Hammond/Thorne Heir Hunters

Heir hunters specialise in tracking down people

who are entitled to money from someone who's died.

It was difficult to find you, actually.

Sometimes the deceased has become estranged from their family.

Sometimes they simply haven't left a will.

Either way, the heir hunters must make sure

that any unclaimed money goes to the right people.

When the heir hunters contacted us, it was amazing.

Their work involves painstaking investigation.

So these kids could all be right, all be wrong or half and half.

But it can bring families back together.

That's lovely!

Most of all, though,

the work is about giving people news of an unexpected windfall.

Could the heir hunters be knocking at your door?

Coming up on today's programme -

the death of an Essex man

leads the heir hunters to a colossal family tree.

What's happening is we've got a large top line

and then each of those top line

are having massive families themselves.

And an emotional family meeting.

-Hello, Nell!

-Hello, darling!

Long time no see.

Plus how you could be entitled to inherit

unclaimed estates held by the Treasury.

Could thousands of pounds be heading your way?

London.

And at the country's biggest firm of heir hunters, Fraser & Fraser,

boss Neil has picked up a new case.

Ralph Leonard Kenneth Hammond died in Rayleigh in Essex

just before Christmas last year.

So a pretty fresh case.

Heir hunters' work can come from a variety of sources.

Each week, the Treasury Solicitor

publishes a list of unclaimed estates.

Cases are sometimes referred by solicitors or concerned neighbours.

Today, the heir hunters are acting on a tip-off

that Ralph died without leaving a will.

If they can't find beneficiaries,

his estate will go to the government.

And it's thought to be of substantial value.

He owns a property,

so we're probably looking at a case with a value of about £160,000.

On a case like this,

the heir hunters will take a percentage of the estate

in return for their work.

But they'll only get paid if they find Ralph's heirs.

Born in 1922, Ralph Hammond was 89 years old

when he died at his home in Rayleigh in Essex.

Friend and neighbour Stuart Thomson used to keep an eye on Ralph

and do odd jobs for him.

He was always jolly. He was always pleased to see somebody.

We knew he liked his football. He liked Arsenal.

And he loved his cricket.

He always used to talk about his cricket.

He used to go to Chelmsford.

As far as we all knew, there was no relations.

He never mentioned family.

The only person he did mention a couple of times was his mother.

A very private and personal man, he was.

Sadly, Ralph lost his sight towards the end of his life.

But it didn't stop him keeping up with what was going on in the world.

He was a funny guy. He had these different radios.

All tuned into different radio stations.

So when he wanted to listen to something, he had one radio on.

If he wanted to listen to something else, he'd put the other one on.

If he wanted to listen to something else, he'd put the other one on.

Sometimes you'd go in there and you've got three radios going.

Although for his impairments, he looked after himself.

And he didn't want to intrude on people's help.

When I found out he'd passed away,

it was a sad thing for me, I must admit.

Because he was such a lovely man.

What can I say? He was such a lovely man.

In the office, the investigation to find beneficiaries

to Ralph's estate is in full swing.

Call him after 12:00 and make an appointment

because apparently, he's out until then.

The team are working on a tip-off,

but it won't be long before this case

is advertised by the Treasury Solicitor.

And that will mean rival heir hunting firms could pick it up.

So they have to work fast.

So these kids could all be right, all be wrong or half and half.

The first thing they've been able to establish

is that Ralph was a bachelor and had no children.

This means the heir hunters must now look to the wider family tree.

Thomas and Alice.

-Thomas...

-Thomas Frederick.

They will look to see if either of Ralph's parents

had brothers and sisters.

If any of these aunts or uncles had children,

then they would be heirs to Ralph's estate.

Right name, right place. Who knows?

But it's easier said than done.

As case manager Jo Ibrahim gets to grips with the investigation,

it soon begins to dawn on her

that Ralph's father was part of a huge family.

This case is quite big.

We've got ten uncles and aunts of the deceased

just on the paternal side.

And they all seem to have quite a lot of children,

so it's quite a big family.

Jo has only recently become a case manager.

With the discovery that Ralph's father was part of a massive family,

it's becoming clear that this is not going to be

an easy one to cut her teeth on.

I believe he went and saw you earlier today.

She can't fall at the first hurdle.

And on this job, there are lots of them.

It's what they call a massive one!

She decides the only way to deal with so many stems of the family

is to divide and conquer.

And she drafts in more and more researchers to help with the work.

Do you want to take this one, Ben? That one? Yeah.

At the moment, we're just looking at the family,

making sure that someone is working on each part of the family

to try and see if we can get more people up to date.

But because it's so big, we're having to give out stems to each person.

Cheers. Thanks. 'Bye.

Ralph Hammond's father had 11 brothers and sisters.

Six of whom went on to have big families.

Which means that Ralph had dozens of first cousins.

If any of these cousins are alive, they would be heirs.

If they, too, have passed away,

then their children would be in line to inherit.

It's a dauntingly large family,

but a challenge that some of the team relish.

It's an enormous tree.

And what's happening is we've got a large top line

and then each of those top line

are having massive families themselves.

We're having, you know, if there's eight or ten on the top line,

each child from that top line is having seven or eight children themselves.

And it's just like a fountain coming down.

It's going to be enormous.

The sheer size of the job means that Jo really has her work cut out.

As head of this investigation,

the onus is on her to make sure it runs smoothly

and gets solved fast.

Everyone in the office, even senior staff like case manager Dave Slee,

is working to her lead.

I feel sorry for Jo.

It's a hell of a big family tree to cut her teeth on.

So...she's doing well.

But Jo has more help just ready and waiting.

The company has a team of travelling heir hunters

who are out on the road and ready to go wherever they're needed.

It's their job to collect certificates,

make enquiries and sign up heirs.

I think we've got our work cut out with this one.

Out on the road today are Bob Smith,

Dave Hadley and Bob Barratt.

All in the Essex area, waiting to be dispatched.

Bob Smith is about to get further instructions from Dave Slee,

who has been working on the stem of one of Ralph' uncles,

George Hammond.

I've got an address for you.

OK. Which stem's it on?

If you go top line, George Arthur Hammond.

I don't know what your tree shows. Does it come down to Dorothy Elizabeth Hammond?

Yeah. She marries Alfred.

OK. We've got her being born 1900, Romford.

1901, yeah.

-Go to Hornchurch and then phone us and we'll let you know.

-OK.

-Thank you, Bob. Speak to you later.

-Yeah. 'Bye.

The heir hunters think they may have located a cousin

who would be an heir to Ralph's estimated £160,000 estate.

So Bob is hitting the road.

In the office, the whole team is still working on the Hammond case.

It's a risky strategy.

If it doesn't get solved,

or another firm of heir hunters gets in first,

the company will have wasted money and manpower.

Technically, we have three family trees working in the office.

Jo's got the original one we've been working with,

Tony's gone upstairs to update the current working tree

and we're working on a copy at the moment

which is actually in two bits.

Jo has got a not-easy task at the moment.

She's controlling probably about five or six managers.

Me, a partner, and 20 researchers, as well.

I think they've got four people out on the road working, as well.

So not an easy task for Jo.

She's not been in this game a huge amount of time and certainly,

this is probably the biggest job she's had to run.

I quite like the big families because

in some cases, the research can be quite quick now.

And there's no fun in that.

Essentially, that's what we are, we're researchers.

It's nice to be able to do research and do it throughout the day.

We look at a stem, we move on.

We look at another stem, we move on again.

The advantage is we've got numbers,

so we can look at a large job all in one go.

It is just the sort of work they relish.

It seems like most of the office is tackling branches

of the Hammond family tree.

Currently, we're having a look at Alice and Ruth Richardson.

Um...found a marriage so far for Alice,

but can't find anything else for her since.

She had two children, by the looks of it.

One of them died infant

and the other one seems to have disappeared.

At the moment, it looks like the right people,

but obviously, without certificates, we won't know for definite.

And it's quite an early stage.

Because the family are quite a large family,

it can easily be the right people in the wrong sort of place.

So hopefully, by speaking to the family, we might know a bit more.

In Essex, travelling researcher Bob Smith

has arrived at the home of Edward Vinton.

Mr Vinton's mother was Ralph Hammond's first cousin,

so he may be entitled to a share of the estate.

It's now down to Bob to check that he is indeed a family member

and if the office's research is correct.

If it is, then Mr Vinton is an heir to Ralph's estate.

Was your mum married more than once?

No. Just that once.

Just the once.

And your brothers and sisters, can you name them?

Who's the eldest?

My sister.

What was her name?

-Gwendoline Doris.

-Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Do you know when she was born?

Um...

Well, she's between nine and ten years older than me.

OK, so about 1922, 23?

Yeah. Yes.

It's good news for the team.

Bob confirms that Mr Vinton is Ralph's first cousin once removed

and therefore, an heir to his estate.

On a case like this, the heir hunters

will help a relative claim their share for a percentage fee.

And Bob leaves a contract for Mr Vinton to sign.

It's been a worthwhile visit.

Although he was very helpful in terms of giving us information

about his own particular branch of the family,

he didn't remember the deceased.

But still very useful. Lovely chap.

And it will enable us to contact other family members

so we can sort of move them forward quickly.

And the search for heirs is really gathering pace now.

In a different part of Essex, travelling researcher Dave Hadley

has been dispatched to see another potential heir.

The team believe Alex Grover

is another first cousin once removed to Ralph

and so entitled to a share of the estate.

-Mr Grover?

-Speaking.

Dave Hadley. Pleased to meet you. There's my card.

But Dave needs to make sure their research is correct.

Can you call out your brothers and sisters for me?

Call out their names.

-The eldest, Frederick.

-Frederick.

-Mm-hm.

-Did he have a middle name at all?

-Don't look at me, he's your brother.

-I know he is, yeah.

In the office, the team have been hard at it for several hours.

And they're beginning to get

the enormous paternal family tree under control.

We're now getting to the point where

we're looking at the holes in, um...in the tree.

So we're starting to concentrate on little bits where there's no address.

So...I think...

we've got something on every stem, as far as I'm aware.

So we're really just trying to finish off the bits.

But that's only 50 percent of the job.

Case managers Tony Pledger and Ben Cornish

begin to work on Ralph's mother's family.

Right, OK. The maternal is...

you've got the mother of the deceased is Eveline Hilda Letton.

Eveline Letton had almost as many brothers and sisters as her husband.

Nine in total.

But only five of these siblings lived to be adults.

Any children they had would be cousins to Ralph

and so heirs to his estate.

And Tony quickly uncovers that one of Ralph's aunts

had an interesting working life.

We think that we've found her as a servant

on the electoral roll in London

in the 1930s.

She's living in the same house as,

this is why we think she's the servant of

Esmee Tondiman

the Ranee of Pudukota.

It looks like the heir hunters have uncovered

a real-life upstairs downstairs story.

It would not have been acceptable for servants

to have a child out of wedlock,

nor would it have been acceptable for most servants

to marry and remain in service.

At the beginning of their search,

heir hunters often have very little information to go on.

But the process of tracing heirs

can sometimes reveal some intriguing family history.

It's something a bit unusual and interesting.

Based in Liverpool, Saul Marks of Celtic Research

specialises in estates that have sat unclaimed for several years.

The toughest to crack.

And this next case was no exception.

Arthur Thorne died in 2003

in Raynes Park, London, aged 92.

He never married, nor had children

and it appeared he had no family.

But he was a dedicated member of his local church.

Sarah Colley was part of the same congregation.

I think I would have been about six or seven when I first Arthur

because that was when I started to come to church

with my grandparents and my parents.

He was a sidesman here.

Took it in turns with my grandfather and two other people.

Arthur's role would be to hand out the books to the congregation

as they arrived, and then collect the collection

and take it up to the altar to be blessed at the end of the service.

I remember him sitting in his own special pew,

collecting the money, and being introduced to him

and saying hello at each service.

Arthur was very polite, I remember that.

Shook hands, always said good morning, always had a nice smile.

It's very sad that people can lose touch completely with their family,

so maybe Arthur found fulfilment here.

Arthur died without leaving a will,

which meant that his estate was published on

the Treasury Solicitors' Bona Vacantia list.

If a living heir could not be traced, then the money would

go to the government rather than Arthur's family.

Heir hunter Saul was keen to stop this from happening.

We picked this case from the Treasury Solicitor's list of unclaimed estates

in the summer of 2011, and the reason we picked this one in particular

was it looked like the value would make it

worth our while researching.

Arthur's estate was estimated to be worth around £18,000.

If Saul could find and sign up heirs,

he'd get a pre-agreed percentage of the estate,

but the Bona Vacantia list gives heir hunters

very little information to work with.

We started with the deceased's name, date of death and place of death.

That tends to be all we have to start with on any of our cases.

One of the first things I did was to find the deceased's date of birth,

which I was able to do because he died in 2003,

and the 2003 death indexes allow us the date of birth.

We established fairly early on in this case that the deceased

was born in the first few months of 1911,

which made it very easy for us

to just look him up on the 1911 Census.

And it was this crucial document that unlocked the case for Saul,

explaining why it had sat unclaimed on the list for several years.

The 1911 Census was only published in 2009,

so there was a six-year period

when this case really was pretty much impossible.

But once the census was published,

Saul was able to find Arthur living at an address in London,

a home he shared with his parents and five brothers.

Arthur was one of six sons born to Edward Thorne and Ellen Forbes.

His eldest brother Thomas died in 1933,

but the rest of his brothers,

Harry, Edward, Frederick and William, all married.

Any of their children would be heirs to Arthur's estate.

The deceased's eldest brother Thomas seemed to die quite young,

in his 20s, so once we'd established that he'd not got married earlier

and had children, which he hadn't,

we could rule his line out completely.

Of the surviving four brothers, we found marriages for all of them,

and we actually found deaths for all of them,

and they'd all had families of their own

from each of their marriages, so we knew that this case

was going to be all about finding nieces and nephews of the deceased.

As Saul researched each of Arthur's brothers,

he found it unusually easy to trace beneficiaries

using death indexes and the Census.

Normally, we use a lot of birth, marriage and death certificates

in our work to try and track people down.

In this particular case, we didn't actually need to use any.

What we did was we used the indexes and the census

to be able to solve the case,

and then we could just speak to the heirs

and they led us to the other heirs, and the case was solved.

But there was one detail that cast his research into doubt.

One of the odd things I came across in this case was that

the deceased's brother Frederick had married in London

and had some children in London,

and then there seemed to be other children born

to the same name combination of parents, but in Weston-super-Mare,

and that's quite unusual,

because obviously two different sides of the country.

Could this be another couple with the same name?

Or had Frederick and his wife Lily

moved their family 150 miles west from their native London?

When Saul traced one of the couple's youngest children,

Christina Morrison, he found the answer.

When the heir hunters contacted us, it was amazing.

It was just unbelievable to think that we had an uncle

who was still alive in 2003, and quite sad too.

Dad joined the army when he was quite young,

and during the war, when the Blitz was on in London,

Mum and the three oldest children

were evacuated out to Weston-super-Mare,

where the rest of us were all born.

During the build-up to World War II,

the fear of attack from German bombers prompted the government

to evacuate Britain's towns and cities.

Nearly 3,000,000 people, most of them children,

were uprooted from their homes

and sent to the relative safety of the countryside.

The government were very keen

that we could get rid of as many useless mouths, as they were called,

from the likely areas that would be bombed, to get them to safety.

Evacuation was never compulsory.

The government quite rightly saw that that would be a morale disaster,

to force people to go, and so they had to put in a lot of effort

to convince people to send their children away

or to go away themselves,

and this went on from about 1937 onwards,

they were beginning to put these kind of ideas,

propaganda involved, getting people to think

that it would be a good idea

to move their children from danger itself.

Terrified by the prospect of a German bombing campaign,

thousands of families fled to safer rural and coastal areas.

Many, like the Thornes, never returned home,

and lost contact with their extended families.

I'm sure it was horrendous for them

when they left all their family behind.

It must have been very, very difficult.

Very lonely, and Mum was from a big family herself,

and she left them all behind,

but she was more frightened that the children would be killed.

Obviously, evacuation was hugely emotional.

For many families, it was the first time they've ever been split up.

Families on the whole moved a lot less.

Many families never went on holiday, for instance.

You were day-to-day in contact with your siblings

and your children and your parents all your life.

It became clear to Saul that he was dealing with a family

who had become fragmented by the war.

His job now was to piece all the Thorne brothers

and their families back together,

and in turn, reunite them with their uncle Arthur's £18,000 estate.

We assumed that, as our dad died so young,

the other brothers had virtually followed suit,

because we didn't keep in touch with any of the family.

But all that might be about to change.

As a result of Saul's search for heirs,

Arthur Thorne's remaining family members

have been put in touch with each other.

I can't tell you how excited we all are

to know that there's more family around,

and we're looking forward so much to seeing them.

It'll be the first time that some of Arthur's family,

separated by war, have ever met.

-It's lovely to meet you.

-You're a complete stranger!

I can't take my eyes off... I can't take my eyes off of you.

Heir hunters use their specialist skills to track down

thousands of rightful beneficiaries every year,

but not every case can be cracked.

There are around 2,000 names

on the Bona Vacantia list of unclaimed estates

that have eluded the heir hunters and remain unsolved.

Cases will stay on the unclaimed list for a period of 12 years

from the date that the administration has been completed,

and that's a period of time that people still can come forward

and claim the estate.

Today we're focusing on two cases that stumped the heir hunters.

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

Could you be in line for an unexpected windfall?

First is the case of Gordon Stead.

He died in Shipley in West Yorkshire

on 9th April, 2011 at the age of 84.

Gordon was born in Bradford,

and his parents were William Stead and Alice Patchett.

The heir hunters believe he may have been married twice,

but so far, they've only found records of one marriage,

to a Barbara Slater in 1953.

Do you have any more information about Gordon?

Could you be one of his relatives?

Next is the case of Tex Orrico,

a jazz musician who died in Marylebone in London

on 28th September, 2009.

Heir hunters believe the name Orrico may come from Nigeria,

and could be a variation of Oriaku or Oriaky,

but unless someone knows where Tex was born,

it could be difficult to trace his relatives.

Could you be related to Tex, or do you know

anything about his family history that could help crack the case?

Both Tex Orrico and Gordon Stead's estates remain unclaimed,

and if no one comes forward,

their money will go to the government.

If it belongs to someone else, we simply don't want it,

so we're very pleased when people come forward.

So do you have any clues

that could help solve the cases of Tex Orrico or Gordon Stead?

If so, you could have an inheritance coming your way.

In London, the team at heir hunting firm Fraser and Fraser

are working on the case of Ralph Hammond,

and they're already dealing with a mammoth family tree.

So you can try and sort all that out, start from the beginning.

Let Jacko do that.

Case manager Jo Ibrahim is running the research,

and the entire office is working flat out to try and find heirs.

Michael, do you want to sort this lot out?

What's going on here?

Ralph Hammond passed away in December 2011

in Rayleigh in Essex.

He was 89 years old.

He spent the last few years of his life living alone,

but he had plenty of company from friends and neighbours,

like Stuart Thompson.

He was very, very jolly, but very private.

He was always pleased to see somebody,

somebody he could trust, basically.

Although he lost his sight towards the end of his life,

he still managed to keep active.

Not much is known about Ralph's background,

but it's thought he served in the RAF

and worked at the oil refinery in Canvey Island.

He liked people to visit,

but he did seem to like his own company.

He got on really well. He used to cook his own dinners,

he used to go and make himself a cup of tea when he wanted to.

When I found out he'd passed away, it was a sad thing for me,

I must admit, because he was, again, he was such a lovely man.

It's been a very busy morning in the office,

as the team gets its teeth into Ralph's huge family tree.

They've found out that Ralph's father

had 11 brothers and sisters,

six of whom went on to have big families,

so Ralph had a lot of first cousins.

But most of these first cousins have passed away,

which means their children or grandchildren

are in line to inherit.

It looks like there are dozens of beneficiaries,

but the fact that most of them seem to have stayed

in the south-east of England is making them easier to track down.

For us it's looking quite good, though.

We're coming up on a lot of stems,

we're coming up on a lot of beneficiaries

and we're getting to speak to people,

so fingers crossed, we're doing quite well.

Jo has three travelling researchers on the road in Essex,

and they've already had success in treating heirs.

We've got a case at the moment where somebody's passed away

without leaving a will,

and we believe that that person is related to you.

So far, most of the work has been on Ralph's father's side of the family,

but as case manager Tony Pledger is discovering,

there's some interesting family history on his mother's side.

We have an Ella Letton living in the same house as,

and that's why we think she's a servant of,

Esme Tondaiman, the Rani of Pudukota.

Ralph's mother, Eveline Letton, had nine brothers and sisters.

One of them, Ella, had a son, Leonard.

Controversially for the time, he was born out of wedlock

and Ella did not stay with his father.

Leonard is Ralph's first cousin,

and the team have been to see him to inform him that he's an heir.

We had a ring of the doorbell, and there was this strange chap.

I shook hands with him, and he said,

"I've come about a possible legacy for you as a possible heir."

I said, "Well, I haven't got any relations,

so I don't know where this comes from,"

and he said, "Well, it looks like you might have.

"Who was your mother?"

So I said, "Well, she was Ella Letton."

Ella Letton was born in 1888 at Mucking in Essex.

As an unmarried mother, she had no choice but to go out to work,

and Leonard recalls spending months

living apart from his mother when he was growing up.

I was sort of farmed out in different families

for a great deal of time until the war.

Eventually I found out that I was staying with all these people

because my mother could not look after me on her own.

It's as simple as that.

She would have to give up work, and that wasn't possible.

And at this time, for Ella to keep her job,

she might have had to be discreet about her son.

It would not have been acceptable

for servants to have a child out of wedlock,

nor would it have been acceptable for most servants to marry

and remain in service.

Most women in particular would have expected

and been expected to retire on marriage,

so it would have been very unusual to have a son,

and that's perhaps why she kept the son

relatively low-key in her life.

Thousands of young women worked in service in the interwar period,

but Ella was no ordinary servant.

In fact, she was a sought-after society cook,

who spoke fluent French.

My mother was quite a self-made lady, she started off as a servant

in life, and then graduated up to the cooking status where she got

quite successful, and she cooked, I know, for a lot of people in the

Park Lane area, and used to travel to Scotland to prepare meals up there.

Once, she was involved in cooking a meal for Von Ribbentrop,

when he came over in 1938, when he was German Foreign Minister,

and she said, "I missed the chance to poison him!"

A cook was a very senior position in the household, it was,

along with the housekeeper,

one of the most senior female roles that you could have.

It meant that you would have had authority over other servants.

It was well-paid, the living conditions were quite good.

Hours would have been long, that doesn't mean that there was

no time off in the day, but it would have been an early start

and a late finish, and, yes,

there would have been a lot of pressure to get it right, especially

if you're cooking for upper-class society dinner parties and so on.

She told me that a lot of the cooking that she did was French.

When she died, I was clearing out some of the stuff

and I found two very large cookbooks, all handwritten,

all in French, in my mother's handwriting.

As to who she cooked for, I never met anybody,

I was never introduced to anybody, so, in actual fact,

I have no idea who she cooked for.

Electoral rolls from the 1930s show that Ella had at least one

very grand employer, Esme Tondiman,

the wife of the Maharaja of the Indian State of Pudokkottai.

In 1915, the mixed-race marriage between the Australian

socialite, known as Molly, and the Maharaja caused a public scandal.

The couple were ostracised by the British establishment who

refused to recognise her as the Maharani.

After her husband's death in 1928, Molly moved to Mayfair in London,

where Ella Letton became her cook.

To learn that my mother was eventually

cooking for the Maharaja's wife, would be quite a good thing to

know, and it shows me what heights she achieved her cooking skills.

Ella's life seems to be a very successful life,

she had perhaps the career that she wanted,

but, we might look back and ask ourselves -

Was it sad for her that she didn't

get to bring up her own children personally?

I was extremely fond of my mother, and she always treated me well,

and when she visited me, she always came armed with a good book or

a present or something for me, which I was always very grateful for,

but when I lived with her I found out more about what she was like,

and she was a good woman.

I sadly missed her.

Back in the office, the heir hunters are still working

the case of Ella's nephew, Ralph Hammond, and they may have

finally broken the back of the giant paternal family tree.

It's just a huge family, and we are trying to put

the meat on the bones, really, now. To complete the research

and find the last heir is certainly going to be weeks, if not months.

They think they have now identified most of the living relatives

and out on the road,

the three travelling researchers are seeing as many of them as they can.

And this is the Hammond family tree.

Fantastic.

That's the agreement.

That's it, Dennis and Robert, that's it, isn't it?

-we haven't got any other brothers or sisters?

-Nope.

The team now knows of around 90 heirs to Ralph's

estimated £160,000 estate.

Partner Neil is hoping most of them will sign up with the company.

We have got some beneficiaries who are the only heirs on the stamp,

so therefore they are entitled to £20,000.

We have also got some heirs

who are only entitled to £50 - £100,

so it is important for us that we

get to see the beneficiaries who are entitled to £20,000,

and just write to the beneficiaries who are entitled to £100.

It's a very careful balancing situation.

For new case manager, Jo, this job,

with its sprawling family tree has been a baptism of fire, but thanks

to her own hard work, and the support of her team, she has managed

to avoid the many potential pitfalls and crack this completed case.

The travellers have done really well, spoken to lots of heirs

today, and everyone in the office has done lots and lots of research.

I'm pleased with how well it has come out,

and considering the pure amount of people

that was on the tree originally,

I am pleased with how much we managed to do in such a short space of time.

A few weeks later,

and Neil has heard news on the final value of Ralph's estate, and it is

even better than that £160,000 he had originally estimated.

In the last three weeks a claim has been

accepted by the Treasury Solicitor, that claim has been

valued at £270,000, approximately twice the value I thought it was.

Jo, who has been managing this case,

it's one of the first cases that she has really properly managed,

and to have a case with this many beneficiaries handled

in this way, with such speed, is really quite incredible,

and I'm very proud of what she's done.

In Liverpool, Saul Marks of heir hunting firm, Celtic Research,

was trying to find beneficiaries to

the £18,000 estate of Arthur Thorne.

He died in London in 2003,

and had been a well loved figure in his local church.

I think I would like Arthur to be remembered for what he was,

which was a nice, self-contained, very polite person.

I remember him as being very formal, always shaking hands,

saying, "Good morning."

It would be nice if Arthur could be remembered by his memory

at least being reunited with his relatives that are still alive.

One of those relatives is Christina Morrison,

whose father Frederick was Arthur's older brother.

She remembers her uncle as a talented musician who had

an exciting working life.

Arthur was always known to the family as Archie.

He was a very handsome, dapper man.

Worked in Harrods and he was musical and played the piano.

Pauline Rainsford is another of Arthur's nieces.

When she got the call from the heir hunters about her uncle,

it was a name she hadn't heard for a very long time.

I didn't know that Uncle Archie had died,

though I thought he must've done.

So, when somebody got in touch with me

it came as a bolt out of the blue.

The fact that Archie was alive in 2003 is crazy, because we could

have all enjoyed each other's company, he would have,

he might not have enjoyed us so much, but we would have liked

to have seen him, as we would with any of our other family.

It has made me think back to my Uncle Archie, it has made me

think back to my childhood, and I wish I knew more about him.

I have fond memories of him, he took me to places I would never

have gone in my early years, he was delightful, he was delightful,

and I would hope other people had the same memories of him.

Heir hunter, Saul Marks, discovered that Arthur was one of six

brothers, all of whom had died before him.

Four of these brothers had married and had children,

and these were all heirs to Arthur's estimated £18,000 estate.

The heirs I spoke to on this case all remembered their Uncle Archie

quite well, he was a popular figure from their childhood,

but they had all lost touch with him over many, many years,

so none of them were aware that he had actually passed away.

And it wasn't just Arthur that the Thorne family had lost touch with.

Because of the threat to the capital city during the Second World War,

some of the family had gone from West London to the West Country

and never returned.

Consequently,

the next generation of Thornes knew virtually nothing about one another.

Often, families found it very difficult to reunite after

the war, because over that long period of time people do change,

and they adapt, and they evolve, especially children,

so, often children would have gone away at nine and they came back at

14, 15, they were now young adults, they were almost unrecognisable, they

would certainly have evolved and changed from the people they were.

For the Thorne family, the heir hunters investigating their

Uncle Arthur's estate has opened up a whole new world.

I think we're all very excited to know that we have got cousins,

I'd like to learn a bit more about their dads, our uncles,

and I think it would be just fun to see them.

Today, Christina is travelling from Somerset

and Pauline from Sussex to the home of their cousin, Nell, in Shepperton.

Nell is the eldest of the three cousins.

A bit nervous. Yes.

It will be quite an experience, it will be nice to see them.

These three ladies have never been in a room together before.

I'm feeling very excited, and looking forward very much to

seeing my cousins, and I hope they are looking forward to seeing me.

I am very curious to find out about my father's past life

and his brothers, because although I knew they existed

they seemed to have stretched to the four corners of the country.

-Hello!

-Hello, Nell!

-Hello, darling!

-Long time no see.

Nell and Pauline have not seen each other for more than 30 years,

and Christina has never met either of her cousins.

Hello.

-Hello.

-Are you Christina?

-I'm Chris. And you are Nell.

-Yes.

I haven't seen you before, have I, darling?

No, you haven't, it's lovely to meet you.

-It's very kind of you to come.

-Hello.

-Hello, how are you?

-I'm very well, and you?

-Lovely to meet you.

You are a complete stranger.

Here we are, Nell, here's a little something for you.

-That's very kind of you.

-And a little something for you.

Oh, my goodness, how kind of you! That's lovely!

I can't take my eyes off you!

Over a cup of tea, the ladies soon settle down to swapping

stories about their long-lost uncle.

Do you know anything about Uncle Arthur?

He was always Uncle Archie.

Yes, we only ever heard him as Archie.

He was a brilliant guy, really nice. Really kind.

But it's the photographs they've brought along to share that

really bring the family stories to life.

So, this is our grandmother with her six boys.

That's Archie, Fred, we think Tom,

Harry, and my dad, Ted.

My dad adored his mum and he was absolutely heart- broken

when she died.

And even though they have not shared the last few

decades of their lives, it seems they have an awful lot in common.

This one, of Uncle Fred, now, my brother has got this up on his wall.

-Crazy!

-He treasures it.

And didn't he win the Army heavyweight boxing title?

When he won that, my mum and dad were at the Albert Hall.

My mum got so excited, the man sitting in front of her,

she banged her hands down and squashed his bowler hat!

LAUGHTER

With this unique opportunity to meet up and share family history,

the cousins can't help but return to talking about the person who

brought them all together.

There's Archie.

-Did you hear that he worked in Harrods?

-Yes.

-And also he was a very good pianist?

-I just remember the voice.

It was my dad's funeral.

I knew he could sing, but in the church where you get this

echoing and everything, oh, it was so beautiful, it made me cry.

After such an enlightening day,

the cousins feel pleased with all they can take away from their meeting.

I was very, very happy to see everybody and it was

so lovely to meet Christina.

I haven't met Pauline for about 30 years, I think it is.

It's been great fun, and maybe we will meet up in the future,

who knows?

I think Archie's got a lot to answer for and I think he's a lovely,

lovely man for bringing us all together.

If you would like advice about building a family tree or making a will, go to:

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