Fraser/Chainey Heir Hunters

Heir hunters specialise in tracking down people who are entitled to money

left by relatives who have passed away without making a will.

Often the family members they find

have no idea they're in line to inherit.

I was absolutely gobsmacked!

Their work involves expert research.

These don't lie. Computers miss things off, annotate it differently.

This is the Bible.

And can bring to life fascinating family histories.

The word "Vic Robinson" was like

someone talking about David Beckham in footballing terms.

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

Could the heir hunters be knocking at your door?

Coming up...

The remarkable story of how one man's champion pigeons

played a vital role in Britain's war effort.

Many lives were saved through racing pigeons coming back

through bullet wounds, snow, fog, to bring vital messages back.

And one heir gets a much longed-for chance to explore more about his past.

If your parents die when you're young, you don't really...

appreciate how important it is just to ask them about their lives.

It's Thursday morning in the London office of heir-hunting firm Fraser & Fraser,

and the team are busy working on various cases

advertised on the Treasury's bona vacantia list of unclaimed estates.

One case in particular has caught the eye of boss Neil.

We're going to be looking at the case of Ian Urquhart Fraser.

Died in 2011.

Um...owns a property in the Barbican, a flat in the Barbican.

So value-wise, we're talking about an estate of probably £250,000.

Or more.

The Barbican estate is in a prime location in the City of London,

where homes command high prices.

And with such a potentially valuable case,

the team will be giving it everything they've got to find heirs and get their commission.

Ian Urquhart Fraser died in London on the 1st of September 2011.

He was 85 years old.

John Whitehead was a friend and neighbour.

I think when Ian moved into the Barbican, it suited him down to the ground.

I think it provided him with a nice little bolt-hole.

It's surprisingly quiet and private around here.

He lived in a simple studio flat.

And he largely kept himself to himself.

When you got to know him, it was really worthwhile.

It took a long time to get to know Ian. He was a very private man.

But he was great fun.

Until the last, Ian was also a modest man.

The funeral was arranged by Bart's Hospital.

Myself and a small group of friends went along.

It was a very simple service,

but the coffin did arrive in a Rolls-Royce hearse,

which would have amused him.

I don't know if he often travelled in Rolls Royces!

Ian was a man of simple tastes.

Back in the office, it's early days in the search for Ian's heirs.

The middle name is quite unusual.

It is a Scottish name.

Fraser is a Scottish name as well,

and Ian is also Scottish.

So my feeling on this... We're going back to Scotland.

As this case has been published on the Treasury solicitors' list,

there's a strong chance that a rival firm will also be trying to crack it.

So the team need to work fast to reach heirs before the competition.

They begin by looking for any records that could relate to Ian.

Basically, between 1901 and 1911,

I've done marriages and deaths and found nothing.

And already, the pressure is mounting.

It's normally a bad day when we're using the microfiches this much,

to be perfectly honest.

But it's not long before Neil and the team make a significant breakthrough.

They've found an online obituary for Ian, and it's got them off to a flying start.

This gives us quite a lot of information. It's written by...

the RCS, which is the Royal College of Surgeons.

It says here that Ian was a lecturer from London,

and he was born in Bangkok in 1926.

This is really vital for us. It tells us that Ian's been born in Bangkok.

No matter where we look in our records here, we shouldn't really find a birth for him.

And that's not all.

And at the bottom it says, "Ian was an intensely private person who sadly did not have any immediate family."

But the heir hunters can't just take the obituary's word for it.

We've also had a little look round, and we can't find a marriage for him,

we can't find anything else for him.

As Ian died a bachelor,

the team have also looked for any brothers or sisters of his.

They've traced his parents,

Elizabeth Maria Reilly and John Urquhart Fraser.

Using their names, a search of birth records has revealed that Ian was an only child.

So they're now set on finding aunts, uncles and cousins

who, if they're still alive, would be heirs to Ian's estate.

We've got a Thomas Reilly. Elizabeth...

And already they've made some great headway.

