.

-Very short with...

-Right.

So, we don't know... He certainly didn't know.

For Sheila, Dave's visit has sparked some regrets.

Having had this surprise,

it's made me think about my mother and I wish that

I had sat her down more and talked to her when she lived here.

She lived here for six years, I ought to have sat her down and had a long conversation with her,

but I don't think you think about it and it would have been nice to have known.

She would have been able to tell a lot more than I can.

-Thank you, bye-bye.

-Bye.

-Bye-bye.

-Really nice lady, nice family.

She's agreed to use our services, so at the end of the day

I think it's a job well done and I'm just about to make my way home now.

With another heir signed up the researchers have had

an extremely successful day, staying well ahead of the competition.

I think really we've found just probably short of half a... Or about a dozen heirs in total, I think,

that we'll have on this, and I think we're in contact with or have spoken to probably eight or nine of them.

One or two we will just have to write to,

but a dozen heirs in a day is pretty good going.

We've done more than one heir an hour, so I don't know if that's a stat to be proud of or anything,

but it seems pretty good to us.

Paul is on his way to see two final heirs.

Arthur and Deborah are cousins of Chris on his mother's side.

Arthur cares for his sister who has cerebral palsy.

Good afternoon. My name is Paul Matthews from a probate research company called Fraser and Fraser.

-Mr Hewitt?

-It is.

We're dealing with an estate of somebody who has passed away without

making a will and we're trying to find relatives.

-Would you like to come on inside?

-Thank you very much, indeed.

Paul fills Arthur in on the details.

He and Deborah are both eligible for a stake in Chris's £100,000 estate.

Some of the relatives I had knowledge of, but only sort of glancing knowledge, no deep insight

into them at all whatsoever. So, yeah, I was surprised that the family was so far flung, yeah, absolutely.

Anything that did arrive would be really surplus to requirements

because basically we have all that we need here.

It's of no real consequence whatsoever,

but if it were a substantial sum well, obviously, we would be able

to go on joint holidays together and have carers go with us, which at the moment were not able to do.

The fact that Arthur and all Chris's other heirs will benefit

from his legacy seems fitting given that in his lifetime Chris was known for his willingness to help others,

a trait that makes his loss keenly felt amongst his friends.

I mean, there is a sort of, you could say like a selfishness

because he was so willing to help

and I miss him. I do miss him because when...

A friend in need is a friend indeed,

and, you know, the guy was talented

and helpful and sometimes in life

I just can't do certain things and Chris was on the end of the phone,

and, "Chris, I'm stuck, this is broke", and obviously,

you know, that is from a selfish point of view,

I miss that, but I also miss him because, yeah, we all loved him.

Yeah, we loved him.

Lord Teviot has been researching the case of Daisy Hart,

who died intestate, leaving a £12,000 estate.

He believed that she was given away as a baby

because she was illegitimate, and has tracked down the nephew of her birth mother, John Waller.

John was amazed to hear the details of his aunt's secret.

She didn't have a lot, but apart from her love,

and she would have loved that baby, I know she would have done.

It must have been really heartbreaking for her to hand it over like that.

And when she was with us, with our kids and with Irene

and her kids and my other sister's kids, it must have gone

through her mind - I wonder where mine is?

When Annie fell pregnant with Daisy, she was not married.

This was in 1922, a time when having a child outside wedlock

was not acceptable, giving the baby away was often the only option.

Local newspapers would carry advertisements for babies

that were up for adoption and there were also adoption societies who found new families for the children.

The shame of illegitimacy meant the birth of a baby

like Daisy would be kept a secret and often never talked about again.

The term of adoption in her case,

would probably have been an informal one, yes, indeed.

I mean, they obviously just changed her name.

She wasn't... She hadn't had her name changed by deed poll or any of that sort of thing at all.

So, that would have been informal, and I think in fact she was fostered

as we now know it rather than was, you know, legally adopted.

There were no formal adoption laws

until 1926, so when Daisy was taken in by the Parkinsons in 1923,

it would have been an informal arrangement.

Well, if somebody who was adopted today,

they would relinquish all ties with their natural family

and be with their adoptive family whom they would be entitled to.

But because Daisy's adoption was never formalised, her inheritance goes to her birth family.

This means her adoptive nephew Peter would not be eligible to inherit.

Her biological family would take precedence.

I knew that Bubbles was adopted, but I certainly didn't know anything

whatsoever about Daisy's circumstances.

Daisy's birth mother, Annie Billings,

had seven brothers and sisters and their children would all inherit.

John Waller is Daisy's cousin and heir.

He and his wife, Laura, are pleased that Annie's secret has finally come to light.

I think, in a sense, that this is like a tribute to her,

and a little compensation,

for the fact that she was not allowed to openly admit

that she did have a child.

John and Laura were very fond of Annie.

She was very open, very friendly and she always

played with the children.

I know when she used to come down and visit us as kids after the war,

and on the Sunday night she used to go back there was always tears in the house

when it was time for her to go. Always. I remember that well.

Charles is on his way to see John and Laura to show them

the evidence he's accumulated so far,

but he may still have to find more.

In this case it's not straightforward.

There's no absolute proof, no document or anything to give us

to say that Daisy Billings

did become Parkinson.

I have had a word with somebody at the Treasury Solicitor's Office

and they said, you know, it does look a bit slim, but if one can prove

absolutely or the likelihood of this happening they would consider it.

If the Treasury don't accept Charles's case, Daisy's inheritance will remain unclaimed.

It's a significant day in the Waller household.

John's sister, Irene, who is also a potential heir,

has come over to hear how Charles tracked down her cousin Daisy.

So, how old was she when she had it?

She was born in 1894. Yes, and Daisy came in 1923.

-1923, yeah. So, she was 28, 29.

-Yeah.

Laura remembers the moment she and John talked to his mother about Annie's child.

And she was very surprised and very, very reluctant

to even answer, but she did and she said, yes, that is true.

She had a girl,

a baby girl. She named her Daisy.

-Ah.

-She named her Daisy and she went to her grandparents'

in Tunbridge Wells to have her, and that's all I know, she said.

And we never talked about it again.

As well as the family history, Charles gets down to discussing the details of Daisy's estate.

If the Treasury accept the claim there could be 23 relatives eligible for a share.

I don't think the estate is all that big, it's probably about 12,000 something.

So, hopefully, quite soon a claim will go in.

Daisy's estate may provide a small windfall for her family,

but the greater reward for them is finally being able to learn about her life.

It's a bittersweet discovery.

If she'd been miles away at the other end of the country or something,

then it wouldn't have been so bad,

but knowing that she was only 13 miles away in Tunbridge Wells, that's a 30-minute drive from here.

So near, yet so far because we didn't know she existed, or didn't know where she was or where she lived.

Otherwise, she'd have had another family

and we'd have had another cousin.

If you would like advice about building a family tree

or making a will, go to:

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd - 2009

E-mail [email protected]