Walker/West Heir Hunters

Welcome to Heir Hunters. We follow investigators as they search for living family

of people who've died without leaving a will.

Today the team are looking for heirs who could be in line for thousands of pounds.

In the office, the team needs to rethink their heir-hunting tactics on a £250,000 estate.

Today, obviously, rule one has been broken!

They're trying to track down long-lost relatives who may have no idea

they're in line for a windfall.

Could they be knocking at your door?

Coming up on today's programme...

Do you believe this Huddersfield birth?

The estate of a professional singer causes a real headache.

So, things aren't looking terribly good.

And a case spanning 200 years

reveals connections to Winston Churchill

and a surprise inheritance.

How do I feel about inheriting from this family which isn't my family?

I feel quite pleased, actually!

I'll be investigating further into forgotten laws that not only mean

you could inherit from your most distant of ancestors,

they also revolutionised schooling in this country.

This is a way for the first time,

especially for the poor of the parish,

to receive a system of education,

giving them skills to cope in an industrialising society.

Plus, how you could be entitled to unclaimed estates where beneficiaries need to be found.

Could you be in line for an unexpected windfall?

Every year in the UK, an estimated 300,000 people die intestate.

If no relatives are found, then any money that's left behind will go to the Government.

Last year that amounted to £14 million.

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.

I love the fact that I can put families back together.

I can reunite people.

I can tell them secret histories about their own family,

which they don't know about themselves.

In our first case today, the team investigate the estate of a talented woman from Lewisham,

who died without leaving a will.

It's first thing Thursday morning, and while most of the country thinks about breakfast,

heir hunters across the land are digesting the Treasury's latest list of unclaimed estates.

In central London, the team at Fraser and Fraser are poring over the names,

hoping to find a lucrative case.

It's a little bit early, I suppose, but let's see where we go on it.

The estates on the list are worth a minimum of £5,000 and could potentially be worth many millions.

But at the moment, none of the advertised estates has got the team excited.

It's not terribly encouraging.

The Treasury's list doesn't say how much estates are worth,

so the team are searching for any clues that may give them an idea of value.

Do you want to have a look at this?

Do you want to do an enquiry on that, then?

I can't because there's no address.

Rench. Irene Rench, anyone got?

Walker?

Doreen Walker?

Neil's keen to start research and he's spotted a name he thinks has potential.

We're going to have a little look at this estate of Doreen Ellen Walker.

The advert's a little confusing, because it's Doreen Ellen Walker, formerly Howard, nee Walker.

So, it means her maiden name's Walker.

It also says she's a single woman, which probably means she's a divorced lady.

Doreen Walker died in March 2010, aged just 62.

She had lived in Lewisham in southeast London for 10 years.

Friend and local lay preacher Neil Hill has fond memories of her.

My memories of Doreen were really very happy ones.

She was good company and pleasant.

Liked a good laugh, liked socialising.

Doreen was a professional singer.

She performed with a number of well-known choirs,

and her beautiful contralto voice was captured in this BBC recording.

OPERATIC SINGING

Sue Sturrock studied with Doreen at the Royal College of Music.

I will never forget Doreen

because she was a wonderfully vibrant, flamboyant character.

I have to say that you'd know

whether Doreen was or was not at the singers' table

the moment you stepped into the dining room,

because she would be the centre of attention.

She was funny, she was witty, she was nicely naughty,

nicely disrespectful.

But, most of all, very amusing.

SHE SINGS

Another singing friend, Judy Rees, shares similar memories.

Everybody knew Doreen.

All the orchestral players knew her as well.

She really was that sort of person and everybody had a word,

everybody had a laugh with Doreen.

She really was a big personality.

But after a successful career, Doreen suddenly gave up performing,

and began to live an increasingly reclusive life.

She lived, I would have thought, almost an isolated...

I mean, I don't think she went very far.

She went occasionally, probably, to the bank,

but I don't think she left the house very much at all,

which is dreadfully sad.

Having led an active and sociable life, Doreen sadly died alone.

In Central London,

the heir hunters are keen to start the search for Doreen's heirs,

but first they need to try and find out how much her estate is worth.

Heir hunters work on commission,

so the value of the estate means the difference between profit and loss.

Neil has an address for Doreen in Lewisham,

and because it's a London suburb, house prices are likely to be high.

But he needs to know if she rented her home or owned it.

Hi. I've got a property which is freehold in SE13,

but it's not available electronically.

What do you reckon that means?

They need someone on the ground who can visit the property

and make enquiries with the neighbours.

I'm going to get Bob Smith to go there.

Fingers crossed he can find something out.

The company has a network of regional heir hunters

spread across the country.

Each one is on standby from 7.00am on a Thursday morning,

and they can be called upon to make door-to-door enquiries,

collect important certificates and visit potential heirs.

Bob Smith is their south London man, so he's been told to hit the road,

to see if he can find out valuable information about Doreen.

Today, we are heading off to Lewisham.

The deceased, Doreen Walker, she died in 2010.

We'll be going along there, making enquiries with neighbours,

find out what they know about the deceased and her family.

A property in South London

is bound to have attracted interest from rival heir hunters,

so Bob needs to get to Lewisham fast.

But, frustratingly, he's hit rush hour.

There's a two-mile traffic queue at the moment.

We're about five miles away.

At this rate, it could be a long time before we get there.

'Your destination is straight ahead.'

Once the roads clear, Bob makes quick time

and he arrives at Doreen's house to be greeted by a fairly grim sight.

This one here.

Unbelievable, isn't it?

Incredible.

The house is boarded up and completely overgrown.

I'm making enquiries about the lady that used to live next door.

I don't think there's anyone in here.

Bob eventually speaks to a neighbour

and learns that Doreen did own the property.

He gets straight on the phone to give Neil the news.

Hello, Neil.

I tell you what, it's a lovely house, Neil, but it's a little bit derelict.

But it's in a lovely location, a little bit overgrown.

Anyway, the neighbour had known her for the last 15 or 20 years,

and said that she didn't have any children.

She was a local lady, as far as he was aware.

He didn't know she was born elsewhere or anything.

So the house itself isn't a council house?

No, no, it looks like...

He said she owned it.

I asked him that and he said, "No, I think she owned it."

Bob's also noticed a number for the company who boarded up the house.

That notice on the corrugated iron on the front door...

there's a telephone number.

I mean, I don't know what sort of organisation they are.

I can't get hold of any other neighbours.

There's no-one answering.

While Bob goes off to make further enquiries at the local church,

back at the office, Neil's managed to find out more about Doreen's house

and he's been able to pinpoint exactly when she bought the property.

Doreen owns the property, bought it in 2000.

So, it's definitely worth us pursuing it. It's a £250,000 estate.

It's now all systems go for the heir hunters.

Gareth, she definitely owns it, so pull some staff on to it as well.

With a £250,000 estate at stake,

the team must follow up any clue that could lead them to heirs.

Neil phones the company who boarded up Doreen's house.

Good morning. I wonder if you could help me.

I'm doing an enquiry about a property

which I think your shutters are on.

I'm basically trying to find out who is paying you for them,

or who asked you to put them up.

Neil's wondering if they've been in touch

with one of Doreen's relatives.

That was put up because of the police.

The police broke into the property on 4th March,

which is exactly the same date of death we have for Doreen.

So, obviously, she was found dead.

They broke in as part of a welfare enquiry.

So, obviously, no-one's heard anything and no sign of anything, so they went in there.

The case has taken a sad turn. Doreen was found dead in her flat.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Bob has now spoken to the vicar at the local church,

and a picture of Doreen's later years is starting to emerge.

Neil, hi, it's Bob. I actually spoke with the Reverend.

She phoned someone that she thought might have known the deceased, and he did, he remembered her.

Apparently, her husband was the church organist,

but ten years ago he just left a note to say that he was leaving her, and he went to South Africa.

They're not sure whether there was actually a divorce.

This information could be crucial for the team.

If Doreen did not get divorced,

her husband will be the sole heir to her estate.

It seems the sudden end of her marriage in 2001

affected Doreen very deeply.

She was devastated.

I don't think the decline set in then,

but I think it contributed to her

withdrawing from...

socialising and meeting up with friends.

I rarely saw her over the last ten years.

The state of the house was really quite shocking.

No idea what the inside looked like. I was never going to be invited in.

But outside, as I said before, completely overgrown,

and it was like that while she was living there.

It's just rather distressing.

In the office, the search for Doreen's heirs is gathering pace.

The team's first priority is to find out

if she and her husband got divorced.

-Emily, are you doing probate?

-Yeah.

-I've got a divorce for you to do.

-Are they the first years you want?

-We want it 1995 to 2005.

-Yeah.

The first three years first, do you want?

Emily will try and find records of a divorce,

but the team can't afford to wait for the results.

They start the search for any other living relatives.

But, first, they need to find records for the right Doreen Walker,

and they've found a possible birth for her in Yorkshire.

We've got a date of birth, 23rd February, 1948.

There's only one birth of a Doreen Ellen Walker, which was her maiden name.

It's in Huddersfield, which is completely out of area.

If this birth is right,

Doreen was the only child of Eric and Doris Walker

and came from somewhere near Huddersfield.

But the neighbours in Lewisham thought Doreen was from London

and the team are split.

Where are you up to? Do you believe this Huddersfield birth?

At the moment, yeah.

If we confirm this date of birth is correct, there is only one Doreen E.

She looks like she's an only child.

Coming up, the search for heirs goes nationwide.

I'm now trying to move all my guys back up to South Yorkshire.

And it turns out Doreen was no ordinary singer.

She was one of the absolute stars. It was obviously considered that she had real potential.

Heir hunters solve thousands of cases a year

and millions of pounds are paid out to rightful heirs,

but not every case can be cracked.

The Treasury has a list of over 2,000 estates which baffle the heir hunters and remain unsolved.

Bona vacantia is the Latin for "ownerless goods"

and we deal with the estates of people who die intestate

and without known kin.

This could be money with your name on it,

as long as you are correctly related to the deceased.

So, the people that are entitled are those that trace their relationship in a direct line,

from the deceased person's grandparents.

So, a spouse would be entitled, children would be entitled,

aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces, first cousins.

So, could you be in line for a windfall worth hundreds,

thousands or even millions of pounds?

Today we're focusing on three names. Are they relatives of yours?

Sandor Alex Kiss died in Chertsey, Surrey,

on 22nd February 2005, aged 65.

Did you know Sandor?

Was he a friend or colleague of yours back in the day?

Gertrude Augusta Kite died in Bath back in May 2001.

Kite is a rare surname, shared by less than 40 people in a million.

Was Gertrude a member of your family?

Could you be entitled to her unclaimed estate?

Also on our list is Crystal Hephzibah Gardner,

who was from Marsham in Norfolk.

She died in 2008, aged 71.

While the surname Gardner is quite common,

the name Hephzibah is Hebrew, meaning "my delight is in her".

All efforts to trace heirs have drawn a blank.

Could you help solve Crystal's case?

If Crystal was a relative of yours,

the Treasury wants this money to go to you, its rightful owner.

My division isn't allowed to make a profit.

We don't make commission, or huge bonuses

for passing money to the Treasury. The Treasury is more interested in finding more kin,

which we are, and are we good value for taxpayers' money, which we are.

Remember, it's up to you to prove how you're related to a name on the unclaimed list.

The bona vacantia division will ask for family trees

and the relevant certificates showing the link to the deceased.

A reminder of those names again...

Sandor Kiss, Gertrude Kite,

and, finally, Crystal Gardner.

So, if any of the names on today's list are relatives of yours,

you could have a windfall coming your way.

Next, a case for the heir hunters reveals an unusual estate,

and an even more unusual family.

Most heir-hunting cases involve people who have died in the last 20 years,

but the estate of 19th-century nobleman, Frederick West,

was a very different story.

The search for his heirs would span six generations

and unearth links with the Royal Family and a rather famous politician.

The heir hunters picked up the case after spotting an article in the paper

and partner Charles got straight to work.'

The article stated that they were looking for

the beneficiaries of Frederick West,

who was the donor, he gave land away for the purpose of a school.

Frederick West lived at Ruthin Castle in Wales

and was a wealthy MP and landowner.

In 1844, he decided to donate a small piece of land

so the local church could build a school.

In the middle Victorian period, there was a great philanthropic process

where they were trying to educate the masses.

In order to do that, schools were being created.

But thanks to the School Sites Act of 1841,

Frederick West's gift to the Church came with a catch.

If the school closed, then the land would go back to the original donor.

I think it was a belt and braces approach to try and prevent people

just giving land away for the school,

the school closing immediately and then the land being sold off.

This significant piece of small print was largely irrelevant until 2008,

when the school that had been built on the land closed down.

The plot was put up for sale and by law the proceeds would have to go to heirs of Frederick West.

The land originally given away would have been less than an acre

in order to comply with the legislation,

It's, hopefully, being sold for somewhere in the region of £375,000.

This meant it could be a very profitable case for the heir hunters.

The team needed to find Frederick West's heirs,

whoever and wherever they were.

The first step was to find a copy of Frederick's will.

The finding of the will isn't always the most difficult part.

It's actual interpreting the will, which can be very difficult to read,

to decipher and then to interpret.

The will showed that Frederick West had left his entire estate

to his daughter, Charlotte Louisa West.

She in turn passed the estate down to her nephew, William,

and nieces Georgina and Florence.

Both Georgina and Florence died without children,

so the entire estate went to their brother.

William Cornwallis-West was now a very wealthy man

and in 1872 he married flamboyant socialite Mary Fitzpatrick.

They set up home in Ruthin Castle and began hosting parties for their influential friends,

who included the future King Edward VII.

They were known for

their high class parties, if you like.

And because Prince Edward Albert, the future Edward VII,

used it as one of his secret haunts,

he used to bring many of his lady friends here, including

Lillie Langtry, the actress, Alice Keppel, many of his mistresses,

who may well have included members of the West family themselves.

Their parties were absolutely legendary.

The future king of England, Edward VII,

was one of many high-society guests at Ruthin Castle.

Fun-loving aristocrats travelled across the country to enjoy Mary and William's hospitality,

which earned them the nickname the Wild Wests.

Mary Cornwallis-West, her party trick was sliding down the huge banisters in the main hall

on a tea tray, which apparently Edward Albert loved.

Hence the Wild West Show, the nickname that he gave them.

In between the parties, William and Mary also raised a family.

They had three children, Daisy, Constance and George

and they were next in line to inherit the West estate.

But, surprisingly, George was written out of the will.

George was the middle one. He was the boy.

He had quite a hard life

in his early days.

But, eventually, of course, he started enjoying himself

and he really spent all the money.

He squandered all the proceedings of the family.

Having blown most of the family's fortune,

the 17-year-old George then caused further scandal

by embarking on affair with an American divorcee who was more than twice his age.

He became involved with Jennie Churchill.

This was reckoned to be scandalous, firstly, because of the age gap,

and the two families also had really broken down their friendship.

And this, at the end of the day, did not go down well.

What's more, Jennie had a son the same age as George

and her son was none other than future Prime Minister,

Winston Churchill.

Despite the controversy surrounding their relationship,

George and Jennie married in 1895.

Both families were very much against this and he was sent off to the Boer War,

where he met his future stepson, Winston.

Still to come, George's connection with Winston Churchill

comes in very handy for his family during the Second World War.

I believe Churchill stepped in because of the family connection.

And the search continues for living relatives of talented singer Doreen Walker.

All we've got to play with on this case is one maternal aunt.

So, things aren't looking very good.

Well, the Wests certainly were an extraordinary family.

I want understand why Frederick donated the land for a school in the first place.

I'm meeting Alex Windscheffel, who can tell me more about the need for land

on which to build schools during the Victorian period.

So, Alex, why in Victorian times did people give away land for schools?

In Victorian Britain you don't have a national education system.

The education system is voluntary

and so donation of land by local philanthropists, or benefactors, is one of the only ways

in which a school can be set up for the poor of a certain area.

And what was the School Sites' Act?

The School Sites' Act was an Act of Parliament introduced in 1841.

It provided a legal framework

in order to allow, and encourage, benefactors to donate areas

of lands and sites of land, explicitly for the purposes of education.

The Act meant that the land could only be used for the purpose it was given.

As we've seen in Frederick West's case, the Act stopped schools

from being immediately closed down and the land sold for profit.

Frederick left his acre of land to his local church in 1844,

just three years after the School Sites' Act came into being.

But what was West's motivation to give away the plot?

The West family were the local landowners in Ruthin.

They had Ruthin Castle in Wales.

Two purposes...

Firstly, it's to provide education, which is Anglican.

The school can be run by the local vicars and the churchwardens

to provide an Anglican education for the young children of the parish.

For the family themselves, it was something which is expected of them in their role as local landowners.

It's also a way of restoring, if you like, and establishing,

their local authority in an area.

So, would this small school in rural Wales have made a big difference to the lives of the local people?

Oh, undoubtedly.

Before this time, provision is very partial across the country

and so this is a way, for the first time, especially for the poor of the parish,

to receive a system of education, giving them some of the skills to cope in an industrialising society.

The Wests' donation was one of many across England and Wales.

These donations didn't just apply to schools.

Another piece of legislation, the 1873 Places of Worship Act,

meant the same rules could be applied for people who wanted

to donate land for a church, chapel or burial place.

It seemed during this period, a changing society,

combined with a change in the laws, was changing things for the better.

So, was the School Sites' Act a part of the greater revolution in educating Britain?

Yes, very much so. It's part of a wider Victorian move towards a more national education system.

The 1841 Act provides the legal framework.

Something like 17,000 Church of England schools had been created before 1870.

In 1870, you have, for the first time, a national system of education in England and Wales

which is paid for out of the local rates, paid for, therefore, by the local community,

establishing primary education up to the age of 12 in England and Wales.

The School Sites' Act worked.

It allowed philanthropists, like Frederick West, to donate land for much-needed schools.

They knew that if the schools ever closed, the money would come back to the family.

In the West case, it may have taken six generations to do so,

but the legislation is still in place for it to happen.

All the heir hunters need to do now, is find the family.

Here's some more names of unclaimed estates from the Treasury Solicitor's list.

Could you be in line for a forgotten fortune?

The list of unclaimed estates is money that is owed to members of the public

and new names are added all the time.

The bona vacantia unclaimed list

is a list of cases that we haven't found kin for.

The list goes back to 1997, because that's when our case management system came online.

The idea is to produce a list of all those solvent cases,

so there should be at least a few pounds in there, possibly many thousands.

There is no plan to change the list going forward in a major way,

but we continue to review what we do.

It's something that'll be there for the foreseeable future

and, hopefully, reduce in numbers as further kin are found.

And this is money that you could be entitled to.

Monies raised through bona vacantia

ultimately goes to the general Exchequer to benefit the country as a whole.

But it's important to note that the Crown doesn't want all estates at all costs.

It's not how it operates. It wants kin to be found, and that's what we work very hard to do.

Let's look at some of the estates from the unclaimed list.

Do these names mean anything to you?

Are they relatives of yours?

Henry Potter died in Carlisle back on 19th September, 1997.

Can you help solve Henry's case?

So far, all efforts to trace his heirs have drawn a blank.

Marion Schumann died in Bordesley Green, Birmingham, back in November 2001.

The name Schumann is rare in the UK, more common in Germany.

It literally translates as "shoemaker" or "cobbler".

Did you know Marion? Did she ever talk to you about her family?

Wladislaw Graf died on 17th May, 2007, in Bradford.

I've got Wladislaw's death certificate. It shows that he was

born on 22nd August, 1922, in Poland.

The death certificate also states that his wife was called Stefania Graf.

Do you remember a Stefania Graf?

If you think you can prove you're related to any of the names today,

you could have a fortune waiting for you.

If people want further information

about bona vacantia and what we do,

the first port of call would be our website

which has information about who's an entitled relative,

how to put in a claim, how we deal with estates and things like that.

But, remember, unless the Treasury approve your claim,

there's no way of discovering how much an estate is potentially worth.

We never released details of the estate or anything about the deceased

until a claim has been admitted and we will only then release it to the person

whose claim we have admitted.

A reminder of those names again...

Henry Potter, Marion Schumann

or Wladislaw Graf.

If today's names are relatives of yours,

you could have a windfall coming your way.

Now back to the case of Doreen Walker.

Join me later when I'll be finding out more about the life of a professional singer.

# Thinking that he

# Was a trusty tree... #

But first, can the team find any living family members entitled to her money?

At the offices of Britain's largest heir-hunting firm,

the team are racing to find heirs to Doreen's estate.

She died in Lewisham in 2010.

Gareth, she definitely owns it, so pull some staff on to it as well.

The case is worth an estimated £250,000,

but the team is struggling to make much progress.

They've only found one potential birth for Doreen

and it's 200 miles away in Huddersfield.

Huddersfield to Lewisham is a hugely long way.

I don't particularly like that. I think the birth is in London somewhere.

Doreen died alone in her south London home in March, 2010.

Having separated from her husband in 2001,

it seems she went from being the life and soul of the party

to a virtual recluse.

Doreen was very sociable and amusing

and liked a good laugh.

Went round to parties, liked mixing, all those sort of things.

This is why it was so sad about what happened, that she just withdrew.

But this was a far cry from Doreen's earlier years.

She had worked as a professional singer and had sung at some of the country's most prestigious venues,

including the Royal Albert Hall.

In 1966, she was awarded a scholarship to the Royal College of Music,

a prize that was only awarded to those with exceptional talent.

Sue Sturrock was a fellow student.

To get into the Royal College in 1968 was probably

one of the most difficult things a singer could try to do,

so to be offered a place was a huge achievement,

but as Doreen was given a full scholarship, a full open scholarship,

that was a real accolade.

She was one of the absolute stars.

Doreen graduated from the Royal College of Music in 1970

and seemed destined for great things.

She had a lovely, warm, dark sound

and it could have been a stunning voice.

She could have been a great singer, with her personality.

It just didn't work out as it should have done.

Her potential was not fulfilled.

Although she never became a full-blown solo performer,

Doreen carved out a successful career singing

with the BBC Orchestra and choir London Voices.

Once she appeared in our lives, she was...

I can only say, the life and soul of the party.

She had a very broad Yorkshire dialect

and she was always in the middle of all the fun.

She was a very, very great girl to know.

Back in the office, the team desperately need more information

if they are to have any chance of finding Doreen's heirs.

Case manager Tony Pledger has been given a number for one of Doreen's closest friends.

Could this be the breakthrough they need?

I'm ringing you with regard to the late Doreen Walker.

She was married, but I understand that her husband upped and left her.

Yeah. Do you know when they divorced, at all?

Well, no, I assumed that he was dead, but...

Right, OK.

And it was definitely a village in Huddersfield-ish was it, not Huddersfield town, so to speak?

Tony's confirmed Doreen's place of birth and that she was divorced.

He told me that the deceased husband had returned to South Africa,

remarried and had died in South Africa.

He told me roughly when the divorce was.

He told me a little bit of information about the parents

and confirmed that the deceased was an only child,

so there's a little bit of headway.

Armed with this new information,

the team can finally start building Doreen's family tree,

but Neil is still surprised about the Huddersfield birth.

The first rule is that the deceased was probably born near where they passed away,

unless it's the south coast, but we still expect them to come from the southeast.

Today, rule one has been broken,

which means now that I'm trying to move all my guys back up to South Yorkshire.

Neil has sent one of his northern based travelling researchers

to pick up Doreen's birth certificate.

Here you go.

And, in the meantime, the team in the office are building

a family tree from information they've found online.

-This tree is getting a bit crowded.

-Yeah, I know.

-That's why I started a new one.

-Ben Charles...

What are we looking at here?

They soon build a picture of Doreen's family.

Her parents were Eric Walker and Doris Charlesworth.

Doreen was an only child and so was her father, Eric,

which mean all eyes are on Doreen's mother, Doris.

Her parents were Ben and Ellen Charlesworth and the team are hoping

they had other children who may lead them to heirs.

The family on the Charlesworth side come from a small village called Honley near Huddersfield.

We know that Ben, the grandfather deceased on the Charlesworth side,

was certainly living in that village in 1911,

and then when he died he was still living there,

so there's a potential chance that some family are still living in the village.

These are simply some telephone numbers of Charlesworths living in that village.

There may be Charlesworths living in the right village, but are they the same family?

If they are, they could be Doreen's cousins and heirs to her £250,000 estate.

Hello, sorry to trouble you. My name is Tony Pledger.

We specialise in tracing missing heirs

and we're researching into the family of somebody who died recently in London

who was born in the village of Honley

and their mother was a Doris Charlesworth.

If nobody in your Charlesworth family has ever heard of a Doris Charlesworth

who married an Eric Walker, then I'm sorry to have troubled you.

OK, then. That's OK. Thanks ever so. Thanks, bye.

Tony speaks to all the Charlesworths he can

and not a single one of them has heard of Doreen's mother, Doris.

So, things aren't looking terribly good.

As Doreen had no children herself, the team are running out of options.

Then the researchers make a breakthrough.

They find that Doris had a sister called Annie who is Doreen's paternal aunt.

If Annie had children, they'll be the cousins the team have been searching for.

But Gareth is doubtful.

All we've got to play with on this case is one maternal aunt

who, unfortunately from our point of view, she did get married,

but she didn't have any children that we know of, at the moment,

so our last hope is that maybe she adopted a child.

We're waiting for a probate to come back.

When that comes back, that should tell us, but no heirs as yet.

It doesn't look like Annie had children, but Gareth's refusing to give up.

He's asked for a copy of Annie's will to see if it mentions

any children or other relatives that the team haven't found.

We've just seen the will of Annie Oldham who, in her will,

she's mentioned the deceased, so we know it's the right family,

but she's also mentioned an Anne, who she's described as a niece.

We need to work out where she fits in.

This could be the last roll of the dice.

Is Anne the daughter of an aunt or uncle they don't know about

and the last remaining blood relative of Doreen Walker?

She, as I said, describes her niece as Anne.

Her parents, no matter what we do, are always going to come from him.

It's a disaster for the team.

Anne is a niece through Annie's husband.

She's no relation to Doreen and cannot inherit her estate.

The team have exhausted every avenue of research, and must admit defeat.

Unfortunately, it looks as though we're not really going to be able

to make much progress on this estate.

Not through lack of trying, I don't think,

but really through lack of family, as from what we've found,

the father was an only child,

the mother had a single sister who got married,

but it doesn't look like they had any children,

so as far as we're concerned, it's a dead case.

It's a case with no living beneficiaries on it.

Obviously, if this case came from Scotland,

we could have gone a generation further back

before we came down and foreign beneficiaries, but we can't,

it's an English estate, so it's money which is going to the Treasury.

Doreen may not have any heirs,

but her larger-than-life personality and remarkable voice

have left a lasting legacy.

I think she'd want us all to remember the best of her singing,

and the very best of her performances,

and the happy memories her friends have

and those of us who remember her from more of a distance

have of her as such a vibrant and huge human being.

As the team's drawn a blank,

it seems unlikely anyone will ever come forward

to claim Doreen's estate, estimated at a quarter of a million pounds.

And if it's not claimed by 2040, the money will go to the Government.

So unfortunately, it appears there are no heirs to Doreen's estate,

but I'm intrigued by her life as a singer.

SHE SINGS OPERATICALLY

I'm here at Burr House to meet Emma Curtis,

one of the only professional contraltos around,

who can tell me all about Doreen's voice

and the challenges she would have faced

trying to make it in a competitive world.

Emma, that was fantastic. It was beautiful. Thank you.

So Doreen was a contralto like you,

but for those of us who can't sing a note, what does that actually mean?

Well, I think first thing to say is Doreen was definitely contralto,

and we're both contraltos,

but each voice is unique and it differs according to personality,

so to say that we're like each other, I don't know.

I don't know.

But the categories of female voice are, from high to low,

soprano, mezzo soprano and contralto,

so the contralto is the lowest of the female voices.

But Doreen trained at the Royal College of Music.

Clearly, it takes years of training to be a professional singer.

It does.

There's a lot more to becoming a professional singer

than many people might imagine.

We see people so often singing with microphones,

but a classical singer has to learn to balance the resonances

within their own bodies in order to be that microphone themself,

so you can be heard at the back of a hall.

And balancing how your sound reflects around your own head and body

is something that takes many years to get really right,

and to get a beautiful purity of sound,

and also, we have to sing operas in French, Italian, German,

sometimes Russian, sometimes Spanish, so we learn languages,

lots of us speak other languages,

and there's also all the musical training

that you need to be at the top of the musical profession.

Which Doreen's friends and colleagues speculate she could have been.

Listening to Emma, I get the impression

it takes a lot of hard work to be at the top of your game

in the world of professional singing.

We know that Doreen sang for the BBC Orchestra,

but what about the jobs treading the boards?

What are the traditional roles for a contralto, then?

In opera, the contraltos tend to be...

some people say witches and bitches.

It's a fabulous alliteration, but it's not just all cackling.

We tend to sing the earth mothers and the prophetesses and seers.

Basically, the wiser characters most of the time

tend to be contraltos,

so there's something about the colour and earthiness of the voice

that composers like as portraying that kind of information or role.

So there's less roles for a young contralto.

-The older you get, the more roles there are.

-Absolutely, yes.

Very much so.

For a young contralto, the repertoire is really quite limited.

There's not so much to sing.

You're waiting until you're growing into these motherly and wise roles.

That's great.

As an actress, you're always dreading getting older.

Contraltos are waiting to get older!

So why did Doreen never pursue the big roles?

Sadly, we will never know.

She was obviously a very big personality,

but maybe it just wasn't the life for her.

I think that it's quite a challenge to make a career

when there are so many different factors involved.

There's not just the technical work,

there's not just the beauty of the voice,

but there's how one withstands the travelling

and the very curious hours.

-Sometimes, we work 12, 14-hour days...

-Yeah.

..on a regular basis, and seven-day weeks quite a lot,

so you have to be prepared to really work

and not worry too much about your social life.

-So you've got to really love it, then?

-If you don't love it, you're in the wrong job.

You've got to love it, because also,

loving it is partly what enables you to go through the long hours

and the travel and all those other things.

-Loving it is very deeply important.

-Thank you.

I don't think anyone can doubt Doreen loved what she did,

and during her career, singing as a contralto,

this vivacious, outgoing woman

made a deep impression on everyone who knew her.

Lastly, it's back to the story of the West family,

and the search for living family members entitled to inherit money

from land donated over 160 years ago.

In 2008, heir hunter Charles Fraser began the search

for heirs to a former school site worth an estimated £375,000.

The school was to be demolished,

and an 1841 law meant the land it was built on

had to be returned to the family of its original owner,

19th-century nobleman Frederick West.

By tracing his descendants,

the heir hunters had already uncovered a story

of extraordinary wealth and royal connections.

These types of cases are often very exciting.

The families we're dealing with are often quite different to the ordinary intestacy cases.

Frederick's great-great-grandson, George Cornwallis-West,

had caused a scandal and been written out of the family will,

so the heir hunters were now focused on his sisters, Constance and Daisy.

Mary leaves her estate to her two daughters.

She leaves her property in Cannes to her daughter Constance,

in order that she may have a residence near to her sister,

Mary Theresa Olivia, Princess of Pless.

So at that stage we knew that

not only had one daughter married well, into the Westminster family,

the other daughter had also married into royalty of some sort.

It was obvious we were now dealing with quite wealthy families,

of certainly upper and higher class in British society

and, indeed, German nobility and royalty, so it was very exciting.

We didn't know where we were going to end up.

First, they turned to Daisy,

and her story was yet another remarkable chapter

in the West family history.

We didn't know much about her initially,

so we had to do quite a lot of research

to establish who she was and what happened to her,

and then the story of her life was quite fascinating, but tragic.

Because Daisy's brother George had squandered the family fortune,

her mother Mary, also known as Patsy,

was keen to find a wealthy suitor,

and who better than a German prince?

Patsy wanted to make sure that her daughter married well,

and she was on the lookout on the Continent,

and the Prince of Pless came along

and she decided he would be the one,

and he was not very pleased with this

because he came to London to meet another young lady,

who in fact he lost, but at the end of the day, he did marry Daisy.

The newlyweds moved to the enormous Furstenstein Castle

in the Prussian town of Pless.

The castle look like the setting of a fairytale,

but Daisy and the Prince of Pless had married for convenience,

and there was no happy ending.

As far as the marriage was concerned,

neither Daisy or the Prince of Pless really, really wanted to be together.

It was really forced on them, but friends and family

and the Royal family did in fact try to help it out.

They gradually got to know each other a bit better.

Things got worse when the Pless family fell on hard times.

Daisy moved from the castle to the gatehouse,

and the couple eventually divorced.

Daisy, the Princess of Pless, died in 1943.

The Pless family money went

because of the way the governments of both Poland and Germany

took over the companies after the war.

The money went, the money went, she became ill and by that time,

there was no money left to look after her and she depended on friends.

Unfortunately, she developed MS

and that really brought on a slow, slow death to her.

In London,

the heir hunters were trying to find the rightful beneficiaries

of a piece of land donated to make a school

by Daisy's great-grandfather, Frederick West.

Charles's next move was to see if Daisy had left a will.

Finding the will for the Princess was difficult

for a whole host of reasons.

There were obviously the boundary changes from Germany and Poland,

and also the fact that she died in poverty.

It was actually so difficult.

We haven't been able to trace any will for her at all.

This meant looking for Daisy's blood relatives.

They quickly learnt that Daisy and the Prince of Pless

had had three sons, Hansel, Alexander and Bolko.

The oldest, Hansel, who was also known as Henry, had died,

but in his will, the only beneficiary was an ex-wife who was still alive.

The team had found their first heir through a long line of inheritants.

He left the entirety of his estate to his ex-wife, Lady Ashdown.

In relation to the Honourable Frederick West,

Lady Ashdown has no blood relationship at all.

She's the ex-wife of a very distant relative of his.

Lady Ashton lives in London, and was stunned to hear she was in line

to inherit from her ex-husband's great-great-grandfather.

I knew there was a lot of land or had been a lot of land in Wales,

but I didn't know much about it.

We never talked about it.

Um...

So I didn't really expect it to come back, as it were.

Funny how things happen so many years later, isn't it?

Although Lady Ashdown and Henry Pless divorced,

they remained on good terms.

He was one of the kindest people I've ever known. He never...

I never, in 30-plus years, I never saw him irritated or bad-tempered.

What more can I say? He was a saint, I think.

Henry had come to England from Prussia in the 1930s,

but when war broke out,

he found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Because he was German,

and...although he was living in England and had English relations,

like the Duke of Westminster was his uncle,

he was popped into Brixton Prison

and there they kept him for... I think it was nearly three years.

And then one day, the prison governor came and said,

"I am so sorry, this has been a frightful mistake,

"you should never have been here, you must leave as soon as possible."

It seems that Henry was released from prison

because Winston Churchill was the stepson of George Cornwallis-West,

Henry's uncle.

I believe Churchill stepped in because of the family connections.

He brought the matter... He had tried other ways, but eventually,

he asked a question in Parliament.

Soon afterwards, Hansel was released.

For Charles and his team,

the search for heirs to a £375,000 plot of land

was starting to come good.

They found that another of Daisy's sons, Bolko,

had three children, who were also heirs.

They now turned their attention to Daisy's sister, Constance,

the Duchess of Westminster.

Would her branch of the family lead to even more heirs?

Initially, I found it quite surprising

that she had left her estate to her companion,

and not to any of her children,

which in 1970 amounted to just under £30,000.

Quite a lot of money at the time.

The beneficiary named in Constance's will was Nora Gillespie,

and she had worked for the Duchess for over 40 years.

Nora's godson, Peter Sykes,

has letters from the Duchess which date back to 1928,

when she was looking for someone to manage her estate.

"Dear Miss Wills," and this is July 4, 1928,

"Dear Miss Wills, I am writing to ask you to do me a favour.

"If by chance you hear of a nice lady," with a capital L,

"who wants a comfortable home and is a really capable manager,

"do let me know as I am looking out for one

"to entirely run this house for me. Someone about 28 or 30,

"but she must be a lady.

"Also, she must have had some experience of the type,"

with a capital T, "of work required."

At just 22 years of age,

Nora Gillespie wasn't the ideal candidate.

The Duchess was very doubtful that such a young person

could rule the household in the way that she wanted,

but evidently she convinced her,

and in 1928, she took the job

and was there until the Duchess died in 1970.

Constance rewarded Nora's loyalty

by naming her as the sole beneficiary to her estate.

Nora died 22 years later, in 1992, and she left half of her estate,

which had come from the West family, to her godson, Peter.

It's sort of started me delving back into the history

and discovering, if you like, the Cornwallis-Wests of Ruthin,

and some of it has been quite fascinating.

The parties they used to go to, and...yes, and also, the Plesses.

Princess Daisy, from what I've read since,

it would make the eyes water, really.

Although Peter has no blood link to the West family,

he was now an heir to a piece of land donated in 1844,

and now worth an estimated £375,000.

How do I feel about inheriting from this family which isn't my family?

I feel quite pleased, actually.

After an epic heir hunt that has spanned six generations,

Charles Fraser is pleased to be able to wrap up a truly remarkable case.

We've established that the majority of the heirs

aren't blood relatives,

and we've also gained a delightful insight into some of these families,

these quite wealthy families, and how they lead their lives.

Some of the details in their wills

just don't appear in ordinary people's wills.

Fraser and Fraser managed to trace nine heirs

who will all share in the six-figure proceeds

from the sale of the school.

Join me next time on Heir Hunters

for more family secrets and long-forgotten fortunes.

If you would like advice about building your family tree

or making a will, go to:

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