Godfrey/Pumfrey Heir Hunters

Heir hunters specialise in tracking down people

who are entitled to money from someone who has died.

Good morning. Mrs Carr?

They hand over thousands of pounds to family members

who had no idea they were in line to inherit.

Their work involves painstaking investigation.

Did you know Mr Godfrey?

Right.

And it can shed new light on the past.

The over-riding thing about the workhouse was the shame.

Most of all, though, the work is giving people

news of an unexpected windfall.

Could the heir hunters be knocking at your door?

Coming up...the heir hunters grapple with a massive family tree.

Six, seven, eight, nine... Nine children in total.

But will it be worth their while?

The information we've picked up is that it's just above our threshold.

The death of a Sussex woman sets two sisters off on a journey of discovery.

Got a picture. That's Georgina. She's very happy in there.

Plus, how you could be entitled

to inherit unclaimed estates held by the Treasury.

Could a fortune be heading your way?

Early Thursday morning in London.

A new list of unclaimed estates known as the bona vacantia has just been released.

It details the names and dates of death of people who've died without leaving a will.

And at the offices of heir-hunting firm Fraser & Fraser,

boss Neil has chosen one to follow.

We've just started the case of Jack Ronald Godfrey, dies in 2012.

The heir hunters usually work for a percentage of the estate.

The higher the value, the higher potential profit.

They don't believe Jack's estate is hugely valuable,

but on a slow day like today, it could still be worth chasing.

It doesn't look like it's going to be a great case,

but we'll do an enquiry. Value-wise, could be anywhere from £5,000 up to maybe £10,000 or £15,000.

Hopefully, if we can get the enquiry to confirm it, we might be able to get it up to £20,000.

And if it gets up there, we can work it.

Whatever it's worth, the heir hunters will only get paid

if they find Jack's heirs,

and if they get to them ahead of other competing firms.

Born in 1931, Jack Godfrey was 81 years old when he died in Woolwich,

southeast London, where he'd lived for most of his life.

No pictures of Jack survive,

but friends Pat Bishop and Geoff Stevenson remember him well.

I met Jack probably in 1990.

And he was a neighbour of mine for many, many years.

I used to live next door to Pat here,

three doors away from Jack. 1989 I first met Jack.

-He was always pleasant.

-Absolutely.

-Always had a word.

-A gentleman, wasn't he?

-Yeah, a gentleman.

But he kept himself to himself.

It seems Jack wasn't concerned with material things,

and made a point of living very frugally.

Didn't have a fridge freezer, nothing. Washing machine, cooker,

nothing at all. No mattress. He had an inflatable one for about a week,

and he put it on the old springs, and, of course, it punctured.

But he still wouldn't get a mattress. He wouldn't.

Did get him some furniture once.

Took a day moving it all down,

then the next day he came to me and said,

"No, it's just too much in there. Cluttered."

-So I had to take it all out again. But that's how he lived.

-Yeah.

Although Jack lived in rented accommodation

and had very few possessions,

his estate is now thought to be worth around £20,000.

For the heir hunters, it's a job worth working.

The case is likely to have caught the eye

of competing heir-hunting firms as well,

so speed is of the essence for case manager Ben Cornish.

Just minutes into the investigation, a check of birth,

marriage and death certificates has already thrown up the first clue.

We think he may have had a sister, an older sister.

But we're not sure what happened to her. We think she may have passed away as an infant.

Marriage records show that Jack died a bachelor,

with no children of his own.

If it's confirmed that his sister did die as a child,

then the heir hunters must look for Jack's aunts, uncles and cousins.

It's not long before there's a breakthrough. Senior researcher Alan

has found the phone number of Jack's former neighbour.

She's only been there at least since '97.

She's the same sort of age as the deceased,

-and she's still there.

-Excellent.

She could provide some vital pointers

to help the team track down Jack's family.

It seems that the family have lived, or were living in,

that property all the way back to '48. And apparently the deceased left it in 2000,

so hopefully, she may have some information about the deceased.

Even though so much of the investigation can now be done online,

there's no substitute for talking to someone who knew the deceased.

Did you know Mr Godfrey? Right.

Jack, yes.

It's good news. Jack's neighbour remembers him well.

Oh, right. OK.

It sounds like he was an only child if she passed away in infancy.

Because you never had the impression that he had a sister, is that correct?

Ben's hunch that Jack's sister died as a child

looks likely to be correct. That means the team will now concentrate on finding Jack's wider family.

There's potentially a link to Wales and Canada, so I'm not sure where

that's going to go. But I've just been given the number of another guy

who knew the deceased pretty well, so I'll give him a quick call now.

As Ben makes his next call,

travelling researcher Bob Smith sets out for a day on the road.

While much of the research is done by the staff in the office,

the team rely on a country-wide network of senior researchers

who can follow up their leads.

Their job is to pick up certificates, chat to neighbours,

and hopefully, sign up heirs ahead of the competition.

Bob's looking for clues at the sheltered accommodation

where Jack spent the last few years of his life.

They couldn't really tell me a lot about Jack himself

or his financial situation. But what I have obtained is details

of a lifelong friend who apparently looked after all his financial affairs

and will know all about his family.

In the office, case manager Ben has beaten Bob to it.

He's already spoken to Jack's friend and has come up trumps.

He looked after his financial affairs as well.

Um, looked after his financial affairs. Says he's got over £20,000.

The friend has also given Ben another good lead -

the name of one of Jack's relatives who lived nearby.

The deceased had an aunt who lived in the area, called Mabel Nicholls.

We're just trying to work out which side she belonged to, the paternal side or the maternal side.

With the value of the estate now confirmed,

the team can go full steam ahead to track down heirs.

But it soon becomes clear that Jack's father was part of a huge family.

Six, seven, eight, nine... Nine children in total.

Jack's father, Edward John Godfrey, had 12 brothers and sisters,

eight of whom went on to have families of their own,

which means Jack had dozens of first cousins.

If they're still alive, they will be heirs to his estate.

If any of them have passed away,

then their children will be in line to inherit.

It's a dauntingly large family, and at this stage,

boss Neil is concerned that the potential profit

may not be worth the amount of work involved.

It's a big family. The information we've picked up, though,

is it's just above our threshold and only just above our threshold

for going back to cousins.

So we were hoping it wasn't going to be such a big family,

with it being so close.

Nevertheless, the team keeps moving forward.

Yeah, I'm on a roll.

Alan has found a number for who he thinks is the son of Jack's aunt, Mabel.

Case manager Ben makes another call.

I'm just wondering if you can remember any of your mum's brothers and sisters?

With Neil's help, he's trying to build up the Godfrey family tree.

Jim...

Yeah? And who did he marry?

It's more good news. The team has found their first heir,

one of Jack's first cousins, and he's a mine of information about the Godfrey family.

We think that you're...

The deceased, he mentioned the fact that he had an aunt, Mabel Nicholls.

And we weren't sure whether she was from the Godfrey side

or his mother's side, the Fletcher family.

It looks as if there are at least 35 cousins on Jack's father's side alone.

The tree is getting bigger by the minute.

-Everyone's one of seven or five.

-Exactly!

But that's only half the story.

Researcher Emma has been looking into relatives of Jack's mother, Mary Fletcher.

If she also had lots of brothers and sisters,

the team could find itself swamped.

-He's a boy called Thomas.

-Thomas, OK.

-We knew that there were three on the top line,

including the mother. But one of them dies.

He doesn't seem to die between '01 and '11. That should be that side done.

Jack's mother, Mary, had just two siblings -

a sister who died without having any children

and a brother who was illegitimate.

Because he wasn't a full blood relative to Jack,

like the other heirs they found,

his descendants won't be entitled to a share of the estate.

That side now looks like it's pretty much...

Um, you know, there's no heirs on that side.

So it's all about the Godfrey side...which is huge.

It's a stroke of luck.

Ben and his team can now concentrate their efforts

on finding Jack's father's family.

Out on the road, travelling researcher Bob Smith

has been sent to see his first heir.

I've just been to see a paternal first cousin of our deceased, Jack Godfrey.

Um...he wasn't really able to tell me much information.

Remembered the deceased.

Um...

But he has given me the telephone number of his brother

who he knows was in regular contact with the deceased

until the last four or five years.

So what I'm going to do is, I'll call the office, let them know what's happened,

It's not a great result.

The heir hasn't signed with the company.

-Hello, Ben.

-Hi, mate. How are you doing?

'Yeah, I'm all right.'

He wasn't particularly welcoming, to be honest.

-'Oh, really?'

-Yeah. I left the agreements with him.

I don't know if there's anyone else in the area, actually.

There is somebody in Hornchurch. There's a stem that we haven't got into.

She was originally Maud Godfrey.

Right, OK, mate.

-'All right.'

-Speak to you later.

Cheers, Bob. Bye.

Although they've spoken to a couple of beneficiaries,

the heir hunters still haven't signed anyone up.

Which means rival firms could pip them at the post.

Can Bob make it in time to beat the competition?

Finding heirs almost always involves delving into the past.

But some cases take heir hunters further back than others.

In 2011, the team started working the case

of a woman called Georgina Pumfrey,

who had died in West Sussex, aged 102.

Right from the get-go, senior case manager David Milchard knew it was going to be a tricky one.

This is going back to the sort of case

that I probably experienced more when I first started.

Today you've got so much on the computer and things like that.

It almost becomes mechanical.

But going back, you really have to work at some of these cases.

Georgina died without leaving a will,

so her estate was advertised on the bona vacantia list of unclaimed estates.

As rival heir hunters were likely to be looking at the case,

David knew they had to work fast.

But he soon discovered that to find any heirs,

he'd have to go back almost 200 years, to Georgina's grandfather.

He was born in 1820.

Which, to put it into perspective,

you're going back to a time when Napoleon had died.

With a family tree going back so far,

David and his team would certainly have their work cut out

to find heirs to Georgina's £54,000 estate.

Georgina Pumfrey died in February 2011

in Rustington, West Sussex.

Bill McMellan became friendly with her

in the last few years of her life.

I was very fond of Georgina.

It was a pleasure to go and see her.

She was a very warm person

and she...

You just felt good when she was there.

Towards the end of her life,

Georgina had grown frail and had to move into a care home.

But as a young woman, she'd been a vivacious and artistic character.

I remember Georgina telling me about painting

and about how she'd earned her living through painting,

with a big company in Hove.

It's quite easy to imagine her painting with a canvas in front of her.

She was quite a flamboyant person, I think.

Georgina had never married, nor had children

and had lived alone since the tragic death of her fiance in 1976.

One thing about Georgina was that

although her neighbours and people around were concerned for her,

she always seemed to be on her own.

There were no family that I knew of,

and I didn't hear of her family until after she had died.

And it seems to me to be terribly, terribly sad

that there was no contact between her and her living family,

who would have doted on her, I'm sure.

A search of birth, marriage and death records

had revealed that Georgina was an only child,

with no nieces, nephews, uncles or aunts on either side of the family.

It was looking increasingly unlikely that there'd be any living heirs.

But then came a glimmer of hope

in the shape of Georgina's maternal grandfather, George Rolph.

The heir hunters' painstaking research

revealed that Georgina's grandmother, Jane,

was, in fact, George's second wife.

His first wife, Eliza,

had died in 1876.

If she and George had children,

they would be half-blood relatives of Georgina.

From the paternal grandfather's first marriage, we found there was one child,

an Eliza Emily Rolph, who was born in 1849.

Now that would make her...

an aunt of the half-blood.

Which, in the absence of full-blood relatives,

half-blood then come in.

With the discovery that Georgina had a half-aunt,

the heir hunters were finally starting to make some headway.

But the family story was not a simple one

and David still had some unravelling to do.

Everything now rested on whether or not Eliza Emily Rolph had children.

And the early signs were not good.

We found that Eliza married when she was about 30

to a guy called Dennis Power

in 1886.

But unfortunately, he died a year later.

There was obviously no issue from that marriage.

We thought then it was going to die out again.

But the heir hunters were not about to give up on this case.

David and his team went the extra mile to see if Eliza had any children out of wedlock.

And they struck gold.

We trawled through some other records,

and we established that Eliza in fact had an illegitimate daughter...

..called Emily Louisa Rolph, who was born in 1878.

This was a significant breakthrough for the heir hunters.

Emily Rolph was Georgina's half-cousin

and although she had long since died,

her descendants, if she had any,

would be heirs to this £54,000 estate.

This is really going back to what this sort of work is really all about.

It's going back to where there's almost nothing

and you're looking for that little bit extra.

You could so easily have missed this one illegitimate child.

It's only through the diligent research that you can identify what happens.

But if it had been missed, it would have been a lost case

and the money now would be going to the Government.

Fortunately, that was not the case,

as marriage and birth records revealed that Emily had a large family of her own.

When she marries, she then goes on to have 11 children,

which is quite a contrast to the previous generation.

And she is now survived by a considerable number of grandchildren.

Two of those 16 grandchildren are sisters Dorothy and Beryl.

Their father, Edward, was Emily's youngest child.

They'd never heard of Georgina,

and were stunned to find out they were heirs to her estate.

I thought it was a joke.

I thought, "There's no way we've got any relations left

"that would want to get in touch with us."

So I just thought, "This is going to be a hoax."

We always thought we might have someone leaving us something one day,

but we didn't think it was going to come like this!

We thought we was going to know the person,

-which would have been nice. It would've been nice to have known her and spoken to her.

-Oh, yeah.

Now, keen to find out more about their mystery benefactor,

the sisters have come to Georgina's home town in West Sussex.

She can't go to 102 and everyone forget her. It's not right.

We've got to find out.

She had no children, she had no-one. We're the only two to...

to dig.

-To find the mystery.

-Yeah. Find the mystery of where she came from.

Georgina spent the last few years of her life in a care home.

Dorothy and Beryl have decided to call in,

in the hope of finding out more about their long-lost relative

and getting a photograph of her.

We've got a picture.

That's Georgina. She's very happy in there.

She was just over 100 then.

She got a telegram from the Queen and the Prime Minister

when she was 100.

She was a fiery lady. If she didn't want to take her medication, there was no way you would make her.

-And a wash.

-And a wash!

-I'm glad we came down and done all this.

-Yeah.

I feel happier now.

But the sisters' quest to piece together the puzzle of their family history

is only just beginning.

As they move forward, they discover a surprising family secret.

People just didn't talk about the workhouse to their children.

Thousands of rightful beneficiaries are tracked down by the heir hunters every year.

But not all cases can be cracked.

There are thousands of estates on the Treasury's unclaimed list

that have eluded the heir hunters and remain unsolved.

Bona vacantia is Latin

for "ownerless goods". There are two types of bona vacantia.

There are the estates of people who die without leaving a will or any entitled blood relatives,

and there are the assets of dissolved companies.

Today we're focusing on two cases that are yet to be solved by the 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 is the case of Albert Phillip Ford,

who died on the 18th of February 2011

in the West London suburb of Ealing.

Although Ford is a common name,

research has already established some basic facts.

Albert was married to a Sylvia Millicent Strong

and worked as a lift operator.

But the heir hunters can't find any record of his birth in 1930.

And they believe it's possible he was adopted.

Perhaps you know Albert.

Perhaps you were one of his long-lost relatives.

Next is the case of Thelma Margaret Williams,

who died in South Kensington in London

on the 19th of April 2001.

Her estate is believed to be of substantial value,

but there are over 400,000 people in the UK

with the surname Williams,

so tracing her heirs has proved extremely tricky.

But perhaps Thelma Margaret Williams

was a relative of yours.

Both Thelma and Albert's estates remain unclaimed

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

The Crown doesn't want to grab all the estates it possibly can.

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

That's the way to stop property becoming bona vacantia - make a will.

Do you have any clues that could help solve the cases

of Albert Phillip Ford

or Thelma Margaret Williams?

If so, you could have a fortune coming your way.

In London, the heir hunters are working the case of Jack Godfrey

and they're dealing with a colossal family tree.

We've just been looking primarily at the paternal family, the Godfrey family.

So we've been tracing quite a few stems.

A good majority of them survived and had children.

And they seem to have a lot of children themselves.

Jack's grandparents, Frank and Eliza,

had 13 children in total.

But two of them died as infants.

Of the 11 who survived,

nine of them, including Jack's father, Edward,

went on to have families of their own.

So Jack had 38 first cousins.

It looks likely that there are dozens of beneficiaries

to Jack's £20,000 estate.

And case manager Ben has spent most of the morning

trying unsuccessfully to reach them by phone.

In Essex, Bob Smith is hoping to talk to one of the heirs, Maud, face to face.

She is a paternal first cousin,

the lady I'm going to see.

Her father and the deceased's father were brothers.

Bob heads straight for the address

and without making an appointment, goes to see if Maud is in.

Will she be the first heir to sign up?

Jack Godfrey passed away on the 9th of January 2012

at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich, southeast London.

He was 81 years old.

Neighbours Pat Bishop and Geoff Stevenson

have fond memories of him.

He was a very nice chap

and very inoffensive, and um...

He would always have a smile.

-He had a bit of a twinkle in his eye as well.

-Yeah.

Yeah, he did.

He was a lovely chap.

Jack never married nor had children

and he rarely talked about his family.

He was a solitary soul,

but he did enjoy company.

But he didn't seek company.

He just, er...

He just did what he did, you know, and enjoyed it.

But he would stand there often just smiling, with nothing to say,

and just enjoy being with people, you know?

-Watching the world go by.

-Well, that's what it was. He was a watcher.

He didn't participate, did he? He just watched.

In later life, ill health forced Jack to move into sheltered accommodation.

But before that, he'd lived in the same Woolwich terrace

for more than 50 years.

He would always be stopping and talking to somebody.

A lot of the neighbours would come by and say to me, "How's Jack?"

And I'd say, "He's in hospital." "Oh, well, hope he's doing all right."

And you'd see them again and I'd say, "I'm sorry, but Jack passed away." "Oh, I'm sorry about that."

-There was a lot of people sorry.

-Yeah.

-He was a gentleman, wasn't he?

-Yeah.

-We will remember him.

-Oh, absolutely.

-Won't forget Jack. Part of Woolwich.

-Yeah, definitely.

Bob Smith has come to Essex to try to find a lady called Maud,

who is one of Jack's first cousins.

And when he arrives at the address he's been given by the office, there's a surprise in store.

Not one, but two heirs.

Your cousin Jack, he died earlier this year.

OK? Now, when he died, he hadn't made a will.

And there were no family that were in touch with him

that could look after his affairs.

Maud and her younger sister, Mary,

live together in sheltered accommodation.

It's a stroke of luck for the heir hunters.

They can save time and money by interviewing the two ladies at the same time.

When did you marry?

Er...'47.

Mr Nicholls?

To make sure he's got the right people,

Bob has to check the office's research against the information he gets from Maud and Mary.

What was your father's name?

Charles Frank Godfrey.

The office got it right.

The ladies are the daughters of Jack's uncle, Charles.

It's a great result for the heir hunters.

Well, that went very well.

Um, I'd turned up to see a paternal first cousin,

and, surprise, surprise, her sister is sitting there with her!

So that was quite an unexpected, but pleasant, surprise.

The interview went well.

Got lots of good information. I've left the forms with them to consider

and I'll ring the office now and let them know the good news.

It's been a long time since Maud and Mary have seen the younger cousin they knew as Jackie.

We hadn't heard from him for years, you know.

We used to think about him,

because he was on his own.

He was a quiet boy, but he just....

Sorry to hear that he went like that

and we hadn't sort of seen him.

And when you're all getting old, nobody can get to one another

like they used to, you know.

The sisters are a mine of information about their large family.

Our dad had 12 brothers and sisters.

Maud and Mary's father, Charles, was the fourth of 13 children.

His younger sister, also called Maud,

was an aunt to the ladies, and to Jack Godfrey

and lived on a farm in Devon.

Used to take the kiddies down

and we'd see them a lot, like Aunt Maud and that.

But, um...

And that's where Dad come from originally.

Like, his father and mother

came from Devonshire.

Like the rest of her siblings, Maud was born in London,

but at some point she moved to North Devon to live with her grandmother, Mary-Anne Godfrey.

There, the two women earned a living through the centuries-old craft of Honiton lace-making.

People have been making lace since 1580, 1590 in Honiton.

And it's been continuous, right up to the present day.

This intricate technique requires not only a steady hand,

but lots of patience.

Just one square inch takes around nine hours,

which makes for an expensive product.

And we have wedding veil that was made in 1869

and it cost £84.

And in 1869, £84 was an average man's annual salary.

The lace is named after the east Devon town

which was once the centre of British lace production.

In the late 1800s, there was about 4,000 people who lived in Honiton.

At least half of them made lace.

It was a cottage industry,

with the majority of lace being made at home by women

like Jack's Aunt Maud and great-grandmother Mary-Anne.

Made in Honiton, it was collected and taken to London, where it was sold.

Because it was so time-consuming,

it was very difficult to make a decent living from lace-making,

but according to Maud and Mary,

Mary-Anne had a very grand customer.

Me great-grandmum, she was blind

and she used to crochet collars for Queen Victoria.

Queen Victoria loved Honiton lace,

and was a great promoter of the industry.

The white silk dress and veil she wore to marry Prince Albert in 1840

was trimmed with Honiton lace

and throughout her life,

she commissioned many pieces for ceremonial garments.

Mary-Anne used to sell her lace through one of the small shops in Honiton.

According to family legend, one piece caught the eye of the agent

that Queen Victoria used to send to the town to buy her lace.

She said, "I like that one." She said, "Well, that's an old lady that's blind that does them."

"Ooh," she said. And she had a scroll, me aunt,

from Queen Victoria.

Back in the office, the heir hunters have now finally

broken the back of Jack Godfrey's sprawling family tree.

They think they've identified most of the living relatives

and case manager Ben has been on the phone all day,

trying to talk to as many of them as he can.

Hello. Is it possible to speak to Mrs Bishop, please?

The team now knows of around 50 heirs to Jack's £20,000 estate.

And Ben is hopeful they will sign up with the company.

I've made contact with at least all the stems at the moment, apart from one.

There's quite a few beneficiaries on each stem.

We've just been making sure we've got the correct addresses.

With the value of the estate, we're probably going to write to everyone.

It's a huge tree, so it's a big undertaking.

It might not be much of a reward, but it's definitely an interesting family.

Everyone's been really helpful with the research, so it's been OK.

At the end of the day, partner Neil can rest a little easier

now he finally knows the case was one worth working.

It's been one of those days. We've started the case, started the research,

hoping really that we may find some value.

Um...but not really expecting to find any.

From the enquiry, we've identified probably about £20,000 worth of assets,

maybe a bit more than that,

which means we're working the case. It's above our threshold. We're working it.

Haven't identified any competition. I think a lot of the competition would be scared off

and they probably haven't identified that this estate's got some value.

So, quite a good day for us.

Not, obviously, life-changing amounts of money for any of the beneficiaries,

but by the end of it, they're going to get a family tree they didn't know about before

and they're going to get a couple of hundred pounds.

Sisters Dorothy and Beryl are getting to grips with the news

that they're in line to inherit money

from a mystery relative called Georgina Pumfrey.

I honestly thought it was a hoax.

Because it wasn't until I spoke to my brother Joey

and my sister Dorothy

that I found out they'd all had letters as well.

So then I thought, "Well, who is this Georgina Pumfrey?" Cos I don't know who she is.

Georgina was 102 years old when she died in West Sussex.

Bill McMellan became her friend in the last few years of her life.

It sounds trite, almost, but there was a twinkle in her eye.

I understand that she liked to dance.

And...

Yes, I can remember almost dancing around me

when I spoke with her.

And my biggest memory of her

is...apart from her face, which was... She was very warm.

Perhaps you could say she was eccentric.

Georgina became frail in her late nineties,

and had to move into a care home,

but up until then, she'd lived alone in a small cottage.

Georgina was a very independent person.

The house was her territory.

She liked having all her things around her.

You very much felt that you were a guest in her domain when you went to see her.

She was very attached to the house

and she... It was a terrible shame that she left the house.

When she moved into a home, she enjoyed the company,

but she always wanted to move back to her own home.

And although she'd lived alone,

Georgina was a sociable person, who was popular with her neighbours.

My impression is that the people who lived around were fond of her

and concerned for her.

But she was also a very warm person

and would have been delighted to have found that she had family.

Solving the case of Georgina Pumfrey

was a tricky job for Fraser & Fraser's senior case manager, David Milchard.

He had to go right back to Georgina's grandfather,

George Rolph, in order to start searching for heirs to her £54,000 estate.

Napoleon had died in the same year her grandfather was born,

in 1820.

To go back so far...

and to find half-blood, it makes a nice change.

But thanks to the heir hunters' persistence,

Georgina's estate will now be divided up between her 25 rightful heirs,

including sisters Dorothy and Beryl.

Keen to find out more about the distant relative they never knew existed,

they've set off on a fact-finding mission to West Sussex,

and have managed to find the small cottage Georgina called home

until she was well into her nineties.

Let's try round the back.

The house has been lying empty since Georgina went into a home,

and has fallen into disrepair.

Very sad to see the way she lived, the way it is,

because you'd have thought somebody would have helped to get it put nice for her.

But I'm sure, cos of her age, that's why it's all run down.

But it's lovely. Lovely cottage. Seems like a nice little village.

It doesn't look as big as I thought it would.

It's not as big as the man's next door.

Mmm.

-She's got an outside toilet.

-Yeah?

-Yeah!

-Oh.

The trip to Georgina's home town has been an enlightening one for the sisters.

But there's another family mystery that they're keen to solve.

While searching for Georgina's surviving family,

heir hunter David Milchard stumbled across something unusual about Eliza Rolph,

Georgina's half-aunt and Dorothy and Beryl's great-grandmother.

We've then come across the 1911 census.

And this is quite interesting, in that it appears that, um...

she was an inmate

in Parkhurst, which I assume was the prison.

Further investigations reveal that the institution referred to on the census

was not actually a prison, but a workhouse on the Isle of Wight.

This information has raised a lot of questions for Dorothy and Beryl.

Keen to know more, they're on their way to meet workhouse historian Peter Higginbotham.

Workhouses were first introduced in England and Wales in the 17th century

and were set up to house and feed people

who were too poor to support themselves.

By Victorian times, the workhouse had gained a terrible reputation

as a grim, harsh place, to be avoided by all but the truly destitute.

I had a great-great-grandfather who died in the workhouse.

and when I first learned that, I was quite taken aback to think...

"That sounds a bit grim."

What was this place? I'd heard of Oliver Twist, and, you know...

It sounded pretty horrendous.

But when you actually dig in a bit more,

it's actually interesting to discover what it was really like

and how it actually changed over the years.

It was the welfare system that we had

prior to the National Health Service.

And we often forget, really, what it was like for everyday life.

When you hear, "In the workhouse, they had this to eat

"and there were these rules and regulations,"

it's very easy to go,

"That sounds horrendous."

But you always have to compare it to what life was like outside

at the same time. And life outside, for poor people in Victorian times, was very hard.

Nevertheless, the workhouse was seen as the absolute last resort,

where only the most desperate people turned for help.

Peter has found Eliza on the 1911 census,

living in the Union Workhouse on the Isle of Wight, at the age of 61.

When you went into a workhouse, the first thing that happened to you was

your own clothing was put into store

and you were given this workhouse uniform.

You had to have a bath,

to make sure you were nice and clean.

Would it have been a choice for her to go to the workhouse, or could she have...?

Well, technically, it WAS a choice.

Um...no-one was forced into the workhouse

except from their own circumstances.

So if you were sick, you had no money...

You know, the rent's due...

then what do you do?

How and why their great-grandmother ended up on the Isle of Wight

is a mystery to Dorothy and Beryl.

Even more puzzling is the revelation

that while Eliza was living a grim existence in the workhouse,

her daughter Emily was living in London with her own husband and children.

Why didn't she go to her daughter's?

Why didn't they take her in?

The over-riding thing about the workhouse

was the shame

attached to it.

Emily may have actually wanted to block this out

from her life, you know,

and not tell the children that their grandmother was in the workhouse.

It's really difficult to imagine

how awful this was viewed,

and people just didn't talk about the workhouse to their children.

The possibility that their grandmother Emily kept her mother's plight a secret

comes as a shock to the sisters.

It'd be a shame if she died and she didn't know she had all those grandchildren.

I think myself personally that she was ashamed of her being in there.

That's what I would have thought.

And then she just thought, "I'll cut my ties."

Despite their grim reputations,

conditions inside workhouses had improved a lot by the early 1900s.

Here's a picture of a workhouse dining hall,

where Eliza would have found herself

surrounded by rows and rows of other inmates,

with their daily ration of food.

In the 1830s, 1840s, it certainly was bread

and gruel.

By 1900, 1910, things had changed.

I've actually here got quite a rare thing.

This is the original workhouse cookery book

from 1901.

You've got fish pie

and dumplings

and...cake. Plain cakes.

Not much different to what you eat now, today, really.

Once she got into the workhouse, could our great-grandmother have come out?

Once you're in there, it wasn't a prison,

and if Emily had turned up on the doorstep

saying, "Mother, I hadn't realised you were here. I've come to take you,"

that would have been absolutely fine.

Sadly, it appears Emily never did come to collect her mother

and Eliza died in the workhouse infirmary in 1917

at the age of 68.

That's sad.

I can't believe I'm getting emotional. That's stupid.

At the end of their meeting with Peter,

the sisters take a moment to reflect on how far they've come

since they first found out they were heirs to Georgina Pumfrey's estate.

-We would never have done this ourselves, never have found it in a million years.

-No.

Wouldn't know where to start.

It's all down to Georgina. It's just a shame that we didn't know about her when she was alive.

Cos she could have told us so much more.

Well, she didn't know she had any family, so...

If she'd have known she had a family,

we could have all gone to meet her as well, which would have been nice.

It's been an emotional journey for Dorothy and Beryl,

but for heir hunter David Milchard, who's managed to overcome several obstacles

to track down 25 heirs,

there's a real sense of achievement.

I'm quite proud of the guys who did the research that they...

..not so much went back so far,

but it was the fact that they were able to, through the records,

identify an illegitimate child.

Had we not done that,

then we wouldn't have a case now.

We wouldn't be making any fees of the value that we've got money

or be giving information about the family they didn't know.

And, in fact, any money that's in the estate

would be sitting in the Government Treasury now.

If you would like advice about building a family tree

or making a will, go to...

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