Littlewood/ Burgum Heir Hunters

Every Thursday morning across the UK,

heir-hunting companies scan the Treasury's list of recent unclaimed estates.

Today, the heir hunters are chasing a name on the list

but they have no idea what it could be worth.

Their job now is to find the long-lost relatives

who could be in line for a windfall.

Could they be knocking at your door?

First one's council, second one no address, third one's the same.

On today's programme - the heir hunters take a gamble

on a name from the list and end up getting a pleasant surprise.

We've worked a case that doesn't appear to have any value

and there IS value.

After a mysterious aunt dies in London,

her relatives are at a loss to explain her whereabouts for over 50 years.

My head was reeling with where had Evelyn been,

where's the rest of the family, what's going on?

And 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,

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.

Every year, they make £14 million from unclaimed estates.

But there are over 30 specialist firms

competing to stop this happening.

They're the heir hunters and they make it their business

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

We do put people back in contact or give them information

about family that they didn't know about.

It's early Thursday morning in London, and overnight,

the Treasury has advertised a new list of names of unclaimed estates.

The staff at heir-hunting company Fraser & Fraser

are getting set for another day of tracking down heirs.

The sun may be shining outside, but inside the office

dark clouds are forming.

Partner Neil is scanning the Treasury's list

for names for the team to chase but nothing is jumping out at him.

First one's council, second one no address, third one's the same.

There are only a small number of names on the list

and Neil's first impressions indicate that none of them seemed to have any great value.

Despite this, the heir hunters still have to hunt,

so Neil picks a name for one of his teams.

Got a new case - Betty Zena Littlewood.

Dies in Fulham, I think we found her an address in Shepherd's Bush.

All indication is that it's not going to be a valuable estate.

Case manager Dave Slee is handed Betty's case.

With over 30 years' experience under his belt,

Dave is more than happy to take a gamble.

Betty Zena Littlewood. Let's hope we've won the pools on this one.

Dave may be positive but as the team discuss Betty's address,

the signs aren't good.

In general, properties make up the bulk of an estate's worth,

so where someone lived is a good indication of a case's value.

It looks like it's a street full of shop premises.

Estate agents...

It's 158 flats on it at least.

Betty Zena Littlewood died in December 2010 in London.

She was 82 years old.

She'd lived with her mother in the same block of flats in west London

since the end of the Second World War.

Her friend Esther Royle has fond memories of Betty.

She was a very gentle person and she was always very grateful,

you know what I mean?

She really was.

In her old age, Betty was still active

and had volunteered for over 10 years with her local Age Concern,

helping those less able than herself.

If she could help them in doing things,

I mean, in writing a letter for them or something like that,

she would be there to do it.

She would do it and do it in a lovely way.

The search for Betty's heirs is under way.

Case manager Dave is keen to get a running start over any competition.

And puts in a call to a travelling heir hunter.

I'll talk to Bob Barrett.

Let's have a word with him, let him know what's going on.

Travelling heir hunter Bob Barrett is poised ready to go

wherever the office needs him.

Bob 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.

We got this address of 29 the Grampian, Shepherd's Bush Road.

I think the death certificate's paramount.

OK, I'll go there first, then.

Bob heads straight to Fulham Register Office

to collect Betty's death certificate.

The certificate will list the informant on her death

and they potentially could be Betty's relative.

Back in the office, Dave has made contact

with a neighbour in the Grampians who knew Betty.

The new information he's gleaned is making him even more positive about the case.

What I like about it is that the deceased has, for a number of years,

lived with her mother in rented accommodation since the war.

That would be on a protected rent

and the fact that the deceased worked, one would hope

and as the neighbours said didn't drive fast, flashy cars,

one's got to assume that there may be some savings.

Based on that,

I think it's certainly worthwhile going ahead with this estate.

The neighbour also gave the team the name of Betty's mother,

a Rose Littlewood, who according to the neighbour, never married.

The fact Betty shares her mother's maiden name leaves researcher Simon

to suspect Betty could have been an illegitimate child.

Her mother had her when she was around 34, I believe.

Usually, what I find when I do the research is that

when there's an illegitimate child born,

it's when the mother's a bit younger than 34.

There's a chance that there may be another one somewhere.

Researcher Simon knuckles down to the job in hand

to try and determine 100%

that Betty was the only illegitimate child of Rose Littlewood.

He also investigates the 1911 census

using Rose's maiden name of Littlewood

to try to trace any potential siblings

that would be uncles and aunts of Betty's.

He's found a couple of possibilities.

The problem is it hasn't helped in his hunt for heirs.

There's currently not really any stems that are

looking particularly promising for finding an heir.

So far, the team believes that Betty's mother Rose

had two siblings - a brother and sister.

So far, these stems have led nowhere.

In order to find heirs, the office must widen their search

in order to find potential aunts and uncles of Betty's,

as these could lead to cousins that could still be alive.

Out on the road, Bob Barrett has arrived at Fulham Register Office

and he's got his hands on Betty's death certificate.

-Hello.

-Bob Barrett.

Betty Littlewood, 31st December, 2010, Charing Cross Hospital.

-Born 28th December, 1928 in England.

-That's right.

In fact, it all ties in that her mother lived with her

so we've got that up-to-date

but I'd really like if you could come on board on this.

No problem, speak to you later. Cheers, Dave. Bye now.

Unfortunately, the death certificate hasn't helped move the hunt for heirs forward

as the informant on Betty's death wasn't a relatives

It does still confirm the information

the heir hunters have been working with so far.

As he's in west London already, Dave asks Bob to head

to Betty's old address in Shepherd's Bush to make some inquiries.

Cheers, bye.

See if I can make any sort of assessment

as to whether there's any value in the estate and talk to neighbours

and see whether they know anything about the deceased.

But back in the office, Dave is now one step ahead of Bob.

He's managed to make contact with another neighbour of Betty's.

Did Betty own her own property? ..No.

Talking to the neighbour has confirmed

a lot of what Dave already suspected, that Betty didn't own her own property.

She had protected rent

and she'd lived unmarried with her mother for most of her life.

Dave stops Bob Barrett in his tracks.

I don't think it's worth doing the inquiry now.

-OK, I won't bother then.

-Lovely, thanks.

Right, so now I don't know where I'm going. Or who for.

Bob may be frustrated with the state of play,

but back in the office, things have taken a positive turn.

Researcher Emily has found a Littlewood family tree

on a genealogy website.

This is the break the team needed.

It looks like they found more of Betty's aunts.

Dorothy May.

-Born 1st August, 1904.

-Yeah, that'll do.

According to the online family tree,

the team now thinks Betty's mother Rose Littlewood

had yet more brothers and sisters.

The newly-discovered tree has advanced the heir hunt

in a very short space of time and has confirmed with Simon

that his research into the census records has been correct.

He now has the names of Betty's grandparents.

The 1911 census does say that they have eight children,

eight still alive, and this would be the eighth

so I don't see any reason why it would be wrong.

So in 1911, Betty's mother Rose was one of eight children

listed in the census as being alive at that time.

Simon now combines the online family tree with the census.

The team now believe that of Rose's seven siblings, four have died

and that two of her cousins have also passed away.

Despite not having absolute proof at this stage,

they suspect all of Betty's aunts and uncles are no longer living

so the hunt has to now move on to her other cousins

and it looks like Betty's Aunt Dorothy had one son called Stuart.

What have we got for Stuart? Nothing at all.

At the moment, all we know is his year of birth

and who he's married to. Other than that, nothing.

Haven't got anything, to be honest.

But there is one last avenue open to the heir hunters.

Emily has come up with a cunning plan.

Stuart's father Herbert died in 2007

so Debbie at Probate could check that to see if he leaves a grant.

If he does, we hope that his son Stuart

would be the one taking out the grant.

If it's right, it will give us a recent address for him

and hopefully that will be our first heir with an address.

Later in the programme,

Betty's case gives the heir hunters an incredible twist at the 11th hour.

We've had the claim come back and there's a property on it.

Every Thursday morning when the Treasury's list of unclaimed estates

is advertised, heir-hunting companies scramble to try

and be the first to find the beneficiaries to an estate.

When they do eventually find the heirs, there are no guarantees

they will have ever heard of the deceased

or, in some cases, even the other heirs.

Evelyn Burgum died in London in January 2011.

She was 82 years old

and passed away without leaving a will to her £330,000 estate.

A widow, she'd lost her husband George over 15 years ago

and continued to live in their north London home right up to her death.

The couple spent most of their married life in the same house

and their long-term neighbour, Fred Friar,

remembers Evelyn and George fondly.

They were a very private couple but very kindly

so I think the best combination, really.

They were private and kindly.

For example, George, who worked for Thames Water,

was an ardent angler and he would quite often give us presents

of proper brown trout. The real thing.

Despite knowing the couple for decades,

Evelyn never spoke openly to Fred about her past or wider family.

George was more open but enigmatic with it.

Locally, George had the soubriquet, "German George"

and one-time I asked him about this.

"Why German George?" I said. He said, "Look at my square head, Frederick.

"I'm German." And he never did speak German.

He spoke with a London accent, quite a cultured London accent.

He never did speak with a German accent or speak any German.

Because the war might have had sad or bitter memories for him,

I never did go any further with that.

By all accounts, they were friendly but very private people,

and George's death in 1995 only increased Evelyn's withdrawal

into her own little world.

She took it really very badly. After that, she became very reclusive.

For a number of years. This wasn't just a six-months' grieving.

She took it very much to heart.

I gather they must have been a very devoted couple on the basis of that.

With no neighbours or friends of Evelyn's

knowing of any children or even wider family,

her £330,000 estate was advertised on the Treasury's list.

Heir-hunting company Fraser & Fraser picked up the job.

Senior case manager David Pacifico

has 40 years' experience of heir hunting.

He started the task of piecing together Evelyn's family tree.

First of all, we needed to identify her birth, which we did.

From that, we identified her parents.

Evelyn's birth certificate revealed her mother and father

were Dorothy and Henry Linsley.

David now turned his attention to the birth records

looking for evidence of Evelyn's siblings.

We also found out when the parents married, and from that,

identified that there were other children born to that marriage

so therefore Mrs Burgum had several siblings.

So despite the mystery about whether Evelyn had any wider family,

she actually had three sisters.

For heir hunter David, finding these sisters was key

to discovering if Evelyn had any living heirs.

We found one of them was still alive.

The other two had passed away.

Evelyn's younger sister was still alive and in her late 70s.

She was now an heir to Evelyn's massive £330,000 estate.

The revelation that Evelyn had had sisters was news

to all those who knew her,

especially Chris Macleod, her husband George's nephew.

Evelyn, I didn't know had any relations.

She never talked about that side of the family,

George never talked about that side of the family.

As far as I was concerned, there was no that side of the family.

This was despite Chris knowing Evelyn and George better than most.

George and Ev were always there when I needed them.

My brother suffered from eczema and asthma

and spent the first seven years of his life in hospital.

I spend most weekends with them.

They became almost like another set of parents for me

for those early years.

I learned a lot from my uncle George about being a wind-up merchant.

He enjoyed it, so do I.

He had a screw loose but we've all got a different type of screw loose.

If George was a renowned prankster then his tales of German ancestry

to the neighbours could have been just one of his jokes.

But Evelyn and George's enigmatic and eccentric personalities

didn't faze heir hunter David Pacifico.

All he was concerned with was cold hard facts.

Having discovered Evelyn had one sister still live,

he turned his attention to the two that had passed away.

We found out from an early stage that one of them had several children.

We made contact with one of the children.

Nephew and heir David Atkins was not only shocked to get a call

from an heir hunter, but also to hear his aunt's name again

having not seen or heard from Evelyn for over 50 years.

My head was reeling with where had Evelyn been,

where's the rest of the family, what's going on?

It turned out David hadn't seen or heard of his aunt

since his childhood.

My last proper memory was when Evelyn and George took me to Paris.

I was 15 and at that time, this was a fantastic experience -

a 15-year-old in the early '60s going to Paris for the weekend.

It was wonderful.

But for some unknown reason, in the mid-1960s,

Evelyn and her three sisters started to drift apart

and David's aunt and uncle disappeared from his life.

So what had happened to Evelyn's family ties with her three sisters?

As case manager David Pacifico started to delve deeper,

a potential cause for the separation was surfacing.

We understand from the family that they thought she had gone abroad.

It seemed Evelyn's sisters and wider family had been led to believe

she and George had emigrated to Canada in the 1960s.

But did they ever actually go?

If they didn't, what made them cut all family ties?

Later in the programme, the confusion surrounding Evelyn's life

grows as David discovers yet more heirs and yet more mystery.

Heir hunters solve thousands of cases a year

and millions of pounds are paid out to the rightful heirs

but not every case can be cracked.

The Treasury has a list of over 2,000 estates

that have baffled heir hunters and remain unsolved.

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?

Estates stay on the list for up to 30 years

and today we are focusing on three names.

Are they relatives of yours?

Mary Lilian Clunan died in Bristol in March 2007.

Her surname is Irish and originates from County Galway.

The name is extremely rare in England

but so far all efforts to trace her heirs have failed.

Or did you know Thomas Arthur Thomas?

He died in Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Cambridgeshire in 1997.

Does his distinctive name mean anything to you?

Or finally, Reginald Fewtrell.

He died in June 2002 in the West Midlands.

His surname is fairly common for the area and also in Wales.

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

If the names Mary Lilian Clunan, Thomas Arthur Thomas

or Reginald Fewtrell mean anything to you,

then you could have a windfall on its way.

Betty Zena Littlewood died in London aged 82 in December 2010.

There was no will and the heir hunters don't know how much money

she might have left.

As an illegitimate only child, she never married or had any children

and spent her adult life living and caring for her late mother.

Her friend Esther Royle remembers the day

she talked to Betty about her background.

I asked her, I said, "Betty, have you any family?"

She said, "Well, I don't know." She didn't know.

But it appears Betty only cared about one relative -

her beloved mother.

Her mother was the world to her. She really was.

I said, "You should have broke away, Betty."

I said, "You should have got married."

The heir hunters have picked up Betty's case from the Treasury's list

and it is now their job to try and work out

if Betty did indeed have any relatives.

So far, their morning has consisted of false starts.

Right, so now I don't know where I'm going.

And hard-to-trace family trees.

Haven't really got anything, to be honest.

But after a frustrating morning's work,

the team made a vital discovery of a family tree on the internet

for Betty's ancestors.

This showed that Betty's mother had in fact had seven siblings

and these ants and uncles have led the heir hunters

to not one but two cousins.

The team have been struggling to get up-to-date addresses for them

but it looks like their efforts are about to pay off.

We finally found an address for Stuart Cleaver.

We did that by finding the calendar slip at Probate

for his father's will. We also have an address

for what we believe is another cousin who's deceased -

Margaret Morgan.

We got that address the same way.

Making contact with the heirs they know about is now the top priority.

The estate may be of an unknown value but that doesn't mean

there won't be any competition from other probate companies.

The team must act fast.

Simon has left a message with cousin Margaret

but the team has so far failed to find a number for cousin Stuart.

It calls for urgent action.

That's got to be a goer, isn't it?

Simon has discovered an address for cousin Stuart's daughter.

All Dave has to do now is get one of the travelling heir hunters

to pay her a visit

and to try and get an up-to-date phone number for her father.

With Bob Barrett now tied up on another case,

Dave scrambles to get another travelling heir hunter

to go and meet Stuart's daughter.

We've got an address for you on a job.

Fortunately, traveller Bob Smith is in the Kent area

and hotfoots it to the doctor's address.

-My mum's name is Liz.

-Liz, did you say?

-Elizabeth.

-OK, that's lovely.

I shall give him a call now.

Bingo.

Bob has cousin Stuart's number

and heads straight back to the car to put in a call.

-Hello, is that Mr Cleaver?

-It is, yes.

Mr Cleaver, my name is Robert Smith.

I'm calling on behalf of a company called Fraser & Fraser.

Stuart agrees to a meeting

and Bob heads to Portsmouth as quickly as he can.

Back in the office, Dave also has good news.

Bob has told them what he's initially learned from Stuart.

Thanks very much, speak to you soon. Bye-bye.

It was him that put the tree online.

It turns out Stuart was the person who posted the Littlewood family tree on the internet.

This is music to the heir hunters' ears,

that it will hopefully help clear up the blank bits of their own tree.

The good news keeps on coming.

Dave has also been called back by Betty's cousin Margaret

and thankfully Bob Barrett is now available.

MOBILE RINGS

I wondered if you would mind popping over to see a client

that might be entitled in Hassocks.

Bob Barrett sets the satnav and hits the road.

After a hectic morning, case manager Dave feels

all their hard work may yet pay off.

Hopefully, within the next couple of hours,

we'll have had two of the known beneficiaries seen,

hopefully an agreement from them to act for them, hopefully,

and we should have more information about the others.

So, as always in this job, you go from there to there in no time.

That's good news.

And in Portsmouth, things are also looking positive.

-Hello, Mr Cleaver?

-That's me.

-Robert Smith of Fraser & Fraser.

-Oh, yes.

-I spoke to you earlier on the phone.

-You did indeed.

Bob Smith has made his appointment before any competition, and is the first to arrive at cousin Stuart's.

He brings him up to speed on what they know.

Your Aunt Rose had this daughter, Betty.

Now, Betty herself remained unmarried during her lifetime.

She died some time last year.

When she died, apparently, she hadn't made a will

and there were no family members that were in contact with her

that could look after her affairs.

After sharing information on the Littlewood family's ancestors,

Stuart is happy to sign up with the company.

-Don't argue with that.

-OK. Thank you very much indeed.

This means the company can help Stuart make a claim,

and are therefore entitled to commission

on his share of the estate.

For Stuart, Bob's visit has allowed him to expand his family tree

that bit further, which is welcomed by this keen amateur genealogist.

Not very worried about the money, we don't particularly need it,

but it's more the people we're concerned about, I think.

They're people we knew about,

but they were blanks in the family tree, if you like.

We knew nothing about them.

This will really help to paint the picture for us.

Thank you very much, Stuart, it's lovely to meet you.

OK, and we'll be in touch soon.

Look forward to that.

Thank you very much indeed. Bye bye.

It's a fantastic result, and back in his car,

Bob puts in a call to the office.

Bob Smith.

'Hello, Bob Smith - David Slee.'

Dave Slee! Dave Slee, I've just signed Stuart Douglas Cleaver.

Well done, mate. I don't think there's anything more.

'Bob Barrett's seeing the other heir.'

Thanks very much indeed. Thank you, bye.

Mr Cleaver was certainly a very nice gentleman.

Very interested in the type of work we do,

and obviously re-establishing contact with family

that he knew nothing about.

So, all in all, a very, very good day.

And Bob isn't the only happy heir hunter.

Stuart was also able to clear up

some of the dead ends on the family tree.

It turns out Stuart thinks that one of his and Betty's uncles

that the team had been struggling with hadn't just disappeared -

he'd emigrated across the Atlantic.

It's another lead for the office to follow.

We're looking at shipping records for William Littlewood,

and there are records of a William Littlewood sailing in 1912,

so we're just wondering if it was on the Titanic!

There's lots of ships sailing in 1912,

so we don't think it's likely that he...

It sounds like he made it! He got there safe!

So, the hunt for Betty's heirs could stretch to the New World.

But still on home turf in Hassocks,

Bob Barrett has made it to the home of another heir -

Betty's cousin Margaret.

Your mother was one of quite a large family, wasn't she?

Yes, there was eight of them.

-Indeed, eight.

-Yes.

Margaret knows a fair bit about her mother's family,

but it's down to Bob to break the news

she'd had a cousin she'd never known about.

Right, one of the daughters, Rose...

-Rose Littlewood had a child and didn't get married.

-Mmm.

-And it's her child who died.

-Oh.

She didn't leave a will, and her child was named Betty.

She wasn't married, she didn't have any children,

-she used to live with her mother.

-Mm-hm.

-No brothers or sisters?

-And no brothers or sisters.

Whilst the news she had a cousin may be new to Margaret,

she does know a little more about the circumstances surrounding her family's split.

Four in the middle, we found their names - Rose, Winifred,

Percy and Alfred - and we know nothing at all about them.

Presumably they were young men and young women

and they left home, at what age we don't know.

But they left home and they never made any contact with the mother.

Brothers and sisters do scrap and they do fall out

and one thing and another.

But their mother was the dearest lady you could ever come across.

Everybody loved her.

And how any children could go away and lose touch with the mother

is beyond my understanding.

So four of the eight siblings simply upped sticks and left home for good.

This information is vital to the office, as it ties in

with cousin Stuart's memories of their Uncle William's emigration abroad.

Bob explains the paperwork to Margaret,

and then says his goodbyes.

Hi, Bob.

Charming old lady, but she's quite frail, quite elderly,

with very poor eyesight,

-so I didn't think it was right to ask her to sign an agreement.

-'No, fine.'

I've left one with her and asked her to speak to her cousin

and I'm sure they'll get together.

Yeah. And her cousin has agreed to use our services, which is good news.

A nice ride out in the country as well.

From what started as a frustrating case for the team,

the end result has been worth it.

Meeting and signing up heirs is the heir hunters' main aim,

but to be able to fill in the blanks in a family's history in the process is the cherry on the cake.

Dave reflects on a rollercoaster of a day.

Take care now, bye-bye.

Still quite a little bit of research to undertake,

but we should be able to tie that information up in the next few days

and bring it to a successful conclusion,

so, all in all, it's been a good day at the office.

And Dave's positive feelings about the case have proven prophetic.

After the family's claim is accepted by the Treasury, Neil gets an amazing news.

It's a result all heir hunters dream of.

We've had the claimant come back and there's a property on it.

In fact, there's four properties, four plots of land.

Fingers crossed, they'll be sizeable plots and it'll be a big estate,

but at the moment at least we know the gamble has paid off.

We've worked a case which doesn't appear to have any value, and there is value.

Evelyn Burgum died in January 2011, with no known relatives

and no will to her £330,000 estate.

By all accounts, her life and past

were a mystery to those who knew her.

Evelyn, I didn't know had any relations.

She never talked about that side of the family.

George never talked about that side of the family.

So, as far as I was concerned,

there was no that side of the family.

But heir hunter David Pacifico had discovered otherwise.

He'd found that Evelyn was in fact one four sisters,

one of whom was still alive, in her late 70s and an heir to Evelyn's estate.

He also traced three nephews from one of her late sisters.

Nephews that, like the rest of the wider family,

had lost contact with their aunt, believing her to have moved abroad 50 years ago.

We understood that she and George had emigrated to Canada many years ago

and we'd all lost touch.

In 1960s London, Evelyn and George's emigration to Canada

would have been a highly plausible event.

After World War II, Canada had undergone an economic boom

and a skilled British labour force were welcomed to move there.

But it seemed that Canada was only ever a pipe-team to Evelyn and George

as they'd never actually left north London.

And David Pacifico was the man who had to break this uncomfortable truth to her family.

It's strange in this case because the deceased lived in north London

and one of her...and her surviving sister lives in north-west London.

Not many miles away.

Yet, you know, there hadn't been any contact for, I think, 50 years.

So why did Evelyn's family believe she'd emigrated to Canada,

when in reality she was just down the road?

From his vague, early memories,

nephew David doesn't believe it stemmed from any big family bust-ups.

There wasn't any disagreement, any argument or anything like that.

I understand that my mother tried to trace Evelyn after a few years

and was told she'd emigrated to Canada.

And there the trail stopped because in those days, 50 years ago,

it wasn't possible to go any further.

But it is now, and David is set on discovering more about his mysterious aunt.

I don't know, we don't know,

the family don't know anything about this and we want to know why.

Now, the only way the family can try and get to know Evelyn is through her possessions.

Nephew David has been assigned administrator of her estate

and has come to Evelyn's home to search for clues

about his mysterious aunt's past.

I think, really, the purpose of the visit today is to see

if we can find out anything about these huge gaps that we've got in the family history,

what happened since we understood that Evelyn and George had emigrated to Canada.

David's motivations are different from the heir hunters.

Andrew Fraser has joined David,

but he is on the lookout for clues about Evelyn's financial past instead.

Andrew is used to the process,

but for David, it's not so straightforward.

It's a funny situation because,

should I be looking through all these papers?

They're somebody else's almost.

It might be slightly unsettling, but David gets stuck in,

sifting through old photos and letters, trying to get

a clearer picture of Evelyn's life over the last 50 years.

It becomes apparent his late aunt and uncle may have been estranged from the family,

but they weren't estranged from the world.

Well, they don't seem to have been reclusive.

They seem to have had a circle of friends -

photographs and letters from other people - that they're obviously regularly in touch with.

So it seems Evelyn's family may have been gone to her, but they were forgotten.

David discovers an old photograph that brings the past flooding back.

It's a photo that captures one of his last meetings with his aunt and uncle.

That's George and me as a young boy

on this trip to Paris that Evelyn and George took me on.

But that is absolutely amazing to find that.

If Evelyn and George were keeping the photographs,

the old family photographs, it means that they hadn't cut themselves off completely from the family,

and this would suggest that that is correct.

And that's why they've been kept.

Whatever caused the breakdown in contact between Evelyn and her sisters may never be known,

but the story wasn't over yet.

In his hunt for heirs, David Pacifico

made another uncomfortable discovery.

It turned out David Atkins had cousins he knew nothing about.

Evelyn's latest niece and nephew were from her younger sister Rita,

who passed away when her children were still young.

Joanne and her brother grew up knowing very little about their mother,

let alone Evelyn.

I was a bit numb, really,

when I first spoke to David. Yeah, a bit shocked.

A bit numb and a bit of disbelief as well, really.

And David Pacifico's revelations kept on coming.

So initially he told me that my mum actually was one four sisters,

I thought she was only one of two,

and that one of the sisters had had three sons,

so that I had three cousins that I didn't know about.

Joanne had a lot to take in in a short space of time,

and it wasn't just her maternal family who were in mystery, it was also her mother.

I knew very little about my mum, really.

My memories are very sketchy because she died

just after my seventh birthday.

My dad was, um...he didn't cope very well with her death

and he just wasn't able to talk about her, really.

And so...so we never spoke of her.

And this silence included any mention or contact with her mother's wider family.

It's really strange to get to your forties and then find out

you had cousins you didn't know anything about,

and now they've all got children and some of them have grandchildren.

And my aunt who's still alive, to meet her a bit more

and introduce her to my children and get the families together.

Getting to know her extended family also means Joanne can hopefully

learn more about her late mother, Rita.

Cousin David has offered to try and help Joanne fill in some of the gaps.

The two cousins have arranged to meet for only the second time in their lives,

the first being at Evelyn's funeral.

Jo knows very little about her parents and the family,

and I've got some family photographs that I can pass on to her.

-Hello there, good to see you.

-And you.

David has prepared family photos that Joanne will be seeing for the first time.

-That's our grandad in the First World War.

-Wow!

Gosh!

-That's the first photo I've seen of our grandad.

-Well, that's...

But the greatest revelation for Joanne has been seeing

the snapshots of her mother Rita's life.

That's Rita being held by her mother, our grandmother.

Can I get a copy of this?

-It's in there.

-Oh, thank you. It's lovely.

-I've copied most of these.

It's fantastic, it's so lovely to see these photos,

-it's just amazing.

-Of course, you haven't seen any of these.

-I haven't seen any of them.

I've got one photo of my mum when she was obviously grown up and that was it, really.

-Right.

-That's all I've got. So these are just amazing.

The conversation turns to their Aunt Evelyn.

David brings Joanne up to speed on how he's dispelled the myths surrounding their aunt.

Her supposed emigration to Canada,

uncle George convincing the neighbours he was a German,

the separation from the sisters, but also her happy life with George.

They weren't hiding themselves away,

they obviously had lots of friends, very friendly with the neighbours.

The reunited cousins may never know the reason

their family broke apart,

but whatever DID happen makes no difference to the way Joanne feels today.

I feel very sad that I hadn't met Evelyn and that she lived so close

and I could have known her,

but I should be eternally grateful that she has been the catalyst

to bring the family together and to enable me

to find out about people in my family that I never knew existed.

Evelyn, the family's mysterious sister and aunt, has not only left

a legacy that has brought the family together, but also her six heirs

will now share their enigmatic aunt's £330,000 inheritance.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd