Mead/Miller Heir Hunters

Welcome to Heir Hunters, where we follow the search

for relatives of people who've died without leaving a will,

hoping to unite them with forgotten fortunes.

Today, the heir hunters are researching an estate

-worth an astronomical amount of money.

-Found a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Somewhere out there are some long-lost relatives,

who have no idea they're in line for a windfall.

Could the heir hunters be knocking at your door?

Coming up on today's programme...

Now we can rock'n'roll.

..it's pennies from heaven for one lucky beneficiary.

When I discovered the value of the estate, I was staggered.

An heir hunt that travels across the globe

and uncovers one of the most valuable estates ever...

He's going to receive a truly life-changing amount of money.

An heir retraces his grandfather's footsteps...

-He's done things that we can never, ever dream of doing.

-..deep in the trenches of World War One.

When the whistles went and you'd go off over the top,

you were just sort of floundering almost waist deep in mud and water.

I find out how to research relatives who served in the military.

It's amazing, to suddenly see them as a human,

as not somebody on paper - a great grandad you've never met.

Plus, how YOU could be entitled to a share of an unclaimed estate.

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.

There are over 30 specialist firms who make it their business

to track down missing relatives and help them claim their rightful inheritance.

People are entitled to this money. We make sure they get it.

First up today,

the heir hunters investigate the case of a man who died abroad

without leaving a will.

But with little information to go on, can the team find the right family?

-It's early Thursday morning at the offices of Fraser & Fraser...

-Can you check probate, Debbie?

..and the team are already hard at work.

-That could be right.

-No, I don't like that. Wrong age.

The Treasury has just released its list of people who've died without leaving a will

and boss Neil Fraser

has spotted a case which is a little out of the ordinary.

What we're looking at today is the case of Robert Ford Mead

and he dies in Thailand.

The list of unclaimed estates normally only covers people

who have died in England or Wales.

The only exception is when somebody dies overseas,

but leaves behind assets in the UK.

Neil knows that this case could be fraught with difficulties.

This is going to be very, very hard for us to get on.

We don't know if we're going to be able to get the death certificate. We don't know how old he is,

because we take that information, usually, off the death certificate.

We certainly don't know what type of assets he's got.

The team are hoping they're dealing with a wealthy ex-pat,

who's left behind a property, bank account or pension in the UK.

But Robert Mead could just as easily have died

with no more than a few thousand pounds to his name.

So the team are taking a massive gamble.

Heir hunters work on commission,

receiving a percentage of an estate's final value.

If the value is substantial, they'll make a profit.

If the value is very low, they could have trouble just breaking even.

Neil puts senior researcher Gareth in charge of the case.

-Have we got a manager on this?

-Yeah.

Gareth is an experienced heir hunter

but already he's worried about the seemingly insurmountable task ahead of him.

I haven't got an area in the UK to look for him.

So I don't know where he was from, originally.

Was he living in Thailand? Was he just on holiday in Thailand?

I've, literally, only got his name, Robert Ford Mead.

So I'm struggling to identify anything, really.

With no leads to go on, Gareth decides a sensible place

to start his enquiries is with the British Embassy in Thailand,

so he gives them a call.

We are actually in the process of trying to locate the heirs to his estate

and at the moment, we've got so little information to go on,

I was hoping you might have some further details.

This turns out to be a good move,

as the Embassy in Bangkok is more than willing to help.

Thank you very, very much. Cheers, bye.

He thinks they will almost certainly have a file on the deceased

and he's going to root out that file

and hopefully e-mail or call us back with some details.

Robert was one of around 6,000 British nationals

who die every year overseas.

Before his name appeared on the Treasury list,

his death would have set in motion

a whole chain of events, both in Thailand and the UK.

The responsibility for deaths abroad lies with the Foreign Office.

When a death comes in,

it will always be the frontline services, at our embassy, consulate,

our high commission, that will generally deal with it.

And that can obviously mean immediately dealing with

the authorities, it can mean dealing with the police, the hospital,

depending on the nature of that death.

It will be called in to London

and we will obviously start looking for the next of kin here.

Finding the next of kin is of paramount importance.

In an ideal world, there would be, in the back of the passport,

where it says "next of kin", details,

but unfortunately, that doesn't always happen.

So you may look through some of the belongings,

you may have to look at the credit card details, any personal letters.

Talk to the ex-pat community, did they know him?

Was he a member of any clubs? Is he registered with the embassy?

With the British Embassy in Thailand on the case, things are looking up.

While Gareth waits for them to get back to him,

the rest of the team start pursuing other leads,

and it's not long before they make a breakthrough.

What we've been able to do is, through a process

of pure elimination, is identify the address for the deceased.

By going through all the Robert F Meads they could find on the electoral roll,

the team have been able to identify one who was living by himself.

They believe this is the correct Robert Mead

and the electoral roll provides them with his address.

He owns a property down in Eastbourne and it looks like a family home,

so we've got value on it, so we've started rolling on it.

This is exactly what Neil was hoping for.

A family home in Eastbourne could be worth a substantial sum of money,

so the team now know it's worth their while to continue pursuing this case.

Now we can rock'n'roll.

Robert Mead died on 17 February, 2010, in Koh Samui, in Thailand.

But the team have now discovered he did have a life in the UK.

His next-door neighbour, Ramesh Patel,

knew him from when he was a young man.

Robert was a shy boy. Very, very shy.

I never saw any friends,

not even a boy friend, not even a girlfriend.

Robert shared a house in London with his parents,

to whom he was very close.

Robert loves his mother a lot. That we saw.

Because they always go together, no?

All three of them.

His parents eventually retired to Eastbourne,

but Robert stayed on in London,

where he worked as a development manager

for a well-known cake and biscuit company.

He always comes with the van, Mr Kipling cakes, or McVitie's.

He always parked the van here, in front of the house.

That's why I knew that he's working for McVitie's or Mr Kipling.

The team now know that Robert owned a property in the UK,

which means there is money in the estate.

But the discovery of his address

has also provided them with a vital clue -

Robert's age when he died.

He's 63 years old,

which is pretty much how old we thought he was going to be.

The team can now work out the year that Robert was born

and, thus, identify the correct birth record for him.

Once they have the correct birth,

-they can look for other family members.

-Now we've got his birth, we can work it in the normal way.

He appeared to be living with a John and an Isabella, who are probably the parents,

so we are going to work those.

We need to see if he's got any brothers and sisters.

Researcher Debbie gets on the case.

I just want to double-check the spelling of the mother's maiden name.

She finds a marriage for Robert's parents,

rather unexpectedly, in Scotland,

and then goes on to see whether they had any children, other than Robert.

Currently, I'm trying to establish siblings of the deceased.

Debbie's search comes up trumps.

So far, we think he's got a brother, John.

This is potentially an exciting development.

If John is still alive,

he could be the heir to Robert's estate.

Robert's parents, John and Isabella,

married in Edinburgh in 1944.

Soon after marrying, they moved to London,

where they had two children, Robert and his younger brother, John.

John was born in 1949,

so there's every possibility he's still alive,

or so the team think.

Unfortunately, a quick search of the death records...

Dies in '84.

..reveals that John passed away in 1984.

To confirm this death, and eliminate John as an heir,

Gareth needs to get a copy of John's death certificate

from the register office in Hounslow in London.

Ah, is that Bob?

And, as luck would have it,

travelling researcher Bob Smith calls in at this particular moment.

-'Hi, Bob.'

-Hello, Gareth.

'After you've got Millsy's death certificate,'

can you get one for me from Hounslow, please?

-Hounslow, yeah?

-It's John Andrew Mead, M-E-A-D.

Whilst the bulk of their research is done in the office,

heir hunters also rely heavily on a network of travelling researchers,

ready to hit the road at a moment's notice.

Based throughout the UK, their job is to pick up certificates,

make enquiries with neighbours,

and make sure they get to the heirs ahead of competing heir hunters.

-All right. OK, mate.

-'Cheers.'

-Cheers.

While Bob heads off to Hounslow,

the team set about looking for a marriage for Robert's brother, John.

-Check marriages for John A Mead.

-John A Mead?

Yeah, dies in Hounslow in 1984.

And it's not long before they find one.

-Hounslow?

-Hounslow's good. Hounslow's perfect, in fact.

-So, take that marriage, then. June '78.

-June' 78.

It looks as though Robert's brother, John,

got married in Hounslow in 1978.

The team's task now

is to see whether he and his wife had any children.

If they did, they could be the heirs to Robert Mead's estate,

but it's not looking hopeful.

-Gareth?

-Go ahead.

-Small issue.

Neil hasn't found any children from the marriage of John Mead.

This means that there don't appear to be any close kin on this case,

and the team will now have to expand their search,

to look for aunts, uncles and cousins.

Researcher Alan gets to work

on Robert's father's side of the family.

I have identified the marriage of the deceased's paternal grandparents.

Robert's paternal grandparents were John Mead and Julia Bennett.

They had two children, Robert's father, John, and a daughter, Joyce.

If Joyce had any children, they would be cousins of Robert's,

and potential heirs to his estate.

But it's not good news.

Joyce died, unmarried, in 1947 in Brentford.

As Joyce was Robert's father's only sister,

and as she died without having any children,

this brings research on the paternal side of the family to an end.

It would appear at the moment in time there's going to be no full blood

on the paternal side of the family.

Things are not looking very hopeful.

With no close kin and no heirs on Robert's father's side,

the team's only hope now is the maternal side,

and it looks as though they're all based in Scotland.

Good morning, Alan.

How are you?

It's Gareth, by the way.

Gareth puts in a call to the company's Scottish agent,

to request some help with their research.

It's a very short family tree, cos we don't have much information.

The deceased is Robert Ford Mead,

and that's M-E-A-D.

Robert Ford's parents are John Clifford Mead

and Isabella Ford Finlayson.

They get married in 1944, in Edinburgh.

That's our Scottish agent,

who's going to get the marriage of the deceased parents

and will almost certainly be working the Finlaysons in Scotland,

I would have thought.

All the team can do now

is play a waiting game and hope that the Scottish agent

will find some heirs

on Robert's mother Isabella's side of the family.

We're really pinning all our hopes on Isabella.

Hopefully, Isabella's got a nice family

and we'll find some heirs from that.

Nice, big family. Nice, big Scottish family, that's what we want!

Coming up, the team gets confirmation

of the estate's final value,

and it exceeds all expectations.

When I discovered the value of the estate, I was...

Well, I was staggered.

It's 45 minutes, an hour's worth of research,

which could make Fraser & Fraser's year.

The heir hunters are pinning their hopes

on Robert's Scottish mother leading them to heirs on this case.

'I'm going to meet case manager Simon Grosvenor,

to find out how the team research Scottish records.'

Why does Scotland have their own set of records?

It's because Scotland is a separate country and, despite

James I succeeding to England and the Act of Union,

it retained its own legal system, so when they set up the

Registration of Births, Marriages and Deaths, they set it up separately.

It was on January 1, 1855 that civil registration

of births, marriages and deaths replaced the old system

of parish records in Scotland. From 1855, registration

became compulsory, regardless of

religious belief or denomination

and followed a standard format for each record type.

Are there any differences between Scottish records

and English and Welsh records?

Scottish records, very helpfully, from our point of view,

have more information on them

than you would get on a standard English or Welsh certificate.

Whist extra information do they have?

As an example, we've got here the birth of Alexander Fleming...

-Who discovered penicillin.

-Indeed.

Now, the certificate says here, he was born on August 6th, 1881.

It gives you the time of day that he was born, which you

wouldn't standardly get on an English or Welsh certificate.

The exception is twins or multiple births, when they give you the time.

On Scottish births, you get it for everybody,

so if you wanted to do a horoscope or something,

you've got the time, and it tells you where,

and then it gives both the parents' details,

so you get the maiden name of the mother,

but also - again, you don't get this on English or Welsh certificates -

you get the place and date of the parents' marriage.

The rest of the information - "who informed?" In this case, the father.

And when and where it was registered.

That must be really useful information, as an heir hunter?

Yes, it is, because if we were doing this in England or Wales,

we'd have to search for the marriage. Here, we've got the date.

We can go straight to it and don't have to look.

Also, if it's a common name and you know

when it was, you know it's the right one.

Also, the marriages are different.

We've got here the marriage of J M Barrie.

-Yes, he wrote Peter Pan, my favourite.

-Indeed.

And it gives you his name

and the name of his wife, and when and where the marriage occurred.

It gives his occupation and notes she is a spinster.

It also, and this is again

the difference. On an English certificate, you'd just get the name

of the father of either the groom or the bride.

On the Scottish certificate, you get the name of the mother, as well,

including her maiden name.

So, if you're going to go backwards, you know who both

the parents are, you can find their marriage and it makes life

a lot easier, cos we don't have to guess the maiden name of the mother

or check loads of other marriages. You just go straight for that one.

-How can people access these records?

-Again, one of the other differences

is that you can actually see the entries. If you go into one of

the websites where they have the births,

marriages and deaths, or the census records,

up to about 1906, you can actually see the entry.

Instead of having to apply for a certificate in England,

then wait for it to come back and get information, you can just

highlight it, click on it and get all the information straight away.

-Amazing!

-You can go back much more quickly,

-which makes it rather more exciting, I think.

-Yes.

If you want to trace your Scottish ancestors, before the introduction

of civil registration in 1855,

the old parish records are also online and some of the records

date back as far as the mid-1500s.

However, the amount of information found on parish records

can be variable and some entries contain little detail.

Scotland keep their own records. Are there any other places within the UK

-that do the same?

-Virtually everywhere other than

England and Wales is kept separately, so Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man,

the Channel Islands and, curiously, Lundy, which was privately-owned

for quite a long period and seem to have "escaped".

Their records are kept at Kew. The others

are kept either on the Isle of Man or Jersey or Guernsey,

depending which one it is. The records in Jersey are slightly

more complicated, cos they're kept in French, so if you don't

speak French, it makes life more difficult.

In that sense, the Scottish records,

although they're also different, they're much easier to see

than a lot of the others. The others are a more complicated process to do.

You just have to, perhaps, travel a bit further to find them.

-Thank you.

-OK.

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 database of over 2,000 names,

which have baffled the heir hunters and remain unsolved.

This is known as the Bona Vacantia list.

Bona Vacantia is the Latin term for ownerless property.

There's two main types.

There's the property of now-dissolved companies

and the estates of those who die without a valid will

or entitled kin.

And this unclaimed money could have your name on it.

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.

Could you be the heir they've been searching for?

Could you be in line for a windfall worth hundreds, thousands

or even millions of pounds?

Pollyanna Frances Charley Burnett died in Hereford in November, 2009.

Although Burnett is a relatively common surname,

Polyanna's forenames make her name combination very unusual.

Are you related to Pollyanna?

Does her combination of names mean anything to you?

John Emmanuel O'Hosi died in Leeds in February, 2007.

O'Hosi is a very unusual clan name, with unclear origins.

Do you share the surname O'Hosi? Could you be John's heir?

Mary Griffiss died in Woodford Green in Essex in November, 2004.

The surname Griffiss,

probably a corruption of the popular surname, Griffiths,

is extremely rare in the UK.

Were you a friend or neighbour of Mary's?

Can you help solve this case?

If you think you might be related to Mary,

or to any of those featured today,

then follow the Treasury Solicitor's advice.

If people want to find out information about

Bona Vacantia Division, the first port of call

is our website. We have a dedicated website

and there is information on there

for them to find out about what we do and how to make a claim.

Those names again... Pollyanna Burnett,

John O'Hosi and Mary Griffiss.

If any of the names today are relatives of yours,

then you could have a fortune coming your way.

Next, the case of a man from Coventry,

who died without leaving a will.

The task for the heir hunters is to find out if he had

any living family entitled to inherit his money.

This is what happened in the case of Robin Miller.

Robin Miller died on November 26, 2008, in Coventry.

He was 73 years old.

He lived alone in a flat in this house,

where his neighbours knew him as a quiet, reclusive character.

But Robin was actually a man of hidden depths

and had a bit of an adventurous streak,

as his lifelong friend Roy can reveal.

Robin's main passion was cycling.

He used to do Land's End to John o'Groats

on his summer holiday fortnight. In those days, he used to manage

to do it in the fortnight. I should think

he must have done it 20 times in his lifetime.

Robin was also a man

of rather old-fashioned tastes.

'A pure Victorian'

and anything past the, sort of, the war, he didn't want to know about.

He just felt that it was a waste of time.

If it was horse and carts

or that type of transport, he'd love it,

but if it was cars or planes, he'd boycott it.

He lived for Victoria.

When Robin died, he left an estate of £33,000, but no will.

His case was taken up by heir hunter Tony Pledger.

This case first came to our attention

on the Bona Vacantia list. At that time, we couldn't establish a value

'for it, so we put it to one side, until such time'

as we did know a value. That turned out to be £33,000.

'We then started looking into it.'

Tony's first step was to establish whether Robin had been married

and whether he'd had any children.

We're unable to trace any marriages of him in the Coventry area.

We then have to assume that he was a bachelor at the time of his death.

And, as a bachelor, had no children.

As Robin had no descendants, the team would now have to go

back a generation, to find his parents.

Once they had his parents' names,

they could see whether Robin had any brothers and sisters.

The birth certificate of Robin told us who his parents were.

We then found that they'd married in 1922, in the Chipping Norton

registration district.

From that marriage, there were two children,

Robin's elder sister and Robin.

Robin's parents were Walter Miller and Kathleen Dore.

They had two children - Cicely, born in 1926,

and Robin, born in 1934.

If Cicely was still alive, as Robin's only sister,

she could be the sole heir to his £33,000 estate.

The team's task now was to try and track her down.

Robin Miller was born on December 12, 1934, in Coventry.

As a boy, he worked in a local grocer's shop,

where he soon progressed to become manager.

He then went on to work for the railway.

Well, he has to shovel the coal in the fire

and keep the steam up and all this, you know?

Yeah, and he was on one or two of the bigger engines.

He went to London,

and from London to Glasgow and that

on the Royal Scot and one or two others, I think.

Tragically, Robin's parents both died within a year of each other

when Robin was just 18,

and his neighbour Roy and his family took him under their wing.

My dad invited him round for Christmas lunch,

which he thoroughly enjoyed, because we lived on...

It was like a smallholding, on Tile Hill Lane,

and we used to rear our own poultry,

and we used to have goose for Christmas lunch,

and it really went down well.

And he never missed a Christmas lunch

with my father and myself for 60 years.

In the office,

the team have discovered that Robin had a sister, Cicely,

who could potentially be the heir to his estate.

But a search of the death records soon put an end to this possibility.

She passed away in 1933, aged six years,

in Coventry Hospital, of bronchial pneumonia.

This meant that Robin had no surviving close kin,

and the team would have to go back a generation

to investigate the families of Robin's parents.

Tony started to look into Robin's mother's side of the family.

He discovered that Robin's mother, Kathleen,

was the daughter of James and Louisa Dore.

She had six siblings, who would be aunts and uncles of Robin's.

The team began to work their way through these uncles and aunts,

to see whether they had married and had any children.

It transpired that all of the uncles and aunts

had family of their own

and so, it became immediately apparent

that we were looking at a fairly sizeable maternal family.

With such a large maternal family,

the team had high hopes of finding some of them still alive.

It looked like they were on the verge of finding their first heirs.

Coming up... The search for heirs

reveals the horror of life in the trenches during World War One.

I'm glad it was those guys and not me.

It's not something I'd fancy doing, that's for sure.

Here are some more unsolved cases, where heirs still need to be found.

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 is 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.

Do these names mean anything to you? Are they relatives of yours?

Vesterborg Bendix Sorensen died in Brighton, back in June, 2000.

The surname Sorensen is Danish or Norwegian

and probably gives a clue to Vesterborg's heritage.

Do you know anything about Vesterborg's family?

Can you help solve this case?

Nicholas Daniel Gabrilenko died in Cardiff, in March, 2001.

The surname Gabrilenko is extremely rare and may be

from Russia or the Ukraine.

It also appears that Nicholas had a wife, who pre-deceased him,

called Rita.

Do you know Nicholas? Did he ever speak to you about any family?

Eva Price died on June 19, 1998, in Birkenhead.

I've got Eva's death certificate here. It contains more information

about her. It says she was born

on September 14, 1932, in Birkenhead. As she was born

and died in the same area, perhaps she was from a local family.

The death certificate also reveals Eva's middle names, one of them

being Barnett, which could have been her mother's maiden name.

Does this ring a bell with you? Was there an Eva in your family?

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

you need to show your relationship to the deceased,

in order to claim their estate.

People need to prove their entitlement,

by producing documentary

evidence - certificates of birth, death and marriage.

We will tell them what's required

and then they will need documents of identity.

A reminder of those names again...

Vesterborg Sorensen...

Nicholas Gabrilenko....

and Eva Price.

If today's names are relatives of yours,

you could have a windfall coming your way.

Now, let's return to the hunt for living relatives of Robin Miller.

The team's on the verge of finding their first heir.

Heir hunter Tony Pledger was looking into Robin's case.

He died in Coventry, aged 73,

leaving behind an estate worth £33,000.

As Robin had never married and had no children or living siblings,

Tony had expanded his search to look for aunts, uncles and cousins.

And it looked like there were quite a few.

It became immediately apparent

that we were looking at

a fairly sizeable maternal family of the deceased.

One of Robin's maternal aunts was Violet Dore,

who married a Thomas Sandland.

They had a daughter, Dorothy, who had sadly passed away.

When she died in 2009, she had survived the deceased,

but unfortunately, she had died before we were able to contact her.

So Dorothy's share of Robin's £33,000 estate

would now pass to her son, Marshall.

The team tracked Marshall down to an address in Bedfordshire

and got in contact.

Their call came as a bolt out of the blue.

It was a shock to get a call from Fraser,

cos I only met the guy once, back in the '60s.

So to think we were entitled to something was an absolute knockout.

I had no idea. It was amazing.

The only time Marshall had met Robin was at his grandmother's funeral.

I know absolutely nothing about cousin Robin.

I only met him the once. I didn't even know he was a relative of mine.

He walked in and somebody said, "This is your cousin Robin."

I said, "Oh, really?" So that was it.

Marshall is actually Robin's first cousin, once removed.

His mother, Dorothy, was Robin's first cousin.

She married Reginald in 1944 and Marshall was their only son.

My parents met during the war,

while they were both working for AC-Sphinx,

a company that made spark plugs for Spitfires and such like.

WHISTLE PEEPS

During the Second World War, working for a factory like AC-Sphinx

would have been a reserved occupation.

Reserved occupations are those civilian jobs

which are so important, either to the munitions industry

or to the national economy,

that the people who hold them are exempted from conscription.

A spark plug factory would have fallen into this category.

Britain fights a very motorised war.

It's reliant on an enormous aerial campaign against Germany,

from 1941 onwards.

Every bomber that's flying against Germany

has four of these huge engines powering it across the Channel.

It's reliant on an awful lot of spark plugs.

Marshall's father, Reginald, worked as a universal grinder,

sharpening the tools used to make the spark plugs.

His mother, Dorothy, was a production worker.

As the war progressed, more and more men were called up to fight

and this led to an increased need for manpower

to fill the jobs back home.

One of the ways to do that, is to bring a lot more women

into the engineering labour force

and particularly into the munitions production system.

Most of those women

are undertaking what are fairly unskilled jobs,

but some of them go on to take up what would formerly have been

reserved occupations held by men.

The introduction of women into the engineering workforce

provided plenty of opportunity for romance to blossom,

which is exactly what happened in the case of Marshall's parents.

They did their courting at the back of the factory

during the air raids and during the war.

But, yeah, they enjoyed it. They had good fun there.

And, er, that's how I happened to come into this world.

Inheriting from a cousin he hardly knew

has awakened Marshall's interest in the family that linked them.

In particular, his grandfather, and Robin's uncle, Thomas.

Just like Marshall's parents,

who were brought together by the Second World War,

his grandparents, Thomas and Violet,

also met doing their bit for their country during the First World War.

My grandfather, Tom Sandland,

he was fighting in Ypres

and was in the Durham Light Infantry.

He got injured and he landed up in hospital and, um,

she nursed him and they fell in love.

Thomas Sandland was in the 11th Battalion Pioneers,

a division of the Durham Light Infantry,

who landed in France in July, 1915.

They spent the duration of the war on the Western Front

and saw action in some of the major battles of the First World War.

Marshall is keen to find out more

about the wartime experiences of his grandfather,

who was also Robin's uncle.

So he's going to meet historian and First World War expert, Taff Gillingham.

-Hello, Marshall, pleased to meet you.

-Hello, Taff, pleased to meet you.

-Want to have a look at the trench?

-That's why I'm here.

-Follow me.

Taff wants to give Marshall an idea

of the conditions his grandfather would have fought under.

So he's invited him to visit a replica

of the First World War trench system, near Ipswich in Suffolk.

So your grandfather, Thomas Sandland,

served with the 11th Service Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry.

And the service battalions were those which were raised

only for service during the First World War.

That's all that they were going to do and at the end they'd be disbanded.

So they weren't regular soldiers, they weren't territorial soldiers,

-they were what they called Kitchener volunteers.

-Yeah.

Kitchener's Army was an all-volunteer army

formed in the United Kingdom after the outbreak of hostilities.

It was created by the Secretary of State for War, Horatio Kitchener.

Contrary to popular belief that the war would be over by Christmas,

he predicted a long and costly battle

that would require a huge increase in troop numbers.

So he began a massive recruitment campaign to expand Britain's army.

The 11th Service Battalion were nearly all miners.

Yeah, that would fit in, because Pop was a miner.

Because there were so many miners,

they were made into a Pioneer Battalion.

And what that meant was that, within their division, they were the troops

who were fighting soldiers - they could find themselves in action, as well -

but they could be called upon to do trench digging, road building, repairing structures in the trench.

-So they had a specific role, as well as doing the fighting.

-Multitasking.

-Absolutely.

Before the war, Thomas Sandland worked as a coalminer in Durham.

His experience down in the pits was perfect preparation

for the gruelling hours of trench digging

he would undertake as a Pioneer.

Never was this more true than at the Battle of Passchendaele.

The big problem with the fighting at Passchendaele was that the weather turned

and there was torrential rain. When the whistles went, you'd get off over the top.

You were just floundering almost waist-deep in mud and water.

Obviously, in the midst of battles, trenches get very heavily shelled.

You know, if it's been battered for several days

this all gets filled in. The earth's coming in, the sides are smashed down.

So a big role that they have is keeping the trenches deep enough to defend.

At the time, Passchendaele was seen as a vital piece of ground

that needed capturing.

The Germans were sitting up on the Passchendaele Ridge,

observing the British Army, not just from the front,

but also from two sides.

And it was a thorn in the British side

that needed clearing and sorting out.

Really, 1917, the Battle of Passchendaele is probably,

out of all of the battles in the First World War,

the one that sapped British morale more than any others.

Taff has obtained a copy of the 11th Battalion's war diary,

which paints a vivid picture

of the back-breaking work the Pioneers undertook.

Here we are on the 29th.

Read this for me. It just gives you an idea

of how it wore the fellows out.

So, read it from here.

"The men are thoroughly weary on arrival, in bivouacs.

"After work, they parade daily at 7:15am,

"carry haversack rations and return at 4:30pm.

"They take both breakfast and dinner in the dark.

"Some are too tired to eat dinner.

"Others too weary to turn out for rum rations."

It really does give you an idea of how much hard physical work

these fellas were having to put in.

-Besides the fighting.

-Besides the fighting side of it.

I mean, in a way, this role of the Pioneers

-is more important than the fighting.

-Oh yeah, yeah.

Cos they're obviously doing this work for everybody else in their brigade.

-Creating all these tunnels and these...

-Yep.

-Oh!

For Marshall, today's experience has been a real eye-opener.

It was very, very eerie being in those trenches.

I'm glad it was those guys and not me.

It's not something I'd fancy doing. That's for sure.

But it's also served to reinforce the affection he feels

for his grandfather, and Robin's uncle, Thomas Sandland.

I've always admired my grandfather

because of what he made of himself and what he's done,

but to see what he went through to get there, it's, er...

You can only love him and admire him even more,

because he's done things that we can never, ever dream of doing.

Absolutely fabulous.

Marshall didn't really know his cousin Robin,

but thanks to him, he has gained a fascinating insight

into his family's experiences during the two World Wars.

And those who did know Robin well

will remember him fondly.

'After my dad died and then he came to us,'

I think he most likely looked on me nearly as a brother, really.

'He come to our house once a week, on a Monday.'

And it was a real ritual every week. He wouldn't go anywhere else.

He'd come if he'd got pneumonia. He just loved coming, aye.

The hunt for heirs led Marshall

to investigate his grandfather's experiences in the First World War.

I'm keen to find out more about how military records can help

when it comes to researching family history.

'I'm off to meet military expert Taff Allingham,

'who can tell me where to look

'and hopefully help me search for my relatives.'

So why are military records such a good way to find out about your family?

Well, the really good thing

is that the military, over the years, gathered so much information

about individual soldiers, sailors and airmen,

and kept all these records almost entirely for pensions purposes,

that's why they're all still around

and amongst it, you can find,

if they were married, it will tell you who they married,

how many children they had, what their names were,

where they were living at certain times.

There is a physical description of them,

so you can find out exactly how tall they were,

what colour their eyes were, and even things like the fact that

when they filled out the attestation form when they joined,

they'd sign the form, so you can get their signature. It's magic

and of course, in a lot of cases,

it might be the only surviving paperwork, you know,

for somebody who lived 100 years ago or 150 years ago.

Yeah. So what's the first step

when looking into your family's military past?

It depends, really, because it's different for different periods.

For instance, the Second World War,

most of the records have survived for the soldiers and sailors and airmen

but anybody who served in the military post-1921,

only the closest surviving relative

-can actually search for that information.

-Right.

If the soldiers and sailors and airmen are still alive themselves,

they can get records for free and so can their spouses,

and I'd really urge them to do that

because it makes life a lot easier for family historians years later

if your grandad's already searched for that and got the record

and it's in the family. I mean, this is a typical one,

this soldier who served in the Hussars in the Second World War.

It tells us when he joined the Army, it tells us where he went,

it tells us all about his promotion, what medals he was awarded,

so a great deal of information amongst the service papers

that tell you all of this.

If you want to go back to find the papers of a soldier who served before 1921,

then their service record is available to anyone,

not just family members.

They can be found on various websites

or through the National Archives at Kew.

The big problem, however,

is that many of the records were destroyed in the Blitz

but efforts have been made to salvage what's left.

Amazingly, the military kept all of the burnt documents

so when the fire brigade went in during the Second World War

and put the fire out, there's these big chunks of documents

which were burnt along the top edge or down one side

-and those were all kept when the fire was put out.

-Gosh.

And in recent times,

the National Archives have literally cut all those apart

and scanned them, so there's now a lot more information

than there was probably 10, 15 years ago

but it's still by no means complete.

There's an awful lot of soldiers' records that are missing,

but it's always worth a look because you might be lucky.

So my great-grandfather was in World War I,

-so can we look at his records?

-We can certainly give it a try.

Let's have a look.

So, what was his name?

William J Morton.

And do you know what the J stood for?

I think it was Jonah.

Fantastic. Lovely period name.

Morton. M-O-R-T-O-N.

OK. Any idea what year he was born?

-1892.

-1892.

There we go. That's a medal index card for him.

-Oh, my gosh!

-There he is. Look. Royal Field Artillery.

And it tells us the rank is driver,

so he's actually driving a team of horses,

almost certainly with an 18-pounder field gun.

What it also tells us is the medals that he got.

He got the 1915 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal.

Now, everybody got the War Medal and the Victory Medal,

or everybody that went overseas,

but the Star was for the guys not quite at the start,

they had what was called a 1914 Star

but the 1914/15 Star, which this is,

was given to all of those who served in France between 23 November 1914

and the last day of 1915.

The good thing with that is that it gives us the qualifying dates,

so basically, the date that he landed in France.

-He might have just been a reinforcement in a small group of them.

-Yeah.

-On the other hand,

there might have been a whole division that landed at the same time

and 18 July 1915, when you look that up,

what we find is that the 19th Division,

who were called the 19th Western Division,

they were a Kitchener army unit,

so basically, these were wartime volunteers, not prewar regular soldiers,

and they were established by Western command in sort of late August,

I suppose it was September 1914, as part of Kitchener's New Army

and it was called Kitchener's Second New Army,

so they already had 100,000 men join, which joined the First New Army.

Second New Army, which this was part of, and if we look here,

it actually says advance parties left for France on 11 July and

the main body crossed the English Channel

between 16 and 21 July 1915.

And this here is the 88th Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery,

which is what he was attached to.

It's amazing, isn't it?

It's fascinating stuff.

The level of detail that's revealed

about my great-grandfather's time in World War I is impressive.

It goes right down to the battles his unit fought in.

Then in 1916, this is all Battle of the Somme,

Battle of Albert is the opening day,

so they're in action during the Battle of Albert,

the attacks on High Wood, Pozieres Ridge, Omkar Heights,

so, you know, bang in the middle of the Battle of the Somme.

In 1917, they take part in the Battle of Messines, which is a huge success,

the first really big success of the war

and in 1918, which is really the forgotten year of the war,

which is also the most successful,

they take part in the Battles of St Quentin, Bapom, second battle of Messines,

right the way through at the end you know,

the final advance to beating the Germans

so they're well and truly involved in all of it.

It's amazing. You suddenly see them as human,

as not somebody on paper, a great grandad that you've never met.

Thank you.

Now it's your turn to investigate your family's past.

With so much information available, you too can appreciate

what your ancestors went through in the Great War.

Finally today,

let's return to the case of Robert Meade who died in Thailand.

Will the Heir Hunters be able to track down any heirs here in the UK.

Robert died on the island of Koh Samui in 2010.

Initially, the team had virtually no information to go on.

I have literally only got his name, Robert Ford Meade.

I am struggling to identify anything really.

But then they had a lucky break, when they managed to track down

an address for Robert in Eastbourne.

From that address we can work out his date of birth,

we even had his parents names, so that little bit of information,

you know, we can fly along.

This address also meant it was worth the team's time

and effort to continue pursuing the case.

Although he died overseas, Robert had left behind a property

in England which could be worth several hundred thousand pounds.

Earlier, Gaareth put in a called to the British Embassy

in Thailand to see if they could fill in any gaps

about Robert's life.

They passed his request on to the Foreign Office who had just

-called Gareth back.

-Thank you for your time and calling me.

You've been a great help. Take care, bye.

The Foreign Office had managed to track down a second

cousin of Roberts.

Unfortunately, under UK law, second cousins are too distant to

inherit, so this cousin has no claim on Robert's estate.

But she was able to help the Foreign Office with their enquiries.

It appears the deceased spent six months in the UK

and six months in Thailand.

He rented an apartment where he died in Thailand,

he had rented the apartment for three months.

When Robert retired in 2003, he sold the house he had

lived in in Hounslow and moved into his parents home in Eastbourne.

His parents had both died by this point so Robert was alone.

There was nobody else in his life you know.

No girlfriends, boyfriends, nothing. He was alone, totally alone.

With nothing to keep him in England, Robert decided to up sticks

and spend his retirement in sunnier climes.

And from that moment forth, he spent half

the year in Eastbourne and half year in Koh Samui,

an island in the Gulf of Thailand,

renowned for its palm fringed beaches and year round sunshine.

Robert moved to Thailand

because I think he thought he must enjoy his life now.

He once wrote me a card that he's enjoying the sunshine

and the weather, everything in Thailand.

As the foreign office were unable to track down any family

members of the closer than a second cousin, the British state fund

its way onto the Treasury list

where it was picked up by Heir Hunters.

So far, the team have determined that Robert has no surviving

close kin and no surviving aunts,

uncles or cousins on his fathers side of the family.

They've therefore been pinning their hopes on the mothers side

and have enlisted the help of their agent in Scotland to

-help track down heirs.

-A couple of Joneses.

Researcher Simon, has also been doing some

investigations of his own in the office.

I think it's the mother of the deceased family,

Isabella Ford Finlayson.

Just found the marriage of her parents so the

grandparents of the deceased I think. It's in Edinburgh, 1923.

Now they've found Roberts maternal grandparents,

James and Isabella, they can look to see whether they had any

children other than Robert's mother, who was also called Isabella.

Let's try and see if we can pick up deaths for James Finlayson.

But searching for records in the Scottish databases

can be problematic.

You cant look at the actual maiden names on the births in Scotland

in the period we're looking, so there's plenty of births

that are potential aunts and uncles of the deceased, but at the moment,

it's hard to identify them.

The team have been assuming the heirs in this case would be

cousins on the maternal side of the family, so now,

it looks like there's not much more they can do

but wait for their Scottish agent to get back to them.

But suddenly, all their assumptions are blown skyhigh

when Alan makes a startling discovery.

-That

-could well be the deceased sister-in-law.

He thinks he's found the widow of the deceased brother John

and he's also discovered something else rather intriguing.

Living with John Andrew Mead at one point was his widow who

we already knew about and also Sean.

Sean was born Sean Graham however on the electoral roll

he is calling himself Meade.

My question is, was he adopted by John Mead? If he was adopted by John Mead, then he's an heir.

This is potentially a very exciting development.

It appears that John's wife was previously married to a Mr Graham

and they had a son, Sean,

but at some point after John and his wife got married,

Sean changed his surname from Graham to Mead.

Under UK law, adopted children have the same rights of inheritance as blood children,

so if Sean was adopted by the deceased brother John, he would be a nephew of Robert's

and hence, closer kin than any aunts, uncles and cousins the team might find in Scotland.

Gareth's on the verge of a major breakthrough.

At the moment, I'm not 100% sure. We don't know for definite whether Sean was adopted by John.

If he was adopted by John, then he is an heir. If he wasn't adopted by John, then he's not an heir.

The team really need to speak to Sean or his mother

to find out whether their assumptions are correct.

They track down an address for Sean and Gareth wonders whether to send Bob Smith to go and visit him.

He's clearly at this address. More importantly, he's clearly not going to be at home, is he?

It's still fairly early in the day and Sean is likely to be at work,

so Gareth decides instead to call Sean's mother.

I'm hoping that if our research is correct then your son, Sean, was adopted by yourself and John -

would that be correct?

He was officially adopted.

This is great news.

Sean's mother has confirmed that he WAS adopted by John Mead

and the couple did not have any further children.

This means Sean is closer kin than any cousins the team might find in Scotland

and he is therefore the only heir to the estate of Robert Mead.

Gareth gets straight on the phone to Bob Smith.

Hi, Bob, how are you?

Can I give you a slightly different destination? The sole heir of the estate.

OK, all right.

-Before you get there, though, could you give the heir a call on his mobile cos he's at work?

-OK.

-He's expecting your call.

-All right. Cheers.

-Cheers, mate.

-Bye.

Bob was on his way to the register office to pick up some certificates,

but he's used to getting diverted at a moment's notice, so he arranges to meet Sean in a local pub.

He will need to confirm some details with Sean to make sure the team's research is correct

and that he is definitely related to Robert Mead.

-Right now, you were adopted, weren't you?

-I was adopted by John.

-What was your father's name? This would be your adopted father's name.

-John Andrew Mead.

-Now your father's brothers and sisters, these would be your aunts and uncles...

-Mm-hm.

-Can you name them at all?

-There was only Robert.

At this stage, Bob is unable to tell Sean how much he'll be inheriting,

but he IS able to suggest that the estate could be worth a substantial sum of money.

-We THINK that there may be as many as two properties...

-OK.

..one over here and then one possibly maybe in Thailand.

-OK, so he got about, then?

-Possibly.

Bob leaves Sean to mull over the events of the day.

Like I say, I think it might be a day that will change your life.

Oh, fingers crossed.

Bob's visit has left Sean slightly overwhelmed.

He hadn't seen Robert for many years.

The reason we lost contact

with my uncle Robert was purely because back in the day, him and my father didn't really get on -

kind of brotherly non-love, and...

and I'm sure it happens in quite a few families, to be honest.

For Bob Smith, it's a successful end to a very eventful day.

Interviewing the sole heir to an estate, which is, it would seem,

to be quite a valuable estate as well,

that's going to... like I said to him,

"This could be a day that's going to change your life."

That's good. It's all good.

Why can't it happen to me? I don't know.

Several weeks later, Sean agrees to let the company help him make his claim to the Treasury

and the team receive some staggering news.

We were hoping for a value of £200,000,

by the end of the day, fingers crossed, we may have a value of £400,000.

Well, the excellent news is the estimated value come in is approximately a million pounds.

This is an heir hunter's dream scenario -

estates worth this amount of money are very few and far between.

Sean's inheritance will however be dramatically reduced by inheritance tax,

but the amount he receives could transform his life.

A lot of the times we hear how unfair it is when you get adopted out of a family

you no longer inherit from the original blood family,

but we've always said that you become a beneficiary to your new family.

In this case, the heir has been adopted into the family.

His adopted uncle has now passed away

and he's going to receive a truly life-changing amount of money.

Sean's happiness at inheriting Robert's estate

is slightly tinged with sadness.

On one hand, you do have this bolt out of the blue, this bonus, which is totally unexpected,

and will always go down nicely, but it's hard to feel overly happy at somebody's misfortune, in this case,

somebody passing away and not really ever being there to catch up and find out what happened with him,

so it's swings and roundabouts really.

This case has taken the heir hunters from London to Edinburgh

to Thailand and back to the UK.

Robert Mead, a quiet, private man, who led a fairly ordinary life,

has in death, left a huge mark in the world.

For senior researcher Gareth, this is a case he'll remember for a long time to come.

This is one of my first cases managing, er...

and it's worth a million pounds, it's a brilliant stroke of luck.

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