Clarke/Thornton Heir Hunters

Welcome to Heir Hunters, where we follow the search for living family of people who have died

without leaving will, hoping to unite them with a forgotten fortune.

Today the heir hunters are looking for the heirs of a skilled

craftsman who is rumoured to have left an estate of £40,000 in cash.

Somewhere out there are some long lost relatives who have no

idea they are in line for a windfall.

Could the heir hunters be knocking at your door?

'Hello?'

Coming up on today's programme, it's all in the name.

The name Clarke is awful.

You only need to drop the E and you're really in Queer Street.

It's tough times for the heir hunters as they tackle

one of their most demanding cases yet.

No luck, Isha?

The death of a bricklayer from Bradford leads all

the way to a legendary Derby winner.

I've spent me inheritance!

And I'll be looking further into our bricklayer's past,

discovering how and why he left the family business of Yorkshire wool.

Because wages are so low, British people won't do the work.

Plus, how you may be entitled to inherit an unclaimed estate

held by the Treasury.

Could thousands of pounds be heading your way?

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.

Last year, they made £14 million from unclaimed estates.

That's where the heir hunters come in.

They make it their business to track down missing relatives

and help them claim their rightful inheritance.

We reunite family members,

even decades after they've lost contact with each other.

In our first case today,

a common surname proves a challenge for our team.

I'll be finding out how researchers tackle problems like this,

but first let's see how the investigation unfolds.

It's seven in the morning at the offices of heir hunters Fraser & Fraser

and the Treasury has just released its weekly

list of unclaimed estates.

In the UK, if someone dies without leaving will,

has no known relatives and their estate is worth £5,000

or more then it will appear on this list.

Can you take this?

The team's first job is to try and identify the high-value cases.

Death of Gordon Clarke. Dies in Birmingham, in Ladywood.

With only a name and place of death to go on, it's not easy.

Boss Neil has singled out one case that may not immediately

look like it's worth a lot, but he's got a good feeling about it.

We're going to work on the case of Gordon Clarke.

He dies in 2009 in Birmingham. Don't know a huge amount about him,

doesn't look like there is any value, but who knows?

We may fight a little bit of cash hidden in a drawer or something.

The value of estate is really important to the heir hunters because they work on commission,

earning a percentage of the amount

that's claimed by each heir they sign.

Neil is hoping that his hunch is going to pay off.

Gordon Clarke died aged 65 on 24 January, 2009.

He lived in this block of flats in the Ladywood area of Birmingham.

His friend Nilash Patel lives nearby.

He would always be there to help everybody.

He would always put other people first before himself.

He would always be up for a good conversation.

He would always be there as a good listener.

He'd be like a breath of fresh air, you know?

Although Gordon was quite a bit older than his friend,

he was definitely young at heart.

Not many 60-year-olds are keen followers of rave music.

I was surprised when I first met him.

"Hold on, you're this age and you listen to this type of music?

"You should be down there on Broad Street, clubbing every night!"

He was a fantastic person. One in a million.

I really lost a good friend that day.

I would say he was more than a friend.

I'd say he was a family member.

Back in the office and the question the heir hunters need to answer is

does Gordon have any family members who would be eligible to inherit?

And if this case is going to be worth enough

to merit a full investigation.

The best place to start looking for answers is at Gordon's home.

Kate's manager, David Milchard,

known around the office as Grimble, has been given

responsibility for this case and he gets straight on the phone to

Bob Barrett, one of the company's senior researchers on the road.

'It's a case called Gordon Clarke. We think it's a low value estate.

'We've made an enquiry.

-'See if you can get any value on it.'

-Yeah, sure.

Heir hunting relies heavily on research done in the office,

but its senior researchers on the road

like Bob Barrett who are the public face of the company.

They're based all over the country and it's their job to follow up

any lead and make sure they get to the heirs ahead of the competition.

-'Hello? Do you want me to let you in, love?'

-Yeah. Thanks.

Bob arrives at the block of flats where Gordon lived.

He wants to talk to the neighbours to see what

he can find out about the deceased.

He's always lived on his own, has he?

Did he own the premises, the property, or are they council owned?

Bob's first findings aren't encouraging.

The neighbours never saw any of Gordon's family who might be

able to help with the investigation.

Crucially, it appears he didn't own his flat, which would mean

the estate could be worth much less than the heir hunters had hoped.

But Bob is a pro and doesn't take just one person's word for it.

So he heads off in search of more people to talk to.

And his persistence pays off.

It could be there is some value in it.

I spoke to a neighbour who knew him quite well. Excuse me.

And he had several pensions and he had one cash sum that came out.

-She reckons his estate might be about 40,000.

-'All right.'

-OK, mate?

This is the news the heir hunters have been waiting for.

£40,000 is a decent sized estate and worthy of an investigation,

so it's all systems go.

-How many children are there?

-Five alive, one dead.

Grimble assigns senior researcher Alan

and research at Isha to the case.

They get hold of Gordon's death certificate which

shows that he was born in Birmingham.

They can then access his birth certificate which reveals

that his parents were Frederick Clarke and Lily Bowen.

And that he was an only child.

They now know there is no near kin or brothers

and sisters on this case.

They need to go further back in the family tree

and look for aunts, uncles and eventually cousins.

The team decide to tackle the paternal side first

and try to find any siblings for Gordon's father, Frederick Clarke.

Elizabeth May, born June 1907, Birmingham.

Isha gives Alan a list of five names that she

found on the 1911 census.

It seems he had four brothers - Frank, William, George and Albert.

And a sister, Elizabeth.

All very common names for the period

and combined with the surname Clarke,

they spell bad news for Alan.

Unfortunately, because the name is Clarke,

and they're not good combinations of names, we're going to have to

trawl through some very common name searches to try and identify them.

Isha gets straight onto it and it's not long before she has

honed in on the correct birth record

for each member of the Clarke family.

Somehow, she's managed to make a hard task look very easy

and Alan can't quite believe it.

How do you know these ones are correct?

They are quite common names.

Yeah, because they were like a year apart or something.

Sure enough, Isha's research is spot-on and gives them

the information they need to proceed with their investigation.

The youngest of Gordon's uncles and aunts was born in 1907.

They are all now deceased, so the next step is to look

for their marriages and any children who would be Gordon's first cousins.

Do you want to have a look at Elizabeth then?

Elizabeth or May Elizabeth?

Isha now turns her attention to Gordon's aunt Elizabeth,

who married Frank Davis.

It looks like, unfortunately, she's married a Davis which

doesn't help me at all.

It seems even super researcher Isha has met her match.

Davis as a surname is about as common as Clarke and so the

chances are there will be thousands of Davis-Clarke births

in Birmingham.

This case is going to test the heir hunters' skills to the limit.

At times like this, the best thing to do is to consolidate what

they already know.

So Grimble gets on the phone to Paul Matthews.

I'm all ears.

Paul is another of the company's senior researchers on the road

and is based in the Midlands.

What we want initially is the... Start with the father.

-He's Frederick Theodore.

-Clarke. Yeah.

-Sixth of June, 1905.

-Yeah.

So initially, that's what we need you to get sorted out first of all.

Paul heads off to Birmingham register office to get

the birth certificates of all the Clarke brothers and sisters.

That way, at least they can be 100% sure they have the right family.

This case is beginning to feel like an uphill struggle.

The name Clarke is awful.

Not only is it a common name,

but you only need to drop the E

and you're really in Queer Street.

It becomes as bad as the name Smith.

Paul knows the staff at the register office very well and it's not long

before John the registrar has found those all-important certificates.

-The first one, Frederick Theodore is the name.

-Frederick Theodore.

Your next two...are Frank,

then you've got George, born 25 April, 1901.

One by one, he reels off the whole family.

-And your final one is Elizabeth May.

-OK. That's great. Right.

-Cheers, John.

-OK.

Job done.

-'Good afternoon, Fraser & Fraser.'

-Paul Matthews after Grimble, please.

Paul reports back to base to get his next instructions.

-Can you try for a marriage of Elizabeth May Clarke?

-Yeah.

'To Frank Davis.

'September 1913.'

Okey cokey. OK, Cheers.

They need the marriage certificate to prove that Elizabeth did

indeed marry Frank Davis.

And then they can go on to look for any children.

But Paul is also going to try another angle.

I'm trying to basically find the death of Elizabeth May Davis,

hope that she never remarried.

Born 1907. So I'm working back from 1990,

hoping we get lucky.

Paul is working on the theory that if Elizabeth had any children, then

they are likely to be listed on her death certificate as the informant.

The team are relying on him

to make a breakthrough on this most complicated and demanding of cases.

But with so many Clarke-Davises in Birmingham, he's got a mountain to climb.

It's just trial and error.

It's trawling through it and hope eventually that we will find it. The truth is out there.

We've just seen how a common name like Clarke can cause a real

headache for the heir hunters.

I'm here in London to meet heir hunter Neil Fraser,

who's going to tell me more about how they deal with the problem.

So why is Clarke a tricky name to work?

We have good surnames, bad surnames, common surnames,

area surnames.

Surnames which are spelt differently, different variations.

Clarke is one of those names which falls into a couple of camps.

Firstly, it can be spelt two different ways.

With an E on the end or without an E.

Secondly, it is a very common name.

And common names are very hard to research.

What we have to remember is we are looking for unique people.

And a name isn't a unique distinguishing feature.

A date of birth isn't even a unique distinction feature.

So although we like to think of ourselves as individuals,

there is another Neil Fraser out there,

there is another person who was born on my birthday.

What we are trying to tie-up is all of the same surname and the same date of birth.

And when we're dealing with Clarke, there's going to be

a lot of people without first bit, the surname and the first name.

It makes it very common, very complicated.

What other names are tricky to work?

Different names are hard for different reasons.

But names such as Smith, Jones, very common names. Very hard to work.

Area names are also very hard.

Area names or regional names can present either a very easy or

very hard hunt for the researchers.

