Johnson/ Jones Heir Hunters

Welcome to Heir Hunters,

where we follow the search for living family of people who've died

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

Today the Heir Hunters are racing to track down the heirs to an estate worth £37,000.

Their job now is to beat the competition

and be the first to find the long-lost relatives

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

-Could they be knocking at your door?

-BUZZER

Coming up on today's programme:

I like where it's all staying in one area for us.

It's absolutely all over the place.

the hunt for one man's descendants

leads the heir hunters on a nationwide search.

We're covering every county in the country,

and that's usually a very bad sign from our point of view.

The heir hunters investigate

the £225,000 estate of Arthur William Jones.

But in the process, uncover his tragic life story.

Though Arthur hadn't died in the Second World War,

his life really had ended as anybody else would have known it.

And I'll be investigating Arthur's past further,

talking to the experts about his experiences of war in North Africa.

There's constant psychological tension, if you like,

because you don't know where death is coming from.

Plus, how you could be entitled to unclaimed inheritance,

where heirs need to be found.

Could you be in line for a cash payout?

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

If no relatives are found,

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

And last year they made £14 million from unclaimed estates.

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

They are the heir hunters, and they make it their business

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

The people that we trace are entitled to this money

and we like to try and do all that we can to make sure that they get it.

Our first case today features a man from Manchester

who died without leaving a will.

But with possible family spread far and wide,

the pressure is on for the team to track down his rightful heirs.

It's Thursday morning in London, and overnight the Treasury

has advertised a new list of names of unclaimed estates.

But today things are going to be a little different for staff

at heir hunting company Fraser & Fraser.

Yeah, OK.

Partner Neil is using an alternative list of names that is only

published every two or three months.

So what we're working today are a few cases which are

slightly different than our standard Treasury cases.

They're Duchy of Lancaster cases.

The Duchy of Lancaster is actually the Queen, the Monarch.

Um, this means that the money

doesn't directly go to the Government, it goes to the Queen.

This actually goes into her own personal coffers.

The Duchy of Lancaster is one of two Royal Duchies in England.

The other is the Duchy of Cornwall, and these are traditionally used

to provide income for the British monarch.

This revenue comes from the people who die intestate

within certain parts of these districts,

where the land is still owned by the Crown.

Another difference from Treasury cases

is that Neil knows exactly what an estate's worth.

It's 37,000.

With Duchies, we still get given the value on the cases.

However, they're generally a lot smaller than the Treasury cases.

So 37,000 is still in our budget to, to work.

What Neil means is that chasing a case of £37,000

is financially viable for the company,

as long as they can turn it around quickly.

If they can keep the manpower, timescale and resources

used to find David Johnson's heirs to a minimum,

it will mean there's a profit in it for the heir hunters.

Get in touch with Dave Hadley and send him there.

Wanting a speedy result,

Neil hands the estate over to senior case manager David Pacifico.

OK, bye.

David has over 40 years' experience at heir-hunting

and if anyone can turn this case around quickly, it's him.

Neil and David share what information they have so far.

-What was the date?

-18.04.56.

Initial research into the death records has given them

a speculative date of birth for the deceased -

a good starting point for the heir hunters.

I've got a Duchy case out today of a David Johnson. ..Bye.

David Johnson died aged just 53 on 25th January, 2010.

He left no will and no known relatives.

He died alone in his Manchester flat

and was discovered by friends, who alerted the police.

It was a sad end for a man renowned for his sense of humour

and love of life.

His friend David Fisher remembers a vibrant character

who he first befriended over a crossword puzzle down the pub.

The first time I met him, 28 years ago.

And he was happy, outgoing.

Loved his cigarettes, loved his beer. All the time, happy.

We had great laughs together.

In the week, David Johnson was a biochemist.

But on the weekends,

his greatest pleasure was walking in the great outdoors.

David and his friends

ventured from the Yorkshire Moors to the Lake District,

looking for good walks and good pubs.

But at the end of 2009, David Johnson

dropped off his friends' radar and stopped visiting his old haunts.

Towards the end of David's life...

..he became...almost invisible.

You couldn't see him.

He disappeared, as though he'd moved to another part of the town.

But he hadn't.

He was actually suffering from an undiagnosed cancer

and started avoiding his friends.

It was only by chance that David Fisher saw him in hospital.

But it was obvious his old friend didn't want to talk.

I think he'd pretended he hadn't seen me, yeah.

Which was a bit sad, really, because, you know,

we weren't distant friends or anything.

We were pretty close at the time.

So maybe he was just a bit frightened of...expressing himself.

When David Johnson finally sought medical help for his cancer,

he was told it was terminal.

And just two weeks later, he died.

The day in the hospital was the last time I saw him alive.

I never got to say any goodbyes,

you know, or try and cheer him up a bit,

take him on a bit of a camping holiday.

You know, he sort of retired into himself. He wouldn't go anywhere.

David Johnson left behind friends who miss him.

But for the heir hunters, it's about whether he left any family, as well.

What's the time now?

David Pacifico is already on the hunt for David's heirs.

The team's initial research into the death register suggests

that even although the deceased passed away in Manchester,

there was a David Johnson born in April 1956, in London

that could be their man.

Can I get Jo to go to Islington Registry Office?

David Johnson's birth certificate is crucial to the hunt.

On it will be his parents' names - a must-have when tracking down heirs.

David Pacifico puts in a call to researcher Jo, who is

out on the streets of London, ready to visit any register office

the team needs her to.

Could you go to Islington Registry Office and pick up the birth,

hopefully, on one of them?

At this early stage, all the team's research is speculative,

including the deceased's date of birth.

Well, hopefully born on 18th April.

And if that's the case, we'd also have the parents names.

But we need that birth.

From the team's initial research,

they think David's parents could be an Alan Johnson and an Edna Daniels,

although they won't know this for sure

until they get their hands on his birth certificate.

But because David died relatively young,

there is a possibility his parents outlived him.

Roger is hard at work.

Well, hopefully we've got the right David Johnson birth,

and if we have, I'm just seeing if the parents are still alive

as he's not that old a person.

So...I'll have a look around and see if there's any...

any Ednas and Alans still together.

Roger finds a potential marriage for David's parents,

but despite this, it's all still a bit confusing.

He was born in, er, London.

His potential parents also married in London,

but he died in Manchester.

So he might have gone on his own, or they might have all gone,

so it's still a stab in the dark at the moment.

But case manager David Pacifico

knows you have to speculate to accumulate,

and his team have found a potential last address for the deceased.

If it's correct, then they may have tracked down

a neighbour who knew David Johnson.

We're trying to trace the next of kin of a David Johnson.

At this stage, any additional information

will be welcomed by the heir hunters.

All right. Thank you. Bye-bye.

The phone call fills in details,

but details that don't help David Pacifico in his hunt for heirs.

Well, we've got the right address for the deceased,

but I believe he'd only been living there for a few years

and she had absolutely no knowledge where he came from,

any family or anything like that.

Everything is still up in the air.

Are David Johnson's parents still alive?

And even if they are, is the team even chasing the right family?

All they can do is speculate and plan for every eventuality.

-How are we doing, Roger?

-We're trying to track down the parents, yeah.

-What about siblings?

-Doesn't look like there are any.

I think that if Jo picks up the birth, just obviously,

do it one bit at a time.

-Yeah.

-Can you hold the door for me, sir, while you're there?

Fortunately, across the office, researcher Gareth is making headway.

Even though again, it's headway of a speculative nature.

Very speccy, because we haven't got any certificates.

We don't even know if the parents we've got of the deceased

are correct, but if it is, there's a Ronald born in 1931.

Um, having trouble finding a marriage for him. So, again, speccy.

I've possibly got HIS son,

so that would be a potential cousin of the deceased.

Er, trying to track him down now. His name's Ian Ronald Daniels.

To kick-start this hunt, the team are investigating the maternal line.

Using David's mother's maiden name of Daniels,

Gareth has potentially found Edna's birth in Sheffield.

If this is correct, it would make her parents

a Frederick Daniels and Agnes Brown.

He then searched for other children from their marriage

and has come up with a brother Ronald, who has passed away

but left living children.

Gareth passes on his tentative lead.

He has two children - Stephen and Ian Ronald Daniels.

Born in Sheffield?

-I think.

-Epping?

Despite this promising lead,

the team's hunt is still far from finished.

All the research into David's cousins could prove useless

if they discover his parents are still alive,

as they would be the rightful heirs to his estate.

To add to their worries, the speculative family tree

Gareth's putting together is all over the place.

We've got a deceased who died in Manchester, born in Islington,

potential parents Wood Green, which is fine, goes with the birth,

and then the mother potentially born in Yorkshire.

So, we're gradually covering the entire country.

Now, if my Ronald marriage is right, which is a long stretch, really,

then he married in Hertfordshire and his children are in Essex.

So we're gradually covering every county in the country.

It's frustrating stuff

when you're working on a case you know is worth £37,000.

And Gareth isn't the only one feeling it.

I'm losing the will to live here.

There it is, see, Rhodri had it.

David now has a phone number for the potential cousin of the deceased.

But he's in for yet more frustration.

Unobtainable.

The phone number doesn't work.

David is back to waiting on the birth certificate

for confirmation that they are chasing the right family.

Researcher Joe has ordered the certificate

from Islington Register Office, but has to wait until they've found it.

How are you getting on with that birth, any...?

Right, on the basis that it's right,

we think the parents may have got married in Wood Green,

which is Haringey.

Would you mind possibly going over there afterwards?

Until David Pacifico can confirm his family tree and the cousins

they've found, he has frustratingly little

for his travelling heir hunter to do.

Bob Barratt is one of the company's squadron of senior researchers

who are willing to go wherever a case takes them

in the hunt for heirs.

Their goal is to meet face to face with long-lost relatives

and hopefully get them to sign up with the company.

But for the time being, Bob will have to wait like everyone else

for David Johnson's birth certificate.

It's crucial for confirming that

the basic details for this case are correct,

and not leading the heir hunters on a wild goose chase.

And, birth certificate aside, the team still doesn't know for certain

what's become of the deceased's parents.

If we get that second Christian name, we might be able to do a bit more,

but we are worried that she's still alive.

Born 1924, so she could be in a home.

Yet again, it's more guesswork, and until the team start getting

some firm answers on this case,

all their initial research could be in vain.

Later in the programme, the team may have found David's cousins,

but they still haven't found his mother.

My own feeling is that I think she could be alive.

Every year, thousands of cases are cracked by heir hunters

across the UK.

But there are always a few estates that remain a mystery,

finding themselves in the unsolved file.

The Government list of over 2,000 estates is money that is owed

to members of the public,

but you must be related by blood ties to the deceased.

People need to prove their entitlement by producing

documentary evidence - various certificates of birth,

death and marriage, which we will tell them was required,

and then they will need documents of identity.

If your claim looks like it has merit,

then the Bona Vacantia Division will take it further.

You get two experienced people looking at each claim,

and, ultimately, if it's a big claim or a little bit complex,

it could go higher. We generally find the right answer.

If there isn't evidence, then we can't give the money away, because it's public money.

If there's evidence, then the case is made out.

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

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

Could you be in line for a windfall worth hundreds,

thousands, or even millions of pounds?

Margaret Grant-Paxton died in East Sussex in September 1996.

She passed away in the Eastbourne District General Hospital.

Does her distinctive double-barrelled name

mean anything to you?

Do you remember Margaret? Was she a relative of yours?

Or did you know Herbert Fallows Worsnop?

He died in March 2001 in Hampshire.

He may have passed away in the South of England,

but the vast majority of Worsnops live in and around Yorkshire.

So far, all efforts to trace Herbert's heirs have failed.

Can you help solve his case?

Or finally, Mabel Presence,

who died in Camberwell Green in London back in 1994.

Her surname is extremely rare in the UK.

Was Mabel a friend or colleague of yours?

Did she mention any family?

Do these names mean anything to you?

Here's a reminder.

Margaret Grant-Paxton,

Herbert Worsnop

and Mabel Presence.

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

you could have a windfall coming your way.

Next, the case of a man from Wales who died without leaving a will,

and whose early life was a mystery to those who cared for him.

Can the team find living family entitled to his estate?

Heir hunting companies don't always source unclaimed estates

from the Treasury or the two Royal Duchies.

Sometimes they will be approached by solicitors

acting on behalf of a deceased client.

But no matter where a case comes from,

the heir hunters' role is the same - to track down long-lost relatives

and inform them of their rightful inheritance.

Arthur William Jones died in January 2011

in a nursing home in Cardiff.

Arthur was 90 years old when he passed away,

and with no known relatives and no known will,

his mammoth £225,000 estate went unclaimed.

Arthur had been in College Fields Nursing Home for eight years,

and matron Rachel Kemp thought of him as one of the family.

Arthur, he was a gregarious sort of chap once you got him going.

SHE LAUGHS

And he loved singing songs that... It would have been war songs.

"Daisy, Daisy" was one of his favourites,

so if you wanted to get Arthur wound up, if you started singing

"Daisy, Daisy", he would start singing with you.

But Arthur was unfortunately very ill.

Before College Fields, he'd been in a mental hospital since 1979,

and had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and dementia.

Other than this, most of his past was a complete mystery

to Rachel and the other staff.

We knew nothing of Arthur's background,

only that he'd been a long, long-stay patient in Whitchurch Hospital,

and that he'd been wounded in World War Two.

That was the sum total of Arthur's history, as far as we were concerned.

After his death, Rachel and a solicitor appointed to Arthur

by the state tried in vain to trace any family he may have had.

Hitting a dead end,

the solicitor decided to contact heir-hunting company Fraser & Fraser

to see if they'd have more luck finding the heirs

to Arthur's sizeable £225,000 estate.

It is almost certainly going to be in Cardiff, isn't it?

Bob Smith is one of the company's case managers,

and the job of finding Arthur's heirs fell on his desk.

Obviously, the deceased had died without making a will

and there were no family members, apparently, that were in contact with him,

certainly no family members that visited him

in the nursing home where he died.

In the first instance,

Bob wasn't too happy about working a name like Arthur William Jones.

Jones is one of the most common surnames in Wales,

and solving cases with this name are notoriously difficult

for the heir hunters,

but Bob was given a head start.

Amongst the papers given to us

by the solicitors was a copy of our deceased's birth certificate.

That obviously has his parents' names on it.

From there, we were able to identify their marriage in 1906.

Arthur's parents were George Jones and Laura Maud Rich.

Bob's next task was to identify

whether they had any children apart from Arthur.

Using the details gathered from the marriage certificate,

he trawled the birth records and struck gold.

There were eight children.

So Arthur had in fact had four brothers and three sisters.

Bob's problem was they were all called Jones

and all born in Wales, but luck was on his side again.

Amongst the deceased's papers were mention of three family members.

These were the initials and surnames of a suspected brother,

niece and nephew.

From the paperwork, Bob discovered the name J Jones matched up

to Arthur's brother on the 1911 census records.

Now the team worked the niece's initials and surname.

By using the birth and marriage records, they found

who could be J Jones' daughter, and therefore Arthur's niece.

But it was a long shot.

On a hunch, we then located that lady, and she did in fact

turn out to be the niece who was named in the deceased's papers.

Bob had found his first heir, and she was able to tell him

crucial information about the family.

And having interviewed her, we confirmed that two of those

children had died in infancy, so that left five siblings

to our deceased where there were possible descendants.

Arthur was from a military family,

and when the Second World War broke out in 1939, both he

and his brothers were at a prime age for conscription into the Army.

But according to the niece Bob had found,

Arthur returned from the war a shell shocked and broken man,

an affliction that was still haunting him into his 80s.

His trauma from the war was witnessed first-hand

by his nursing home's matron, Rachel Kemp.

Initially, on coming in to us, Arthur was obviously a gentleman

who was quite disturbed, and would be able to have a normal

or semi-normal conversation with you and then would get very distressed,

would shout out about being in the trenches,

about... Hitler was coming, things like that.

Over 50 years later,

and Arthur's experiences of war were still haunting him.

After his death,

matron Rachel tried her hardest to piece together the tragic story

of his adult life, and what led him to College Fields Nursing Home.

We found out the fact that he was wounded at 24,

and although Arthur hadn't died in the Second World War,

his life really had ended, as anybody else would have known it,

because he became homeless, he became isolated from his family,

ended up in a mental hospital...

So life had had major repercussions for Arthur

because he'd been a soldier.

So what had happened to Arthur during his war years

that was so traumatic it stayed with him for the rest of his life?

For heir hunter Bob Smith, this question would have to wait.

His aim now was to track down the children of Arthur's other

siblings, as they would also be the heirs to Arthur's £225,000 estate.

Later in the programme, the family Arthur had lost touch with

remember just how traumatised their late uncle was by the war.

He would want us all to get under the table and hide,

and get very distressed if we didn't.

Although Arthur's life is still a mystery,

we know he had a brother, Alfred, who is also now dead,

but research has revealed that Alfred joined the Army in the early 1930s.

I'm off to meet military expert Taff Gillingham,

who's been investigating the Army records

and can hopefully explain why young men like Arthur's brother Alfred

joined the Army between the two world wars.

-So you've got Arthur's brother's Army record here.

-That's right.

This is the record of Alfred Jones, and as you can see here,

-he joins the King's Shropshire Light Infantry in 1933.

-Now, 1933 -

is there any particular reason why he'd join up then?

What's happened after the First World War, the Government have deliberately run the whole of the military down.

"There's never going to be another war. We fought the war to end all wars, and don't need a big military."

So everything's deliberately scaled down, but by the early '30s

there 's already the stirrings of the Nazis in Germany,

there's already a sense of unease,

and it's time to start thinking about building the military up,

which, actually, the British don't really do very successfully before the war starts.

And in 1933, there's an enormous recruitment campaign

all across the country, to try and get young lads to join the Army and build those numbers up again.

Pre- the Second World War, Britain still had its empire to administer

and govern.

From the records, Taff's discovered Alfred Jones

was stationed in India, in a colonial policing role.

So what would life in India have been like at the time?

Well, actually, it was quite hard work in a way,

because, obviously, it's the peacetime Army -

it was all about pressing and polishing... Incredibly smart,

which isn't an easy thing to do in a very dusty environment,

but on the other side to that, because it was so hot, they...

Throughout the middle part of the day, fellows were allowed to sleep

in their barrack rooms and come out in the cooler part of the day,

and at certain times of year, when it was extremely hot, they'd be

sent up the hill stations where the air was cooler, rather than keeping

them down in the plains where they were likely to get a lot more disease and illness.

Most soldiers would have Indian servants who shaved them

in bed in the mornings, without even having to get out of bed.

They had all their washing done for them. Just, you know, pay the locals a little bit of money.

So there was a whole sort of local industry that serviced

-the troops at the time.

-And what did Alfred do in World War II?

Well, he's come back to Britain just before the war and he finds

himself in France in 1940, at a period they call the phony war, where

really they were just waiting to see what was going to happen with the Germans. He gets appendicitis

and finds himself in a field hospital, in casualty clearing stations,

and is treated for that, and comes off at Dunkirk after the retreat there.

And then he joins the Reconnaissance Corps,

and the job of the Reconnaissance Corps... They're an armoured unit with armoured cars,

so they would be attached to armoured divisions with tanks

and their job was to get ahead of the tanks

and see what the Germans were doing, so, literally, reconnaissance troops would go out,

find out what was doing, report back to the tanks, because obviously the tanks moved much slower,

and that's what he does. He then gets sent back to India,

which is quite unusual for someone who's spent so long out there already,

and we can't be sure from the records that are here

but there's every likelihood that, between then and the time that he leaves India in December 1945,

that he's actually part of the Army fighting the Japanese.

So how had the British Army changed from when Alfred joined

-to when he left?

-It had changed enormously.

After the First World War, all the lessons the British Army

had learnt were pretty much forgotten through the '20s and '30s,

and when the Second World War arrives, it really takes

most of the Second World War for the British Army to relearn

the lessons that they'd learnt 20 years earlier,

but by the end of the second war, it's a very modern Army,

it's a very mechanised Army.

Obviously, Alfred himself is attached to a reconnaissance troop,

so it's all about fast-moving armoured cars.

And it was all state-of-the-art technology,

so it was a very, very different Army - all motorised,

everything travelled by vehicles - than the Army he joined in 1933.

From the records it appears Alfred Jones could have had a very

different experience of the military to his brother Arthur.

The Second World War may have been the beginning of a new

era for the modern British Army, but as Arthur's condition showed,

men still suffered horrifically while serving their country.

Now it's back to the search for heirs to the £37,000 estate

of David Johnson, who left no will and had no known relatives.

David died aged 53 in January 2010.

He passed away alone in his Manchester flat.

David had been diagnosed with terminal cancer,

and died just two weeks later.

He'd been ill for a while, but had kept it to himself,

and was loath to seek help.

He never actually went to a doctor's, and in that case,

when he did go to the doctor, it was a bit too late for the poor man.

And sadly, he passed away very quickly after that.

It was an unceremonious death for a man who loved life.

At the local pub where the two friends met regularly,

David was renowned for his dry humour and quick mind.

Everyone would be talking and he'd just say something off the cuff

and it'd throw everybody into turmoil then.

We'd all be laughing and joking.

He was a very bright, intelligent person.

In London, the heir hunters are working

David Johnson's £37,000 estate.

Because David died in Manchester, his name has been released

on the Duchy of Lancaster's list, not the Treasury's.

Unclaimed estates from areas of land owned by the monarchy

in the district of Lancaster go to the Crown, not the Government.

But the way the company tracks down heirs is exactly the same.

I've got a Duchy case out today of a David Johnson. Bye.

-Senior case manager David Pacifico and his team...

-Hello.

..are having a nightmare trying to confirm

even the most basic of David's personal details.

Why is nothing working today?

With no birth certificate yet for the deceased,

they're using a family tree based on an educated hunch.

So far, using the maternal line, they've managed to trace

but not yet contact two cousins in Essex who will be heirs

if the team can prove David's parents have passed away.

Not an easy task.

Born 1924, so she could be in a home.

But across the office, things have taken a positive turn.

Researcher Gareth thinks he's found a phone number for David Johnson's mother's brother's widow.

Got your tree?

Bit of a mouthful, but it's music to David Pacifico's ears.

We're trying to trace a particular family of the name of Daniels.

Now, would I be right in saying that you were married to a Ronald Daniels?

And did Ronald have a sister Edna?

Do you know whether or not she's still alive

or anything at all about her family at all?

Finally, even without David's birth certificate,

the team has confirmation

they've been chasing the right family all along

and their initial guesswork was spot on.

David Pacifico gets as many details as he can from the ex-sister-in-law.

-Bye-bye.

-But there's one answer she can only guess at.

She thinks that Edna herself may have passed away,

but she's not certain about it.

Until they confirm whether David Johnson's parents are alive or dead,

the heir hunt is still up in the air.

David brings Gareth up to speed.

Basically, this is all correct. Yeah. Ronald was one of two children.

Edna was married to Alan Johnson. They only had one child, David.

She says that Edna went into a home, thinks she may have died,

but she's obviously not certain.

So, we still could be talking about a mother.

But the question is who deals with her affairs, if that's the case.

All right. OK, bye.

Downstairs, the team double their efforts to find a death certificate

for Edna Johnson. Upstairs, David has his own thoughts about it.

-My own feeling is that I think she could be alive.

-Only time will tell.

So, while he waits for confirmation on Edna's predicament,

David uses a phone number given to him by the sister-in-law

and puts in a call to a cousin of the deceased.

We're looking into an estate of somebody

that has recently passed away -

in this case we're talking about her son.

Yeah. Your cousin, in other words.

The cousin may be a potential heir, but that will only be known

if he can shed some light on what's happened to Edna.

OK, thank you very much, bye. Bye.

Unfortunately, the cousin is still just a potential heir,

as he can't give David any definitive answers on Edna.

But there are other snippets of information he's provided

that will help the hunt.

That was the cousin. He knew that David was last known to be up north.

He thought Manchester or Newcastle,

but thought it might have been Manchester, which is right.

His mother lived in Blackpool, and his father was also Blackpool.

The father's definitely dead.

He knows that Edna went into a home,

so with Blackpool, I will hopefully ask them to see if they can check

to find out if we have got any possibilities of deaths in Blackpool.

That now cuts it down an awful lot.

If there's no death, that means that she's possibly still alive.

The location of Blackpool could be the key that unlocks this case.

David heads downstairs to pass on his latest lead about Edna

and her late husband Alan.

Gareth, can you see if you can identify

a death of Alan Johnson in Blackpool 22 to 25 years ago?

But Edna was also Blackpool.

Can we pick her up on any electoral roll or death?

This new information allows the heir hunters

to significantly narrow their search.

Gareth gets stuck into researching the records in Blackpool

and strikes gold.

-Edna, otherwise Edna Laetitia...

-Oh, it's right?

..dies on 8th May 1997.

Excellent.

So, if that's correct, as it looks good,

we'll then be back to this cousin again.

The cousins look like they're going to be entitled.

So, one side of the family is known but, of course,

we then have to look at the Johnson side,

because the father may well have had brothers and sisters

and, subsequently, children.

They may have had children,

so there is unknown possible other beneficiaries on this.

Gareth switches his attention to

David Johnson's father's family tree.

And now David Pacifico knows for sure that

the deceased's two cousins are heirs,

he puts in a call to travelling heir hunter Bob Barratt,

who has been on stand-by all morning.

He lets him know he potentially has a meeting for him in Essex.

Bye.

Bob Barratt is available, traveller,

so I know I've got somebody that can go to Epping.

Happy things are finally falling into place,

David lets the rest of the office know the good news.

We're up to date on one of the Duchy cases.

But things are never that easy.

It turns out the two cousins are willing to meet Bob,

but it can't be today.

David hurriedly organises a meeting for the following day.

The good news is that neither cousin has been contacted by

any competing heir-hunting companies.

David Pacifico hopes it stays that way.

I haven't come across any competition yet,

but that doesn't mean to say it may not come.

It's day two of the hunt.

In the office, the team are still trying to work out

if the paternal side of David's family will produce any heirs.

Meanwhile, a travelling heir hunter has made it to the meeting

with David's two cousins.

At the moment, they are the only two heirs on David's mother's side

to his £37,000 estate.

Bob Barratt is now tied up on other cases,

so David Pacifico has drafted in Dave Hadley.

-Hello there, Mr Daniels?

-Yeah.

Hi, Dave Hadley from Fraser & Fraser.

First on the agenda is cross-checking with the heirs

the information the office has passed on to him.

-And where was that? Was it in Blackpool?

-That was in Blackpool.

For the cousins, the news of David's death has come as quite a shock,

knowing he was only in his early 50s.

Didn't even know Dave was ill, how he died.

Don't know, but we can find that out.

Both cousins are happy to sign with the heir hunters.

This means the company can help them

in making a claim to the Duchy of Lancaster,

and are then entitled to commission on the cousins' share of the estate.

We hadn't talked in 20 years,

it's a bit of a surprise to get a phone call out of nowhere.

Despite not having spoken for decades,

there was no big family bust-up or arguments.

The cousins speculate it was more geographic than anything.

We had different lifestyles, totally.

He liked living in Manchester, we like living down south.

The two cousins, Stephen and Ian,

will now be entitled to a proportion of David's £37,000 estate.

But it's an estate they will now share.

In the weeks following the initial hunt,

David Pacifico and his team traced an aunt on the paternal side.

She's in her 90s and is the final heir to inherit on this case.

David Johnson may have lost contact with his family

in the decades before his death,

but the friends he left behind can give them some idea

as to the type of man he'd become.

We'd all be laughing and joking,

David would come out with some real crackers, Dave would.

He'd get everyone laughing within a few minutes.

Everyone looked up to him, he was a dead decent chap.

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 cases are being added all the time.

Cases get on our unclaimed list after a little while.

The procedure is that initially the case will come in.

We will make some enquiries ourselves to see

whether we can trace relatives, or a will.

If those initial enquiries don't bring forth anything,

-we will then advertise.

-This is money the Government want you to inherit

if you are indeed the rightful heir.

Money raised through Bona Vacantia

ultimately goes to the General Exchequer to benefit

the country as a whole, but it's important to remember

that the Crown does not want to grab all the states that it can.

It is keen for kin to be found and for people to make wills.

That is the way to stop property becoming Bona Vacantia, make a will.

Are today's cases relatives of yours?

Could you be in line for hundreds,

thousands or even millions of pounds?

Marguerita Joan Tysoe died in Olney, Buckinghamshire, in August 2007.

The surname Tysoe is almost solely found in this area near Milton Keynes,

suggesting that Marguerita may have been from a local family.

Did you know Marguerita? Could you be related to her?

Brian Druce died in Heston in West London on the 22nd July 2009.

Only around 25 people per million have Druce as a family name.

Do you share Brian's rare surname?

Could you be related to him and entitled to a share of his estate?

Bruce Harding died on the 27th January 2000.

I've got Bruce's death certificate here.

It shows that he was born on the 6th May 1919 in Staffordshire.

Was there a Bruce Harding in your family with that same date of birth?

The death certificate also shows his occupation.

It says he was a council maintenance worker.

Did you used to work with Bruce? Did he mention any family to you?

If you think you are related to any of the people 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.

A reminder of those names again -

Marguerita Tysoe, Brian Druce and Bruce Harding.

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

you could have a windfall coming your way.

The heir hunters are searching for relatives of ex-soldier

Arthur Jones.

Can the team uncover further family

and find out what happened to Arthur during World War II?

Arthur William Jones died in a Cardiff nursing home aged 90.

He left no will

and no known relatives to inherit his £225,000 estate.

Most of his past life was a mystery to those who cared for him

in his final years.

We knew nothing of Arthur's background,

only that he'd been a long, long-stay patient in Whitchurch Hospital.

And that his experiences in the Second World War

had traumatised him for life.

He would get very distressed at times and would shout out

about being in the trenches, about Hitler was coming, things like that.

The job of finding Arthur's heirs fell to

probate researcher Bob Smith.

Hunting heirs to an Arthur William Jones born in Wales is a tall order,

as Jones is one of the most common Welsh surnames.

Despite this, Bob discovered Arthur had had seven siblings,

five of which had survived into adulthood.

Using paperwork that came with the estate,

Bob found his first heir, a niece of Arthur's,

and her family knowledge helped him move his hunt forward.

It is almost certainly going to be in Cardiff, isn't it?

Using Arthur's mother's name of Laura Maud,

he searched the birth records

and found a sister of Arthur's who was also called Laura Maud.

She had stayed in Cardiff, and had had two children,

one of whom was Lorraine Sergeant, another of Arthur's nieces.

She was able to provide great information in relation to all of the deceased's family

and particular about the deceased himself and his life.

Niece Lorraine may have been extremely helpful to Bob,

but initially the whole thing came as a shock to her.

My immediate reaction was, "nothing to do with us."

My sister phoned up and said about it.

We were both dumbfounded, to be quite honest.

Right out of the blue.

Lorraine used to occasionally bump into Arthur around Cardiff,

but lost touch.

Her fondest memories of her uncle went back to her childhood.

He used to come and stop with my grandmother

and very fond memories of him at that stage.

But he was a very sick person.

Yes, he had problems stemming from the war.

It turned out Arthur had enlisted in the army in 1939,

aged just 19 years old,

just before the outbreak of the Second World War.

At this stage, he was a healthy young man.

He was in the First Battalion Welsh Regiment

and was initially based in Palestine before being posted to Egypt

and the infamous El Alamein

as part of the Allies' Western Desert campaign.

El Alamein is a town in northern Egypt where, between 1940 and 1942,

crucial battles were fought by the Allies against Italian and German forces.

The Allies ultimately succeeded and halted their advance into Egypt,

eventually forcing the Italians and Germans west.

It was in this world that a 21-year-old Arthur found himself,

and it appears something happened during this period of conflict

that deeply affected him.

What it was is not exactly known by the family,

but niece Lorraine does remember one story.

We understood him to have been out on a patrol.

His best friend had stepped on a landmine and been blown to pieces.

He was affected by that from then onwards.

Once described as an honest, sober and hard-working soldier,

by 1943 his military record had begun to deteriorate.

So what was life like for a soldier like Arthur,

and what was the reality of fighting in the desert?

In order to find out the facts, I'm meeting author Stephen Bungay,

who's researched and written extensively

about this chapter of World War II.

So what was the situation in North Africa

at the beginning of World War II?

Well, in North Africa, Britain possessed Egypt,

and of course, Egypt was the key to the Suez Canal,

very important for our economy,

and just behind it was all the oil in the Persian Gulf.

So in fact, from a strategic point of view,

it was a very attractive political target,

but the Germans weren't interested at all.

It was the Italians who were interested,

and in June 1940, they decided to invade Egypt

in order to build up Italian colonies in North Africa.

They already possessed Libya.

But this turned into an embarrassing farce,

because a very small detachment of British troops,

no more than about three divisions at a time,

succeeded in not only kicking them out of Egypt,

but in kicking them right out back up to Tripoli,

and it was at that point in February 1941

that the Germans decided they'd got to intervene

to prevent Italy from being knocked out of the war in its early stages.

The Germans arrived in North Africa, led by General Rommel,

who, because of his military expertise and cunning,

was quickly dubbed "The Desert Fox".

Despite the Germans having a smaller force than the British,

the battles raged back and forth,

with no clear winner for the next year and a half.

What sort of hardships

would Arthur have had to endure as an infantry soldier?

Well, this part of the world actually had never

really been fought over before.

There'd been lots of fighting in the Middle East,

there'd been lots of fighting in Libya in Roman times,

but this area was so hostile to human beings

that nobody had ever thought of getting some armies there

to survive. Everything had to be taken with them,

the biggest problem being water,

and they had to survive an incredibly hostile environment.

It's not the sandy desert we think of from Lawrence of Arabia.

It's basically rock, stone and scrub.

The temperatures vary from about plus 40 -

it could even get up to 60 degrees centigrade during the day...

-My gosh.

-..in the summer, absolutely -

and it could be freezing, below freezing at night,

which is why you sometimes see these people going around

in these thick, grey coats and you wonder why.

By all accounts, living conditions were horrific,

with dirt and dust getting everywhere.

Clothes were washed maybe once a month,

and usually using petrol,

because water was such a precious resource.

The troops in the desert also had a particular enemy -

the food and latrines attracted flies,

something every veteran of the campaign remembers bitterly.

They were not our little flies, that's Musca domestica.

This is a little beast called Musca sorbens,

which is a vicious and aggressive animal.

If you shut your eyes, the soldiers say,

they would crawl around your eyelids

trying to suck out a little bit of body fluid.

They would settle on your tea.

It took two hands to drink a mug of tea,

cos you couldn't drink it like that,

you had to cover the top in order to keep the flies out,

but they didn't mind - if they got it, they'd stay in

and you'd swallow them. They spread disease.

They tried to kill them in large numbers,

but that still didn't work, and in the end,

you pretty much became resigned to an extremely poor diet

with massive swings in temperature, constant diarrhoea -

about 70 or 80% of the troops suffered from it -

it was chronic.

You just had to give up complaining and get on with it.

-And then on top of that, there's a war going on.

-Exactly!

-What did the soldiers fear the most?

-The thing that terrified them

was something that would come out of the blue

with massive violence, and the first fear was shell fire.

Shortly after that comes bombing, particularly from Stukas,

who will appear out of nowhere.

Everybody said that when a Stuka was coming for you,

it looked like it had got you personally in its sights,

and the third thing was landmines.

As we already heard, a landmine was what had potentially killed

Arthur's friend, and the experience had affected him deeply.

Mines were everywhere, literally millions of them,

and both sides laid them.

They were strategically used to constrict movement,

but also to channel enemy forces where you wanted them.

They were an horrific form of weaponry.

So, there's constant psychological tension,

if you like, because you don't know where death is coming from.

So how did the troops react to this? How were they affected by this?

Well, there are three things that can come together to traumatise you.

One is shock, which shells and mines delivered.

The next is surprise, which they also both delivered,

and the third thing is losing a friend.

The thing that held people together

more than anything else wasn't patriotism or the cause,

or certainly not hatred of the enemy -

they were all in it together, in a way -

it was simply sticking by your mates.

They fought in order to protect each other

and to try to survive together.

So when those three things come together,

you get people going to pieces.

For Arthur, seeing his best friend blown up by a landmine...

I just can't imagine how devastating that would have been.

It's probably a combination of the worst things that can happen.

Losing your friend - OK, if he'd heard he'd been shot somewhere,

that would have been pretty bad, but he'd probably have got over it.

You combine that, though, with shock and surprise,

this thing they don't know is there suddenly going off,

and then the third thing is, he's actually present.

He witnesses this event take place.

I mean, that's where all the worst things

that you can possibly imagine happening

all come together in one brief, traumatic incident.

So that would affect him for the rest of his life.

That is going to give you post-traumatic stress disorder.

This is exactly what it's suspected Arthur suffered from

his entire adult life.

His army records of the day clearly show he was no longer a well man.

In March 1945,

Arthur was declared permanently unfit for military service.

Statistics suggest that as many as a fifth of World War II veterans

suffered from some sort of emotional trauma, and that is just the ones who reported it.

People experiencing things that they had never experienced before,

thinking the world is a benevolent place

and then seeing how awful human beings can be towards each other.

But then also serving in conflict after conflict,

so it is a general wearing down of their capacity to be able to cope as well.

The experience of trauma and how it presented itself was not particularly well understood

although it was better that it had been.

But also the fact that these were men of their era

and were unlikely to have admitted to experiencing emotional distress.

The kinds of symptoms that they would have exhibited

when they came back from war might have been anger,

they might be acting out elements of their experiences

because they were feeling as if they were back in that situation.

Nightmares, depression,

not being able to perform their job effectively,

becoming very withdrawn,

all of those sort of symptoms would have been noticeable.

As a child, Lorraine can clearly remember

her uncle displaying signs of his trauma,

and also the lengths the family would go to

to accommodate his illness.

When the aeroplanes went over or there was any police noises or

anything he would want us all to get under the table and hide

and get very distressed if we didn't.

He was a very nervous person.

And despite the family's best efforts to care for Arthur,

it eventually proved too much for his mother to cope with.

She found it very, very difficult, not being able to take him out

for fear of him, you know, having a bad turn or something like that.

Then he went to stay at the hospital.

Arthur and his family's situation were sadly all too common in the post-war years.

He was just one of many men who found it extremely difficult

to slot back into everyday life.

It would have had a very shattering effect on the family,

they would never have been able to have the relationships

they would have liked to have had with each other.

Having an uncle whose life was effectively over at 24

and whose illness meant normal relationships were nearly impossible

is a tragedy that caused Arthur to finally disappear

from his family's lives.

All the things he has missed, you know, he never had his own family, never had his own home.

He was just forgotten, to be quite honest with you.

Even from my point of view, I forgot about him

once my mother passed on and...

He just got forgotten.

It wasn't just Arthur's heirs who were saddened by their late uncle's life.

For Bob Smith, Arthur's story also struck a chord.

Presently in the media there is a lot of coverage about soldiers

that fight on behalf of their country in all parts of the world

and how they are looked after, there are many charitable causes,

quite rightly, for those soldiers.

But of course, Arthur himself was a victim of the generation he was brought up in.

They obviously didn't receive the same sort of support as they do now and I find that quite upsetting.

Overall, Bob found 13 heirs to Arthur's £225,000 estate.

An estate that could potentially have been made up of over 60 years worth of untouched war pension.

The legacy of the Second World War ruined both men and their families.

And for Lorraine, Arthur's life is a sad indictment

of the lack of support for men who served their country.

He never had nothing.

I feel really, really strongly that these people, these boys,

because he was only a boy, he wasn't a grown man, he wasn't...

He hadn't seen nothing of life, and he came back and he was just left

and I think it was such a shame, a real waste of a life, really.

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