Wilcock/Bone Heir Hunters

Heir hunters specialise in tracking down people

who are in line to inherit money from relatives who have passed away.

Often the family members they find have no idea they're entitled.

We didn't know anything about it. It was a shock as well.

Their work involves expert research.

Each one had numerous possible marriages, numerous possible deaths, numerous possible births.

And can often uncover fascinating family secrets.

You even wonder if he could have been possibly a spy.

But most of all, it's about giving news of an unexpected windfall.

Could the heir hunters be knocking at your door?

Coming up... The heir hunters attempt to unlock the secrets of one man's mysterious career.

He was like a James Bond. He was like a millionaire's lifestyle.

But nobody actually where... How he got that money.

-Hello!

-And one heir takes an emotional journey.

They did everything to make her happy,

and if she wasn't happy, she'd let you know.

That's really nice to know, you know, that she was all right.

Plus, how you could be entitled to inherit unclaimed estates held by the Treasury.

Could thousands of pounds be heading your way?

It's Wednesday morning, and in the offices of heir-hunting company Fraser & Fraser,

case manager Dave Slee and the team are working on a private tip-off.

I have this... I like to think of as little Miss Marple lady that finds out about estates for us,

and a couple of days ago I received a call from this lady

to inform me that a resident had died by the name of William Wilcock.

William Maxwell Nasmyth Wilcock died on the 18th of December 2011 in West London.

He was 90 years old.

His friend Ian Johnston knew him in his later years.

He was the kind of old-style Englishman that you don't get any more.

The kind of old-style gentleman.

Extremely tall, extremely pukka and extremely mannerly.

And when you were saying goodbye to him,

he would always go, "I wish you good day" in an extremely sort of pukka English accent.

Ian got the impression that his friend came from a privileged background...

..and was always an enigmatic figure.

It was a mystery exactly what job he did.

He would suggest that the job he had

enabled him to have periods of time of study, which I think was paid for.

He would talk about going to Lima,

he would talk about going to Tubingen, I think they pronounce it in Germany.

And also Heidelberg.

And, of course, he'd been to Oxford and Cambridge.

Since William passed away, Ian has been left with one lingering question.

What did he do for a living?

There was always a degree of mystery, and he wouldn't really tell me, but he knew I wanted to know.

And then one day he said he was... a negotiator.

And I didn't quite know what he meant by that.

But I gather he did travel and represented the Government and negotiated things.

He claimed to have met Stalin.

Which, if he was working for the Government, meeting Government people,

it's not far-fetched.

You even wonder if he could have been possibly a spy,

but who knows? As I say, he'll always be a bit of a mystery man.

William's last known address was a sheltered accommodation flat in Fitzrovia, West London.

Because he didn't own any property, the company don't know if the case will be high-value,

but from the wild stories he'd been told of William's life,

Dave is already intrigued by this mysterious figure.

He seems a real larger-than-life character.

How much of it is truth and how much is fabrication, I don't know.

He's supposed to have been an explorer and a doctor and all sorts of weird and wonderful things.

Um...there may be an estate there. So it's certainly worth investigating.

Since the case of William Maxwell Nasmyth Wilcock came in two days ago,

the team have been making steady progress in the hunt for heirs.

They've already got hold of his death certificate, and it's revealed some vital information.

When the death cert came back,

it was actually William Maxwell Nasmyth Wilcock, otherwise Maxwell,

so he was actually born with the first name Maxwell.

And the death cert has also revealed that the man they know as Maxwell was a widower.

We've been able to establish that the deceased married late in life, and he married a portrait painter.

And she was actually originally from...born in Toronto in Canada.

A search of the records has revealed

that Maxwell married

Moira Audrey Featherston Haugh on the 7th of November 1982.

At the time of the marriage, he was 61 and she was 73.

Due to their ages, they had no children,

and Moira sadly passed away in 1999.

Having ruled out children, the team have checked to see if Maxwell had any siblings.

We've also been able to discover that the deceased was an only child,

both his parents having been born in Preston.

Maxwell's mother, Gertrude Maudsley, married Charles Harold Wilcock in Preston

in 1919.

As searches revealed Maxwell was an only child,

the team are now looking for aunts and uncles

whose children, Maxwell's cousins, could be rightful heirs.

On the father's family, the Wilcock family,

our research leads us to believe that the deceased's father had four siblings.

Two of his siblings, unfortunately, died as young men killed on active service

during the First World War.

Maxwell's father, Charles, had two brothers and two sisters.

As the brothers, Edwin and Frank, died before they had children,

the focus has turned to Charles's sisters, Nellie and Elizabeth.

They've learned that Elizabeth married a Robert Sumner

and had two sons, Frank and Charlie,

who would be Maxwell's cousins and heirs to his estate.

Charlie passed away in 1990

and research has shown that he had four children who would inherit his share of the estate.

But Roger is still trying to track down Charlie's older brother, Frank,

who would also be an heir, if he's still alive.

I've just found his birth in December '13 in Preston

He appears to have died...

May 1984 in Preston.

Sadly doesn't leave a will, so I've got no address there to go from.

Because Frank has passed away,

Roger needs to find out if he was married and had children who could be entitled.

I'm just seeing now whether...

there's a Frank Sumner married in Preston,

but because it's an area name, I have a choice of about four possibles.

Sumner is a common surname in Preston

and Roger is finding it hard to establish which of the possible marriages is the right one.

Of the Franks I've got, one is a little young - he'll be 17, 18 - so it's not the most likely.

But the other three are within ten years of each other.

Between 25 and 35, so they're all of marriageable age,

so I haven't really got a favourite at the moment.

The only way Roger can be sure which of the four Frank Sumners is the right one,

is by ordering all four marriage certificates

to see which if any of them tallies up with the other information they have.

The company work on a commission basis,

but as this case is a private referral, the team are not competing against rival firms to solve it.

So Roger can afford to order the certificates online and wait a few days for them to arrive by post.

Until then, there's nothing more he can do.

Roger and the team are hanging on the certificates, but will they prove his research right or wrong?

We hope one of them comes back correct.

And his death should also come back today,

which hopefully will confirm one of the marriages is correct.

But until we see the certs, I'm not 100% sure.

And as their investigation into the case continues,

the mystery of Maxwell Wilcock deepens.

It sounded, as a kid, he like he was a James Bond.

Every Thursday, a list is published of unclaimed estates

where, if no relative is found, the money goes to the Treasury.

One list included the name Prudence Bone,

and probate researcher Saul Marks was immediately drawn to it.

Based in Liverpool, Saul works for Celtic Research,

which is run by father and son team Peter and Hector Birchwood

and has offices in Wales and London.

This case particularly stood out because the deceased died in Chester.

It's very much in our area in the northwest of England,

which we cover here.

And it also happens to be the city where I went to school

and I really consider my home town.

Prudence May Bone died in Chester on the 28th of November 2011.

She was 91 years old.

Prudence spent the last 17 years of her life at the Curzon residential care home,

where staff like Andrea Stanton grew very fond of her.

Prue was an enjoyable, lovely lady.

She had lots and lots of interests.

The rapport she had with the staff... They all loved her, they all spoilt her.

Despite needing specialist care,

Prue lived life to the full.

Prue had a learning disability, which meant that she had the mental age of a child,

which we took to be around the age of eight to ten.

She couldn't read, she couldn't write.

But this wasn't anything that affected her or bothered her.

She was totally fulfilled with the fact that she could do her knitting,

she could do her colouring, and she could watch the television.

And her bright, colourful personality made its mark on those around her.

She's still missed today.

And the girls will still call Room 16 "Prue's room".

The home never knew of any living family for Prue.

Finding them was a job for Saul.

When we started the work on this case,

quite early on in the morning,

we had established from the list that the deceased's name was Prudence May Bone,

and she died on the 28th of November 2011 in Chester.

There was one other piece of information on the list which was vital to his research.

In this case, it said, "Prudence May Bone - spinster", so we knew immediately there were no children,

there was going to be no husband.

So the first place we had to look was for siblings.

In order to do that, he first needed to trace Prudence's birth records.

Prudence M Bone is not a particularly common name,

so I looked her up on the birth index, and there she was, listed in the first quarter of 1920.

This index listing also revealed that Prudence was born in Chester

and that her mother's maiden name was Roberts.

Using this information, Saul could now look for a marriage record

and uncover her parents' full names -

Florrie May Roberts and Ernest Sidney Bone.

With this, Saul was able to establish that Prudence was an only child.

That meant that he now needed to find cousins who might be entitled.

As Roberts was an extremely common name,

and could potentially involve a lot of work,

Saul hoped he might be able to find heirs on the Bone side more quickly.

But initial research suggested otherwise.

We used the censuses to track down the basis of the Bone family - 1891, 1901, 1911.

We established that the deceased's father was actually one of nine children,

so there were quite a lot of Bones to look for.

It was at this point that Saul decided that it would be better to divide and conquer.

The paternal heirs were all down south. The family were very much based in and around Tunbridge Wells

and some of them had moved to Sussex.

They weren't people I was going to be able to visit.

However, the maternal side of the family, the Roberts family,

were all based in Chester, certainly for a couple of generations,

and it was much more sensible for me to work on the maternal side,

so I contacted my colleague Peter and asked him to take on the rest of the work on the Bone side,

and I focused on Roberts.

It seemed like a brilliant idea.

But Saul soon realised that he might have drawn the short straw.

It was great to get my teeth into a very local case on very much my own turf.

The sad part about this was the name was Roberts,

so I was back in the realm of cases where there are a million John Roberts and James Roberts

and which is the right one?

Saul didn't know it at the time,

but Prudence's maternal grandfather was, in fact, a Joseph Roberts,

born in Chester in 1872.

Whilst his name might be a common one,

the role that he played in the industrialisation of the British Empire certainly wasn't.

After the first ever passenger train from Stockton to Darlington in 1825,

Britain's railway network went on to develop at a remarkable pace.

Joseph's home town of Chester was no exception.

The railways expanded very quickly in and around Chester.

It took less than one year

from the cutting of the first sod

to the opening of the railway station here

on the 1st of August 1848.

And the coming of the railway brought with it fantastic employment opportunities

for people like Prue's grandfather.

In addition to the people that worked looking after the locomotives,

cleaning, firing and driving,

then there were significant numbers of people

working in the goods shed and also on the railway platforms themselves.

Joseph Roberts began his working life cleaning the trains

and rose steadily up the ranks until he was able to drive them.

Throughout the 19th and the 20th century,

to be a locomotive driver was always the ultimate ambition

of many young boys and men.

But his career didn't end there.

Joseph went on to become a mechanical engineer

and after five years gaining expertise in England,

he then left to work in Nigeria,

where a new dawn of industrialisation meant his skills were in great demand.

As the British Empire expanded during the second half of the 19th century,

there was an expansion also of infrastructure in the colonial countries.

And I suppose, in many ways, it was quite natural for engineering firms to exploit the potential

in exporting railway tracks, locomotives,

carriages and coaches to those new countries of the Empire.

Sadly, whilst he was there, Joseph caught blackwater fever and passed away.

But it wasn't long before his son Stanley followed in his father's footsteps

and began his own career in the railway industry.

I suspect that the father was greatly admired by the son

for the things that he had achieved during his lifetime.

Back in the office,

Saul seemed to be getting off to a flying start tracking down the Roberts side of the family.

I looked on the census of 1911

and there was a Florrie M Roberts living in Chester, of about the right age

and I thought, "Fantastic, great, no problem".

But as his search continued,

he came to realise he might have made a wrong turn.

All that work had been for nothing, and we were back to square one.

Heir hunters trace thousands of rightful beneficiaries every year.

But not all cases can be cracked.

There are thousands of estates on the Treasury's bona vacantia list

that have eluded the heir hunters and remain unsolved.

The bona vacantia unclaimed list is a list that we publish on our website

and it's a list of all the cases we've never managed to solve

since 1997.

Today we are focusing on two cases yet to be solved by heir hunters.

Could you be the beneficiary they're looking for?

Could you be about to inherit some money from a long-lost relative?

First...

There are fewer than 100 people in the UK with the surname Barovitch,

which is likely to have originated from eastern Europe.

Are you a Barovitch who may be related to Michael?

Next, can you shed any light on this case?

Did you know Florence?

Perhaps you're a relation of hers.

Both Michael and Florence's estates remain unclaimed

and if no-one comes forward, their money will go to the Government.

The monies that bona vacantia raises

go to the General Exchequer

and they just help with the general running of the country.

Do you have any clues that could help solve the cases

of Michael Barovitch or Florence Kisil?

If so, you could have thousands of pounds coming your way.

In Liverpool, heir hunter Saul Marks from Celtic Research

was working the case of Prudence Bone, and had made good progress.

After establishing that she was unmarried, had no children

and was an only child,

the search was now on for Prudence's cousins.

Saul had established that Prudence's father, Ernest Sidney Bone,

had eight brothers and sisters.

As this was going to be a potentially huge family tree,

and this family all seemed to be based down in the south of England,

Saul decided to pass this side to his colleague, Peter Birchwood,

and concentrate his search on the Roberts family that were much more local to him.

Doing this, he hoped to be able to visit the heirs in person

and sign them up that way.

But he had to find them first.

Prudence May Bone died on the 28th of November 2011 in Chester.

She was 91 years old.

Prue, as she was known, had a severe learning disability

and the mental age of around ten years old.

She spent the last years of her life in a residential care home,

where staff such as Andrea Stanton remember her always smiling.

I remember every Christmas with Prue, we always, always, um...

wrap lots of presents up for her.

And somebody would dress up as Father Christmas, and Prue absolutely adored that

and you'd see her face light up.

She loved everything about Christmas.

And, again, on her birthday, she'd have presents. No matter how little it was,

she loved it and she would show it off to everybody.

For the majority of her life, Prue was cared for entirely by her mother, Flo.

But as Flo got older, she found it difficult to cope

and they moved into residential care together.

Prue arrived here in August 1993.

When she first came, she came with her mum.

Um...

I think it must have been because her mum wasn't feeling very well at the time,

so she'd come for a little bit of a rest.

From what I remember about when Flo and Prue arrived,

Flo obviously loved Prue to bits, and very, very protective of her.

Prue absolutely adored her mum.

They were inseparable. They were together all the time.

Prue's mother, Florrie May Roberts, was born in Chester in 1898.

Using the 1911 census, Saul had found a match that showed her having six siblings.

If Florrie's brothers and sisters had children,

they would be heirs to Prue's estate,

still yet to be valued.

But Roberts is a very common name

and tracing what happened to them was proving a tough task.

Each one had numerous possible marriages, numerous possible deaths, numerous possible births.

I managed to find a few births, but it was very hard going.

After a lot of work, Saul finally had a breakthrough

and managed to get hold of a potential heir.

It seemed like a great result, until alarm bells started to ring.

The information that she was giving me really didn't tie in with what I thought was the case.

So much so that I felt I had to go back to the register office and do some more work on it.

The Florrie M Roberts that Saul had traced via the census had a father called Edward,

so he needed to see if that name matched up on Prue's parents' marriage certificate.

To my utter disappointment and frustration,

the marriage certificate showed that the bride's father was Joseph Roberts, deceased.

So all that work had been for nothing

and we were back to square one.

And it was now midday, and I was very worried

that the competition would have got on to the right family quite quickly.

It was a devastating blow,

but Saul was determined not to be defeated.

I found a listing on the 1911 census

of a Florence Roberts, whose father was Joseph Roberts, an engineer.

She was the only other Florence Roberts in the right area, of the right age.

Her father's name matched up with the marriage certificate. This had to be the right woman.

This Florence Roberts had five brothers and sisters.

Searches revealed that one of them, Joseph Stanley Roberts,

had three children.

Using the Electoral Roll, Saul tracked one of them down.

I found the right man - I was fairly certain it was the right man -

living in North Wales.

Unfortunately, he had no phone number listed,

so I thought to myself, "Right, well, I've got to take a chance, hope it's the right gentleman,

"and go out to North Wales and see him."

So I jumped in the car and off I went.

It turned out to be a trip worth making.

At last, after all the hard work, I'd have a beautiful drive up into the North Wales hills,

found an heir who was definitely an heir, who had not been contacted by any other companies

and was very happy to sign with us. And it was a great relief!

And it seemed Saul was on a roll.

I went to see his brother and his wife,

and they knew quite a bit about the family.

They were able to confirm which aunts and uncles had not had children

and they put me in touch with another cousin, named Jean,

and she was obviously a cousin of theirs and a cousin of Prue's,

and she knew even more.

For heir Jean Hill, her visit from Saul was an emotional experience.

I was very sad at first to hear that Prudence had died

and we didn't know anything about it.

And it was a shock as well.

When Jean was ten years old,

she'd known her cousin Prue well.

Prudence was quite tall

and very, very slim.

She liked her hair long -

plaits with ribbons.

She used to love ribbons.

She used to come over to Chester for a holiday

and meet me outside school with her auntie

and they'd take me back, and I used to spend the weekend with her.

And Mum said it was company for her.

And we just used to do little puzzles together.

Despite being in regular contact as a child,

as Jean grew older, the family seemed to drift apart.

And when Prue's mother, Florrie, passed away,

Jean's own mother made an important decision.

My mother said she couldn't go visit her,

because it would be too upsetting...

and that Prue might get upset as well.

So she decided that, you know, we'd just leave it at that.

So I went along with her...

what my mother said.

Looking back on it now,

Jean wishes things had been different.

I do regret that I didn't find out how she was going on in the nursing home.

I wish, you know...

I'd made the effort, I suppose, to go and see her

or find out how she was going on.

But whilst she can't change the past,

Jean is keen to find out more about Prudence and her life after they lost touch.

All I'd like to know, really, is how she got on in the home -

if she was all right, and...

..you know, she was happy there.

That's the main thing.

In the hope of learning more about her cousin's last years,

Jean has come today to meet and share memories with carer Andrea Stanton,

at the residential home where Prue lived.

Prue's main activity and her main hobby,

and what she loved more than anything in this world, was knitting.

-Knitting.

-She loved being taken out and going to a wool shop and picking all the different wools.

What she'd do then is she'd come back and she'd knit...

eight to ten rows, maybe, and there'd be holes in there, but she'd knit it

and then she'd unpick it and start again!

Surprised, really, how much she took an interest in things,

because when I knew her, she...

-Never really showed an interest in things?

-No.

It was when she was at home with her mum.

She loved...she loved things.

She wouldn't sit there and do nothing, ever. Ever.

She'd always be colouring, or watching something, or singing.

She'd never just sit there.

Or knitting.

Even if she fell asleep, she'd fall asleep like that, with her...

-Did she?

-In between her knitting.

All the time.

She was really, really happy here.

The staff really did, they did everything

to make her happy.

And if she wasn't happy, you'd know she wasn't happy. She'd let you know.

-She'd always let you know.

-It's really nice to know, you know, that she was all right.

-She certainly was.

-Especially after her mum dying, you know.

-Yeah.

-I wondered how she'd get on, really, with being with her all her life.

It took some time, but she adjusted.

And she was...

well loved by all the staff here, and she's missed by all the staff.

After her visit, Jean feels she can rest easy with her cousin's memory.

And Prudence's modest estate, still yet to be valued,

will be divided amongst the heirs.

All in all, there were 15 heirs to this estate

on the paternal and maternal sides combined.

We actually only signed four heirs, but those four heirs

comprise 40% of the estate.

Despite the twists and turns of the case,

heir hunter Saul is pleased with his work.

It's very satisfying at the end to get a good result.

In the offices of heir-hunting company Fraser & Fraser in London,

case manager Dave Slee and the team are busy trying to track down heirs

to the estate of William Maxwell Nasmyth Wilcock.

After establishing he died a widower, had no children, and was an only child,

their hunt has focused on tracing uncles, aunts and cousins.

On Maxwell's father's side of the family,

Roger has been trying to track down Frank,

the son of Maxwell's aunt, Elizabeth.

Several days ago, he ordered certificates

which would make or break his research on this stem.

I'm expecting...

some marriages back for Frank Sumner.

Um...

Sumner being a very, very area name.

We're looking for marriages in Preston initially.

And I put four or five in last week

that are possibles for him. Just hope one of them comes back correct.

William Maxwell Nasmyth Wilcock

died on the 18th of December 2011 in London.

For friends such as Michael Plomer, who knew him as Bill,

he was a baffling figure.

I find it very difficult to sum up Bill,

because he was an enigmatic character.

There are so many bits and pieces which appear to be very...

They're very interesting, but I never had the complete picture of Bill,

only bits of the jigsaw.

The little he did give away about himself created a fascinating picture.

He'd been out to the Far East to buy a lot of monkeys

for medical research in this country

and fly them back, which I gather was not a very comfortable flight back.

And he had many an extraordinary story.

I think, at one stage in the '50s or the '60s,

Bill worked for Bernard Docker

and I gather it was a matter of transporting large suitcases of money, or something like that.

Whether that's one of Bill's exaggerations or not, I don't know.

Bernard Docker was a millionaire businessman who, in the late 1950s, made headlines

in the national press for openly flaunting his wealth.

I didn't think there was any percentage in Bill trying to impress me,

so I just accepted what he said.

Friend Ian Johnston, however, found some of Maxwell's stories harder to believe.

He would talk about meeting very well-known people.

One person he talked about meeting was Aristotle Onassis.

This was through his work.

And I think he actually met him on his boat.

And I thought... I'll try and catch him out here.

Because I didn't know much about Aristotle Onassis, but I knew he was five foot three.

So I said, "Well, I'll see if I can catch him out here."

I says, "Aristotle Onassis - was he a big guy?"

And it was, "No, no, very small man." And I thought, "I've not got one over on him!"

I think he'll always be a mystery character.

He'll always be somebody we'll never quite know the truth about

but what we will know is that the stories he told

will have had a basis of truth in it.

And quite considerable truth in it.

But what the ultimate truth is about him, about the total truth of his life,

I don't think we'll ever really fully know.

After an anxious wait,

Roger's certificates have finally arrived

and it looks like one of them might match the info he has on Maxwell's cousin, Frank Sumner.

He's right on age, right on father.

And Charlie, his brother, is one of the witnesses.

This is a brilliant breakthrough.

And Roger is now one step closer to tracking down an heir.

The next step now is to look for children of that marriage.

Because he's now been confirmed dead, so, hopefully, the children will still be alive.

And a quick search of birth records reveals that Frank and his wife did have children.

It looks like there's one son, which will be useful.

All Roger has to do now is find a current address for him.

It looks like he may have moved to Scotland.

They've got a guy with the right initial and the right, er...quarter of birth

up in Scotland.

This is great news. It looks like Roger's found an heir,

so it's time to update case manager Dave.

Mr Slee.

News, sir.

Until they can speak to the heir, they can't confirm it's the right person,

so Dave gets straight on the phone.

Good afternoon. Very sorry to trouble you.

It looks like he might be in luck.

That's you, sir, is it?

We're trying to trace the next of kin of a gentleman who died in London

by the name of William or Maxwell Wilcock.

Dave explains that, as a cousin once removed,

he's entitled to a share of Maxwell's estate.

I've got to be perfectly honest. At this stage,

we're completely unaware of the value of this gentleman's estate.

Lovely. I'll get the letter in the post to you today.

Bye-bye, now.

It's been a successful call, and Dave and the team have now got some vital information to work from.

And it's not long before the search for Maxwell's heirs can be wrapped up.

There's at least five heirs entitled at this moment on the paternal family.

And on the maternal family...

we have an exact figure of three heirs.

But solving the puzzle of Maxwell's life

is proving more of a struggle.

I've spoken so far to a paternal first cousin,

who knew very little about her cousin, the deceased.

And I've also spoken to a cousin once removed on the maternal family,

who, unusually, even though he's a generation further down,

knew the deceased a little better.

But again, I also understand from my conversations with him that the deceased was a real mystery.

And...this real Walter Mitty character

that kind of came in and out of their lives all the time.

with these fabulous stories of travelling the world.

How much of it's true and how much of it's bluff, I don't know.

Dave and the team have discovered that Maxwell's mother, Gertrude Maudsley,

was one of four children.

Her brother William had three children of his own,

two of whom are now heirs to the estate.

Because William's son Norman Eric Maudsley passed away in 2004,

his son, Robin, is now also an heir.

For Robin, growing up in working-class Preston,

Maxwell was a fascinating figure.

My grandfather, when I was a kid, used to say about the stories of Max, where he'd been.

He'd sent him a postcard or a letter.

And he'd been to Tibet, he'd been to Russia, he'd been to America.

And, you know, it sounded as a kid, he was like a James Bond.

He was like a millionaire's lifestyle.

But nobody actually knew where... How he got that money.

Nobody knew how Max earned his money.

Even after years passed,

his cousin remained a darkly mysterious character.

On one of the occasions when Max first came to our house in the '80s,

my eldest son then and my second son, Philip, he was playing with Max's walking stick

and Max sort of said, "Get off that! Leave it alone!"

And they said, "Why?" He said, "It's dangerous, that" and he got hold of the handle

and moved it up a bit and you could see it was a knife.

As to the truth about Max's job, there are many conflicting theories.

He did tell me he was the chief constable of Hong Kong police,

but how long or where he stayed, I don't know.

The...rumours that went through the family from early background

is that...possibilities of him working for the Government.

Um...because of the amount of times that he went all over the world.

Recently I've been told that he might have been a photographer.

But Robin has always thought one thing more likely than the others.

I believe the background of what Max possibly did was to work

somewhere within the Government services.

To what extent, I don't know.

It's something that, as a kid, I've always been itching to find out.

Was Max Maudsley/Wilcock 007?

Becoming an heir means that he might finally be able to separate fact from fiction.

Our family have always thought, "Was he a Walter Mitty type of character?"

Or...was there some truth in it?

I'd like to hope there's some truth in it, and I'd like to hope, you know, the story comes out.

Dave might have located all the heirs to Maxwell's estate,

but his work on the case is far from over.

As Maxwell died in sheltered accommodation,

Dave's been in touch with the local council, regarding the contents of Maxwell's home

and has had an intriguing message back.

As far as I'm aware from...from my...

colleague's scrawl...

um...that the estate...

has assets of £60,000 in bank accounts.

They found £13,000 in cash at the property.

They took away a number of items - jewellery and gold.

We're probably looking at an estate in excess of £70,000.

Fantastic news.

His next task is to arrange access to the property.

Not only will this establish the true value of the estate,

but both Dave and Robin want to get to the bottom of some of the mysteries of Maxwell's life.

Not least what his real job was

and where he got his money from.

The deceased's estate is in a form of limbo at this moment.

His house, his flat, hasn't been cleared.

There could be documentation in the flat

which is crucial to our research and to the administration of the estate.

It would also be really helpful for the next of kin, this documentation,

because it might give some background as to whatever happened to the deceased

during he lifetime.

Finally, they might be able to discover some truth about Maxwell.

Was he actually a spy,

a world traveller, or just a fantasist?

A few days later, and partner Andrew Fraser is headed to Maxwell's home

to look for evidence of wealth and paperwork

which may help solve the mystery.

Today's task is to assess what we have and how we're going to deal with it.

It's not long before he gets his first clue about what Maxwell did.

This is a certificate from the Royal Geographical Society

to say he's been appointed as a fellow

in 1949.

But as more pieces of the puzzle emerge...

We have here a number of fencing foils,

walking sticks and parade batons.

..the waters become even more muddied.

This is a passport from 1965.

One occupation has been crossed out, to become a "professional hunter".

I expect this is from his hunting days.

It's been a worthwhile day

and Andrew has been able to delve deep into Maxwell's belongings.

But the conundrum of his life is still far from solved.

He certainly appears to have done something in his life.

The question is...what?

No-one knows, so I think, over the years, the truth has been bent,

moved slightly... But he probably was a very interesting character.

Ever since Robert Maudsley heard the news that he was an heir to Maxwell's estate,

he's been keen to know the truth about his enigmatic relative.

I'd like to have a bit more closure, in as much as know something about what Max did.

Um...try and find something of his life, you know, see what he did.

Now that various documents have been found,

he's headed down to London to meet Dave Slee

to see if between them they can make sense of any mysteries of Max's life.

Here's a series of passports,

which we found in Max's possessions.

You go through these... He's literally been around the world.

From the late '40s, he's in Europe - France and Germany.

And then from the early '50s, he starts to branch out, from Belgrade to Greece

to Istanbul... Then on into Syria.

Six foot eight inches. I said he was nearly seven foot.

Six foot eight inches? Six foot six here.

He's short there!

He got taller when he was older!

I think some of the stories got taller when he got older, as well.

-I think he was a good story-teller.

-I think he could spin a yarn, no doubt about that.

But...this doesn't tell any lies, does it?

Well, the stories that I've been told as a kid,

I can now honestly say that those stories ARE true.

You've showed me the pictures. Whereas, when you're a kid, you think, "Is this a fairytale?"

-The passports don't lie.

-No.

The documentation that Dave has uncovered

shows clearly that Maxwell's tales of exotic trips to far-flung places were true.

But there is very little that explains why, or how he funded his worldwide travels.

It's amazing, really, when you think... We're talking here of the late '40s, early '50s...

People weren't travelling Europe and studying like they do today.

-Where did the money come from?

-I don't know.

-It's crazy!

-He never seemed to be without money...

-and the door doesn't shut.

-No, the mystery's still on, isn't it?

For Robin, it's been a lot to take in.

Answering one set of questions has now made it more plausible

that...was Max a spy?

Who was paying for him? Who was paying for all the education

and all the different exams he was doing?

And Dave has still got work to do.

Once the family have submitted their claim to the Treasury,

Maxwell's estate, now valued at between £50,000 and £70,000,

will then be divided between all eight heirs.

But the memory of such a fascinating case

will live on.

Max! Who was Max? You know, an incredible character.

Um...you don't get many estates like that, that's for sure.

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