We've been able to establish that, er...

the deceased's father's family, which originates from Scotland,

is dead.

The deceased's father had one sibling who died in infancy.

There's no paternal heirs.

It seems the team's only hope of finding any heirs now

lies on Ian's mother's side of the family.

On the Reilly family, the maternal family,

we've got the top line birth,

so we now know that we are definitely looking at the right family.

The team discover that Ian's mother, Elizabeth Maria Reilly

was one of six children.

Research has shown that her brothers, Richard and Thomas,

died before they had any children.

So there are three potential lines that the team are chasing.

One is immediately proving tricky.

Florence is the oldest child.

She's the only one without a middle name

and her surname of Reilly is particularly hard to find.

So experienced manager Dom settles down at the microfilm

and begins to look into what happened to Florence

and find out if she had any descendants.

We found the family on the 1891 census,

when Florence, the missing aunt of the deceased,

would have been five or six years old.

And she's not on it.

And what that indicates is that she very likely could have passed away

as a child.

But they've found nothing to prove this theory so far.

Unfortunately, on the computers, there's no deaths that match up,

which is the way these things always go.

So we're now just looking manually on the tapes

to see if we can find the death record for her.

I'd be very surprised if she isn't dead,

but...

we shall see.

For Dom, who's used to the instant results of online record-searching,

it's proving a laborious process.

You suddenly remember how much you don't miss these machines.

It's just so slow.

As Dom searches through the records,

things aren't looking good.

We can't find anything on her at all. I have a horrible feeling

that she's going to be one of those people that just completely falls off the records.

It looks like it's back to the drawing board.

We've now done a search manually of the tapes

to see if we can find her death in that five- or six-year period

and there doesn't appear to be one. Um...

So that could be that theory out of the window.

Perhaps she was staying with her grandparents, or something like that, when the census was taken.

As it seems she survived into adult life,

Dom and the team will now have to search for her marriage

and any children she might have.

Meanwhile, it looks like Dave has made a breakthrough on a different stem.

He's discovered that another of Ian's aunts,

Mary Platt Reilly, married and had two children.

If they're still alive,

these cousins of Ian's would be heirs to his estate.

Dave thinks he knows what's happened to one of them.

We have a potential beneficiary, whose birth, when registered,

was just as "male".

Normally, that's an indication of a child that unfortunately, is going to die in infancy.

You don't name the child, because it dies at birth.

But the team have already looked for a death record online,

and found none.

Dave, however, isn't giving up that easily.

It's really rare

to register a birth of your child as "male" or "female"

and that child survives infancy

and then goes on to be given a name later on.

It happens, but it's very rare.

I'm going to check the deaths, because I've got a sneaking feeling

that it's there.

Finally, he finds the answer.

He dies in infancy. It's there.

And THAT is the argument against computers.

It's there!

Spot-on, but the computer never found it.

It's a clear victory for Dave and the old school.

All the youngsters like to moan about us old ones talking about going back to using these,

but these are the records.

These don't lie.

Computers miss things off,

annotate it differently.

This is the Bible.

This is the way. Proper research.

Having established that this child died in infancy,

Dave now turns his attention to Ian's other cousin,

John Carr Forsyth.

Once his death record reveals that John died in 1981,

Dave manages to trace his two sons, who are next in line to inherit.

These are the first heirs they've found on this very valuable case.

And with the threat of competition from rival firms,

they need to move fast.

But try as he might, Dave can't get hold of one of the heirs, Simon Forsyth, on the phone.

So Dave desperately tries to get hold of senior travelling researcher Ewart Lindsay

in the hope that he can pay a visit to him in person.

Ewart, Dave Slee. Urgent, urgent, urgent.

Need you to go down and see a beneficiary on the Fraser estate, near Bath.

Can you give me a call as soon as you get this message? Thank you very much.

Bye-bye.

Whilst Dave waits anxiously for his calls to be returned,

Alan gives him an update on the rest of the family.

We have had a bit of luck with Florence.

In 1911, she was a servant in Gosforth.

