Brown/Greenhouse Heir Hunters

It's a Thursday morning

and a team of heir hunters are taking a gamble

trying to trace the beneficiaries of an estate

that could be worth anything from £5,000 to many millions.

They're looking for 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, after a slow start in the office,

the heir hunters take a gamble on the estate of the late William Brown.

It all sounds very speculative to me. But they're usually right and I'm usually wrong.

And in Clee Hill, Shropshire,

Lord Teviot unearths ancient family secrets as he searches for heirs.

Bigamy was something people were pushed towards by the legal circumstances of the day.

Plus, 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.

Dare I say, it is rewarding when one can put people in touch with one another.

It's a Thursday morning,

and overnight, the Treasury has advertised a new list of unclaimed estates.

Using the list, heir hunting company Fraser and Fraser are deciding which estates are worth pursuing.

-That doesn't sound like he owns property.

-No.

But it's not looking promising.

Finding heirs costs money, and the team must be as sure as they can be

that estates are worth enough for them to cover their costs and turn in a profit.

Heir hunters generally work for an agreed percentage of the estate,

so the larger the estate, the larger their commission.

Six cases out today. None of them look as though they've got much value.

The team decides to take a closer look at the advertised lists.

Can we take copies of the trees

and then put all the paperwork on the table?

Initial research suggests that none of the deceased on the list own property.

Looks like there's an ex-council flat,

so whether we've got any value here, we don't know.

Partner Neil Fraser has seen better days.

-None of them have got any hope.

-They've all got the same hope.

No hope at all. HE LAUGHS

Today, Neil has no choice but to chase cases he normally wouldn't consider.

We haven't picked up any cases in our tier one,

our valuable cases, the ones with property.

So it moves us down to the second-tier cases.

As it stands at the moment, we haven't got any of them, either.

Neil prays taking a gamble on one of the third tier estates will pay off.

We're hoping that some of the cases we work move up into a tier two,

where it's going to be nearer £20,000 to £50,000 in value.

With this in mind, Neil picks a case for the team to chase.

William Charles Brown died in 2000 in Charing Cross Hospital in London, aged just 59.

From 1983 until his death,

he'd lived in a flat in Roehampton, where his neighbour remembers him fondly.

When he died, the atmosphere in this house was completely different.

It was like something had been lost here.

He was a real nice guy, actually.

I do miss him as a neighbour, to be honest.

William was known as Billy to his friends

and no-one had been friends with him longer than George Jago.

They first met working together in a furniture warehouse.

I met him about 1968

and then I went to work with him in 1970

and we stayed pals ever since then.

But he was, without a doubt, part of our family.

Billy went on to become a grave digger at Putney Vale Cemetery.

During his long years there, he became close friends with co-worker David Farr.

We was the best of mates. We stuck together.

The main thing I miss is the friendship.

David remembers him as a content man with simple pleasures.

Billy was a bit of a teddy boy. He was a bit of a lad with cars.

He was always wanting something smart. I can't remember how many cars he actually had.

But he used to love his car.

When Billy died in 2000, his friends George and David granted his last wish,

to be buried next to his beloved mother.

During his life, Billy was deeply affected by the death of his mum

and lost all contact with his wider family, a fact that doesn't help the heir hunters.

Their first job is to find Billy's birth records and his London address.

Apparently, I'm looking for William C Brown now.

And there should still be quite a lot of William C Browns.

William Brown is an extremely common name,

but the team have discovered Billy's middle name was Charles.

This makes researcher Simon Mills' job slightly easier.

HE LAUGHS

There is apparently only one William Brown with the initial C.

Although no-one knows how much Billy's estate could be worth,

there could still be plenty of competition to find his heirs.

But trawling the electoral role of the area where Billy died,

Simon gets lucky and finds a possible address for him

on a council estate in Roehampton, Southwest London.

Yeah. Yeah.

If he died, there's a possibility that he died in either Kingston or Charing Cross Hospital.

This is a good lead, but all the information the team have at this point is purely speculative

as they have no proof yet that they've found the right William Brown.

It's early days yet, yeah. OK.

We've got a date of birth. We've got what we think is his last known address.

What we need is the death.

The death certificate may contain vital clues for the team.

Listed on it could be a person's occupation,

-date and place of birth, where they died and potentially their former address.

-Right.

Being such a quiet day, most of the office staff are working the Brown estate.

Case manager Tony Pledger hopes to get ahead of any competition

and decides to send out one of the company's travelling heir hunters.

Ex-policeman Bob Barratt is one of Fraser and Fraser's squadron of travellers

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.

At the moment, I'm heading towards Fulham Register Office

but whether or not that'll get changed in the meantime, who knows?

Case manager Tony has a problem with the details of Billy's birth

and wants to get to the bottom of it fast.

We now think that he might have been born up in Claro,

which I think is Yorkshire,

in 1941,

but the birth was re-registered in 1955.

So why would Billy's birth have been re-registered?

Tony gets Simon on the case.

Meanwhile, the team has also found a potential marriage for Billy's parents,

so Tony passes on what little information they've got to Bob.

The office think that William Charles Brown may have been born in 1941...

..to a Mary B Sheridan, who married someone called Simpson.

It all sounds very simple, but for Tony, things are still up in the air.

We think, and it's only thinking at the moment,

that the deceased was the child of parents that subsequently married when he was about 15.

And it looks as if, from the mother's earlier marriage,

there might be several half-brothers and sisters of the deceased.

If Tony has the right William C Brown, AKA Billy, from the birth records,

then he was born in Yorkshire to parents Charles and Mary

and was their only child.

Using Mary's maiden name on the birth records,

they discover she'd previously been married in 1922

and she'd had six children.

Potentially, these are Billy's family and heirs.

In the office, Simon thinks he may have got to the bottom of

how and why Billy's birth was registered twice.

Look at the image. Where William C Brown should be, there's a mark, a cross.

Down at the bottom of the page, we can see that William C Brown's been put in

and it mentions that he's been reregistered in March 1955.

What it looks like has happened is his mother, who was married to Mr Simpson at the time,

had him with Mr Brown

during the war.

They subsequently got married in 1955

and to legitimise the birth, they've reregistered the birth in 1955.

A potential headache for the heir hunters has been solved.

Billy's parents had him out of wedlock, but reregistered his birth later on, once they'd married.

Tony now sets about trying to trace Billy's potential half-brothers and sisters.

Do you think we've got enough sheets of paper now?

Er, yeah. And all of them are actually useful.

Using census records, he thinks he may have found a half-brother living in Harlow.

A fantastic result this early on in the hunt.

Tony calls Bob again, whose wish list of certificates is growing by the minute.

Hello, Bob. Just letting you know that we might have a half-brother of the deceased on the phone

-living in Harlow.

-Right.

-And there's potentially three or four

other half-blood siblings on the mother's side.

-Anyway, so it's all down to you to get the marriage of the potential parents out of Fulham.

-No bother.

HE SIGHS

Tony's frustrated at all the assumptions and guesswork with this case, but he's not the only one.

It all sounds very speculative to me.

But they're usually right and I'm usually wrong, so the next few minutes will tell.

Tony's not going to rest on his laurels.

Using information gleaned from the electoral roll,

he's calling the man he suspects was Billy's half-brother.

He is 84-year-old George Simpson

and could be the first heir Tony has spoken to.

All right, thanks a lot. Bye.

Right, well, that was talking to the son of the potential brother of the deceased.

It's beginning to look like it's the right family, though I can't be sure,

but whether or not it turns out to be financially viable, I've got no idea at the moment.

George Simpson could be the key that unlocks this case.

His family knowledge could be vital to the heir hunters.

He's one of six potential children from Billy's mother's first marriage

to Benjamin Simpson.

The couple married in 1922

and had George four years later.

It's a great lead for Tony

and Bob's got even more news from Fulham Register Office.

Hello, Tony. I've got the first death come back. I thought I'd ring it in to you.

This is our deceased, William Charles Brown.

Billy's death certificate has confirmed they are chasing the right William C Brown.

The date of birth matches, as does the place of birth in Yorkshire.

Bob's also now laid his hands on Billy's parents' marriage certificate and death certificate.

So that marriage was right. OK. The death of the mother was right. OK.

Do you reckon you could get anything out of Wandsworth?

-Yeah, they're normally good.

-Trundle over to Wandsworth, then.

Tony suspects Billy's mother's second marriage could've happened around the Wandsworth area.

He hopes Bob can track down the certificate

at the different register office.

That's a good idea. Thanks. Bye.

The heir hunters are making progress but they still have no idea

whether there is actually any money in Billy¹s estate.

But researcher Simon Grosvenor knows appearances can be deceptive.

Several years ago now, I did an enquiry in a block of council flats

at the bottom of the Hammersmith flyover, they looked straight out onto the dual carriageway.

He lived in two rooms, no fridge, no television,

walked around as the usual tramp-type figure, trousers held up with string,

and he had three quarters of a million pounds in the bank.

Could Billy's estate be a similar case?

The heir hunters are working as quickly as they can to track down his beneficiaries,

but there are some things you just can't plan for.

The traffic is a lot worse than I thought it was going to be.

I'll try my best to get there in time.

Heir hunting isn't always an exact science.

Some cases are straightforward. They get plucked from the Treasury¹s list

and are solved within days by the heir hunters.

Others prove that little bit trickier and can remain unsolved for many years.

Georgina Greenhouse was born in Middleton-in-Teesdale.

She died in 1998 aged 96, but she left no will.

Her £11,000 estate remained unclaimed for over 11 years.

That is, until heir hunter Lord Teviot got involved.

I think I'll make a note of that.

Husband and wife heir hunting team Charles and Mary, AKA the Lord and Lady Teviot,

each run their own heir hunting companies that specialise in older, unsolved cases

that have remained on the treasury's list for a very long time.

These are estates other companies have either failed to solve or have deemed too small to take on.

Well, I think I have a telephone number for him.

The couple cover cases that can lead all over the world

and it was Charles's business partner Chris in Australia

who spotted the case of Georgina Greenhouse.

There was a deceased, Georgina Greenhouse, born 1902,

in the Middleton district, Teesdale.

Charles began to piece together what little information he had.

Georgina never married or ever had any children.

She more or less lived most of her life

in Stanhope or near Stanhope in Weardale.

And she died in a nursing home there.

Charles would have to widen his search.

He went back to Georgina's birth certificate.

So it wasn't difficult to find the marriage in August 1899

of the two parents, Benjamin Thomas Greenhouse and Florence Elizabeth Horn.

Georgina's parents, Benjamin and Florence,

married near the Shropshire village of Clee Hills, which is famed for its stone.

At the time of their marriage, quarrying had become big business in Clee Hills

and this had a dramatic effect on the local community.

It's known that, by the late 1800s,

there were between 1,500 and 2,000 men working here

in the quarrying and mining industries.

So that meant that something like 1,500 people had to be brought in from other parts of the country,

and with their families, that means an enormous increase in population to between 5,000 and 6,000 people.

Against this backdrop of change in Clee Hills,

the Greenhouse family was expanding

and Charles was about to make a surprising discovery on the 1901 census.

Florence first had a daughter,

another Florence, in Teesdale in 1898.

This was a year before Benjamin and Florence's marriage,

meaning Florence junior's birth was illegitimate.

But, two years after the couple's marriage,

they had a second daughter.

Georgina and the family seemed to be blossoming.

Then suddenly, Benjamin disappeared from the records.

Clearly, he had gone.

And Georgina was living with two other siblings

who were called Lowther.

It seemed Florence Greenhouse had a new man in her life.

This was confirmed when Charles searched under her maiden name, Horn,

and found a marriage to a Mr Lowther.

When Florence Elizabeth Horn

married Mr Lowther in 1918,

she put herself down as spinster.

To describe herself as a spinster,

Florence must have been either divorced or widowed from Benjamin Greenhouse.

But Charles could find no records of Benjamin's death

or the couple's divorce and Florence had now remarried and had two more children,

who were half-blood siblings to the young Georgina.

It seemed Florence had committed bigamy.

The records show she was still married to Benjamin Greenhouse when she married Mr Lowther.

It's probably quite important to be aware that bigamy in this instance

would've been quite different to the kind of bigamy

we're used to thinking about today.

We're not talking about a case of a husband who keeps three or four wives on the go

and jets between them.

Really, bigamy in cases like this was something that was forced on people through circumstances.

Because divorce was so expensive,

there really was no other option if you wanted to form another relationship

and if you wanted to get that legally recognised.

So we can see that bigamy was something that people were pushed towards

by the legal circumstances of the day.

But the bigamous marriage didn't concern Charles.

If anything, it opened new lines of enquiry.

He could now look for heirs from Georgina's two new half siblings

and her older sister, Florence.

But sadly, none of them had children.

The next stage was to see if Georgina had aunts or uncles

who could lead Charles to cousins.

On the paternal side, there were none. There were no Horns.

So we only had Greenhouse, of which there were a great many, there were eight.

Georgina's father Benjamin Greenhouse had four brothers and four sisters.

Their descendants would be heirs to Georgina's £11,000 estate.

And one did notice there was a Fanny Greenhouse

that married an Alexander Perkins.

Then one was told that the youngest one of all was Millicent.

Millicent Perrot was born in Clee Hills but now lives in London.

Her grandmother was Georgina's aunt, Fanny Greenhouse,

and Charles was confident she was an heir.

Yes, it was a bit of a shock, in a way.

Cos I'd never heard of Georgina Greenhouse.

She may have known me,

but no, it was a real surprise.

And I found it very exciting, you know?

Millicent was one of six children,

but tragedy struck the family when she was still very young.

My mother died when I was five and she died, unfortunately,

having a child.

So I can't remember my mother very well.

But I do my father.

He died when I was six.

I do remember him and I've been told since

that he was quite a joker

and always playing games.

Because her father died so young,

Millicent grew up knowing very little about her family.

But for Charles, the mystery of the Greenhouses was pretty much solved.

Through Georgina's eight aunts and uncles,

he'd found over 30 heirs to her £11,000 estate

and the case was almost wrapped up.

But still to come, Charles learns his hard work had been in vain.

One's very philosophical about these things. If it's egg on one's face, fair enough.

And the team at Fraser struggle in their race to find heirs.

-Did he know anything about his Aunt Maureen?

-No, he didn't.

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

that have baffled the heir hunters and remain unclaimed.

So could you be the heir they've been looking for?

Estates can stay on the list for up to 30 years

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

It's money that could be destined for you.

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

Are they relatives of yours?

Franklin Nwane Osadebe died aged 48 in 2004 in London.

Do you recognize his Nigerian surname?

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

Or did you know Timothy Houlihan?

He died in December 2008 in Oxfordshire.

If no heirs are found for his estate, the money will go to the government.

Or finally, Maria Joahne Hoile.

She died aged 89 in the year 2000.

Her Scandinavian surname is prevalent in the South East of England.

If the names Franklin Nwane Osadebe, Timothy Houlihan

or Maria Joahne Hoile mean anything to you,

then you could have a windfall on its way.

William Charles Brown, Billy to his friends,

died from cancer in 2000 aged just 59 years old.

He'd never married or had any children

and his friends remember him as a man who loved to work hard and play hard.

Billy had loads of friends. Everybody liked Billy.

He was just 120 percent a great guy.

He used to have a drink and a laugh and joke all the time

and go home and have a kip. That's what Billy used to do. Yeah.

By all accounts, Billy was a loveable rogue.

But beneath his tattoos and fast cars, he hid a gentle soul.

You could tell he was a mum's boy.

We actually buried his ashes in the cemetery with his mother

in respect for him to be with his mother,

which I would've thought he'd always wanted to be, next to his own kin.

After his mother's death, Billy lost contact with any family he had

and heir hunting company Fraser and Fraser are now trying to find them.

But they have no idea if Billy even had any money.

Quite frustrating, I think, for the researchers,

because all their hard work could end up in a file in the bin.

But case manager Tony Pledger has made good progress in tracking down Billy's possible heirs.

Let's put that on the pile of things we have to worry about later.

The team have discovered that Billy's mother and father married in the mid 1950s

and he was their only child.

His mother had had a previous marriage

and it is the children from her first relationship that are leading Tony to heirs.

On the mother's side, the mother was previously married to a fella called Benjamin Simpson

and had five, possibly six, children from that marriage

who would be half-brothers of the deceased.

Tony has sent out travelling heir hunter Bob Barratt.

He's on his way to collect vital certificates from the register office

that could crack this case and lead the team to heirs.

I've just applied for a copy of the marriage certificate

of our deceased person's mother's first marriage.

If Bob can find the right marriage of Mary to her first husband, the office will have confirmation

that the potential half-blood heirs they are chasing are from the right family.

I've got the certificates I wanted.

The death of a Patricia Vivien Lawrence,

whose maiden name was Simpson, so probably is the deceased's half-sister, or was,

and...

..the deceased's mother's first marriage to a Benjamin Simpson

back in 1922.

This is the news the office has been waiting for.

It means they've been tracing the right family and, more importantly, the right heirs.

Billy's half brother George is alive and well

and Bob has confirmed the death of half sister Patricia.

But there are still other siblings and heirs for the team to track down.

On a roll, Tony calls in a second travelling heir hunter.

We've got Dave Hadley going to Romford to hopefully interview the son of Vera Hale,

who'd be a sister of the deceased, half-sister of the deceased.

Vera died in 1999

but had two children who could be heirs.

Patricia had four children

and as half-blood nephews of the deceased,

they are entitled.

And then we get some others that we can't yet figure out, there's a Maureen Simpson and a Coleen,

and we haven't got that one up to date yet.

So it's going quite well, really.

Tony wishes the same could be said for Bob. He¹s trying desperately to get to their first heir,

Billy's half brother George.

The traffic is a lot worse than I thought it was going to be.

I'll be about half an hour late, if that's OK?

Luckily, in Romford, Dave is having more luck. He's beaten any competition he may be up against.

"Your destination is straight ahead."

And is about to meet Alan Hale, the son of Billy's half-sister, Vera,

and their first heir.

Hello there. Can I speak to Mr Alan Hale, please?

Can you confirm who your mother was?

Yes, Vera Josephine Hale

-was her married name.

-OK.

-When was the last time you saw Billy?

-Oh, I haven't seen Billy

since, I think, not long after my father died.

Crikey, I haven't seen him since I was a young man in Fulham.

Billy's estrangement from his wider family

means Alan's memories of his late uncle are limited at best.

As an individual, I think he was quite a nice guy,

even though he was fairly wild,

but there are other sides of it that I would never have seen

because of not being around as he grew older,

which is quite sad, really. Unfortunately, that's how life works out sometimes.

It went very well. He's a really nice guy.

He was able to confirm a lot of the information we had on the tree.

He signed an agreement with us and we can get things moving straight away.

This is a fantastic result for the heir hunters,

finding and signing their first heir.

Over in Harlow, Bob's through the traffic and has made it to Billy's half brother's house,

potentially their second heir.

-Hello, Mr Simpson?

-That's me.

-Hello, I'm Bob Barratt from Fraser and Fraser.

George Simpson is 84 years old and still gainfully employed.

-The person that died we think is your half-blood.

-That's right. That's Billy.

-Right. William...

-Brown.

-Right.

-I've not seen Billy for years.

-Since... We're talking about the war years, are we?

I never saw him since the 50s, I suppose it was.

He's another family member who'd lost contact with Billy

and hadn't seen him for decades.

As Billy's heir, George is happy to sign with Frasers.

-You want it there?

-Yes, please.

-In there?

The family information George has been able to provide is of great help to the team in the office.

Simon has now found heirs from Billy's half sister Colleen.

We've now identified the death of Coleen in 1998.

Tony sends Bob to visit and hopefully sign up the new-found heirs.

-Two addresses for the children, both of which might interest you.

-Right.

Bob also passes useful information back to Tony

concerning Billy's half-sister, Maureen, who is still alive.

I've got a telephone number for the son of the half-sister of the deceased.

And Simon's research has also come up trumps.

He's found the final heirs of the day.

They're descendents of Billy's brother, Herbert.

We've now identified Herbie's marriage

and the births of two of his children,

and we've got addresses for two of them.

At the end of a long day, Tony's frazzled but pleased.

We do now know what happened to all the brothers and sisters. So it's a good finish to the day.

In total, the team has found 16 heirs to Billy's estate

and over the next few weeks, each one will learn how much they're going to inherit.

The heir hunters will spend the next few months administrating the estate

and collecting the necessary paperwork.

But partner Neil Fraser is happy with Tony's work so far.

It's certainly been a worthwhile day for him

and he's signed up beneficiaries and solved a case, so that's got to be good news.

Billy's estate has now been confirmed at just £5,000.

OK.

The heirs are unlikely to receive life-changing amounts of money

and there will be very little commission for the heir hunters.

But at least Billy's family now have a wealth of knowledge about the late William Brown.

In 2009, Lord Teviot took on the £11,000 estate of Georgina Greenhouse.

She'd died in a nursing home in 1998 aged 96 and left no will.

Through Georgina's father Benjamin Greenhouse, Charles has found more than 30 heirs

and one of them was Georgina's first cousin once removed, Millicent Perrot.

I was so excited about learning more about my mother and father.

Having lost both her parents young,

Millicent knew little about the Greenhouse side of her family.

My father worked in the quarries

in the Clee Hills.

I don't remember much of his work, cos I was very young.

I know that they worked very, very hard.

Millicent¹s father was a quarryman,

which meant working long hours in incredibly tough conditions.

The environment of working in a quarry in the Victorian period

was really quite a harsh one.

There was very little mechanised equipment,

so muscle power was really what was needed

and so it was very hard physical labour. The hours were long.

It could be 14 hours that the quarrymen were away from home.

Millicent was just six years old when her parents died

so she and her older sister Janet

were sent to live with their mother's sister Millie and her husband Joseph.

By coincidence, Joseph was also a Greenhouse,

but Charles believed he was an illegitimate member of the family and no relation to Georgina.

Because they had no children of their own,

I think they gave us all the love that they would give to their own children.

So Janet and I were very, very lucky girls.

Uncle Joe was... a caring, loving man.

And he took a good place of my father.

He was full of fun and he made us toys

and took us out on horses

and we were made to collect the eggs, Janet and I.

Despite the tragic loss of her parents,

Millicent and her sister had an idyllic childhood with their aunt and uncle.

And even though she's moved away,

Millicent still has a real fondness for the beautiful Clee Hills area.

There's something about the Clee Hills that is magic.

And, of all the years that I've been away,

a little bit of me is still up there.

Sorry.

Sadly, Millicent's aunt died in 1948

and as a lone widower, Joseph was no longer able to look after the girls.

My brother was notified

and my brother came out of the navy

and he had friends in Ramsgate in Kent

and we lived with them from then onwards.

But Millicent's kindly uncle, Joseph Greenhouse, was about to give the heir hunters a real headache.

Charles had ruled him out of the search because none of the records suggested

he was a close relative of Georgina.

My business partner in Australia actually emailed me

that he'd found the Joseph who he thought was previously illegitimate.

He then discovered he wasn't.

He was a full brother of the deceased.

Charles couldn't believe it.

Millicent's Uncle Joseph was actually the son of Georgina's father, Benjamin Greenhouse.

As well as having two daughters,

it now turned out Benjamin and Florence had had a son, Joseph,

Georgina's full-blood brother.

His descendants would now be the only heirs

to Georgina's £11,000 estate.

Well, it meant that all the first cousins were no longer entitled.

Joseph's new position on the family tree

also meant he was a closer relative to Millicent.

Rather than being just an uncle by marriage,

he was now her father's cousin, which made her his first cousin once removed.

I was really surprised to find out that my Uncle Joe

is also a cousin of my father.

The startling revelation meant Charles now had to find out

if Joseph had children of his own.

He quickly learnt that after his first wife, Millie, had died,

Joseph had remarried and had two daughters, Pauline and Josephine.

Joseph's daughters were Georgina's nieces

and they were now the only heirs to her £11,000 estate.

But the news came as a complete surprise to Pauline and her sister.

I've never heard of Georgina

and I didn't even know she existed.

Growing up, the girls had never once heard their father discuss his family background.

They believed he was an only child.

We just felt that pleased to think that there was someone else

but also sad that we never got to know her

and that Dad didn't know her.

Josephine and Pauline will never know why their father was brought up by his extended family.

But what they do know is that he spent his entire life

wrongly believing he had no siblings.

Charles now faced the awkward task

of contacting the 30 people he had originally thought were heirs.

It didn't really matter to me.

I'm getting answers to all that I've wondered about over the years. It's wonderful.

Thank you. Bye.

Charles is philosophical about the case and glad they spotted the error.

We didn't try and trace it because we thought he belonged to somebody else

and didn't get his birth certificate. Pure and simple.

One's fairly philosophical about these things. If it's egg on one's face, fair enough.

But still, it's been found in time.

With the hunt for heirs complete, Millicent has the opportunity

to meet Joseph's daughters, Pauline and Josephine.

She's hoping to finally find out what happened to Joseph after her Aunt Millie died.

I think I've waited for this forever

and it's happening, it's all happening now.

Millicent has returned to Clee Hills, where she spent a very happy childhood.

I lived here as a child, on this hilltop,

and we had a lovely childhood here.

It's a place she will never forget.

I was born here and I've lived here

and, yes, Clee Hill is in my heart.

This will be the first time Millicent, Pauline and Josephine have ever met.

It's an opportunity to share wonderful memories of a much-loved man.

-Hello.

-Hello.

-Hello.

Fancy meeting you! SHE LAUGHS

Lovely to see you.

Pauline and Josephine have brought along the family's photos.

Was that Millicent?

-Yes. But seeing her features... And she had polio.

-That's what made me think.

She had polio as a child.

The photos have reminded Millicent what a warm and generous man Joseph was.

-He'd always give you anything.

-Janet and I were living with him

and he said, "You mustn't go down the shed"

and Jan and I said, "I wonder what he's got in the shed."

Anyway, a couple of weeks later, he brought out two scooters that he'd made out of wood.

-Oh.

-He had a heart of gold.

-That was it. He always thought about other people.

-Yes.

The search for heirs to Georgina Greenhouse's £11,000 estate

has unravelled a complex family history.

But it'¹s given Millicent the opportunity to meet family members she never knew she had.

Having met Josie and Pauline today,

erm, it seems like the end of a story book.

Erm, my life, going through from the Clee Hills,

from Uncle Joe, to meeting his daughters,

and I shall return to the Clee Hills to see them

as often as I can. I'm really pleased to have met them.

If you would like advice about building your family tree

or making a will, go to:

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

E-mail [email protected]

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