For example, if the deceased person's surname is

synonymous with a specific geographical area or

city like Cardiff, but the deceased was born and died in London,

it's then going to be an easier hunt to find them in London.

But if the deceased was born, raised and died in Cardiff with

a local surname, it can be like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Why are so many people called Smith?

There's a lot of different theories on the surname Smith.

I think about one in every hundred people has the surname Smith.

Now people say it's because of the occupation, it's an occupation surname.

It's because people used to be blacksmiths, silversmiths or goldsmiths.

And that's just what they are called, Smiths.

There is no real evidence to that. It's a common surname,

so therefore it continues being common throughout history.

People marry Smiths.

-Common names get more common.

-We've heard about Smith, what about Jones?

The Jones surname falls under the Welsh camp.

In Wales, there is a high percentage of the population which

use about six surnames, Jones, Williams, Evans, Davies, Thomas.

Very common surnames in Wales and certainly when we're trying to do

the research, we find that we get Mr Jones marrying Mrs Evans

and therefore it's very hard for us to find that unique person.

It's hard for us to look down the indexes. How do we get around it?

We have to spend money, we have to order the certificates.

We have to get on the ground and go to the registry offices and go through their registers.

Looking for those unique bits, the bits where there's going to

be a father on there with a unique occupation.

The likelihood of being able to find potential heirs to an estate

is always an educated gamble for the heir hunters.

When a case comes up with a surname Jones or Smith, it makes them groan.

Smith is historically and currently the most popular surname in the UK,

with over half a million people having it.

Jones is in second place, with just under 400,000 sharing the name.

No wonder finding descendants with these names can be a nightmare.

What about common names that don't necessarily originate in the UK?

There are some very,

very common surnames now in the current population.

Singh, Patel.

They are particularly hard

because for instance the name Singh only goes to males.

It makes research incredibly hard.

What's different for us though and for heir hunting,

is that they are mainly Asian surnames and the Asian population

which is in the United Kingdom is quite a close-knit society.

It's a close community.

And therefore, you don't have the person who's gone off

and died alone.

Everybody knows who their family is or their neighbours know about their family.

So it's not a surname which we have to research very often.

And have you ever had to travel abroad for an heir hunt?

I've been to Jordan and to Egypt to research on an estate.

Researching in Egypt is very hard.

Not only is it not a centralised index of births, deaths

and marriages certificates, but there's also a problem that we

don't have the authority to look through the indexes.

They have protection laws which stop you looking for birth certificates.

Not only that, it's all not just in a different language,

but a different character and I can't recognise the alphabet.

So it's not as glamorous as it sounds by going abroad to look for an heir hunt.

When you're waking up in the morning

to put on a suit in an Egyptian hotel and everyone has shorts

and flip-flops on, going off to see the pyramids, you have to

question why you're actually trying to do the research there.

But in the end, you cracked the case?

In the end, I was able to find the beneficiaries.

And they inherited close to £1 million.

Certainly, it was a worthwhile trip.

Still to come, Clarke may be an extremely common name,

but finally case manager David has got something to be excited about.

Terrific. We've definitely got the right family.

And the hunt for Gordon Clarke's heirs really hots up.

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 solicitor has a database of over 2,000 names

which have baffled heir hunters and remain unsolved.

This is known as the Bona Vacantia list.

Bona Vacantia is Latin for ownerless goods.

And we deal with the estates of people who die intestate

and with no known kin.

And this unclaimed money could belong to you, not the government.

But you have to show them you're the rightful heir.

If they write to us, enclosing a simple family tree,

just showing how they are actually related to the deceased person,

then we can have a look at it, make sure that we are talking about the

same family, before we go off and ask them to supply various certificates

of birth, death and marriage to actually substantiate the claim.

The estate could be worth as little as a few hundred pounds

or as much as many millions.

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

Are they relatives of yours?

Could you be in line for an unexpected windfall?

Marjorie Ettlinger died in Hammersmith London in 1997.

Ettlinger is a very rare name in the UK

and may indicate German ancestry.

Did you know Marjorie?

Are you related?

William Ronald Victor Tod died in Plymouth in 2008.

Although Todd is a common name,

this spelling with just one D is quite unusual.

Does his name ring a bell with you? Was he a friend or a colleague?

Vera Stingmore died in Molesey in 1997.

Stingmore is a very rare name indeed.

There are only a handful in the whole of the UK.

Were you a friend or neighbour of Vera's?

Can you help solve the case?

If no heirs are found, her money will go to the government.

But these estates won't be around for ever.

It will stay on the list as long as it is claimable and actually

under the Limitation Act, people have 12 years to come forward and claim.

Here's a reminder of these names again. Marjorie Ettlinger.

William Tod.

And Vera Stingmore.

If today's names are relatives of yours,

you could be an heir entitled to their estate.

In our next case, the search for heirs reveals a fascinating

glimpse into our industrial past.

Sometimes, families lose contact because one member moves

away from their hometown, even if it's only a short distance.

Years can go by and relationships that were once very close

can be lost for ever.

This was exactly what happened with Jack Thornton.

Jack died aged 61 on July 19th, 2005 in Bradford, West Yorkshire.

He left no will and only a couple of childhood photos survive of him.

Before he died,

Jack lived in this house in the Laisterdyke area of the city.

His landlord, Graham Swain, a builder,

knew him for over ten years.

Jack were a good tenant.

He always understood that one month were four weeks.

That's how much rent we got.

Yeah, Jack were a builder, he were a bricklayer.

He always used to carry a bag of tools around with him.

And we just used to talk about times on building sites.

Jack originally moved in to the house with his elderly father

but when he died in 2000, Jack carried on living there on his own.

Jack were quite a lonely guy.

He kept himself to himself.

He didn't seem to have any family about.

He didn't get out much but Jack did have one unusual passion in life.

He loved old Western films.

Jack always used to get himself spruced up in his leather jacket

and his cowboy hat and he always is to say,

"I'm going to see my girlfriend in Leeds."

I don't really think he had one, but he used to say that.

When Jack passed away, me and my wife were very sad about the situation.

He'd lived in the house for seven or eight years

and you really get to know people like that and it was very upsetting.

If you knew he was going to die, you'd ask him hundreds of questions.

But you think they are going to live for ever, don't you?

When Jack died, he left an estate worth £15,000. But no will.

His case was picked up

by heir hunter Anna Dunn at DS Researchers in Hull.

I've ordered the marriage for that name in '85.

Anna and her team have been in the genealogy business for ten years.

Hi, I'm Peter from DS Researchers.

And are one of only a handful of heir hunting companies

based in the North of England.

Being based in Hull, we pretty well placed to deal with

the Northern areas of England and we also cover Scotland.

When Jack's name appeared on the Treasury's list of unclaimed

estates, it showed that he had died in Bradford.

Anna picked up on it straight away and started to investigate.

On checking the case,

we found that the deceased had been married and he'd had two children.

Jack had married in 1962, but the marriage lasted less than ten years.

In that time, he had two children who under normal inheritance laws

would have been his sole heirs.

But then, Anna made a surprising discovery.

I found that his wife had remarried and I couldn't find the children.

Then I checked the names and she had actually changed

the children's names to her next husband's surname and on checking,

we found that they'd been adopted, which threw the case out for them.

So even though Anna had found Jack's biological children,

because they'd been adopted by their mother's new husband,

they were not eligible to inherit Jack's estate.

Adoption laws are clear.

They go through court and once a child has been adopted out,

they belong to another family.

Now that his own children had been ruled out, Anna needed to go

further back in Jack's family tree to look for his heirs.

Jack's birth certificate revealed his parents were Arthur Thornton

and Sylvena Banks.

And that he had been born in the village of Saltaire near Bradford.

In the late 19th and early 20th century,

Saltaire was a centre of the Yorkshire wool industry.

It was named after Sir Titus Salt,

a wealthy industrialist who'd been horrified by the appalling

conditions he'd seen in the mills of nearby Bradford where workers

were exploited for pitiful wages and crammed into slum accommodation.

In 1853, Sir Titus transplanted his entire textile manufacturing

business from Bradford to his newly constructed

Salt's Mills on the banks of the River Aire.

His workforce were installed in a new model village, Saltaire,

built to the highest standards

and designed to promote their general health and well-being.

Titus Salt, I class, as a paternalist employer.

He was aiming to better the lives of the workers.

You'll find street upon street of terraced housing,

there was a dining room within the complex,

there was the institute where they could go and exercise their minds.

All this was far removed from the smoky atmosphere you would

find in Bradford and in the mills in Bradford.

By the end of the century,

Saltaire was home to 4,500 mill workers, amongst them

were Jack's paternal grandparents, Edward Thornton and Ada Houlden.

Over the years, they lived in several houses in the village,

but ended up at number 27, Titus Street,

just a couple of doors down from the house where many years later,

in 1943, Jack was born.

Having established Jack's immediate family,

Anna now needed to cast her net wider in her search for his heirs.

She began by looking to see

if his father Arthur had any brothers or sisters.

We found the grandparents' marriage in 1903.

And that was Edward Thornton, who married Ada Houlden.

So from there, we were able to identify one, two, three,

four, five, six children.

It turned out that Jack had four paternal uncles and two aunts,

most of whom were born in Saltaire.

It seems that Jack's grandparents Edward

and Ada worked at Salt's Mill all their lives,

as did at least three of their children, including Jack's

uncle Joseph, who eventually held the prestigious post of wool sorter.

Wool sorters were considered to be the aristocrats of the industry.

Seven years' apprenticeship, very skilled, the whole production

depends on their skill at finding the different qualities of wool.

Gerald Smith has been a wool sorter since he left school at 15.

He is now one of only two still working in Bradford.

It entails getting fleece of raw wool from the sheep

and sorting it into different grades.

I suppose you could go five or six different sorts on one fleece.

The rougher it is, it goes for carpets,

the finer it is, it goes for making suitings and clothes.

75% of Bradford was reliant on the wool trade

and it all started off with wool sorters and went down the line,

right through the mill until it came out as cloth.

Salt's Mill, where so many of Jack's relatives had

spent their entire working lives, closed down in 1986 and Saltaire

has since been preserved as a World Heritage Site.

Jack's father Arthur didn't follow the family into the wool trade.

He was a gunner in the Royal Artillery and then,

like his son after him, went to work as a bricklayer.

When Jack was 10, they moved away from Saltaire and it seems

they slowly fell out of touch with the rest of the Thornton family.

Anna had found every single one of Jack's father's siblings but it

was very unlikely that any of them would still be around to inherit.

I checked to see whether any of those were still alive and, having

found deaths for all of them, we knew there were no uncles and aunts.

The search was now on to find their children and, after some

painstaking research, Anna eventually came up with the goods.

Jack's father's sister Annie, we found the marriage on that one.

She was married to Mr Watson and we found three births to the marriage.

It looks like Anna had finally made a crucial breakthrough

but little did she know the investigation would go on to

reveal some names with a very different sound to them.

Was she on to the right family after all?

We had names like Cicero, Sylvena and I thought,

"Could they be Italian?"

The search for Jack Thornton's heirs

was about to lead to some very unexpected places.

Even though it sounds like Anna's hunt could be

moving in a Mediterranean direction, I want to stick to

the Yorkshire Dales for a little bit longer.

Many members of the Thornton family worked in the wool trade at

Saltaire but, with it almost being a family business,

why did Jack end up as a bricklayer?

I'm here to meet social historian Liz MacIver

who can spin a yarn or two about the wool trade in Yorkshire.

So, was the wool industry a big part of British industry?

Yes, massive.

Really, even as far back as the Medieval period,

British wool exports were huge

and it was really our biggest export for centuries.

And when was its heyday?

You're talking about the mid 19th century.

Anything from 1850 through to the 1880s was the boom period.

Of course, the industrial revolution had begun

in the early part of the 19th century, really.

It allowed, for the first time, it to move out of the cottage industry.

It had been an artisan craft before that.

And it allowed everything to take place under one roof,

which was much more productive and cost-effective.

It also meant you didn't have to pay your workers as much money.

And what would the woollen mills have been like to work in?

They would have been very uncomfortable, unfortunately.

They would be hot, sweaty, damp, dirty, very dusty.

A lot of toxic dust would come off the fibres as they were

being carded and processed so people would be breathing them

in and they would get lung conditions as a result of that and poisoning.

People would lose fingers and arms

and even die as a result of being caught in the machinery.

Of course, none of this machinery had any guards

or safety procedures in place.

People would work very long hours, they would be very tired,

often hungry, often suffering from malnutrition.

As we know, Jack Thornton's grandparents and some of his uncles

were fortunate enough to have worked for Titus Salt in his revolutionary

wool factory and workers' community village but both Jack

and his father Arthur ended up as bricklayers.

So what went wrong and why didn't they carry on the family tradition?

These mills were still running strong for decades but was

the wool industry affected by the war?

Oh, yes, massively. The First and the Second World War

had a big impact on the mill trade. Particularly

being that a lot of young men had to go away to fight.

There weren't enough men to run the mills

so women were brought in to do their roles.

It had always been, traditionally,

that women did what was deemed as unskilled work

while men had skilled jobs.

So the men would be in preparation and finishing

part of the cloth making and women would be doing something

like carding wool or mending the cloth when it had errors in it.

So, burling and mending, that would be what went into it.

Gradually, this was taken over so you'd have, in the 1940s and '50s,

a lot more women in the weaving sheds than there had been previously.

Despite women moving into traditionally male jobs

in the mills, the wool industry was facing even bigger problems -

competition from abroad and new textiles entering the marketplace.

Bradford had to contend with the fact that overseas cloth was much,

much cheaper, exports were dropping, demand was falling everywhere.

Especially for Worcester cloth

because you now get synthetics coming in, man-made fibres,

so you have got to compete on all these different levels

and really, by the '50s and '60s, the mill industry is on a steep decline.

So that would be the reason why Jack Thornton wouldn't have

followed in his family's footsteps in the wool industry?

Yes, very possibly.

What you're talking about is a massive fall in wages after

the Second World War and they do try to keep wages at a level

but it drops and drops so that now you have

got 24-hour opening in mills, working through the night to try to boost

production and because wages are so low,

British people won't do the work.

They are looking for work in the service industries,

in building and in retail and that is the next big boom.

So what you get is mills are staffed by foreign operatives

who come over from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Eastern Europe,

primarily, and take over that work force until the 1970s

when the industry really bottoms out and declines completely.

It sounds like Jack and his father got out at the right time

and going into the construction trade was a shrewd move.

Bradford was building hugely in the 1950s and '60s.

Massive council estates were going up all around the city.

There was a huge plan to completely change the way that the

central part of Bradford looked - clear all the slum housing,

the back-to-back housing that was there and put up concrete

and glass buildings that were highly fashionable in the early 1960s.

So Jack would possibly have been involved in demolition and in

building either new housing

or some of the big buildings that are in Bradford today.

So he went where the work was.

The next step was obviously building.

Yes, exactly. It was just changing what Bradford had to offer, really.

Becoming, from a wool city that was known from its Worcester trade,

becoming known for other things. For example, retail being one.

Morrisons, as a supermarket chain, was born in Bradford

and has gone global now.

So that is one of the arms of the new industries

that Bradford has developed into.

Bradford was changing and so were the dynamics of the Thornton family.

No longer in the wool trade, they seemed to spread out.

A fact that makes finding Jack Thornton's heirs all

the more difficult for the team.

Now, do you have long lost family?

Here are 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.

So, how is the Bona Vacantia Division working on your behalf?

The Bona Vacantia Division doesn't employ genealogists or agents.

We work very hard to find kin ourselves.

We advertise on local and national newspapers and, ultimately,

put their names on our website.

Do these names mean anything to you?

Are they relatives of yours?

William Niblock died in Weston-super-Mare in Somerset

on the 21st of February, 2001. Niblock is rare.

Only 10 people per million have the surname.

Do you share William's unusual surname?

Can you help solve his case?

Joan Ruth Burrill died in Archway London on the 26th of May 2010.

The name Burrill means someone living on a hill

and is most commonly found in Yorkshire.

Joan left no will

and so far all efforts to trace her family have failed.

Could you be the missing heir?

Michael Harris died in Whipps Cross University Hospital

in Leytonstone on the 14th of December, 2002.

Michael's death certificate shows that he was born

on the 17th of June 1952 in Camberwell in London

so he was only 50 years old when he died.

The death certificate also reveals

that he was a head receptionist at a bank.

Do you remember working with a Michael Harris?

A reminder of those names again.

William Niblock, Joan Burrill and Michael Harris.

If today's names are relatives of yours then you could have

a windfall coming your way.

Now back to the hunt for heirs to the estate of Jack Thornton and

some unusual family names are about to reveal a surprising pedigree.

Jack was a reclusive bricklayer who died aged 61 in Bradford, Yorkshire.

Anna Dunn at DS Researchers

had established that all Jack's paternal uncles and aunts were dead

so the search for his cousins was well and truly on.

Anna began the investigation with Annie Thornton,

one of Jack's paternal aunts.

She discovered that she had married Heba Watson in 1938

and that Jack's mother Sylvena had been a bridesmaid at their wedding.

Annie and Heba had then gone on to her three children.

Two daughters and a son, Ian.

If Anna could only find these children then

she would have her first heirs.

It didn't take long for Anna to find a phone number for Ian Watson

who is still living in the Saltaire area.

The news of his cousin's death was quite a shock to him.

It came as a surprise because we haven't heard from him

for over 20 years.

Ian remembered back all those years to

when he and Jack were both growing up in Saltaire.

Jack was an only child and I think he was a bit of a loner.

One of his main interests was horse riding.

He used to go to a local stables.

On one occasion he brought the horse to our house to show us

and then rode the horse through the town

and then all the way back to the stables again.

When Jack's family moved away from Saltaire, the two boys

kept in touch for a little while, meeting up in Bradford to go

and watch Jack's favourite cowboy films.

But in the end they lost contact.

The fact that Jack died alone and without anybody else

in the family knowing about it is quite sad.

We had no contact addresses so without the chance meeting

there was no way that we would have been able to get in touch with him.

It wasn't long before Anna had traced all the paternal heirs

to Jack's estate but her work was only half done.

There was still the whole maternal side yet to investigate.

Anna managed to track Jack's mother Sylvena Banks' birth certificate.

This showed that her parents were a Tom Banks and a Lavinia Campbell.

By referring to the 1911 census,

Anna discovered that they had nine children, including Sylvena.

But that wasn't all she noticed.

We had names like Cicero, Sylvena, Mona May

and various sorts of unusual names and I thought,

"Could they be Italian?" But, then again, being a little bit

different, I thought this might help with the search.

As Anna predicted, there weren't many Cicero

or Cicero Banks born in Bradford at the turn of the last century

so it didn't take long to track him down.

We looked first for the marriage of Cicero Sr

and found his wife and then looked for the children for that

marriage and found yet another Cicero.

Cicero Jr had married Olive in 1932 and they'd had five

children, all of whom would be beneficiaries of Gordon's estate.

The youngest of these children was Julie Banks who was amazed to

hear that she was in line to inherit from a first cousin once removed

that she'd never heard of.

I didn't know anything about Jack Thornton.

I didn't know he existed and

I felt a little bit disappointed by that.

But Julie was able to shed some light on how her father

and grandfather came by their exotic name.

Cicero Sr was born in 1905 and the winner of the Derby that

year was a magnificent chestnut thoroughbred called Cicero.

When you're a young teenager,

having a dad who is named after a horse is slightly embarrassing.

If anybody used to ask, I used to say, "Oh, yeah, my dad,

"he's from Italian stock that's why his name is Cicero."

But in the end,

Julie embraced the story behind her father's unusual name.

Especially when she heard how he had come by it.

It seems that was all down to her great-grandmother Lavinia Banks.

Great-grandma, definitely a gambler.

Loved the horses and liked to put the odd penny or two on a race,

which I think is absolutely brilliant

and I hope she won lots of money.

But Julie certainly didn't inherit a fortune from her long-lost cousin.

Jack's £15,000 estate was divided equally between all his aunts

and uncles and then divided again

as it passed down through each branch of the family.

So by the time it got to Julie, she only received £25.

But for Julie it wasn't really about the money.

The whole process has been about finding out more about my family.

So I've learned who he was through this process which,

you know, you can be thankful for. You can thank the process for that.

Jack may never have met his cousin Julie but the shy boy who

loved cowboy films and had a passion for horses would have been

pleased to know how she was planning on spending her inheritance.

-Yes, darling.

-Hiya, can I have £10 each way on Sand Skier, please?

10 each way, number 11, thank you.

-Thank you, my love.

-Thank you.

-Cheers.

Julie and her mother Olive have come on a trip to Epsom racecourse.

-If this wins I'll get £75.

-Will you?

The same racetrack where Cicero the Derby winner,

who her father was named after, had his famous victory in 1905.

Come on! Come on!

On that day, he raced his way into the history books

and became part of the Banks family history as well.

If only the great champion had been running today.

I think we lost.

I've spent my inheritance.

That was brilliant.

Finally, we return to the case of Gordon Clarke from Birmingham.

The heir hunters have been trying their hardest to find

living relatives to inherit his estate

but it's an uphill struggle with a surname as common as Clarke.

Gordon died aged 65, leaving an estimated £40,000 but no will.

Gordon was a Brummie born and bred and worked his entire life

in a pen factory in Birmingham's famous Jewellery Quarter.

The pen making trade was established here in the 19th century

and, at one point, 75% of all pens in the world were produced in this

one square kilometre district.

Gordon came to the factory in 1960, aged 16,

and worked his way up to become a pen designer.

Dennis Freeman was a friend of Gordon's

since they were young apprentices together.

Due to a congenital condition, Dennis has been deaf

since he was a teenager.

He wouldn't make friends easily

but gradually he started to come out of himself

and the more I got to know him, the more I got used to him

and he got used to me and we started to socialise.

Well, he'll always be remembered for the work he did here.

We find it very difficult to cope without him.

He didn't really have a family as such.

The factory was his family, really.

Back in the office and the case of Gordon Clarke is proving

so complicated that it is pushing case manager Grimble to the limit.

The two surnames involved, Clarke and Davis,

are amongst the most common in the UK

so they have had to use all their ingenuity in the search for heirs.

Their main hope is to find

Gordon's aunt Elizabeth Clarke's death certificate.

If she had children then one of them

should appear on it as the informant.

Paul is currently scanning

the records in Birmingham Register Office

but so far he has drawn a blank.

In the office, the team are trying a different tack.

They are searching the online databases for Elizabeth's children

and they strike gold.

Anthony Davis was born in 1941 in Birmingham.

If they can find him then he will be their first heir.

But, like everything on this case, it's not that simple.

We haven't picked him up alive, haven't picked him up dead.

But he will be...

Probably is alive somewhere but we just can't figure him out yet.

Now that the team in the office have found a possible son for Elizabeth,

Paul turns his attention to Gordon's uncles,

looking for any trace of marriages or children.

-Oh, hang on, hang on. Hot off the press. Hang on a second.

-OK, bye.

Paul is on the phone to Grimble

when registrar John comes in with some good news.

We've got a marriage in 1923.

-And this is...?

-Frank Clarke.

Oh, right. Oh, spot on.

They've found a record for Frank Clarke's marriage to

an Elizabeth Stella Raven.

Finally, it looks like the heir hunters will have a

relatively unusual surname to work with.

Clarke to Raven. That's not that bad, is it?

And there's more good news.

Grimble has finally managed to track down the elusive death certificate

for Gordon's aunt Elizabeth Clarke,

which they are hoping will list her son Anthony Davis as the informant.

The only problem is it's in Lichfield,

half an hour north of Birmingham and it's already late in the day.

You ain't got time to get over to Lichfield now, have you?

No. I might need you to do that first thing in the morning.

Paul heads home for the night

but in the office they are still making headway.

The team have found two children from the marriage of Gordon's

uncle Frank Clarke and his wife Elizabeth Raven.

A girl, Elizabeth May, and a boy, Frank Thomas.

Oh, right.

But before they can celebrate, Grimble uncovers

another incredible twist in this most torturous of heir hunts.

It seems that Frank was adopted out of the family

and so is no longer eligible to inherit.

Worse still, there is absolutely no sign of Elizabeth.

His mum remarried, took the son with her.

What has happened to Elizabeth? I don't know.

So it looks as though it is going to be a bit of a problem here.

Poor Grimble. Nothing is going his way

and as the sun sets on the first day of this investigation,

it's safe to say that the case of Gordon Clarke is still wide open.

It's early the next morning and Paul Matthews is on the road

to Lichfield to pick up Elizabeth Davis' death certificate.

Paul's confident it will lead him to her son Anthony.

Picking up the death from Lichfield

and hopefully the informant on that will be the son

and it'll give us some indication as to where he might be.

At the very least, we will know where he was in 1995.

Morning.

-Any chance of that death, please?

-Yeah, certainly.

It's been a bit of a dodgy case where we can't find anything at the moment.

-Not the best of names.

-Yeah, we'll have a look at. No problem.

Cheers, thank you.

It's not long before the registrar

comes back with a copy of the certificate.

-So, here's your certificate.

-Thank you. Fantastic.

Do you want to check and make sure it's the right one?

That's great. Thank you very much.

That is a bit of a surprise but there you go.

A surprise might be a bit of an understatement.

It turns out the informant isn't Anthony Davis

but someone listed as a stepson.

Frank Thomas Davis.

The same first names

as the child adopted out of brother Frank's family.

I wonder if this Frank Thomas

somehow ended up as part of Elizabeth May's family.

The simple way to find that out is to go and knock on his door

and we'll see if we can unravel the mystery.

Paul gets straight on the phone to Grimble

to report this extraordinary new development.

PHONE RINGS

Frank Clarke had a son called Frank Thomas,

didn't he, who was adopted out?

You're bloody right here. You're bloody right there.

-'You're right there.'

-I'm right there.

Grimble is justifiably excited.

Frank Thomas may have lost his claim on his cousin's estate

when his parents gave him up for adoption

but he has turned up again as a fully-entitled heir

because he was adopted back into the family by his aunt Elizabeth.

Finally this case is opening up

and it seems the key to it all is Frank Thomas Davis.

It's funny things can change so quickly.

We come up with one little bit of information and the potential

of it is that this guy may know quite a bit about the family.

It doesn't take them long to find a phone number for Frank

but it is Grimble's job to make the call and he gets straight through.

Was Frank Raymond Davis your father?

He was a stepfather as well?

So they were stepparents. Right.

It's sounding good

but after a day of disappointments and near misses,

Grimble wants to be 100% sure he's got his man.

Do you know who your natural parents were?

Yeah.

Stella Raven, that's it. Oh, terrific.

We've definitely got the right family. OK, fine.

Bingo.

Grimble has got his first heir.

But he's not going to stop there.

There's plenty more that Frank can help him with.

Did your adoptive parents have a son called Anthony?

Yeah, OK. So the baby died shortly after birth.

Did you have a sister, Elizabeth?

It seems that Elizabeth's son Anthony Davis

died as a baby before Frank was adopted.

One by one, Grimble sorts out every branch of the Clarke family tree.

Thank you very much. Thank you, bye-bye.

Success. There, see.

One minute, despondent, thinking it going to take us years and years

then we get one little break and it's opened the whole lot.

He may have solved the case but nothing is over

until the heirs have signed an agreement allowing the company

to help them make their claim on Gordon's estate to the Treasury.

Unless they get that all-important signature, this whole investigation

could still turn out to be a huge waste of time and resources.

Luckily, Paul Matthews is close by

so he heads straight round to meet Frank.

Hi. Pleased to meet you.

Frank tells Paul that his birth parents separated when he was young.

His sister stayed with their grandmother

but he was adopted by his aunt Elizabeth when he was 11 years old.

I still kept in touch with my real mother. She never got married again.

She lived alone and I always kept in touch with her.

Why were you adopted out?

Well, at that time there was no handouts like they get today.

There's no welfare and it's just a bit of maintenance from the husband.

He disappeared, Frank.

She got no maintenance so she couldn't really keep us.

Frank remembers his cousin Gordon from when they were both young boys.

He'd probably be about seven or eight then, I should think...

..when I last saw him.

-And he's gone?

-He's gone.

They are all passing me by.

You hang on there, you've got some money coming.

After listening to what Paul has to say,

Frank decides that he is happy for the company to help him

with his claim and duly signs on the dotted line.

-OK, thanks for your time. Nice meeting you.

-And you, bye-bye.

-All the very best. I hope you get a nice few bob, anyway.

-Thank you.

OK, Cheers, thank you. Bye-bye.

It's time for Paul to get going but there is no doubt

he is delighted with how things have turned out.

Absolutely lovely couple. He is an entitled relative.

He signed it with ourselves so that's a very good end result.

Now we've just got to try and trace some more members of the family.

In the end,

the heir hunters found three heirs to Gordon Clarke's estate

but when the case was submitted to the Treasury,

they discovered that the rumours about its value were unfounded.

There was no £40,000 in cash.

It turned out to be worth just £5,000,

which was split between the three of them.

Sadly, Gordon wasn't close to his blood family when he died

but he certainly wasn't alone.

His close circle of neighbours

and colleagues were a testament to his loyalty and youthful spirit.

He will be sorely missed.

He was just an amazing person.

I do think he's gone straight up and he's looking down at us.

In my mind and heart, he'll always live on. He will.

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