Cator/Mukerji Heir Hunters

In London, the heir hunters have found an unclaimed estate

on the Treasury's list

that could be worth anything from 5,000 up to many millions of pounds.

Their job is to find the long-lost relatives

who have no idea they could be in line for a windfall.

Could they be knocking at your door?

On today's programme, mistakes, confusing family trees

and common surnames all make the heir hunters' job that much harder.

Sorry, I've got the wrong family and I do apologise.

So that's all wrong.

And a case that has taken over 20 years to solve,

the estate of Elizabeth Mukerji,

whose extended family had friends in very high places.

He was the first Indian to be elected to the House of Commons.

And how you could be entitled to unclaimed estates

where beneficiaries need to be found.

Could you be in line for a cash payout?

Every year in the UK, an estimated 300,000 people die without leaving a will.

If no relatives are found,

then any money that's left behind will go to the government...

and last year, they made £12 million from unclaimed estates.

But there are over 30 specialist firms competing to stop this happening.

They're called heir hunters

and they make it their business to track down missing relatives

and help them claim their rightful inheritance.

For us, every case is a gamble

because we don't know how much each case is worth.

We don't know how much work we're going to have to do

and sometimes, we may not even get the reward.

Sometimes, the reward may be very, very good.

It's a Thursday morning in London,

and overnight, the Treasury has advertised a new list of names

of people who have died without leaving a will.

-There's definitely no death for her?

-No.

The staff at heir-hunting company Fraser and Fraser are in the office early.

Partner Neil is trawling through the list of names

but it's an unpromising start.

None of the addresses I've got

appear to be for deceaseds who owned their own property.

This means the team must quickly research

each of the 16 new names more thoroughly

to discover whether any of them did indeed own a house,

as more often than not, it is this that will make up the value of an estate.

-This guy marries in '45.

-Where?

The team's extra research has paid off.

It's a case Neil thinks could have potential.

Edith Hilda Cator died in 2009

and there is the sale of a house attached to her name.

House sold in 2002.

But her address is a nursing home.

The team are debating if this is where her money may have gone.

-Yeah.

-She's been there for a few years.

She's been there for three years at £30,000 a year.

If the deceased spent her final years in a private nursing home,

whatever wealth she may have accrued through property

could now be all gone.

Let's call the whole thing off.

It may not be the most promising start

but Dave gets to work,

chasing the care home to verify just how long Edith could have been there.

Meanwhile, Neil does the maths.

A case like this, which is possibly £50,000,

may gain Fraser and Fraser £5,000 worth of fees,

which as long as we finish the research today, is all right.

Huge gamble

and we have to be very careful when we take on these gambles.

But it's a gamble Neil's willing to take.

Edith Hilda Cator died of a stroke in 2009 aged 85

and she left no will.

She'd lived in Watford, Hertfordshire.

Friend Janet Fowler had known Edith for over 50 years.

They first met working alongside each other in a factory.

I do miss her an awful lot, I do. Yeah.

After the job finished, Janet didn't see Edith for years

but then one day bumped into her in town

and their friendship was rekindled.

And then I more or less visited her quite a lot after that.

Paid bills for her, whatever had to be paid,

did her shopping, did her washing.

I mean, when I saw her, her face just lit up, anyway.

If it was a rainy day, she would give me the money for a taxi home

and if it was a sunny day, I'd say, "No, not today, Edie, I'll get the bus home."

And she was very considerate like that, really.

Yeah, she was, yeah.

Yeah, she was.

The team know that Edith lived and died in Watford

and having previous addresses of the deceased is a big help

to the heir hunters.

With this in mind, case manager David Pacifico puts in a call to Ewart,

one of the company's travelling heir hunters,

who, fortunately, lives in Watford.

We've got a case called Cator coming out in a place called Watford.

Ewart Lindsay is one of the company's squadron of senior researchers,

who are willing to go wherever a case takes them.

Based all over the UK and abroad, their job is to follow the clues

and sniff out potential heirs

and inform them of their deceased relative's estate.

She ended up in a nursing home in Watford.

We've also got a previous address for her

within the Watford area, so I'm heading to that address

to see what I can actually find out about her.

Back in the office, the team start to try and build a family tree for Edith.

They've discovered that she married twice

but the initial research into census and birth records

isn't what Neil wanted to hear.

It doesn't look like she had any brothers or sisters.

It doesn't look like she had any children from either of the two marriages,

so we're not looking at near kin.

We're certainly looking at cousins,

which makes my gamble even more risky.

Certainly the research to cover near kin is much, much cheaper

and doesn't cost us anywhere the money

as if we had to go back to cousins.

This means it's more important than ever for the team to try and wrap this case up in a day.

Any longer, and the company's profit goes out the window.

The team now knows Edith's parents were Kate Johnson and Arthur Goodyer

and that she was their only child.

Plus that Edith married twice and had no children from either marriage.

Edith's mother's surname is a nightmare to research,

as Johnson is a common name.

With this in mind, Neil decides to concentrate on the paternal line

of Edith's father, Arthur Goodyer.

Bye.

I've got the 1911 census in Watford.

Two brothers still alive, one of them looks like he dies in the war.

The second served in the war because I found an army record.

He has one child and that child has two children, who would be first cousins once removed.

The first heirs are on their radar and it's only 8.30 in the morning.

Out on the road, Ewart's enquiries at Edith's previous address

aren't going so smoothly.

The only person I spoke to was the actual person who bought the property off the deceased.

Couldn't give us any information about the family

or if she had children, really.

So I'm now at the nursing home, this is her last address...

to see what information they can give me.

The company has travelling heir hunters so they can try and stay one step ahead of any competition.

Ewart is ready at the drop of a hat

to drive anywhere the office asks him

and that may be just about to happen.

Thanks so much. Thank you. Bye-bye.

I've just spoken to a lady whose relationship to the deceased

is a paternal cousin once removed.

Her father, who was an only child, was a first cousin to the deceased.

Understandably, she's never heard of the deceased.

But literally ten minutes before I phoned her,

another company has been in contact with her.

The good news of finding their first heir is tainted by the fact

they've been beaten to it by the competition.

Ewart's also got bad news.

The nursing home is not able to help with his enquiries.

He's back to square one.

And again, I couldn't really get to speak to anybody.

But from the office, there is a glimmer of hope from the Johnson side of the family,

that the team has tentatively started to work.

I've got a new stem that's literally just up to date now in Slough

and I can't get hold of one person and I'm going to phone the sister.

-So make your way to Slough.

-Right.

Dave now hopes to contact these new relatives before the competition

and hopefully get Ewart on their doorstep ASAP.

Despite being up against other companies,

the team has made leaps and bounds on the hunt.

Even the maternal family's name of Johnson

hasn't fazed research director Gareth.

Cator's up to date on the maternal and the paternal sides...

and considering one side is Johnson.

This is an amazing result so early in the day.

The team has found numerous potential heirs to Edith's estate.

They are all cousins once removed

and case manager Dave now starts to call them

in order to verify the family tree

and try and set up the all-important meetings with Ewart.

Your grandmother was her aunt.

Beatrice.

Your grandmother was Kate?

All right, let me go back over this,

just in case we might have the wrong family.

Worryingly, Dave's family tree isn't marrying up.

You think your grandfather was William.

OK. I think we have got the wrong family.

I'm really sorry to have troubled you.

Sorry about that. Thank you. Bye-bye.

We've run with the wrong birthday.

This is the last thing the team wanted

on a case they've already taken a gamble on.

So that's all wrong.

Johnson isn't an easy name to work, as this costly mistake has shown.

The team started off their hunt with the wrong birth certificate for Edith's mother.

So we've got the wrong family of Johnson.

So all the bits we've worked are her cousins, so they're all wrong.

So what we've done is identified the wrong birth of Kate.

Even though it's still only 9.20 in the morning,

this is bad news for Neil.

Whilst they've been wasting time on the wrong family,

other heir-hunting firms may have found the right Johnsons

and be visiting them right now.

Look through that. If we can find her, we don't need to do the blood bit.

Neil steps in to rescue this case

and using the census records, he finds another potential birth for Edith's mother.

And there's a Kate.

Born in 1889.

But amid all this chaos, there is one member of the team

who is blissfully unaware of what's happened.

I forgot to tell Ewart not to go to Slough.

-Go back to Watford and do what you were doing, please.

-OK, Dave.

-Thanks.

-Cheers. Bye.

Something's happened down there.

Ewart turns around and heads back to Watford.

Fortunately, in the office,

the new birth record for Kate Johnson, Edith's mother,

is bearing fruit.

Neil, Gareth and Simon trawl the 1901 and 1911 census

for evidence of her siblings.

It looks promising.

Alfred and Emily, yeah?

And then we've got Ethel, Walter and Arthur, I've got.

Arthur being the youngest.

This new lead would suggest Kate Johnson, Edith's mother,

had five brothers and sisters.

The team now have to find other records of these siblings

in order to trace any children they may have had.

We've finally got Ellen Johnson, who is the eldest sibling of the deceased's mother,

that's the eldest aunt of the deceased, on the census.

So I've got her on the 1901 and married on the 1911,

so I now know that the marriage is definitely right

and she certainly had one child, probably two children.

And using this fresh information,

researcher Emily scours the electoral roll.

The new lead pays off.

Emily thinks she's found an address for Michael Farren,

a cousin once removed on the Johnson stem.

I can't find a death for him, so he's probably still alive.

We hope.

Emily has also found a phone number they believe matches the address.

I'm now going to try and contact someone

who is definitely related to the deceased on the maternal family.

But things aren't going Dave's way today.

Sorry, I've got the wrong family and I do apologise for troubling you.

Thank you for your time.

The phone number was for a Michael - just not the one Dave wanted.

The team will now have to pull out all the stops.

The guys will have to try to get us another phone number.

The team scramble to try and find another number

for the Michael Farren they believe is Edith's relative.

They have already wasted enough time with the Johnson name.

Edith's estate, with its unknown value,

is a gamble that will only pay off

if the heir hunters are the first to meet and sign her heirs.

Later in the show,

the heir hunters may have originally chased the wrong family

but this cloud could have a silver lining.

The competition looks like they made the same mistake we did.

We're hoping they still think they're on the correct family.

Heir-hunting companies will always try and be the first to contact

the beneficiaries to an estate

but there are no guarantees a case can be solved in a day

or even a week.

Sometimes, the heir hunters can wait years, even decades,

until the information they need to solve a case finally comes to light.

Elizabeth Mukerji was born in 1900

and died aged 91 without leaving a will.

With no known photographs or people who knew her,

Elizabeth's life is a bit of a mystery.

Her £25,000 estate had remained on the Treasury's list,

unsolved and unclaimed, ever since the early 1990s.

But her name was not forgotten.

Heir hunter Hector Birchwood always holds out hope

that old cases can one day be solved.

Any time a new database comes on line,

any time we buy a new bit of information

which relates to our business,

then I pick up those old cases and I run them through.

Hector works alongside his father, Peter Birchwood,

and case managers Saul and Phil

and together, they make up the team at Celtic Research.

Like every other heir-hunting company in the UK,

they leap into action every Thursday morning

when the Treasury releases new names of unclaimed estates.

But Hector never shies away from the challenges involved with an unsolved case.

This case had been picked up and dropped

on a couple of different occasions.

Mainly because there wasn't enough information to find heirs the first time around.

But with the release of the 1901 census, Hector tried once again

to find the descendants of the mysterious Elizabeth Mukerji.

For an heir hunter, it's a rare occasion to work a name of Asian origin.

We don't see very many Indian names coming up in the unclaimed estates.

Well, this is the birth of her father.

And as Hector continued his initial research,

Elizabeth's case was getting more and more out of the ordinary.

I thought initially this might lead to India

and perhaps I should be looking at the Indian records

at the British Library.

Hector got down to his research

and discovered that Elizabeth had taken her surname

from her late husband, Dwijendra Mukerji,

whom she married in 1938.

He was born and brought up in the UK,

after his father came to England in the late 19th century

to study law.

In the 1890s, Elizabeth's father-in-law, Jogmendra,

was one of just a handful of Indians living in England.

But the Mukerji name was to go down in both Indian and English history.

After he'd finished his studies,

Jogmendra went on to work as a personal secretary

for Dadabhai Naoroji,

an Indian who'd achieved something quite remarkable in the UK.

He was the first Indian to be elected to the House of Commons,

the British parliament, in 1892.

This was a truly remarkable feat

because Dadabhai Naoroji had been born and brought up in India.

He was quite a senior political figure in India, as well.

He was one of the founding fathers of the Indian National Congress,

which became the main nationalist organisation and political party

that fought the British for independence.

So I'm sure Mukerji as private secretary

would have met many of the leading politicians, British and Indian, of the time.

Including Gandhi, who was visiting England in 1906

to campaign for better rights for Indians in colonial South Africa.

Jogmendra's meetings with Gandhi led to a working relationship

bound by a fierce belief in Indian independence.

Gandhi and Mukerji seemed to have

quite an extensive correspondence in 1906

when Gandhi came over to London

and one can infer that Mukerji definitely played a significant part

in India's freedom fight.

But despite his political views about the British in India,

it didn't stop Elizabeth's father-in-law Jogmendra

falling in love and marrying an Englishwoman called Helen.

There's also the possibility

they were one of the first Anglo-Indian marriages in the UK.

So there would have been surprise from both sides,

from his own family back in India and from her family in England.

Whatever their families' concerns,

the couple went on to have Dwijendra, who later went on to marry Elizabeth.

Immersed in his initial research,

Hector had originally thought the trail could lead to India

but that was all about to change.

Turned out to be a red herring because she had divorced him.

They had no children.

Hector started looking more closely at Elizabeth's side of the family

and it turned out she was actually of Irish origin.

Back in 1938, her marriage to a mixed-race husband

would have been just as out of the ordinary as her in-laws' 40 years before.

It was quite an unusual for an Indian man to marry an Englishwoman at that time.

I'm sure Elizabeth would have faced some kinds of prejudice

for having an Indian surname, for being Mrs Mukerji.

So for Hector,

what had started out potentially as an international heir hunt

was now a lot closer to home.

His research showed that Elizabeth's ancestry

was in Ireland on her mother's side and England on her father's.

From Elizabeth's birth records,

he discovered her parents were an Eliza McDermott

and Henry Griffith, who had married in 1899.

Hector began his hunt.

My first task was to identify

what happened to the siblings of the deceased.

She had two siblings. I think their names were William and May.

And I then was able to identify that they died

without leaving any descendants.

Hector would have to go through Elizabeth's parents

and on to aunts and uncles

if he was to stand a chance of finding heirs to her £25,000 estate.

So I then had to turn my attentions to the paternal side.

Through the census, I was able to find out

that the father of the deceased came from the Griffith family

that was based in London.

So I then had to find his birth,

then identify any siblings that he had.

He had two siblings, a sister and a brother,

both of which died relatively young and had no issue.

So I then had to turn my attentions to the maternal side.

Elizabeth's mother was Eliza McDermott,

a very common Irish name.

And this is really where the problems began

because although the census and the marriage certificate for her parents said

that the mother came from Ireland,

we didn't know where in Ireland she came from,

so I had to put the case back down again.

Yet again, the estate of Elizabeth Mukerji was proving unsolvable.

There just wasn't enough information in the 1901 census to find her heirs

and the folder went back into the filing cabinet.

It was to be a further ten years

before Hector would get another chance.

Well, I picked up the case again when the 1911 census was released.

At this point, fellow heir hunter Peter took up the case.

The information the 1911 census held could finally provide the clues

needed to solve the complex case of Elizabeth Mukerji.

Bye for now.

Later in the show,

the team finds heirs but the Treasury thinks different.

The reply, to me, was surprising.

Could you be in line for an unexpected windfall?

In the UK, the Treasury has a list of over 2,000 estates

that over the years, have baffled the heir hunters

and still remain unclaimed.

This is money that could have your name on it.

These estates can stay on the list for up to 30 years

and each one could be worth anything from £5,000 to many millions.

Today, we're focusing on three names from the list.

Could they be relatives of yours?

Eileen Lashmer-Parsons died in Brighton, East Sussex, in 2000.

Her surname is very distinctive. Do you share it?

So far, all efforts to trace her heirs have failed.

Or did you know Joanna Fredericksan?

She died age 90 in 2000 and lived in Wembley, Middlesex.

The interesting spelling of her surname could be Scandinavian in origin.

Or finally, Leonard Batstone.

He died in 2004 in Littlehampton, West Sussex.

Again, his surname is rare and easily recognisable.

If the names Eileen Lashmer-Parsons, Joanna Fredericksan

or Leonard Batstone mean anything to you,

then there could be a windfall on its way.

Heir-hunting company Fraser and Fraser have taken a gamble

on the case of Edith Cator.

She died in 2009 aged 85, without ever making a will.

Her estate ended up on the Treasury's list

but the problem is the company have no idea what her case could be worth.

If there's no money in it, we're dropping it.

Sinking time and resources into tracing her heirs

has already failed twice.

Sorry, I've got the wrong family and I do apologise for troubling you.

So that's all wrong.

The team believed Edith had married twice

but according to her friend Janet,

it turns out there was one more to add to the list.

I think she was really lonely and she wanted a partner.

She definitely wanted a partner. She didn't want to live alone.

Edith was in her seventies and wanted company.

As an active member of her local senior citizens' social club,

she befriended a gentleman called Bert.

He must have been over 80 and she was in her seventies.

So they were very late in life getting married, so...

It was a small ceremony

and Janet happily helped out with the proceedings.

I took her down the aisle to meet Bert.

And then, obviously, Bert wheeled her out of the church.

She did look nice and she knew she'd got someone to be with

and she wasn't lonely any more.

The couple enjoyed their life together in the nursing home

but unfortunately, Bert passed away less than one year after the marriage,

leaving Edith alone for the final years of her life,

a life that made a big impression on friend Janet.

I do miss her terribly. I do miss her a lot.

Even talking about her now doesn't help.

Despite the team initially chasing the wrong heirs,

it seems they weren't the only ones to have made a mistake

on the Johnson side of the family,

something that could now be to their advantage.

The competition looks like they made the same mistake we did.

What we're hoping is they still think they're on the correct family.

If nobody's told them they're on the wrong family, they won't know yet.

Gareth is quietly confident and case manager Dave is philosophical

about the problems they've had so far with this case.

That's all right.

It makes life harder for us, makes life harder for the competition.

At this stage, the heir hunters know Edith's mother had five siblings.

Of these, they now suspect four of them died

without leaving any children.

This just leaves Edith's aunt Ellen

and it's Ellen's grandchild, Michael Farren,

the team have been trying to track down.

Dave has found the correct phone number for Michael

and has left a message

but still with no reply, he's switched to plan B.

At the moment, I've got Ewart hot-footing it over to St Albans

to try and see the only beneficiary entitled on the maternal family.

This is a gamble Dave hopes will pay off.

With competition all over this case,

everything now rests of Ewart making face to face contact with Michael

before anyone else.

But arriving at the address, Ewart discovers his heir no longer lives there.

The heir had parted from his wife 12 years ago so...

But she kindly has given me a mobile number for him.

I've rung it, spoken to his partner

and I've arranged to see him.

This is great news

but only if Ewart is the first heir hunter to get there.

There are no guarantees that another company isn't, at this moment,

standing on the heir's doorstep, paperwork in hand.

It's a tense drive for Ewart but he finally makes it to the right address

for Michael Farren, a cousin once removed of Edith's.

And much to his relief, he's the first heir hunter to visit Michael.

Ewart's first job is to clarify they're dealing with the right family.

Your father, did he have any brothers and sisters?

I can't remember him having any brothers. I think it was just him.

-Just him. Right, OK.

-Yeah.

With the research and briefing done,

Ewart wants to deal with the business at hand.

-OK, that's the agreement.

-Okey-dokey.

Read it first, any queries, let me know.

And much to Ewart's relief, Michael is happy to sign on the dotted line.

This means he agrees to the company helping him with his claim to the Treasury,

in exchange for a fixed percentage of whatever Edith's estate is worth.

The fact he never knew about Edith comes as no surprise to Michael.

I didn't get on with my old man very well.

We was always at loggerheads. He lived in the Victorian age

and he had his opinion of life and I had my opinion of my life,

so we clashed. We didn't get on.

Like I said when you was asking me,

I can't remember who was who and who wasn't.

With the paperwork complete, Ewart bids farewell...

-All right.

-Take care.

..and quickly contacts Dave to let him know the good news.

-Yeah, you got an agreement?

-Yeah.

-Well done.

-All right.

It's a fantastic result for the team.

After all of the morning's ups and downs,

chasing the wrong heirs and facing competition,

they can breathe a sign of relief.

Well done. Thanks very much for that.

Safe journey. Bye now.

But it's not all good news.

It seems the time spent sorting out the whole Johnson debacle

has cost the team dear.

With respect to the paternal family,

credit to the competition, they reached the heir before we did.

Despite losing heirs, partner Neil is positive about the outcome

and happy they signed the maternal heir, Michael,

who will inherit half of Edith's estate.

In the end, it's a bit of a shame.

It's how it happens every now and then.

Some days you win, some days you lose.

We've lost this stem but luckily, we represent heirs on other stems,

so we'll still make our money back,

although we won't make much profit.

Hector Birchwood of Celtic Research has been trying for nearly 20 years

to solve the case of the mysterious Elizabeth Mukerji.

She died in 1991 aged 91 and left no will for her £25,000 estate.

Despite her Indian surname,

Hector discovered she was actually of Irish and English origin,

having taken the surname from her late husband.

So I had eliminated any close siblings

and any cousin relatives that would be coming from the paternal side.

So I then had to turn my attentions to the maternal side.

Using the 1901 census, Hector had discovered

that Elizabeth's mother's family were Irish,

with the surname McDermott.

It's an extremely common name to try and trace in Ireland,

so Hector passed the case on to his father, Peter,

an expert in Irish genealogy.

But even Peter had his work cut out.

We're talking about a period in the early 1870s

which is only just after the start of Irish civil registration,

so at this time,

not 100% of births in Ireland are recorded.

Elizabeth's case has dragged on unsolved for over 20 years,

mainly because the heir hunters had no clue

as to where her mother Eliza was born in Ireland...

..making the job of tracing the wider family impossible.

But the release of the 1911 census changed everything.

We found from the census entries

that Eliza was born in County Longford in Ireland

and from her marriage to Henry William Griffith

that her father was a Patrick McDermott,

who was a baker.

Elizabeth's grandparents had seven children,

including her mother, Eliza, all born in County Longford, Ireland.

From having that information,

it was just a case of working down the children

to find people who were still living today.

Peter discovered all of Elizabeth's aunts and uncles had died

leaving no children, except one brother called Joseph McDermott.

He had seven sons and this led Peter to his first heir.

Ann Foley is a cousin once removed of Elizabeth's...

and still lives in the family's ancestral home of County Longford.

When Peter first contacted her,

she had no idea who her Great Aunt Elizabeth was.

Never heard of Elizabeth at all

until Peter mentioned who she was and what her name was.

It was a shock, a total surprise,

that somebody was trying to track down an ancestor

from so far back, from 1900.

Sadly, as no photos survive of Elizabeth,

Ann will never know what her great aunt looked like.

Peter's research married up to Ann's memories of her uncles

and helped him finally confirm who Elizabeth's living relatives were.

In the McDermott side, my dad was the seventh son.

Five of them went to England.

'My and my uncle Frank were the only two that stayed.'

Elizabeth's relatives were spread from Ireland to England

and Peter had found six heirs to Elizabeth's £25,000 estate.

The company had waited 20 years for this day.

After signing the heirs and submitting their claim to the Treasury,

Peter was in for a nasty shock.

The Treasury rejected the claim.

The reply, to me, was surprising

because they couldn't read one of the names

on an Irish birth certificate that I sent them.

Hector knew the team now had their work cut out with the treasury.

Normally if we find that there is one mistake somewhere,

we have to provide overwhelming evidence

to be able to prove or refute any incorrect evidence

that is on any given record, so it makes our job that much harder.

But Peter has taken this blow on the chin

and has changed tack.

My plan right now is to go over to Longford Town

to get our clients proved and recover for them their share of this estate.

True to his word, one week later, Peter has packed his bags

and is heading to County Longford in Ireland.

Peter and Hector have worked too hard on this case

to see it fall at the final hurdle.

Everything now hangs on Peter being able to clear up the issues the Treasury has

with Elizabeth's mother's birth certificate.

We're just about to head into the cathedral

to see if we can find some baptisms that might help resolve this case.

Peter and his wife Maria are visiting a cathedral

where they believe the mother of the deceased was baptised.

It's a nice cathedral.

Any additional evidence he can find

will only add to his case with the Treasury.

-Morning. How are you doing?

-Morning. Father Healey? Peter Birchwood.

But Father Healey that Peter has come to visit

has some bad news concerning the cathedral's records.

As you know, we had a very tragic fire in the cathedral last Christmastime,

so we lost our original records.

We have a printout that was put together some years ago,

-so we'll have a look, anyway.

-What a terrible thing, the fire.

So what first name are we talking about?

We're looking for an Eliza McDermott,

who would be born some time in the 1870s.

Right. These are all McDermotts here.

Perhaps because of the loss of the original records in the fire,

they can find no record of Eliza McDermott's baptism.

Peter tries a different approach.

Mm. Are there any alternate spellings of McDermott,

apart from with one t and two ts?

But again, no joy.

Out of desperation more than anything,

Peter decides to show Father Healey the fudged birth certificate in question.

Maybe he can decipher the maiden name of Eliza's mother.

The mother's maiden name, maybe you'd have a better guess than I could

because I can't read it.

But even Father Healey can't decipher the handwriting in question.

Anyway, I guess we'd better just head off into the sunset.

I wish you well. Sorry we weren't able to solve the issue.

So, bye for now.

-Thank you for your help.

-You're welcome.

Peter is back to square one again.

Elizabeth Mukerji's grandmother's maiden name

is the key to cracking this case.

Plan B is County Longford's register office.

-How are you doing?

-Hello, there. Peter Birchwood, my wife, Maria.

-Nice to meet you.

We've got this birth certificate

and nobody can quite make it out what the lady's maiden name is.

Would you say it's Kirwin?

At first glance, I would think Kirwin

but we can check the actual original record for you.

Were there any other siblings?

-There were five or six of them, yes.

-OK. That will make it easier.

If we can't see it on this record,

if I get the book and there are siblings,

it may be clearer on another record.

Peter knows definitively from his research into the census records

that Eliza had six siblings

and he's asked the registrar to look for the original birth record

for Eliza's younger brother, James.

Hopefully, it will have the mother's maiden name spelt clearly

and he'll have the proof he needs.

It's a tense wait for Peter.

-No, it's definitely not in that one.

-Oh, no. What a shame.

I'll check the next one.

Early, I reckon.

No, no. I'll check the next book, just to be on the safe side.

I'll check the next book.

The registrar scans the lists of births for brother James.

Peter thinks he was born in 1879.

James' birth record could be the key Peter needs

to unlock a case that has remained unsolved for 20 years.

Folks, I have it.

-I have it for you.

-Really?

-Really?

-Oh, wow!

-Wow!

-Well done.

-I have it, look.

-Yes?

-James is in this book

and Jane McDermott, formerly Kelly.

There it is in black and white,

definitive proof Peter's always had the right family.

Not only do the books show Eliza's brother James had a mother with the maiden name Kelly,

there are also marriage records backing everything up.

Peter gets the registrar to print it all out.

-Your evidence is there.

-I think it is.

You have all of your evidence there to prove, really,

that she was Jane Kelly.

She was Jane Kelly.

And she was never anything other than Jane Kelly, it seems to me.

-Thank you very much for all of your work.

-No problem.

-I'm sorry to keep you in over time.

-Don't worry.

-Well...

After years of waiting, the case of Elizabeth Mukerji

can finally be put to bed.

Now armed with copies of the original records

to add to his case file for the Treasury,

Peter's one happy heir hunter.

So this case is solved.

I'm happy about the direction it's taken.

We just need to get the paperwork in chain

and we'll be able to make a good claim for the assets

for the people we represent.

If you would like advice about building your family tree

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

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