Clarke/Meaby Heir Hunters

Heir hunters specialise in tracking down people who are entitled to money from someone who has died.

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 any unclaimed money goes to the right people.

-So he's still alive, then?

-Yeah, Alfred, he's still alive.

Their work involves painstaking investigation.

We had a little bit of success there.

He seems to be the right person.

But it can give people a whole new perspective on their past.

-So he was quite a hero?

-Yes, very much so.

-Wow!

Most of all, though, their work is giving people news of an unexpected windfall.

Could the heir hunters be knocking at your door?

On today's programme...

The war hero uncle one woman never knew she had.

It was quite a shock to know that I had a great-uncle that I didn't know about.

A familiar face delves into his family's hidden past...

When I got the call, I was gobsmacked, really,

because I hadn't the faintest idea who it was.

Plus, could you be a missing heir?

How you could be entitled

to money from unclaimed estates held by the Treasury.

It's Monday morning in London

and Hector Birchwood from heir-hunting company Celtic Research

is about to travel 200 miles north

in a last-ditch attempt to crack a particularly tricky case.

I've been working on this case for well over a year now.

I've identified four heirs, but unfortunately,

two of them are still missing.

So we can't fully distribute the case,

and it's almost as good as if the case was unsolved.

So I think I've identified a good lead up in Manchester,

so I'm taking a train, and hopefully this £12,000 case will be solved today.

It's possible that other firms are working this job too,

so it's vital that Hector stays one step ahead.

The trip to Manchester is just the latest development in a case called Clarke,

which has been fraught with difficulty.

This case has actually been in our unsolved files for quite some time.

It's been a case that's been nagging for a while.

Frank Clarke died in 1990, at the age of 88.

He had no known relatives,

so his details were listed on the bona vacantia -

the Treasury solicitors' list of unclaimed estates,

where it's remained for 22 years.

But Frank did have plenty of friends where he lived

in the seaside village of Walmer, near Deal in Kent.

He was a familiar face at the village's Railway pub

and fellow regular John State remembers him well.

Frank came in one lunchtime, introduced himself

and he said he'd moved down from London. He brought his wife in, introduced her,

and it sort of snowballed from there.

Frank's wife, Edie, died several years before him,

but the last years of their life together were happy.

Even when he retired from his job as a shoe shop manager in London,

he took great pride in his appearance.

I never ever saw him without his suit on

and a collar and tie. Never ever.

And he always had a trilby hat

and he never took it off, not that I recall, never ever.

He'd sit there all night or all afternoon with his hat on.

Frank and Edie had become popular members of the pub's social club.

They came in, sat at their table, got their Christmas crackers and hats and things like that,

and they really enjoyed themselves.

I can prove it in the photograph there - he actually took his trilby hat off and put a paper hat on!

When Frank's wife died,

he was deeply affected by the loss.

Frank was a very much-liked person, and his wife, Edie.

When they went, it left a hole in the pub circuit,

and it can never be replaced.

And he was a gentleman.

And he was a very nice man.

Frank's estate was advertised with a value of £12,000.

Not a fortune,

but an amount that could make a huge difference to any family he had,

if they could be found.

But heir hunter Hector soon discovered just how hard it was to find any living relatives.

A lot of people probably looked at this case when it came out.

Perhaps it may even be on the unsolved list of other companies.

But the point is that it's very difficult even to get a starting point in this case.

One of the main reasons is because the deceased was not born under the name in which he died.

Frank had no children,

so Hector needed to look to the wider family

to try to find living descendants.

But to unlock this family tree,

he first had to find out who Frank's parents were.

We found who we believe was the deceased

and whom we believed was the father of the deceased,

living with the mother of the deceased.

It seemed to fit the marriage we had found for the deceased,

which was the only other document we had, other than his death.

But the 1911 census, which was released in 2009,

gave Hector a new avenue to try,

and he soon thought he'd found Frank and his parents

living at an address in London.

But when he looked for birth records to back up his findings,

he drew a blank.

With no record of Frank Cyril Clarke's birth,

there was no way of solving the case,

but Hector wasn't about to give up.

So he decided to take a bit of a punt.

I thought about perhaps just looking for anybody

by the name of Frank Cyril, Cyril Frank...

So by transposing the names, perhaps I might be able to find someone.

The only one that really seemed to fit was a Cyril Frank Jacobs.

Hector chose Cyril Frank Jacobs,

because he was born in the right area on the right date.

And the gamble paid off.

He found out that Frank's parents were Henry Jacobs and Clara Clark

and that they'd had three older children -

Doris, Bertram and Henry.

At some point, the entire family, apart from Bertram,

had changed its name to a slight variation of Clara's maiden name.

And then once I started looking into the other siblings of the deceased,

I started to see that they were all born as Jacobs

and they matched the Clarke family that we found in the 1911 census.

So that me it to me very, very clear that there had been some change of name.

I don't know why

they picked the deceased mother's maiden name

and then added an E to it.

Um...

I can only speculate.

Whatever the reason for the name change,

Hector could now focus on finding living descendants.

Frank's siblings had all died before him

and neither Bertram nor Henry had had children.

But his sister Doris married a man called Edward Roberts

and had four children.

These were Frank's nieces and nephews.

Hector discovered they too had all passed away.

One of them, Victor, died just after the end of World War II.

Victor had been an RAF flight engineer,

based at Elvington in Yorkshire.

As part of 77 Squadron,

he took part in hundreds of death-defying bombing raids

over Germany and occupied Europe.

It was an exceptionally important job.

Halifax bombers had one pilot

and one flight engineer.

The flight engineer generally assisted the pilot

throughout the mission.

He was responsible for ensuring that the aircraft flew.

The mission itself was completely hazardous

and on their route out,

they were likely to come into contact with German night fighters.

Many bomber crews simply disappeared

without even knowing they'd been hit.

The Germans could come underneath on the dark side and shoot them out of the skies.

In 1944,

Victor's plane was hit by German fighters

as it headed home over France.

Victor tried in vain to save it,

but was forced to parachute out at the last minute.

For attempting to keep the aircraft flying

while the rest of his crew got out, for his heroism,

he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal.

77 Squadron was one of the most foremost squadrons

of RAF Bomber Command.

It lost a huge amount of people - 450 air crew

just in 18 months here at Elvington alone.

Someone once said that Bomber Command didn't win the war.

However, without Bomber Command, the war wouldn't have been won.

Death records seem to show that although Victor survived right until the end of the war,

he did die at the age of 20,

without marrying or having children.

This meant that the search for heirs

would have to move to his brothers and sisters -

Frank, Beatrice and Doris.

Hector could find neither marriage nor children for Beatrice and Doris,

but when it came to Frank, Hector finally had some success.

We managed to find a marriage for Frank.

He married during the war.

He was presumably stationed up in Birmingham.

And he married Doris Long,

and from that, we needed to follow it down

and locate his children.

And sure enough, he had a daughter who was alive

and in line to inherit.

22 years after Frank Clarke's death,

Hector had finally found an heir to his £12,000 estate.

For Sue, Frank's great-niece,

the news came as a complete surprise.

I have never heard Frank Clarke's name mentioned

through all the time that I spoke to my parents

and my cousins, uncles, aunts...

Nobody ever mentioned him.

So...it was a real shock to know that I did have a great-uncle

that I didn't know about.

I remember my father's father...in fact, my grandfather,

not terribly well, because in fact he died when I was quite young.

And my father didn't really talk an awful lot about his family.

Hector had made a crucial breakthrough,

but this case was far from solved.

It seemed likely that either Doris or Beatrice Roberts

would have married and had children,

yet he could find no record of them.

But he was about to get some vital information.

Susan gave me the clue that I should be looking for the family under the name of Clare.

Which is what she believed they changed their name to.

Incredibly, just like Frank Clarke,

some of Sue's father's family had also changed their names,

this time to Clare.

I did know my granddad,

although he died when I was a teenager.

I used to write to him after Christmas or after a birthday

as being "E Clare" - Mr Clare.

And yet, clearly, his surname was Roberts.

So I'm not quite sure why.

All a mystery, I'm afraid.

Several months after Hector first made contact with Sue,

the case of Frank Clarke is still not fully solved.

Clare is a fairly common surname,

and Hector is struggling to find a living heir on this side.

22 years after he died,

the £12,000 estate is still waiting to be claimed.

Not picking up.

Until Hector can speak to all the heirs on the estate,

he cannot close the case

which means it's still out there for rival firms to solve.

Finding beneficiaries is where the search ends for the heir hunters.

But for the heirs themselves, the unexpected discovery of a long-lost relative

can be the beginning of a journey through their family history.

When I got the call, I was gobsmacked, really.

In 1997, BBC weatherman Michael Fish

got the surprise news that he was heir to an unclaimed estate.

I hadn't the faintest idea who it was, who she was,

or anything at all.

Michael was an heir to the estate of a lady called Grace Meaby,

who died in 1993 in Reading.

Who this Grace Meaby is or was,

I really haven't the faintest idea.

She'd never been mentioned by anybody that I know of,

so she just appeared from nowhere.

Grace was related to Michael through his mother,

but he has never known very much about this side of his family.

So now, 15 years after he first learned he was an heir,

Michael has decided to try and find out more about his family

and the woman who left him a surprise inheritance.

I was very intrigued as to who she is

and who she was, and her family too, come to that.

And you kept wanting to do these things,

but you always leave it too late, when all your relatives have died.

Grace Meaby was 74 years old when she died,

in the very same house she'd been born in.

No pictures of Grace survive,

but she's fondly remembered

by her life-long friend and neighbour, Ernest Hall.

She was quite tall.

She had nice blonde hair.

And, er...

When you saw her, she always had a smile on her face.

Growing up, Grace's parents had been very protective of their only daughter.

Grace's father wouldn't let her mix with the kids in the street.

We used to wave to her every time we... We'd usually see her up in the bedroom window...

..watching the children play, sort of envious that she couldn't get out.

But at the age of 27,

Grace found love and married a baker called Colin Meaby.

The couple were together for 44 years, until Colin died,

leaving Grace a widow for the last three years of her life.

When her husband died, she sort of...

locked herself away up in the front bedroom.

I think she was really heartbroken, really.

Because it was a...a good match.

Grace didn't make a will,

so when she died in 1993,

her estate was advertised as unclaimed.

Heir-hunting firm Fraser & Fraser immediately began investigating

and case manager David Milchard was put in charge of the research.

This was a substantial value estate

and we believe that Grace had owned some property.

It was valued at approximately £360,000.

The race was on to find heirs to this high-value estate.

But in 1993, before heir hunters could access records online,

the research process was much slower.

You had to physically pull books out, whereas today, you can sit at the screen on the computer.

If it took you 20 minutes to do 20 years - a minute a year -

you could do that same search today on computer in less than 30 seconds.

Despite this, David and his team made quick progress.

Having established that Grace had no children of her own,

the next step was to see if she had any siblings.

There was one, an Oliver, but he died as a young child.

Um...both Grace's parents had died,

so we were then looking for her uncles and aunts.

And their search hit problems

when they tried to trace relatives of Grace's father, William Amos.

We had several possibilities of a William Amos

being born circa 1871.

We applied for each certificate,

but they all came back with the wrong details,

so we couldn't find his birth in England.

But the team weren't about to give up,

and David ordered a search of the Army Returns,

a record of births, marriages and deaths of British Army personnel overseas.

We identified a birth of a William Amos and we applied for it,

and it was in the Army Returns.

It was an Army birth certificate,

and it showed he was born in 1871 in India.

Next, using birth, marriage and death records,

David could establish that William had three siblings -

Alice, who died as a child,

Eliza, who married and had children,

and Charles, who at the age of 47

became one of the 900,000 British soldiers

who died during the First World War.

There's a big public perception of the First World War as fought almost entirely by youngsters,

which actually bears no relation to the truth whatsoever.

When the war broke out, pre-war regular soldiers, numbers were made up by the reservists,

who were all men who'd left in the previous nine years or so.

So the average age in 1914 was actually quite high.

And when Lord Kitchener appealed for volunteers in 1914,

it wasn't just young men who stepped up.

A lot of old soldiers turned up.

A lot of men who'd seen military service.

And so right the way through the war, you get a real mix

of young lads, middle-aged men and quite old fellows.

Of course, there were men just like Charles Amos Junior

who, at nearly 50, found themselves serving in France.

Charles died in 1915.

And as the heir hunters pieced together records,

they discovered he'd left behind a family of his own.

The only line we could follow down was the descendants of the deceased's uncle, Charles Amos.

He married a lady called Alice Davies.

Now, they had several children.

One of them was a Dora.

Now, she married a gentleman called Mr Fish

and they had one child,

Michael Fish.

As Charles Amos's grandson,

Michael was Grace Meaby's first cousin once removed

and one of the 21 heirs to her £360,000 estate.

But for Michael, the promise of an inheritance

was far outshone by the promise of learning more about his family.

I was very short of relatives. I didn't know any of the Amos side at all.

My mother's father was killed in the war.

And her mother died very early,

so I really didn't know many of the family at all.

When it came to his father's family,

Michael had already done extensive research.

I started doing this about 30-odd years ago.

When I was working in London Weather Centre,

the Public Record Office,

with all the births, deaths, marriage certificates, was right by my office.

And so it was quite easy to pop in in my lunch hour and do a bit of research.

Yet his mother's side of the family, the Amoses,

have remained a mystery.

Until now.

Today, Michael has come to central London

to meet heir hunter David Milchard

to try to find out more.

-Hello.

-Hello, Michael. I'm David Milchard.

-Lovely to meet you.

-I gather you've got some information for me?

-Hopefully, yes.

-Great!

-Come this way and have a look.

-Thanks.

Michael is especially keen to find out more about his grandfather, Charles Amos.

But first he wants to see how Grace fits into the family tree.

-If we go back to Grace...

-Yes.

Now, her father, William Amos,

-was a brother of your grandfather...

-Mm-hm.

-..Charles.

Now, William, Grace's father,

was married to an Annie Woods,

formerly Hallett.

-His first marriage.

-Right.

Now, Grace's mother was Emily Ann Hallett.

-Oh.

-Now, with the surname...

-Yeah.

There's definitely a family connection.

-Married sisters or something?

-Not quite.

Although William was married to Annie Hallett,

he went on to have two children with Emily Hallett,

Annie's niece.

-There was a sort of menage a trois!

-Yes.

-Rather fun.

-Certainly was.

Now, you'll see from the certificate of the birth of Grace,

born in 1919,

shows father William, mother Emily Ann Hallett...

"Father is not free to marry."

-You'll find that both William...

-Yeah.

-..and Emily...

-..are the informants on the birth certificate.

-Right.

That means that the child was born out of wedlock,

-but both parents recognised their natural child.

-OK.

Yet William and Annie remained married and lived together

with Emily and the young Grace and Oliver

in the family home in Reading.

How that arrangement worked,

or whether Annie was happy for William to have children in that manner

-because she couldn't give him children...

-Yeah.

Did she condone the situation in any way? No idea.

-To take your wife's niece into your home...

-Mmm.

-Interesting.

-..and then to be the father of two children,

all in the presence of your wife...

Yeah! Dirty devil!

Michael has already solved some of the mysteries of the Amos family,

but as he continues his journey into his family's past,

there are plenty more revelations to come.

It says "He has been six times entered into the Regimental Defaulters' Book."

What does that mean?

He's been a naughty boy!

Oh!

Heir hunters use their specialist skills to track down

thousands of beneficiaries every year.

But not every case can be cracked.

There are thousands of estates on the unclaimed list

that have eluded the heir hunters and remained unsolved.

The unclaimed list

is a list that the bona vacantia division publishes on its website.

It's about 12,000 names long

at the moment, and it's all the cases that we've never managed to solve.

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, this case...

Research has shown that Mary was married to a Patrick O'Sullivan

and that her maiden name was Flannagan.

But although the heir hunters think Mary may have been born in Ireland,

they can find no record of her birth.

Did you know Mary?

Could you be one of her long-lost relatives?

Next...

He died aged 71.

Colin was originally from Great Yarmouth in Norfolk

and worked as a Royal Naval cook.

But so far, the heir hunters have struggled

to find out any more information about him or his family.

Could you be related to Colin?

Could you be in line to inherit a share of his estate?

Both Colin and Mary's estates remain unclaimed

and if no-one comes forward,

their money will go to the Government.

If a person thinks

that they're entitled to share in one of the estates

that we've advertised,

they should initially contact us

with a simple family tree

showing how they are related to the deceased person.

Do you have any clues that could help solves the cases

of Colin Stuart Macdonald and Mary Ellen O'Sullivan?

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

Hector Birchwood of heir hunters Celtic Research

is close to a breakthrough in the case of Frank Clarke,

a widower whose £12,000 estate has sat unclaimed for 22 years.

I've been working on this case for well over a year now.

I've identified four heirs, but unfortunately,

two of them are still missing.

So we can't fully distribute the case,

and it's almost as good as if the case was unsolved.

Frank Clarke died in 1990

in the village of Walmer, near Deal in Kent.

Frank and his wife Edie had been popular members of this seaside community.

He loved the fresh air.

I know he'd go for little walks around,

and I think he walked down to the sea front,

have a walk along the promenade.

Frank never talked about his personal life,

but it was clear to John that he and Edie were very happy together.

He liked a joke,

and when he was with Edie,

it was quite funny, really,

because they used to bounce off each other a little bit.

From the time I met Frank to the time we didn't see much of him any more,

I never saw him miserable. Never ever, either of them.

Hector has already found one heir to the estate -

Frank's great-niece, Sue.

But large gaps in the family meant she'd never even heard of her great-uncle.

Initially, I was quite shocked that I'd had family that I didn't know about.

And...it really made me regret that I'd never sat down and spoken to my father

to find out the history.

For Hector, the 22-year-old case is still hanging in the balance.

Name changes in the family have made it difficult to trace relatives.

Frank's nieces, Beatrice and Doris, were born with the name Roberts

but it was only when Hector spoke to Sue

that he learned that they, along with most of their family,

had changed their names to Clare.

The fact that they're changing their name makes it extremely difficult for us,

or anyone, to be able to find them.

Whether they do it by deed poll or by usage.

Using the correct name of Clare, Hector has established

that Beatrice had twin sons,

Roger and Terence.

Roger is still alive,

but Terence died in 1991,

meaning his share of the estate must go to his two children.

Yet again, Hector is running into problems.

Hi. This is a message for Damien Davenport.

This is Hector Birchwood.

Hector has found a number for Terence's son Damien,

but can't get hold of him.

We've been trying to get hold of him for some time.

I haven't been able to have any success in any letters I've written to him.

Um...I've also not had any success

whilst I've called him at the restaurant he owns.

Finally, though, he gets the call he's been waiting for.

Hello, Hector Birchwood speaking. Thanks for returning my call.

Well, it concerns the estate of a Frank Cyril Clarke...

Hector believes this Damien is Frank Clarke's great-great-nephew

and an heir to his estate.

We had a little bit of success there,

so he seems to be the right person.

I initially feared he wasn't the right person

because I had an address for him.

He's still listed on the electoral records, even up to this year.

Um, and it appears that he hasn't been living there for some time.

And for some reason, he didn't get the voicemail that I left him at his place of work.

Hector wants to meet Damien to confirm the research,

so he's arranged to go and see him in Manchester.

As Hector tries to bring the investigation to a close,

another journey is just beginning.

Since finding out she's an heir to Frank Clarke's estate,

Sue has been curious to find out more about her father's family.

In particular, she's interested in her Uncle Victor,

who served in the RAF in the Second World War

and became something of a family legend.

I knew my father had a brother Victor

and I knew that he'd been in the RAF

during the war.

My father used to talk to me about him and say what a hero he was and what a wonderful person he was.

It would be lovely to know a little bit more about him.

Victor was stationed at Elvington air base in Yorkshire,

which is now the site of the York Air Museum.

Sue has travelled there to meet resident historian Ian Reed.

This is a Handley Page Halifax

and it's probably the only complete example in the world.

This is exactly the type of aircraft that

Flight Sergeant Victor Clare would have flown in.

Gosh!

It's a lot bigger than I'd imagined.

His squadron, 77 Squadron Royal Air Force, was based here.

During that time, they lost over 450 men.

And they undertook nearly 2,000 operational missions into Germany.

They flew at night, usually.

With no radar, no lights,

-no interconnecting radio...

-They must have been really brave people.

It was on the 22nd of April 1944,

when he was just 19 years old,

that Victor really showed his mettle.

When his plane caught fire after a terrifying hit by German night fighters,

Victor was forced to parachute down into Nazi-occupied France.

He was picked up by the French Resistance

and he went through one of the official escape line routes into Switzerland.

The secreted him in different houses

and dressed him up in different clothes...

You hear about things like this on the television, and you don't realise they were part of your family.

Heir hunter Hector's search for relatives is hopefully coming to an end.

He has arrived in Manchester

to meet who he thinks is the last of Frank Clarke's four heirs,

and he's hoping he can finally put this case to rest after 22 years.

What I want to be able to establish first is to verify that I've got the right person.

Once I've done that,

then my job really is to be able to get a contract,

get paid for my work...

and give them a copy of the family tree.

He's arranged to meet Damien at the restaurant where he works.

-Hi, Mr Davenport.

-Are you all right?

-Hector.

-How's it going?

-Pleasure to meet you.

-Shall we take a seat?

-Yes.

-So...it's a bit of a...well, nice little surprise, I suppose.

-It is.

-It was difficult to find you, actually.

-Yes.

-I guess we could start with how much you know about your family.

-OK.

My dad's, my grandmother's, side of the family is quite small,

so, yes, it's a surprise. I don't quite know who it is, actually.

Well, the deceased really would be your great-grand-uncle.

Now, I got to know about your branch of the family

by speaking to Susan, who was the first person I traced.

Her father had a sister called Beatrice, who changed her name.

Hector is able to confirm that Damien and his sister

are indeed relatives of Frank Clarke.

But then Damien reveals some surprising new information.

Alf, my granddad, he's still alive now. He lives down towards Gatwick Airport.

-So he's still alive, then?

-Yeah, Alf, Alfred, he is still alive.

Hector's research had indicated that Beatrice's husband, Alfred,

had already died.

But it turns out the information he was given was incorrect.

Alfred is in fact alive

and living in a home,

which means he is the heir instead of Damien, Damien's sister

and their uncle, Roger.

Although it's not what Hector was expecting,

it's still good news for the case.

Well, we really had a very good meeting.

Damien gave me some more information about his family,

so I have to clean up the family tree.

And we have to do a little bit of admin work on the basis of that.

But otherwise, it was a successful conclusion, and we definitely have the right family.

Hector must now travel back to London,

to tie up the loose ends.

With all the heirs now accounted for,

Frank's £12,000 estate will be divided between just two people,

including great-niece Sue.

She's already exploring her family legacy by discovering more about her father's relatives.

The most mysterious member of the family

is her Uncle Victor.

She believes that after surviving the Second World War,

he died in a plane crash in North Yorkshire.

But the details of how and why have never been known.

Sue has come to meet local historian David Beevers

at the crash site.

Where we are now is just on the fringes of Clifton aerodrome.

It was a non-operational aerodrome during the Second World War.

-And we were always told that a German plane had crashed into a church.

-Yes.

I'd heard that.

A few years ago, I found out it wasn't a German plane.

It was a British Halifax bomber.

At the end of the war, the Government decided to scrap all its Halifax bombers.

Victor's job was to fly the planes into air bases like Clifton,

where they'd be dismantled.

On this particular day, Victor was the co-pilot in this plane,

and there was a small obstruction on the aerodrome runway,

so the plane got sent round again.

Only the engines had feathered out

and it couldn't regain altitude.

And so it clipped the top of St George's church

and the pilot managed to land it on some spare land.

Unfortunately, that's where Victor died, and the pilot as well.

That's so sad.

I feel really quite moved by that.

-I think...

-It's very sad, actually.

-After he'd been so brave and so skilful.

-Yeah.

That something like that happened.

For Sue, it's been an emotional but worthwhile trip.

It's been...

a bit of a journey today.

I've learned a lot.

And I just feel so privileged

to have had an uncle that was so brave.

And I'm just sad that I never ever got to meet him.

Back in London, Hector is satisfied that 22 years after it was first advertised,

the case of Frank Clarke is now complete.

It's been a challenging search,

but he's pleased with the outcome.

It was a difficult journey for everyone,

including me.

And, yeah, I'm very happy that it's been a successful conclusion.

In London, BBC weatherman Michael Fish is on a quest

to uncover his long-hidden family history.

Michael was contacted by heir hunters Frasier & Fraser back in the 1990s,

after they discovered he was in line to inherit money from a distant relative

called Grace Meaby.

I was very surprised when I got the call, because I'd never ever heard of this person.

And to this day I'm not really sure how she enters into things,

so it was just a bolt out the blue, really.

Grace Meaby was 74 when she passed away in Reading.

She'd lived her whole life in the same house,

and neighbour Ernest Hall has fond memories of her.

She was a very nice girl, but she was very quiet,

very reserved.

I knew her right up until she died.

Her husband died first, then she died.

Sadly, no photos of Grace survive,

but Ernest remembers her clearly.

I remember she was a nice-looking girl. Blonde hair.

We never went out together much.

I would have liked to have done, and I think she would as well. She was a really nice girl.

If she was available, I would very happily married her!

Michael has been meeting with case manager David Milchard

in the hope of gleaning information about his mother's side of the family.

One of the things he's most keen to learn about

is his mother's parents,

about whom he knows very little.

-Your grandfather, Charles Amos, we know he was born in India.

-Yes.

His father being in the Army at the time.

He married and got posted to India.

His wife goes with him, and of course, while he's in India,

he has several of his children.

India was under British rule from 1858 until 1947.

During that time,

thousands of British Army troops, including Michael's great-grandfather Charles Amos

were stationed there.

Their job, to protect trade routes

and the interests of the Crown.

Every regiment took its turn in India over the years.

In those days, a regiment would go out to India for anything up to ten years.

And during that time, new drafts would come and go.

Men would do their time

and once their time ran out

there was the trooping season at certain times of year,

when soldiers would come home who'd finished their time and new ones would come out to replace them.

It was a lot easier soldiering in India,

actually doing the soldiering, than it probably was at home at the time.

But of course, you had to be able to withstand the extremes of temperature and illness.

It was in this climate that Charles Amos and his wife Eliza

had their three children -

Eliza, Charles and William.

Not every soldier was allowed to bring his family to India with him,

but Charles was a corporal, and so able to enjoy this privilege.

It was quite common for sergeants and corporals to be allowed to take their families with them.

The regiment had an allocation of family spaces for wives and children.

They were taken out there as part of the regiment.

At the end of his meeting with heir hunter David,

Michael takes a moment to reflect on what he's learned.

I'm pleasantly surprised, actually. It was nice.

I've learned lots of things that I hadn't realised.

And there's a lot of things I'd like to follow up.

I'd like to know a bit about life in India

and how somebody as lowly as a corporal was able to take his wife out and raise a family.

I'm sure you wouldn't be able to do that these days.

The next stage of his journey is a meeting with military historian Taff Gillingham,

who Michael hopes will reveal even more details

about his ancestors' fascinating life in India.

-Hello, you must be Taff.

-I am.

-Michael Fish.

Michael has learned that his great-grandfather, Charles,

served in the Army in the second half of the 19th century.

During his career, he rose to the rank of Colour Sergeant,

but by the time he left the Army in 1878,

he'd somehow got demoted to Private.

He is a very interesting character.

His conduct sheet...it says, "He's been six times entered into the Regimental Defaulters' Book."

What does that mean?

He's been a naughty boy!

-Oh!

-So he's been in the Defaulters' Book six times.

-Absent without leave?

Or drunkenness, or suchlike.

-Oh, that runs in the family.

-And it says, "Two of which entries are convictions by courts martial",

so he's actually got himself into serious trouble on two occasions.

Charles earned four good conduct badges while he was in the Army

and managed to keep hold of them despite his demotion.

The thing that intrigued me was why they had given him these good conduct badges back.

Because it's not something that would be commonly done. It comes down to this piece of paper here.

This certificate, which is produced by the regiment themselves - 85th The King's Light Infantry -

and it actually says "Sgt Charles Amos

"was winner of the Army and Navy Prize at Crystal Palace AD 1866".

He also performed before Her Majesty, and he's added "at Aldershot"

and then there's a comma there, "And Prince Arthur at Woolwich, 1866".

But the significance of this, when we look into it,

is that Queen Victoria goes to Woolwich and visits the new gym that's been built there

and has a gymnastic display put on especially for her.

-And that is exactly what this is referring to.

-OK.

When Charles was posted to India in 1868,

his wife Eliza was pregnant with Michael's grandfather.

She boarded the troop ship to India with him,

knowing that she'd have to give birth at sea.

I just can't imagine what that would be like.

Was it in a hammock or something?

I mean, what sort of conditions were the wives under on a troop ship?

-It can't have been comfortable.

-No, not at all.

Obviously, the troop ship was designed entirely for shipping large bodies of soldiers -

very rough, very tough men -

from one part of the world to the other.

There would have been a surgeon on the ship,

and I suspect the surgeon probably had Mrs Amos for the birth,

but it really would have been tough.

But there was no choice. This is when the battalion are going,

and you had to fit in the slot,

so the fact that you were pregnant and about to give birth

wouldn't have concerned the Army one bit.

Before Michael goes,

Taff has some news about his grandfather's death in World War I.

The Commonwealth War Graves Record tells us

that he dies on Christmas Eve 1915.

-Yes, that's a terrible time, isn't it?

-It is.

And that he was serving with 90 Motor Transport Company Army Service Corps at the time.

But very little else.

Now, his medal index card... It tells us what his service number is,

which is M1/7805. Now, the "1" after the M

means that he was a new Army man,

so, basically, one of the Kitchener volunteers

who've joined since the war started.

Very often, that would say "died of wounds",

or it would say "killed in action", or "killed",

so "died" suggests that he might have died of illness,

or it might have been an accident.

-At least he wasn't shot for cowardice or something.

-Oh, no! Not at all.

And the letter here that then came to the family, to his wife...

Army Service Corps Records Office at Woolwich.

"Madam, it is my painful duty to have to inform you that your husband,

"late No M1/07803, Corporal C Amos, Army Service Corps

"has been buried in the hospital ground, Mont des Cats".

Interesting. Amazing.

And all those records have survived all this time.

It's the end of Michael's journey

to unlock the mysteries of his family's past.

It's answered some questions.

It'll never answer all the questions.

I don't think any family could ever answer all the questions going back over the centuries.

But I've now got a lot more information,

and I can go along roads I could never have gone along before.

If you would like advice about building a family tree

or making a will, go to...

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