Gosforth is just a bit further north than Newcastle.

We've got a marriage in 1917.

She dies in 1920. No issue.

All in the right area. She's the right age.

Finally, it seems they've got to the bottom of what happened to Ian's paternal aunt, Florence.

Florence, it appears, marries a William Ford

and dies young. Some of this family seem to die fairly young.

She dies childless, so there's no descendants on that line.

It's a big step forward for the company

and they have only one more stem left to trace.

But as the team get ever closer to signing up the heirs...

Father and mother returned to England and both passed away in Scarborough, is that correct?

..Ewart begins to wonder if he's heading down the wrong path.

It's just... It's just a very, very...

tiny track.

HE TOOTS HORN

In the course of their research, heir hunters can often come across fascinating family histories.

But when Kevin Edmondson, senior case manager at heir-hunting firm Hoopers, and his team

took on the case of Jean Chainey,

they had no idea they were about to delve into her father's legendary career.

Several of the paternal heirs

mentioned to us that he was well-known to them

as Vic Robinson, the champion pigeon-fancier.

Jean Irene Chainey

died in Shropshire on the 23rd of December 2011, aged 83.

Neighbours Bernard and Yvonne Mitchell knew her for over 20 years.

She was an outdoor type in her younger years.

She probably was a tomboy.

And she carried on into her later life. She liked her sport.

She was...

always on about Southampton Football Club. She followed the football

and cricket.

Sport in general.

Jean lived with her husband, Peter, and it seemed they had a very close relationship.

Unless they were at work,

they always used to go off together, shopping, the lot.

Not one stop at home and the other one went.

They always went off together, didn't they?

Take the dogs in the back and all, like.

I think they always had dogs.

They were like their children, really. They never had a family.

Peter's death in 2009 had a significant impact on Jean.

When Peter died,

I think she'd lost her companion,

and she sort of just shut herself away.

She wouldn't answer the door.

She would talk, but she wouldn't let you in, if you know what I mean.

Um...

She just wanted to be on her own.

But Yvonne and Bernard will always remember Jean as a very intelligent lady.

From the way she came across, she must have had a good grounding as regards education.

Because she was a very knowledgeable lady.

Up until, I would say, later in life,

she still had all her faculties. She was very sharp.

Though they knew little about Jean's background,

one thing did stand out.

She was her daddy's girl.

She didn't really say a lot about her mum, I must admit.

She was always Daddy's girl.

Her father, I would think, was quite a prominent person

where she was brought up.

She did say to us that her father was one of the first people to have a motor car.

As Jean died without making a will,

her estate appeared on the Treasury solicitors' list,

where Kevin and the team spotted it and started their investigation.

One of the first things we look for is to see whether

the person who has died did own a property.

Using her last known address, Kevin quickly ran some searches.

We saw on land registry records

that Jean Chainey was the owner of the property that she'd been living in.

We did check property values in the area

and we thought that the value of the property on its own

might be about £120,000.

Now he'd got a better idea of the value of the estate,

the search for heirs could begin.

Jean was described on the Treasury solicitors' website

as a widow, but we had to make sure that was indeed the case.

So our first step was to find the death record

of her husband, Peter Chainey.

And we found out that he died just a couple of years before her.

The team's next step was to look to see if she had any children

and as it transpired, Jean had been married once before,

so they had to look for children born with either surname.

This involves us searching the national birth records,

where the births are indexed under surname

and the mother's maiden surname.

So we were quite quickly able to establish that there were no children

from either marriage.

He now needed to find out if Jean had any brothers or sisters who could be in line to inherit.

To find them, he first had to trace the names of her parents.

We obtained a copy of Jean's birth certificate,

and found out that her parents were Victor Hugh Robinson

and Lillian Jane Robinson, formerly Roxburgh.

Jean's father, Victor, was born in Southampton to a shipping family.

His father was employed in the shipbuilding industry,

and from his early teens, Victor, too, worked in the docks.

But Victor and the family were not known as shipbuilders.

It seems that Victor was something of a superstar in a very different world.

Vic was a pigeon fancier par excellence.

He was a champion.

The greatest fancier in the south of England...

and possibly of England,

because he knew how to breed, how to condition,

and how to race a pigeon.

After years breeding and training his stock of pigeons,

Vic hit the big time in 1934, when he won the King's Cup race from San Sebastian in Spain.

It was one of Britain's most prestigious pigeon races,

and Vic became an iconic figure.

The word "Vic Robinson"

was like someone talking about David Beckham in footballing terms.

If Vic did it... If Vic did this, or Vic did that,

that was the template, if you wish, how to successfully race pigeons.

He was a god in his right.

Ted, who was Jean's classmate at the time,

became one of Vic's many devotees.

I needed, or I wanted, to get to know what he knew.

And therefore, obviously, we became quite good friends.

I think I was one of the few he'd allow to go into his pigeon loft.

Granted such special status, Ted was able to watch and learn.

I was able to see how he cleaned them out,

how he fed them, and I took it all in.

How he would prepare them for the long races,

how he would look after them during the winter months,

which is important when they're moulting.

What changes in the food he'd give them.

It was something that I treasured. He was slow in his methods and his ways,

but a really good pigeon fancier is quite often that,

because he wants the pigeons to know him and not be frightened of him.

Vic's methodical dedication to his pigeons

was one shared by all the family.

Every winter, in the evenings,

he, Jean and her mother, Lillian,

would sit at the kitchen table

and he would go through every bag of corn that he bought,

and he would go through that with them - what was good -

and they would discard what was bad.

Such fanaticism paid off.

Between 1929 and 1954,

Vic's pigeons won more national prizes than any others,

and one bird in particular, named after his daughter, Jean,

was a consistent champion.

Vic's approach and technique is still something much admired.

People say in the pigeon world, especially the old school,

"Go back to basics." We're forgetting that pigeons are birds.

I've got friends spent £80,000, £100,000, even £200,000 on pigeon lofts,

wooden floors, central heating, hot and cold showers.

Where the day of Vic's was a normal pigeon loft.

Dry, healthy pigeons, fed well on a varied diet,

plenty of clean water, and that was his secret, if you like. Basic.

Vic Robinson's pigeon-fancying brought him fame,

as well as a fair amount of fortune too.

He was able to buy his house from the winnings of his pigeons.

Because his winnings, I would suggest...

There were pigeons every year from 1934 up to the war years.

..would have been in the region of... averaging about £200, £250 a year.

Which was really a year's salary for quite a lot of people in those days.

And thanks to his pigeons,

his daughter Jean was given the best possible start in life.

They enabled him and his wife to send Jeannie to Barton Peveril Grammar School,

where she received an education second to none.

And she was a very well-educated young lady.

I'm proof of that!

Cos I went to the same school.

In their search for heirs to Jean's estate, Kevin and the team

had established that Jean was Victor and Lillian's only child,

so they now needed to widen their search.

We knew that this was going to be a matter of aunts and uncles,

or more likely, their descendants,

inheriting from this estate.

The shift in the focus of the hunt marked a critical juncture.

When we know it's going to be a matter of going to cousins, ie, tracing cousins,

we really...are branching out into the unknown.

Sometimes it might turn out that both paternal and maternal families are quite small

and it can be solved quite quickly.

At other times, you find there are huge families

and they're spreading all over the place, including overseas.

It's just....

At that point, it's just difficult to know how far you're going to have to go to solve the whole case.

Beginning with Jean's father's family,

Kevin used the 1911 census

to discover that Victor Robinson was one of 11 children.

Immediately, things were not looking good.

Victor Hugh Robinson was one of the younger members of the family

and some of his older siblings were born back in the 1870s.

Um...this meant

that we might have to be tracing down two or three generations

on some branches of the family to find the living heirs.

We knew straightaway that it was very likely that there was going to be a lot of work involved in this,

and that there might well be a huge number of beneficiaries.

And as their work continued, Kevin and the team's worst fears were realised...

There were about 60 heirs on the Robinson side of the family.

..while the remarkable wartime role of Vic's pigeons came to light.

Many lives were saved through racing pigeons flying through

bullets, coming back with bullet wounds,

snow, fog, to bring vital messages back.

Heir hunters trace thousands of rightful beneficiaries every year.

But not all cases can be cracked.

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

that have eluded the heir hunters and remained unsolved.

The Bona Vacantia Division deals with the estates of people who die

without leaving a will

or any entitled blood relatives.

Today we're focusing on two cases that have 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 John Frederick Lawrence Ball.

In the UK, nearly 44,000 people share the surname Ball,

and it's particularly common in the Stoke-on-Trent area.

But heir hunters have struggled to find any of John's living heirs.

Are you related to John?

Do you have any information that might help crack this case?

Next, can you shed any light on the case of Margaret Marsh?

She died in the run-up to Christmas.

The name Marsh was originally given as a topographical name

for anyone who lived near grassland.

Were you a friend or a neighbour of Margaret?

Do you have information about her family?

Perhaps you're the relative the heir hunters have been looking for.

Both John and Margaret's estates remain unclaimed,

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

Money raised by the division

is ultimately passed to the General Exchequer,

which benefits the country as a whole.

Do you have any clues

that could help solve the cases of John Ball or Margaret Marsh?

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

For senior case manager Kevin Edmondson and his team

at London heir-hunting firm Hoopers,

the case of Jean Chainey was proving an extraordinary one.

No only had they discovered that her father was a renowned pigeon fancier,

there were also shaping up to be an enormous number of heirs.

All Kevin and the team had to do now was find them.

In the 1911 census record for the Robinson family,

only five of the children of the paternal grandparents

were actually living with them at that time.

So although we knew there were 11 in total,

we still didn't know who six of them were.

Jean Irene Chainey died in Telford, Shropshire,

on the 23rd of December 2011.

Fellow classmate Ted Bennett remembers her from his schooldays.

She had big eyes.

I'll always remember that.

She wasn't pretty...and she had bushy hair.

She was always well-dressed.

She was always well-spoken.

And she had really good manners.

She was very good at her school work

and very diligent.

She was a normal schoolgirl.

She wasn't like me, naughty!

I'd get up to mischief.

But it seems there was a limit to how close Jean would get to her classmates.

She would talk to you about school work,

but she didn't like to talk about her own private life.

And Ted has his own theory as to why.

The people that were in to grammar school at that time were a little bit snooty.

They... And Jean didn't come from a background...

that...

..a privileged background, let me put it that way.

I think that's what it was.

After leaving school, Ted didn't see Jean again for many years.

When he did, he was in for a surprise.

She was animated, and she'd obviously blossomed.

She was a lot more at ease with herself, let me put it that way, and with her parents.

She had a breadth of knowledge.

She knew things about finance,

about world politics, etc.

She could converse and talk

on most subjects that anybody raised.

It was an impressive transformation.

She was, to me, a woman of the world.

She knew exactly where she was going, and she knew what she was about.

She was a happy girl.

Happy girl.

In the office, Kevin and the team were making good progress

in their hunt for Jean's cousins.

By going back to the 1901 and 1891 censuses,

they had eventually managed to track down

the names of all Jean's father's siblings.

But there were more challenges to come.

The surname Robinson is one of the more common surnames.

And so that does make research a little more difficult.

It was time for some tricks of the trade.

One of the things we first do is to try and discover whether any of the aunts and uncles have married.

Often in the hope that one of the females has married someone with a less common surname.

In this case, we struck lucky, because one of Jean's aunts, Mabel Robinson, married a Mr Lodge,

a much les common name.

And this made it a lot easier for us.

This discovery was a fantastic breakthrough that led Kevin to finding his first heir.

We found that Mabel and her husband had four children.

And we were quite fortunate to discover

that one of them, Raymond, was still living, in his late 80s.

For Raymond Lodge, news of his inheritance came completely out of the blue.

When Hoopers rang, I was surprised, um...

Didn't really have any knowledge of who Jean was.

They explained that she was a cousin of mine,

and that was about it, really.

While he didn't remember Jean,

his uncle's name did, however, ring a bell.

I don't remember much about Vic Robinson, other than I met him on the one occasion.

I was invited around to see the pigeons.

It must have been...

two or three years before the war. It was very close to the war.

So I most probably was 12, 13.

The sheer number of pigeons owned by Vic wowed the young Raymond.

I would think he had 50 or 60. It was a very big operation.

I think he was breeding a lot.

I think he had a reputation. I think he was selling them on.

I think he was even selling the eggs to other people.

It was quite a little business.

I do remember...

him showing me a picture of one of the pigeons,

which as far as I know, was the one that won the San Sebastian race.

At the time of Raymond's visit,

Jean's father, Vic Robinson, was at the height of his success,

racing and breeding champion pigeons.

But just years later, at the outbreak of the Second World War,

all that was to change.

Wartime was a very hard time for pigeon fanciers,

because they couldn't race them, yet they had to keep them.

Now, if you supplied pigeons to the National Pigeon Service,

you were allocated an amount of food for your pigeons.

To overcome the problem of rationing,

Vic and thousands of other pigeon fanciers in Britain

signed up to a scheme called the National Pigeon Service.

An Army man used to come with a basket.

And Vic would go into his loft and pick out anything from eight to 12 youngsters.

He didn't like doing it, but he did it for the war effort.

And he was pleased to do it for the war effort.

But the second point that he was doing it, I suppose was really and truly the more important...

Was that it enabled him to get food to be able to feed the pigeons he had.

Once in the National Pigeon Service,

birds were selected for missions based on their individual record

for speed, navigational skills and endurance.

They often became the bearers of vital, life-saving messages.

They were used extensively in aircraft,

for people who downed their planes and didn't know exactly where they were.

When every Lancaster bomber or aircraft left this country,

two pigeons were on board.

Many lives were saved through racing pigeons coming back with bullet wounds,

snow, fog, to bring vital messages back

that they'd been ditched in the North Sea,

that they had problems in France.

The birds were also used when radio communication was too dangerous.

They could be sent or dropped to the resistant fighters in the countries that were occupied.

And they'd send messages back through the pigeons.

Over 200,000 pigeons were volunteered for the National Pigeon Service during the war,

and 32 of them were awarded the Dickin Medal for outstanding exploits.

As well as a means of serving his country,

for Vic, it was also an important way of keeping his champion dynasty going.

After the war was finished, he still had his basic blood lines there,

which was very successful in the '30s,

and being an exceptional stock man, an exceptional breeder,

er...

he was fortunate to have his foundation

still in the '50s, which enabled him to win a second Grand National race with the National Flying Club.

This momentous post-war win cemented Vic's reputation for ever.

To win two blue ribbons,

the ultimate in pigeon racing in this country,

twice and 20 years apart, if not more, is unique. Very unique.

Back in the office, after successfully finding Raymond,

Kevin and the rest of the team were on a roll with the Robinson side of the family.

We've had quite a few people working on it.

We were fortunate, in that on several branches of the family,

we were able to track down people quite quickly,

and by interviewing them, they were able to fill us in quite a bit of the details

of the rest of the members of their family.

And the total number of heirs entitled to Jean's estate,

now valued at approximately £75,000,

is quite extraordinary.

We've now traced a total of 82 heirs.

We think that is probably the final figure,

although we've still got a little bit of research to do just to verify that.

Another one of these heirs was Peter Robinson,

Jean's cousin once removed.

Now that he's entitled to a share of her estate,

he has no idea what to expect.

My wife and daughter think I'm going to be a millionaire, but I just pooh-pooh it and think,

well, yeah, if £5 comes out of it, I'm £5 better off than I was last week.

For Peter, childhood memories of a visit to Vic's pigeon loft

Have become the stuff of legend.

He took me into his pigeon loft

and, one by one, he showed me all his favourite pigeons.

I've got it in my head that Uncle Vic showed me one of these pigeons,

and said, "See this pigeon? This pigeon is worth a million pounds."

Whether he actually said that or not, I'm not too sure.

Whether it's £100, £1,000...

From that day to this, I've always got it in my mind that Uncle Vic said,

"This pigeon's worth a million pounds."

That must have been a hellish lot of money in those days.

And it's only just beginning to dawn on him what a star Jean's father really was.

I'd heard of Uncle Vic within the family, obviously,

but I didn't realise he was that famous outside the family circle.

Since the case of Ian Urquhart Fraser appeared on the Treasury solicitors' list,

the team at heir-hunting firm Fraser & Fraser

have been making steady progress.

There's one stem with heirs on,

and, um...we're hopefully going to try to get in contact with them.

Once they established there are no heirs on the paternal side,

their search has narrowed to just one line on the maternal side of the tree.

All they need to do is make contact with the heirs before the competition.

Ian Urquhart Fraser

died on the 1st of September 2011, aged 85.

His friend, John Whitehead, remembers him as an intellectually rigorous figure.

You have to bear in mind that he was an educated man.

He was a lecturer.

He wouldn't tolerate sloppy thinking.

Um...if I came up with an idea that was carelessly constructed,

or badly articulated, he'd chivvy me along, "No, no, you can put it better than that."

In the nicest possible way.

But he always wanted to keep me on my toes.

As a member of the Royal College of Surgeons

and a lecturer in anatomy,

Ian continued to teach well into his 70s.

He loved his work. He continued working long after his retirement.

And actually, when he was finally obliged to retire,

Ian memorably declined to go to his own leaving party.

Whether that was out of modesty or because he was irritated at having to finally retire, I'm not sure.

Whenever I met him, he nearly always had a copy of the New England Medical Journal in his pocket.

Even after he retired, he kept in touch with medicine.

When Ian grew ill and was taken into hospital at the end of his life,

John was by his side.

I did ask him if he'd written a will.

And he said he didn't have any family,

and it didn't really matter what happened to his stuff when he died.

I pointed out to him, if nothing else,

he could perhaps make a difference to some of the charities he supported.

I left it for him to think about it, but he did nothing about it.

His condition was up and down a bit.

I saw him a couple of days before he passed away.

He asked me if I'd mind if we entered my name

on his records as next of kin as there was nobody else.

He was a very private man.

I can only surmise,

but my feeling is that, in his mind,

that the things that he had, they were part of him

and when he passed away, there was nothing. That was the end of it.

I don't think he really took an interest beyond that.

Now that Ian has passed away

and his estate is in the hands of the Treasury,

John has strong feelings on the issue.

I think it's very important that everybody writes a will.

Even if you have no family,

then perhaps you have a favourite cause or a favourite charity

and any money you leave them could make a huge difference.

At the end of the day, if no relatives and no heirs

have been traced, the money just goes back to the Government,

after many years. But that money could do some good.

In the office, the race is on to find and sign up heirs to Ian's estate,

estimated to be worth at least £250,00.

As rival companies are likely to be working this valuable case,

the pressure really is on.

But the team have already traced some heirs,

and Dave has finally managed to get hold of one of them,

Simon Forsyth, on the phone.

Father and mother returned to England and passed away in Scarborough, is that correct?

Am I right in believing that you're one of two children?

What I'd very much like to do...

Is it all possible for one of my colleagues to pop along and see you today?

Lovely. Thanks for your time, sir. Bye-bye now.

Now all Dave needs to do is get hold of senior travelling researcher Ewart

and arrange for him to visit Simon.

Your sat-nav should pick it up. It's a small lane.

In order to ensure all their hard work doesn't go to waste,

it's vital that Ewart reaches Simon before the competition.

-How long is it going to take you?

-It's coming up now.

It's only 14 miles. That's fine.

-All righty.

-Speak to you later.

-Yeah, be lucky.

-Cheers, mate. Bye.

-Have a safe journey, OK.

-Bye.

And Ewart's raring to go.

-Mr Forsyth?

-Hi.

-I'm just wondering, can I come to see you any earlier?

Yes, absolutely fine. I'm just sitting putting PowerPoint training presentations together,

so you would be an excuse to make a cup of tea.

OK, well, I could be with you in the next, say, 45 minutes.

-45, yeah, that's absolutely fine.

-Is that all right?

Yeah, that's fine. Do you know how to find us?

It confuses people sometimes, but sat-nav normally finds it.

So I'll see you in about 45 minutes.

-OK, that's fine.

-All right?

-See you then.

-Bye. Take care. Bye.

Bye-bye.

Ewart heads straight off for the meeting.

'Left turn.'

I'm driving through, at the minute, a track.

Just a single track.

For the past three miles.

But as he continues on, Ewart begins to wonder if he's taken a wrong turn.

This is a very, very tiny track.

HE TOOTS HORN

'At the next junction, right turn.'

Oh, really!

At last, it looks like he's made it.

'Your destination is straight ahead.'

Could he be about to sign his first heir?

Ewart brings Simon up to speed with the research so far.

She had a sister called Elizabeth, who married a Mr Fraser.

Ah, right.

-OK.

-We then have the deceased.

-OK?

-I know nothing of that side of the family.

Your father, unfortunately, has passed away...

-in 1981, is that correct?

-That's right, yes.

Um...

He had a brother but, unfortunately, he died in infancy.

Ah, now I knew he had a brother...

Um...and the story in the family

was that he had disappeared off to the States or something,

but we never knew anything about him.

It would explain a lot of things, because my dad never mentioned him.

And we never knew anything about him at all.

The news about his uncle is as surprising as the news about his potential inheritance.

And Simon is happy to sign with the company,

so they can help him make his claim to the estate.

One thing I would ask, if you find background about the family,

family tree things, it would be very useful for me

-to know a bit more about that side of things.

-Sure, yeah.

-Yeah.

-I'm assuming...

-Yeah, yeah.

If we find a family...

..we can put you in touch, no problem.

Take care, Mr Forsyth. All the best.

It's a fantastic result for Ewart and the team

and he calls Dave to fill him in.

-Hello, Ewart.

-Hello, Dave.

Yeah, good news, Dave.

I've signed Mr Forsyth, OK?

-As you said, he was a very nice guy.

-Well done, mate.

-Thanks for everything today.

-Cheers, Dave.

-Take care.

-Bye.

What a fantastic day!

Eh?

Nice big case,

big money...

..a couple of heirs entitled. I've signed one.

Fantastic!

And Ewart isn't the only one delighted with his work.

Everyone's really pulled together, and not only the guys in the office, but the guys on the road.

The heir that Ewart went to see

has kindly agreed to use our services.

Perfect end to a perfect day.

And it gets better,

because the value of Ian's estate has now come in at £430,000.

For heir Simon, it has been an emotional 24 hours.

There was a slight sense of disbelief, and, to be honest,

just hearing my mum's and my dad's names mentioned

just brought a whole load of things alive, really,

reminded me of stuff that just seems to be so far in the past now.

It was just really nice hearing their names,

which sounds very strange, I suppose, but like a connection.

As his parents passed away over 30 years ago,

when Simon was in his 20s,

it's a precious opportunity to learn more about his family.

If your parents die when you're young, you don't really...

appreciate how important it is just to ask them about their lives.

Nearly every day, something will remind me of something I could have asked, would have been good to ask.

Of course, once they're gone, you never can.

So any information that comes out of this would be of great interest and value.

And Simon has been inspired to get started on his own family research.

It's like a gentle challenge to me

to just get on with it. I think the lesson that comes out of this is,

don't put things off for ever,

because you never quite know when for ever is.

So...sometimes sooner than you think.

If you would like advice about building a family tree

or making a will, go to...

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd