Wymess/Lloyd/Haydon 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...

..the heir hunters come across a family

affected by one of the greatest killers of the 20th century.

Fifty million people worldwide died

in this pandemic and maybe perhaps as many as 100 million.

And they delve back into football history as they uncover the estate of a local sporting hero.

He played in front of crowds of 10,000, 15,000,

obviously revered by the local supporters, and such, who wouldn't want that?

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?

Less than one in three people in the UK make a will.

For all other cases, if no obvious relatives are found, their money 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 business to try and find heirs to inherit this money.

Last year alone, they claimed back over £6.5 million for unsuspecting relatives.

Fraser & Fraser is one of the oldest firms of heir hunters in Britain

run by Andrew, Charles, and Neil Fraser.

George R Galloway, who's got the marriages?

They make their commission by solving cases and signing up heirs.

Since they began over 30 years ago, they've reunited over 50,000 heirs

with a whopping sum of over £100 million.

It's Thursday, the day the Treasury publishes its list of unclaimed estates,

and as they earn their money from commission, the office need

to identify the big value cases on today's list.

Do you want to do an enquiry on this one, David?

We're still a little bit up in the air at the moment,

the list doesn't look especially good and until we get a bit further into it,

I don't really know where we're going to go at the moment.

Because the Treasury doesn't publish how much an estate is worth,

the heir hunters have to weigh up how much research time they can afford to allocate to any one case.

See if you can find him,

dying or doing anything.

Of the 13 cases announced, the only one that looks like it has value is the case of Brian Lloyd.

We're looking at a few different cases, firstly Lloyd because

it looks like he owns a property, in Birmingham,

and there's going to be value on that. There's other smaller stuff,

we're looking at, which don't own properties but just because

they don't doesn't mean there's not any value in it.

We don't know about shares and bank accounts, things like that.

So maybe on Lloyd but some of the other researchers are going to be on different things.

David Milchard, known in the office as Grimble, is starting work on the Lloyd case,

with most of the researchers working to see what they can find out about

him and his property in the West Midlands.

But there's another case, too, that's caught their eye, the smaller case of Russell Wemyss.

Russell died on 17 May 2008 and was 81 years old.

His interesting surname originated from Scotland but it seems Russell spent most of his life on Tyneside.

He didn't own his own home and lived in a council property,

which suggests the value of the estate will not be huge,

but to appear on the list it must be worth at least £5,000.

If the heir hunters can solve his case quickly and cheaply, it will be worth pursuing.

Tony Pledger has been given Wemyss to investigate

but unlike the team on the big value case, his brief is to spend almost no money in solving it.

He's working this job with only one researcher in the office,

a local researcher at the end of a phone, and no travellers.

It's a good name. The staff are doing other things that are probably going to be

a lot more productive and more value, this might only turn out to be a few thousand pounds,

perhaps £10,000 to £15,000, I don't know. But hopefully

if we end up with any kin on it, that'll be good enough.

The uncommon name has meant search results have been relatively quick.

We've found a possible sister of the deceased who is married

and I'm looking for her child, she's had a child called Maureen Ellwood.

As Maureen is not listed in the phone directory and Tony has no travellers at his disposal

to send round to her address, he needs to use any resources he can, including helpful neighbours.

We're looking into the estate of somebody who has died fairly recently

and I'm hoping that she, Maureen, at number 28, might be an entitled heir, you see.

Basically, can I possibly ask you if you could stick a note in the door and ask them to give me a call?

Thank you, ta-ta.

So far, Tony has established that Russell's father was a Wemyss and his mother, an Ayre.

A census search of children born in the area from the Wemyss/Ayre marriage

has thrown up around 15 potential brothers and sisters for Russell.

It also looks like two of Russell's possible sisters,

Elizabeth and Winifred, died as infants around the end of the First World War.

For heir hunters, this is significant and suggests that the children were victims

of one of the biggest medical disasters of the 20th century.

The Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 was a global catastrophe which killed millions.

It's called the Spanish Flu

because the epidemic supposedly started in Spain, at least that's

where the first reports that appeared in the newspapers came from.

And because it was wartime,

although flu was also very prevalent in Britain and France,

the papers were censored. So the first reports

we all had were of this epidemic disease erupting in Spain...

one of the first casualties was the King of Spain...and before long,

people starting referring to the disease as the Spanish Influenza,

and it invaded every town and city in Britain in a series of waves.

To make matters worse, the pandemic reached its peak at the end

of the First World War, and it didn't discriminate against class.

Not only were ordinary families like the Wemyss affected,

the Prime Minister of the day, Lloyd George, contracted the virus but survived.

It was essentially brought back from the Front,

so soldiers returning on furlough from northern France would typically

alight in London or in Manchester, or other northern towns,

and you would see the first outbreak of cases around the railway stations.

Then from the centre of cities it would rapidly spread out

to the suburbs and then into the countryside. Typically children

would get sick, and as one health officer described it,

he visited a school and witnessed children...he described them as

sitting at their desks and suddenly drooping like a plant whose roots

had suddenly been pulled up. So he was struck by the fact that

children seemed to be particularly affected and that it would come on very, very suddenly.

Fifty million people worldwide died in this pandemic,

and given that something like a quarter of the British population

were affected by the Spanish Influenza, it's very likely that in

most families there would be at least one or two, if not more,

members of the family tree who would have had direct experience.

It was an unprecedented killer, with the death toll in Britain reaching 228,000.

Children like Elizabeth and Winifred Wemyss could have

picked up the virus anywhere, as it was found to be airborne.

It was a pandemic that truly affected every single continent and country on the globe,

and that is really what makes it unique in history.

The Spanish Flu may have claimed the lives of two of Russell's

potential siblings, but there were another 12 who survived.

Finding out if they all got married and had children is a big research job.

Obviously we have to be careful with the amount of money

that we spend on cases, we don't have money to burn, and indeed,

applying for loads of certificates initially doesn't really get you anywhere.

You've got to know what you're doing because obviously, with a smaller case,

you might not make so much of a profit, or indeed any profit at all, than you would with a bigger case.

Tony needs to keep his research costs to an absolute minimum,

but, luckily, David Milchard doesn't have those concerns.

He's heading up the Lloyd investigation,

which looks to be worth a fairly large amount of money.

He's already established that there's a property which may be worth around £80,000.

We're going to go full pelt on this one, I've got several researchers in the office to do the research here,

and I've got one traveller at the moment.

It's well worth putting a bit of resource into this one.

Brian Lloyd died on 27 August 2007, aged just 51.

He died suddenly from a heart attack, and hadn't written a will.

Brian had worked all his life in a factory near his home, where he was quite a character.

Brian would do anything for you, but he would spend 20 minutes saying

-the reason why he couldn't do it for you and then spend two minutes doing the job.

-That's Brian.

That was Brian, you know. You'd go in there and say, "look Brian, can you do this?"

And he'd say, "I've got this to do, I've got that to do."

Then after 20 minutes he'd say, "leave it here," and he could do it in two minutes.

And he'd make a good job of it.

He was a likeable character, and he was probably a jovial character,

easy to get on with, and I think a lot of people knew Brian

but probably never knew Brian on the inside because he was never really close to anybody.

He was the sort of chap you could talk to anytime but I don't think

you would ever really know what Brian would be thinking.

We found that the deceased lived in Walsall Road in Wensbury,

it seemed to be the family home for a long, long time, both his parents died there.

It's this property which will mean there's some value to the case.

To check this out and to hopefully sniff out some family leads,

he's sending senior researcher, Paul Matthews, to make some door to door enquiries.

Fraser's have a team of travelling heir hunters across the country,

who are ready to go wherever the hunt takes them.

They pick up records, talk to those who knew the deceased,

and make door to door enquiries, all in the search for clues.

And the leads they uncover on the ground are all-important in the race to find and sign up heirs.

Ex-police sergeant Paul Matthews is the Midlands-based heir hunter,

with 23 years of detective work behind him, not much gets past Paul's keen eyes.

I'm now on the way to the address where he lived, firstly to find out

whether it was his property and to put a value on it,

knock on a few neighbours' doors to try and find out if they knew about his family,

and then afterwards we'll be on our way to Walsall Register Office.

As Paul threads his way through the Birmingham traffic,

back in the office research is progressing.

We also identified a Harold Thorneycroft,

who disappears from that address in the '80s.

Thorneycroft is the mother's maiden name

and it turns out that that's the deceased's grandfather.

Harold Thorneycroft and Lily Haskett were Brian's maternal grandparents.

A birth search had revealed that Lily, Brian's mother, was their only child.

This means that from the maternal side there is no-one alive to inherit.

With the team now focusing on the search for paternal aunts and uncles,

Paul has made it to Birmingham.

We'll try a few neighbours and see what's what.

But as they now know, there is less chance of finding living heirs for Brian's family.

Any information Paul gets could be crucial.

Did you know Brian Lloyd who used to live at number 203?

Is there anybody round here who knew him?

That wasn't overly helpful.

But all that effort comes to nothing.

I'll now have to go to Walsall Register Office,

they've got a marriage that I'm to pick, up so I'm going to try one last knock on the door,

the last house to try, while I'm here, then I'll be off to Walsall Register Office.

That's it, failed badly.

He's identified Brian Lloyd's property but no-one seems to know anything about his family.

But Paul doesn't give up that easily, before going to the register office

his keen detective eyes spot something.

Last throw of the dice, he's got to get his meat from somewhere,

it's only a few doors down so a long shot, but worth asking.

-Hello.

-Morning.

My name's Paul Matthews, I work for a probate research company called Fraser & Fraser.

-What can I do for you, mate?

-Brian Lloyd, a few doors down, he passed away 18 months ago.

-That's right.

-He never made a will. We're trying to find his relatives.

-Did you know the gent at all?

-Yes, we were very good friends.

Right. I've drawn a blank knocking on neighbours' doors, but not yours!

It's a result for Paul. It turns out Brian had been a regular customer for over 30 years.

Brian was very methodical, and I don't know why he didn't make a will.

Even his £1 coins were laid in line, he kept a daily accounts book,

so it does surprise me that you're telling me that he hasn't left a will to his estate.

And it's all the more surprising considering how large Brian's estate may actually turn out to be.

He was never short of money.

There was three houses which are in the past,

and there was the money from his father,

there was the money from his grandfather.

I would have thought that Brian was never short.

It wouldn't surprise me to go to £250,000.

It turns out, over the last few years Brian had inherited

his grandfather and his father's money and properties.

But despite sitting on such a large fortune, Brian wasn't a man of airs and graces.

Very down to earth, if he thought you was a fool,

he'd have told you you was a fool.

But he was very, very social with the locals, very neighbourly.

He only worked round the corner,

two streets away, about 400 yards as the crow flies.

In later life, he kept his car up the garage so he'd go up on his bike because he ended up with gout.

I says that was a rich man's disease, and he just smiled at that one.

Right, he was a bachelor,

no siblings known.

The dad died here in about 1994,

the grandparents used to live at 199, basically 199, 201, and 203 were all in the family.

The estimated value of Brian's estate has just gone from £80,000 to potentially £250,000.

It's now more important than ever to find at least one heir

if there's any chance of stopping it all going to the Treasury, or a rival heir hunting company.

The two cases under investigation today, that of Russell Wemyss

and Brian Lloyd, still have a long way to go.

And as they hit the research hard, they're about to discover

that all their hours of work may have been in vain.

OK, I'm much obliged to you.

Thank you, bye-bye.

Wrong family.

For some heir hunters, getting the right result

doesn't just come from searching through records.

Bob Smith is one of Fraser's travelling senior researchers, but he's also crazy about football.

Anyone? Anyone? Yes!

A lifelong supporter of Arsenal, he never made it onto the pitch at Highbury but has been

a passionate player, and manager, at East Grinstead Football Club

since he moved to the area in the late '80s.

Come on, quick, quick. Come on!

In your pairs, let's go jogging again. Come on.

So when he was referred the case of Trevor Haydon, he could not have been happier.

It was to mix his skill of heir hunting with his passion for the beautiful game.

One thing that struck me,

having looked at the birth certificate of our deceased,

his father's occupation is given as a professional footballer.

Now being a football-loving person myself, that struck a chord

and I began to take a great interest in trying to find family members

of our deceased, Trevor Haydon, and find out about his life.

Trevor Haydon died on the 9th of November 2006,

after having lived in Bristol all his life. As he left a property,

his legacy was worth around £140,000, but it seemed there was no-one to inherit.

He died without making a will and no known family.

The solicitors had employed a local tracing agency to try

and track down family members but they were, at that point, unsuccessful.

Tracking down heirs to this fortune would take Bob back into the Haydon family history

to find any brothers and sisters of Trevor's parents,

and it was Trevor's famous father

who had drawn Bob to the case in the first place.

Jimmy Haydon was a professional footballer for Bristol Rovers

and a local superstar.

During the 1920's, he was one of the club's longest serving players,

making 318 appearances for the team.

CHEERING

Their first choice left-back for the whole of his career,

he never played for another club, something that was extremely rare at the time.

His reputation as a strong and determined defender

as well as being a home-grown player meant he was hugely popular with the fans.

But Bob was about to find out that Jimmy wasn't the only footballer in the family.

His son, our deceased, Trevor, was also a well-known footballer in the area,

and it transpires that he played locally for one of the semi-professional clubs,

Bath City, in fact.

So obviously it was a family trait, being professional footballers.

To find out more about Trevor's sporting career, Bob hits the road.

I'm going to pop in to Bath City Football Club

and try and talk to someone there

who may know something about Trevor, our deceased.

Whenever I travel round the country, I always look at football grounds

whatever city, village, town I'm in.

If I see floodlights, I'm always, where's that?

Go on lots of little detours just to drive past the football ground.

Sad, isn't it?

I'm here at Twerton Park, the home of Bath City Football Club.

I've been told by members of Trevor Haydon's family

that Trevor, at some point, played here during his career

as a professional footballer, so I'm hoping to meet up with

someone who might be able to tell me more about Trevor and his life.

Bob's here to meet Bath City's current chairman, Phil Weaver.

I've been watching Bath City since about 1955, but Trevor played,

I think '51 or '52, just for a season, but scored quite a few goals.

Right, so he was a goal scorer, then?

-Oh, absolutely, yeah.

-Were they full-time at that point?

They weren't full-time then, at that time there was

the maximum wage in the Football League and so players would leave the First Division...

-now Premier League sides... to come to Bath City.

-Really?

Yes. They could get a maximum of £25 a week in the League,

but come down here and get 30 quid, so they did!

Those higher wages would have been comparable to getting an extra £150 a week today.

It's a far cry from today's Premiership contracts,

but professional footballers of the day weren't hard done by,

earning the equivalent of £800 a week.

Bearing in mind Trevor and his father were both local lads,

and obviously played for big teams within the local area,

were they sort of considered celebrities as such?

I think in those days

the full-time player would certainly have been if he played for

one of the local League teams like Bristol Rovers or Bristol City.

Somebody like Trevor playing part-time in football,

he would certainly have been looked up to by his workmates

and also, of course, by the crowd in front of whom he played.

-Sure, yeah.

-So we revere them.

-Yes.

And Trevor is even remembered in Bath City's official club history.

Looking here, he was signed in 1951 by the manager,

who was Eddie Hapgood, late of Arsenal,

and 24 year old Trevor Haydon's hat trick, three goals, against lowly Hastings United,

"set City for the big time of Barry Town".

He'd have been popular with the crowd for scoring those goals,

8,300 came to see that game.

So yes, we had some good crowds in those days.

In all honesty, I would love to have had Trevor's playing career.

You know, he played in front of crowds of 10,000 to 15,000.

he was paid to do something that he loves,

obviously revered by the local supporters and such.

Who wouldn't want that?

Armed with further information about Trevor's life, it was time to track down the heirs to his £140,000.

In an ideal world, if we're looking at both

mother's and father's families, we'd like one sister and one brother

so it's not a big family to research.

Unfortunately on Jimmy's side of the family,

not only was it a large family but it was a rather fragmented family.

They didn't really keep in contact with each other and they only really

had sort of sketchy information about their cousins and the names of their aunts and uncles.

What made it even more confusing was the fact that quite often

aunts and uncles were known by nicknames.

One prime example was a gentleman called George Haydon, who was known as Sam.

Not having correct names made it very difficult to find the right

birth, death, and marriage records, which are the foundations of creating a family tree.

It took the team months of record searching and many confusing

phone calls before they finally hit upon a crucial census document.

Having found Jimmy's birth certificate, we were able

to identify some censuses which listed children,

these would be siblings to Jimmy, brothers and sisters to Jimmy,

Violet, Herbert, John, Frederick,

Charles, George, Florence,

and William, so quite a few.

The paternal side of the family turned out to be very large.

Jimmy, Trevor's father, in fact had nine brothers and sisters.

Having completed our research on the paternal family, we turned our attention to the maternal family.

Now we had a copy of the birth of the mother of our deceased,

but we've had a lot of difficulty in finding a marriage between the parents.

The marriage certificate for Trevor's maternal grandparents would give the researchers

a timeframe in which to look for any other children they may have had.

These would be Trevor's aunts and uncles.

Just on an off chance, I said to the researcher,

"have a look for the marriage after the birth of the mother of the deceased,"

and lo and behold, the marriage took place some 15 years later,

and in the meantime there were about five children.

In the end, they uncovered Trevor's mother Gladys's seven brothers and sisters.

Further searches lead them to their descendents, including John Harding,

a first cousin to Trevor and an heir to part of his £140,000 estate.

John still lives in the Bristol area.

Trevor was always very kind to me when I was a small boy

and Trevor, he played football himself, I understand, to a very good standard.

He was friendly with quite a lot of professional footballers

and if there was ever what I would call a big game in Bristol,

perhaps one of the clubs advanced in the FA Cup,

Trevor could always manage somehow to get me some very nice stand tickets.

Ah, right, a useful contact he was.

He was a typical ex-footballer of his generation.

He was always very friendly, always seemed very pleased to see me.

This is an autograph book which Trevor gave me many, many years ago.

As you can see, it says "Merry Xmas, John, from Trevor".

This came to me all signed, Bristol City, the great John Atyeo.

Now we go Bristol Rovers, '64, '65.

Then we go to the big stuff, Grimsby.

THEY LAUGH TOGETHER

He seems very much, I would describe someone, as a man's man.

Very much so.

Football, book-keeping, horses, stuff like that.

Yes. I think even though he wasn't married, there was lady friends.

I remember he came to the farm on several occasions

with what I thought were very glamorous ladies, you know...

as a small boy, I thought, crikey!

-But obviously he never married.

-He didn't have kids?

No, no. He never told me, anyway.

-That's the important thing because obviously if he did have children...

-Yeah.

they would be entitled before any cousins.

He sounds like a very colourful character.

He was a very nice man, Trevor, very kind.

Like I said, I liked Trevor very, very much.

-A kindly uncle.

-That's the one, yeah!

It's been nice to talk to the family and just ask them what they know about the family and Trevor himself.

Just everything about Trevor himself, his life, his life as a footballer

and how he may have been a local celebrity, revered by the locals, and what have you.

It's been fascinating, really, really good.

But discovering Trevor's colourful life wasn't the only result for Bob.

After eight months investigating the case,

he has finally tracked down over 20 heirs to the £140,000 fortune

of his fellow footballer, Trevor Haydon.

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 at anything from £5,000 to millions of pounds,

the rightful heirs are out there somewhere.

Today, we've got two cases heir hunters have so far failed to solve,

could you be the key? Could you be in line for a payout?

Malcolm John Thomas died in Bethnal Green, in London, in March 2007.

Originally from Pontypool in Wales, his mother's maiden name was Griffiths.

Do these details ring any bells?

Could you be Malcolm's closest relative and entitled to his unclaimed estate?

Phyllis Woodcock, born Phyllis Brown, died in Littlehampton,

West Sussex, in October 2007. Does her name ring any bells?

Could she be your long lost aunt or cousin?

Could you be the one person entitled to her estate?

The hunt to find out who is entitled to these estates can go any number of ways.

Estates can end up being worth millions of pounds or just a few thousand.

They might find heirs within hours, or they may never find any.

The team at Fraser & Fraser often work several cases

from the Treasury's weekly list, because they just never know how things will pan out.

Tony Pledger has been looking into a small case,

there's not much value to it so he's trying to make headway all on his own.

Would you know if he would have had a niece or anything at all?

Somebody mentioned there might have been one.

What areas are we doing for marriages?

But Grimble, and most of the rest of the office,

has all the resources to investigate the estate of Brian Lloyd.

It may be worth as much as £250,000.

It started out very promising,

it's got a bit of value to it.

The trouble is, it looks like it's drying up.

We can't seem to find any relatives at the moment.

We're just having some difficulty in latching on to the family,

so hopefully we'll get a little break in it later on in the day.

Brian died suddenly at the age of 51,

leaving a house in the West Midlands and a substantial amount of money,

but heirs to this fortune are looking thin on the ground.

Brian's mother was an only child, making the maternal side a dead end,

but they may have just had a break as they've uncovered

a possible brother on the father's side, Alfred,

and at the moment he's looking like the only route to heirs.

They've gone back over the births, concentrating on Knighton, and you've got to pin things right down.

There's a possible brother of the father of the deceased, an Alfred, born in 1914,

so we'll work that one now and see if it is a brother.

If Alfred is an uncle of Brian Lloyd, his descendants would be

cousins to Brian and in line for the potentially huge inheritance.

Finding out if Alfred had children is key.

I'm looking for an Alfred M Lloyd,

so Joe and I are both ploughing through looking for his marriage.

We don't have any ideas with the surname Lloyd, it's all kind of, at the moment, spec.

We could well end up with a dead job here,

definitely nothing on mum's side,

it's going to be 50/50 on dad's side.

We've still got this Alfred but he's certainly got to have

at least one kid who's living or descendants from it but...

TELEPHONE RINGS

Hello.

How are we doing with our Alfred?

It's going to be difficult, isn't it?

As they search for Alfred's children, they must get

the certificates to identify exactly who the paternal grandparents are.

This will confirm if Alfred is indeed an uncle.

It will also confirm if there are any other aunts and uncles.

Things aren't looking very hopeful at the moment.

We'll keep looking until we have all the certificates back and proved or disproved what we found.

Until that's come in and we finish the research then we'll keep going.

The fact that it's hard for us, it's hard for everybody else.

But even before Alfred can be confirmed as an uncle, they find some bad news.

Well, we've just found the uncle of the deceased,

he dies aged 22, in Wales. So no issue.

Do you know what his father's name was?

Not only has this Alfred died without having children,

but a call to one of his relatives reveals something else.

It looks like we're on the wrong tree there. I'm much obliged to you.

Thank you, bye-bye.

Wrong family.

Unfortunately, there is no uncle Alfred in this family and unless

there are any other any other aunts and uncles, it's not looking good.

It would be a shame if we can't find somebody.

It's possible, you know, if the parents of the deceased

were only children, there is nobody to inherit and it'll go to the Crown.

That's the way the legislation goes in this country.

As travelling heir hunter, Paul Matthews, arrives at the Walsall Register Office,

the case now hinges on what information is contained in the certificates.

Unfortunately, the last certificate that I've obtained,

which was purely a hunch by the office that this may be

the right marriage of the deceased's grandparents.

Unfortunately by confirming that, the response from the office,

well, now that marriage is right, they now know that all this dies out.

Basically, there are no heirs,

so all the hard work, running round, it's come to no result.

So it looks as though on this particular occasion that the estates

are going to be going to the Government, I'm afraid.

So that's life, you win some, you lose some.

It's a disappointing end to everyone's efforts.

Brian Lloyd's potential £250,000 fortune will now be absorbed by the Treasury.

And for Fraser's, there's also no commission to make.

Now it's just down to Grimble to close the case down.

So that birth...

But there's better news for Tony.

Against all the odds, he's single-handedly making great progress on the Wemyss' job.

It's a far less valuable case but if Tony can solve it easily,

it's worth Fraser's investigating it.

Russell Wemyss died in 2008 aged 81,

after having lived for most of his life in a council property on Tyneside.

Russell was a pure gentleman.

Old-fashioned type of gentleman what you don't see these days.

He was sound.

We used to talk about the garden, talk about the weather

and what we're planting, and what we're doing.

I miss looking for him in a morning.

He used to yell out, "Is he up?"

He was great.

Whilst he may not have left a large estate, the chance of finding heirs is good.

It's expanded out pretty quickly. It is going to be near kin

so we more than likely will carry it to a conclusion.

The reason I think it's going to be near kin is because the tree

which Amy's writing out has got several names on it already.

Earlier in the day, Tony got a neighbour to ask a potential heir

to contact him, and Maureen has just phoned back.

So your granny, Thomasina, would have had a sister, I think, Ellen Shaw Ayre,

I'm assuming, therefore, that your mother had several brothers and sisters.

They've all died now, yeah, but, you see, the problem is that we could obviously establish

that you might be a blood relative of the deceased but whether or not

there are other people of a nearer degree that come into it, you see what I mean.

It turns out that Maureen is related to Russell as a first cousin once removed,

but she may not turn out to be an heir if Tony finds closer kin, such as nephews and nieces.

Maureen does, however, know lots of family information.

Russell was quite jovial really, so was his brothers.

They were very good friends with my grandda and they used to drink

in the same pub together and go on the day trips together,

and they were very close. Russell and his brothers were very close.

Maureen was a bridesmaid at Russell's sister, Betty's wedding,

but as they got older, the two families saw each other less and less.

It was strange both called Wemyss, basically because Wemyss was a very uncommon name, you know.

And, of course, Auntie Nelly had the four boys and one girl,

and me Nana had...oh,

three boys and three girls.

No, and he wasn't married either? No, but we're getting a good picture now.

Finding Maureen has been a godsend for Tony.

She's been able to confirm who out of the potential

15 brothers and sisters are, in fact, Russell's siblings.

She's also confirmed that as well as the sister who died as an infant,

incredibly, all the other brothers remained bachelors and died without children.

Russell's sister, Betty, did however have a son and two daughters.

As nephews and nieces, they take inheritance priority over Maureen and other sole heirs.

Hello, Mr Clark. This is Tony Pledger, from Fraser & Fraser, the probate researchers in London.

Despite working on the tightest of budgets, Tony has finally cracked the case of Russell Wemyss.

He's found the nephew and two nieces who will be the sole heirs to his estate.

Still living in the Tyneside area,

Alan Clark is the son of Russell's sister, Betty, who died over 40 years ago.

The last time I saw Russell was just after my mother died.

I went to stop with the brothers, me uncles,

and I was there for about three or four weeks, and then I just went my own way.

'65, '66. My mother died '65, so I would say about '66.

That was the last time I seen him.

It was Alan's mother and Russell's sister, Betty,

who seem to be the link holding the Wemyss family together.

When she died at the age of just 42, much of the family lost contact.

I just would like to know a bit more about the family on her side, you know, because it is a big family.

It's surprising. I was surprised how big it probably will be. It might be even bigger than what I think.

As one of just three heirs, Alan and his two sisters, Joyce and Joan,

will share in Russell's estate, which turns out to be around £14,000.

It's nice if something could be left, but I'm not really interested.

I'm more interested in the family name and hopefully we're going to find more out about it.

I am honestly, the money side of it, not interested at all.

Buried at the family plot in South Shields cemetery, Alan goes to pay his respects to his Uncle Russell.

He's with the rest of his family, I think, I hope.

I know his mam and dad's buried here.

It's a lovely spot where he lies.

It's very emotional here,

knowing that me Mam's just further up from Russell.

Very emotional.

I won't see me Mam later.

Been an interesting day, actually.

Peaceful. Very nice.

What I'd like to do is put a cross or something

on Russell's and me Mam's grave, just to say that they're there,

As you see, it's just a hole in the ground at the moment.

It'd be nice to give them something nice that people can look and say,

"there's a Wemyss and a Clark." It'd be nice.

If you would like to find out more about how to build a family tree,

go to bbc.co.uk

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd