Hooper/Woodall Heir Hunters

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

It's not easy, it's hard for us. And we do it every day of the week.

They hand over thousands of pounds to relatives who had no idea they were in line to inherit.

If you get nothing, then we get nothing.

Their work involves painstaking investigation.

So, one step forward and two steps back.

But it can reveal all kinds of fascinating family history.

-My dad worked as a ventriloquist and magician.

-Did he?

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

I got the phone call and I couldn't believe it.

Could the Heir Hunters be knocking at your door?

Coming up, Heir Hunters look for the descendents of a magician

and conjure up several long-lost relatives.

They're obviously your half-brothers and sisters.

A family comes to terms with discovering an aunt they had never heard of.

I was absolutely gobsmacked!

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

Could a fortune be heading your way?

It's Thursday morning in London and at Fraser & Fraser,

the country's biggest firm of heir hunters,

the team have been hard at work for hours.

-He died in 2011.

-I'm going to try and work on this.

One of them, I can't read the birth for. It may be he's illegit.

Overnight, the Treasury solicitors' latest Bona Vacantia list has been published.

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

And one name in particular has caught the eye of boss Neil.

So we're just starting this. We've got very little information.

The name of the deceased, Harry William Hooper.

We know he died in August of 2011 and that's in High Wycombe.

The team, headed by case manager Gareth Langford,

is working on commission for a percentage of the estate.

And with around 40 rival heir hunting firms all

competing for a slice of the pie, it's vital they work fast.

We'd like to deal with it as quickly as possible.

The quicker we get going, the quicker it can be sorted.

Harry William Hooper died on the 16th of August 2011.

He was 84 years old.

No pictures of Harry have survived,

but his friend Peter Collins has fond memories of him.

Harry was very laid back.

A very nice sort of personality. He would talk to you, have a chuckle.

Born in West London, Harry spent

most of his life in the Buckinghamshire town of

High Wycombe, where he worked on the buses, a job he thoroughly enjoyed.

Harry was a bus conductor and he took tickets from people

and got to know people quite well.

In later life, a series of strokes meant Harry could no longer do the job he loved.

So instead, he took up a new position in the payroll department.

When he worked in Wages, he enjoyed doing that with figures.

He was always very clever, very clever thinking.

I think he was probably underestimated.

He was quite a bright bloke.

You could talk to him and you could have a good conversation with him.

Although he'd known Peter for more than 30 years,

Harry rarely spoke about his family or his past.

He was very reserved. But he did say he didn't get on with his mum.

They were fighting, they were always arguing.

When I went to visit Harry, I didn't see many pictures of other people.

I felt that I was really his only true contact.

I was part of his family, really.

With Harry's past remaining a mystery to even his closest friends,

it's unsurprising that the team have very little to go on,

as they start the search for heirs to his estate.

Trying to find out some information about his parents

and his birth and whether he owns property or not.

Finding out whether or not the deceased was a homeowner is crucial,

as it gives a good indication as to how much an estate is worth.

The unclaimed list does not publish this information.

So taking on a new case is always a gamble.

Because they work for a cut of the estate,

the team could end up losing out if it turns out to be of low value.

At the moment, we've got no idea of value, so one of the reasons

we're still working it is because we don't know the value.

If we knew it didn't have any value, then we wouldn't be

looking at it, but at the moment we don't know either way.

Harry never married and didn't have any children.

His parents have long since died,

so the first thing the team will do is check to see

if he had any siblings, who would be next in line to inherit.

But Hooper is not the easiest of names to work.

It is quite difficult, just because it's such a common...

it's not an area name, it's just an all-over generally common name

for a lot of families.

So, a lot of mix-ups can happen with that sort of name.

A thorough search of birth records soon throws up

the names of Harry's parents.

William Thomas Herbert Hooper and Frances Mary Bowman.

And it appears that Harry was the couple's only child.

The next step would normally be to look for aunts, uncles and cousins,

but Gareth decides to wait before widening the search.

Although Hooper is a common surname, Harry's father's full name

could give them the breakthrough they desperately need.

William Hooper is actually William Thomas Herbert Hooper.

That's an incredibly unusual name, certainly a combination of names.

So, it's very simple for us to look at the number of marriages

there are for him and we're quickly able to see

that there were certainly two marriages for the deceased father.

This is a great result.

Before he married Harry's mother, Frances,

William was married to a woman called Maisie Evelyn Hennings.

If William and Maisie had children,

they could be Harry's half-blood siblings and entitled to his estate.

It's now vital that the team find out if this couple

had a family of their own.

It looks like William and Maisie have had five children.

We've basically looked for children with the surname Hooper

and with the mother's maiden name Hennings

and we've come up with five.

Bingo! This is exactly the result the team needed

and now it's full steam ahead to see if any of these

half-blood brother and sisters of Harry's are still alive.

We're dealing with half-blood, which obviously don't have

as full entitlement as full-blood brothers and sisters,

but half-blood taking priority to full-blood cousins.

And a quick search of electoral roles

soon brings some more good news.

So, we've also discovered that one of the children

of the marriage between William and Maisie is still alive.

He's become a monk and lived, I think, a lot of his life in Africa,

although we believe now he's returned to England.

As this half-brother to Harry is still alive,

he's entitled to a share of the estate.

But the other four siblings Gareth's found,

Amy, Queenie, Maisie and Queenie, have all passed away.

However, any living descendants they had would also be beneficiaries.

As the team continue to look into the marriage of Maisie and William,

they soon discover this couple had been very busy indeed.

We realised that there was also a Lesley, a Cyril and a John.

Further half-brothers and sisters of the deceased.

Although more stems mean more work for the team,

it also increases their chances of finding beneficiaries.

But it's not long before there's yet another twist in this tale.

There's loads of 'em!

While searching under Harry's father William's name,

they found an amateur family tree online

which connects him to another relationship

and means he could have had more children.

His brood currently stands at nine and rising.

Most of the information that we've got

has come from a family tree put up on the internet.

The deceased father married a couple of times.

He's also had a couple of children with a woman that he didn't marry.

Of course the team must approach any amateur research with caution.

But after investigating it for themselves,

they uncover some crucial new information.

The deceased father, William, then had a relationship

with an Agnes Munro and had a further two children.

Now, we don't think he married Agnes,

although we're not a hundred per cent sure yet,

and it was a bit of a stroke of luck that we were able to find them.

So, that's another two half-blood siblings of the deceased.

Again, the deceased wouldn't have been aware of.

The children of William Hooper and his third partner, Agnes Munro,

are called Clive and Iris.

If it can be proved that they're also half-siblings to Harry,

they will be entitled to a share in his estate.

Gareth has a phone number for Iris and gets straight on the phone,

filling her in on what he has uncovered.

So, essentially they're obviously your half-brothers and sisters.

Then there was also Harry.

Iris has given Gareth an address and phone number for brother Clive.

'Dave Hadley on five. Dave Hadley on five.'

He wastes no time in mobilising travelling researcher Dave Hadley.

-Hi, Dave.

-Hi, Gareth.

As part of a flying squad of researchers

who cover the whole country, Dave is a vital cog in the company's wheel.

They're at the front line of the heir hunt and staff in the office

rely on them to gather information they can't get over the phone.

It's their job to speak to neighbours,

pick up crucial documents and ultimately meet and sign up heirs.

Nice to meet you. Cheers now.

Now Gareth needs Dave to make contact with Clive

to find out if he and his sister Iris

are indeed the son and daughter of Harry's father William Hooper.

So, the guy I am going to see is Clive Hooper, is it?

Yeah, Clive Hooper and then if you see Clive,

then it might be worth arranging to see Iris afterwards.

Iris didn't know about this half-brother, then?

'She did not know about her half-brother.'

She is aware of some of her other half-brothers and sisters, though.

-OK, all right, Gareth.

-Cheers, thank you very much.

Cheers then, bye.

The pressure is on.

Can Dave get to Harry's potential heirs

ahead of any rival firms who might also be on the case?

Finding heirs often involves delving deep into a family's past.

Sometimes the search can uncover long-kept secrets

and even bring to light relatives other family members

never knew they had.

That's exactly what happened when heir-hunting firm Celtic Research

took on the case of a woman called Mary Woodall, who died in 2011.

Saul Marks, who covers the Northwest region for the company,

led the research.

We picked up this case from the normal Treasury solicitors' list

every Thursday morning. We looked at this one in particular

in this office because the deceased died in the Northwest.

She died in Altrincham, which is very much in our patch.

Mary Mayor Woodall was born on March 5, 1928,

in the Hulme area of Manchester.

Mary's life is a mystery.

All that's known about her is that she spent her last few years

being cared for at a nursing home in Altrincham.

And it's there that she died on November 11, 2011.

Mary didn't leave a will.

If a living heir could not be traced,

then her estate would go to the government.

Case manager Saul was keen to stop this from happening,

but at the outset, he had very little to go on.

The information that the list provides every week

is simply the name of the deceased and the date and place of death.

It might not seem like a promising start,

but the firm are used to turning such small nuggets of information

into solid family trees.

And Saul got stuck in.

Mary Mayor Woodall was a spinster, so we knew that she hadn't married

and it was a reasonable assumption

that she'd had no children of her own,

so the next step would be to look for siblings.

Saul needed Mary's birth certificate

to find out the names of her parents.

From there, he could find out whether they had any more children.

These would be Mary's brothers and sisters

and they, or their living descendants,

would be in line to inherit her estate.

But it wasn't quite as straightforward as he'd hoped.

The deceased's birth certificate, which I got from Manchester Registry Office,

showed that the deceased's father wasn't listed.

There was a big dash through it, which almost always means

that the deceased was illegitimate.

This new information did not bode well for the investigation.

If we establish on a case that the deceased is actually illegitimate,

that reduces the chances of finding heirs,

because if we end up going to cousins,

there's only one side, the maternal side to work on.

Mary's mother, Mary Ellen Woodall, was 21 years old

when she gave birth to her daughter.

At the time, she worked as a spinner in a cotton mill in Manchester.

The textile factories would have been quite tough places to work.

They were hot, they were noisy, they were dirty,

you might well get a clip round the ear from the overseer

if your machine wasn't running as it should.

But on the other hand, they were seen as good jobs for women.

And this was because in the textile districts,

women were paid roughly the same wages as men

and that was very rare at this time.

But equal pay did not necessarily mean

an enlightened attitude towards women.

Especially women who had a child out of wedlock.

Mary would likely have lost her job if she had had an illegitimate baby.

Partly because of the moral disapproval

of having a child outside of marriage,

but also because of the practical matter of who was going to care for the baby.

In the early 20th century,

illegitimate births were still relatively rare.

Only between four and five per cent of children

were born outside marriage.

What was common, was for premarital sex to take place

and a pregnancy to result, which then led to a marriage,

so that was very common.

It's estimated that maybe a third of all marriages already had

a pregnancy in place so that wasn't particularly frowned on but what

was frowned on was not getting married after you got pregnant.

It's not known why Mary Ellen didn't marry the father of her child

but as an unwed mother, she would have faced some stark choices.

Most young women with illegitimate babies were encouraged to give up

their baby and just move on.

So occasionally families were welcoming of the illegitimate babies

and brought them up, so you might have the grandparents

heavily involved but, more commonly, families didn't want the stigma

and shame associated with having an illegitimate child and so those

babies either had to be brought up by the mother in very, very

difficult circumstances or they would have been given up

into foster care, adoption or institutional care.

It's not clear exactly what happened to Mary after she was born

but it seems likely that she was given up by her young

and probably vulnerable mother.

Women who give up their babies must have wondered

sometimes what the fate of those children was but I think

they would have mostly thought they had done the right thing.

There was a lot of pressure on them to give up the babies,

to give the babies a good start in life -

the kind of start that they couldn't give them themselves.

So she might well have taken comfort from the fact that she had

done the right thing for her child, she had done her best.

The fact that Mary was an illegitimate child could have

spelled trouble for case manager Saul

but thankfully some new information provided him with a glimmer of hope.

I found a marriage for a Mary E Woodall in 1929

to a James Steele. That was the year after the deceased was born.

In cases like this where the deceased is illegitimate, it is

often the case that the mother will marry after that birth

and go on to have children so what I wanted to find out was

whether the deceased's mother Mary had had children who would then

be half-siblings of the deceased and they would be entitled to inherit.

In fact, Mary Ellen had gone on to marry twice

and she had five more children

but only two survived into adulthood, which meant Saul's

options for finding heirs were narrowing by the minute.

The deceased's half-sister Freda was my next port of call

in terms of trying to find an heir.

I established that she married a gentleman named Roland Thomas

and that they had had three daughters.

Sadly, I found Freda's death listing in 1997

and so the three daughters were going to be her heirs

and therefore obviously heirs to this estate.

Discovering that Mary did indeed have living relatives was

a big breakthrough for Saul

but because his company works on commission,

he still had to sign them up ahead of any rival heir hunting firms

in order to get paid for his work.

I was able to establish that, towards the end of her life,

Freda had been living with her youngest daughter, Paula.

Having confirmed Paula's address and phone number, I actually rang

her and there was no answer and I got the impression she was at work.

I had been told she was a teacher.

So I went over to her house and waited for her to come home

and I was actually there quite a while.

Saul's patience paid off.

Paula was able to confirm that she was the daughter of Mary's

half-sister Freda. The company had found its first heir.

It was a shock and a real surprise

because obviously we knew nothing about Auntie Mary.

I don't think my mum knew anything about her either so I've

never had an inkling or heard anything

so, yeah, it was a real surprise.

Because neither Paula nor her mother Freda had ever heard of Mary,

it seems clear that she wasn't brought up with the rest of her family.

It is more likely she was brought up in care,

a thought Paula finds hard to digest.

It must have been extremely hard, I can only imagine,

for my nana to have to let her baby go.

As a mother myself, I can't even imagine having

to let your baby go, especially your firstborn baby.

The fact that her auntie Mary had been living just minutes away is

a source of great regret for Paula.

It's just very sad that we could have known her and we didn't.

We could have played a part in her life,

she could have played a part in our lives.

And as Mary's story continues to unfold,

there are more bittersweet moments to come.

The women who gave up their babies would have been expected to

give them up for good.

Thanks to the work of the heir hunters, thousands

of beneficiaries receive their rightful inheritance every year.

But they can't crack every case and the Treasury's unclaimed list

still contains plenty yet to be solved.

Cases stay on the unclaimed list until they're no longer

claimable by virtue of the Limitation Act and that is a 12-year period

from the date the administration of the estate is completed.

Today, we are focusing on two cases which have

so far stumped the heir hunters.

Could you be the beneficiary they are looking for?

Could you be in line to inherit a fortune?

First is the case of Marie-Antoinette Leonette Miller,

who died in the Wiltshire town of Salisbury

on the 22nd of March 2005.

Her unusual name hints at a French connection.

Are you a relative of Marie who has vital information which could

help finally lay this case to rest?

Next is the case of John Parton,

who died on the 15th of October 2007 in Wakefield, West Yorkshire.

The Parton name is most common among the Welsh borders. Are you a Parton?

Could John be a long-lost family member?

If so, a windfall could be coming your way.

Both Marie and John's estates remain unclaimed

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

The Bona Vacantia unclaimed list has generated a lot of interest and it is

reducing slowly as we go along, and it is hoped that that will continue.

Those names once more...

In Liverpool, heir hunting firm Celtic Research was looking

into the case of Mary Mayor Woodall,

who had died in 2011 without leaving a will.

Mary was born in 1928

and was the daughter of a cotton-spinner from Manchester.

But many key details of her life remain a mystery.

As an illegitimate child,

it seems she was given up by her mother shortly after her birth.

Illegitimate births were really frowned upon by families so there

was a sense of real moral failure if you had an illegitimate birth,

the likelihood being that that baby would not have been seen

as neither a welcome addition to a family nor necessarily a good person.

The baby themself would carry some

kind of sign of the circumstances in which they had been conceived.

Mary wasn't adopted but it is likely she was taken into care

and probably never saw her mother again.

The women who gave up their babies would have been expected to

give them up for good.

There was no sense that the birth mother or the birth parents

had any rights over their children once they had given them up

and they were encouraged to simply forget about them

and move on in their lives.

Case manager Saul Marks had discovered that Mary's mother

went on to marry twice and from her two marriages

she had five more children, but only two survived into adulthood.

She wasn't brought up with the rest of the family.

Her younger half-siblings also might never have known she existed.

One of those have siblings is still alive and, as Mary had

no full brothers or sisters, he will be an heir to her estate.

Mary's half-sister Freda died in 1997 so her living

descendants will be in line to inherit her share.

Freda Elizabeth Steele married Roland Thomas in Manchester in 1952.

Roland worked as a singer in the city's pubs and clubs

and the couple had a long and happy marriage.

But because Roland's father hailed from Sierra Leone,

they also endured a great deal of prejudice.

Their youngest daughter, Paula, recalls the challenges her

parents faced in this relatively intolerant '50s British society.

I think my mum and dad had quite a hard time

being in a mixed-race relationship in the '50s.

My mum had to go and get a house.

She had to go and get it by herself,

she can't take my dad with her cos obviously they would just see

the colour of his skin

and they probably wouldn't have got the house.

Britain's black and Asian population increased dramatically in the 1950s.

The government desperately needed workers to help

rebuild the country's economy after the Second World War

and Britain threw open its doors

to immigrants from Commonwealth nations.

From the Caribbean, India and Pakistan, prospective workers

came in their thousands, but not all were made to feel at home.

There was a lot of fear and hostility amongst the white British

population to these new arrivals.

There were concerns about competition for economic resources

and also competition for women.

In the 1950s, it wasn't uncommon to see signs in boarding houses,

B&Bs, stating,

"No blacks, no Irish, no dogs."

Although Freda's husband Roland had been born in Manchester in 1928,

he did not escape the bigotry levelled at these new immigrants.

Because of the increased visibility of black

and ethnic minority populations that mass immigration brought,

those long-standing communities, who were themselves British,

were treated no differently

and were treated with the same type of racism that the new immigrants

found so there wasn't really that distinction, I think,

made between somebody who had lived their whole life in Britain

and was British and somebody who had just arrived.

So it was not unusual for interracial couples to experience overt

hostility, even aggression, particularly when they were

together and that could be directed at both parties, man or woman.

Women were attacked physically, spat at and called names

so it could be very, very distressing

just simply walking down the road with the person you loved.

Despite the intolerance that surrounded them,

Freda and Roland remained steadfast

and their relationship lasted for more than 30 years.

She just got on with it, I think.

It was, you know, her husband, her life.

She was going to do what she wanted to do how she wanted to do it

and I don't think she really cared about what anybody else thought.

She was true to herself.

She really loved my dad and he really loved her and

they got through it regardless of what was going on around them.

So she was, I think, just very determined and very stoic

and just a really strong woman.

Freda and Roland had three daughters together.

These would be Mary's half-nieces

and entitled to a share in her estate.

Case manager Saul managed to sign up two of them with his company

straight away but Freda's firstborn

Lynne was proving a little more difficult to locate.

Sadly, Paula told me that Lynne had died a few years ago

but she had one daughter and Paula and that daughter are very close

and she was able to ring her niece up and explain what was going on

and I actually went down and visited her

and signed her up that day as well.

There are just two years between Paula and her niece Cathy and,

just like her aunt,

Cathy was stunned to find out about her great-aunt Mary.

I was absolutely gobsmacked.

Paula had rang me and she said, "There's a man coming to see you.

"He thinks we have inherited some money." I was like,

"No." We had no clue whatsoever that this lady had existed.

She had never been mentioned in all the time I was growing up.

Now Cathy is desperate to discover the truth about the relative

she never knew she had.

I have been speaking to my auntie about it

and we kind of think it is really sad that we have got

a member of the family that wasn't part of our close-knit family

that we knew nothing about and I am interested to find out,

you know, what kind of life she led. I hope it wasn't a sad life.

I hope it wasn't lonely life

because that's just going to make it 10 times worse that we

were all here and we have all tried to remain close

and she never got to know any of us.

The most frustrating thing is that because my nana's died and my

mum's died, who might have known something, you can't ask anybody.

And when it comes to inheriting her share of Mary's estate,

Cathy has mixed feelings.

Everybody, you know, likes to get money

but in terms of getting money from Mary if I don't know

anything about her, it would be like inheriting money from a stranger.

So I think in order for me to feel comfortable and in order to want

to go and spend any of the money,

I want to know a little bit more about Mary.

It's not yet clear how much money Cathy or any of the other

heirs will inherit but for case manager Saul Marks,

whose company works for a percentage of the estate,

the job was not just about the money.

We still don't actually know what this case is worth.

It may not be worth a great deal but nevertheless,

certainly for the family and for us, it was a case worth working.

It really is great to be able to tell someone all about a family member

who might actually be quite a close relation

but who they never knew existed.

The visit from Saul prompted Paula

and Cathy to do some investigating of their own.

They went to Mary's nursing home to meet the staff who had looked

after their aunt in her final years.

It seems that Mary had spent much of her life in a hospital

environment, having been given up by her mother as a baby.

We believe that Auntie Mary had learning difficulties

so we believe that our nana might have given her away

because she might not have had the support at the time

and the way society was at the end of the 1920s.

She, presumably,

wouldn't have been able to cope with having a baby with needs.

Although it is hard to imagine what Mary's mother must have been

through, the visit to the hospital has been able to give Paula

and Cathy a precious insight into their auntie's personality.

It told us a lot about Auntie Mary and just her life there,

her death, what she was like.

I think Mary was surrounded by a lot of loving care staff.

They described Auntie Mary as strong, she knew her own mind,

she knew what she wanted, she knew what she didn't want

and although she couldn't speak,

she would bang her fist on the table or on her own hand

if she didn't want something

and she was quite accepting if she did like something.

Very brave, very lovable and very easy to care for.

I think my mum would have loved knowing that she had a sister.

She would have gone to see her as much as she could,

made sure she was OK as far as she could.

And while the two women are delighted that they

have at least some information about their aunt,

their quest to learn more about Mary is far from over.

It makes you want my mum back and Nana back, Paula's mum back,

so we can ask questions.

Did you know anything about her? Even in the back of your mind

was there an inkling of anything going on?

But we have not got anyone to answer the questions for us.

We can't even speak to Mary about the kind of life she's had

so we have still got lots of questions that have been

unanswered and at the moment we are kind of just dipping into it.

Although she remains something of a mystery,

Mary's legacy will now live on through her new-found family.

They said at the care home that had she have met us, she would have

just loved it, she would have loved to have known that she had family.

But the children know about her now. Our children.

So, you know, at least that's one thing.

And we have got the photograph of her

and she will be referred to as Auntie Mary.

In London, the team at heir-hunting firm Fraser & Fraser

are working the case of Harry Hooper,

who died in Buckinghamshire in 2011.

You can't tell where the beneficiaries are going to be.

They could be anywhere.

Harry was an only child

so had no full-blood siblings to inherit his money.

But the team has discovered that his father William was married

more than once and had a total of 10 children.

These are Harry's half-siblings

and they or their living descendants

will be entitled to a share in his estate.

Travelling researcher Dave Hadley has been dispatched to Kent

to the home of one of Harry's half-brothers, Clive.

Will he be the first heir to sign up?

He is happy to be seen this afternoon.

It looks like we might get a result.

Harry Hooper was a reserved man who lived alone

for most of his adult life. No photos survive of him.

Peter Collins had been Harry's friend for 30 years.

I used to come and visit him about once or twice a week.

Harry was housebound so he was in a wheelchair.

He couldn't do much for himself

so I used to go down the fish and chip shop

'and get fish and chips for him once a week on a Friday.'

A series of strokes had left Harry paralysed down one

side of his body but when it came to his enjoyment of life,

he refused to let his disability get in the way.

He was determined to keep himself active.

Harry like putting a bet on a horse.

He would look at the horse racing, see what was in the paper

'and a lot of the time he did quite well.'

Harry would be in my, you know, always in my memory, you know.

In all the time he knew Peter, Harry never mentioned any brothers

or sisters so it seems likely he had no idea

he had a large number of half-siblings.

Now, travelling researcher Dave Hadley has come to Kent

to try to speak to one of those half-brothers, Clive.

-Hello there, Mr Hooper?

-Yes.

-Dave Hadley.

Thanks ever so much for seeing me.

When he arrives at Clive's home, he finds not one but two heirs.

-Hello, are you Iris?

-I am.

Hi, I'm Dave Hadley.

To make sure he has got the right people,

Dave has to check the office's research against the information

he gets from Clive and his sister Iris, who has popped in to meet him.

The person that has passed away is a fellow by the name of Harry Hooper.

-I don't know whether you've ever heard of him. Have you?

-No.

If we have got our research right,

your father was William Thomas Hooper.

Herbert Hooper.

William Thomas Herbert Hooper, was it?

Now, your mum then would have been Frances Bowman?

No, Agnes Donaldson Munro, actually.

Of course, yeah, that's right. Yeah. OK. Agnes Donaldson Munro.

That's right.

The office got it right.

Client and Iris are the children

of Harry's father William and Agnes.

They're Harry's half-brother

and sister and entitled

to a share in his estate.

However, William died when Iris and Clive were only infants so they

know very little of their father's life before he met their mother.

Well, we think that Harry Hooper was also a child of your father.

Harry was the son from William's second marriage

and although they had met some of the children from William's first

marriage, Clive and Iris had never even heard of their brother Harry.

-We met Frank, Cyril and Jack.

-Jack. So we must have...

Frank and Cyril came to see us when we were...

Were they children from a previous relationship before he met your mum?

That's the only ones that we knew of.

-Are you still in touch with them?

-No.

-Lost touch with them.

-I've moved so many times that no-one could ever find me, you know.

-Yeah.

In the course of the meeting, Clive comes up with some interesting

information about the man that links them to Harry -

their father William.

-My dad worked as a ventriloquist and magician.

-Did he?

Yeah, he was called Victor Stewart, that was his stage name.

-Oh, right, that's interesting.

-Very clever at this, apparently.

-High society entertainer.

-High society entertainer. Yeah.

-Oh, right.

-Yeah.

On the 1911 census,

William Hooper's occupation was listed as painter and decorator.

But by the end of the First World War,

it seems he had had a dramatic career change.

Now, I can only speculate on what might have happened

but I think World War I is the key here.

There were a lot of troops who had to entertain themselves and card tricks,

card games were very, very popular and I think he might well have met

someone and basically started learning a few card tricks,

got bitten by the magic bug and then pursued it after World War I.

The early part of the 20th century

was something of a golden age for magic.

We have just had a big world war, people are unsure,

they want to be diverted, they want to be entertained,

they want a bit of escapism.

You had a lot of magic happening in theatres in London.

I mean, Houdini was in town in 1904 and created really quite a stir.

The sawing through a woman,

which later became sawing a woman in half,

that was invented and first performed at the Finsbury Empire in 1921.

So William Hooper is performing in that environment.

People want escapism. It's a good time to be an entertainer.

As a society entertainer,

William would have been moving in some lofty social circles.

It became very fashionable, very fashionable that after the meal

when you're sitting down and having the brandy and cigars that

you would be entertained by an entertainer in the drawing room.

William Hooper would have worked in that environment

and would then do his magic tricks

and it would be predominantly close-up tricks.

It would be tricks that could be seen for a small group.

So small props would have been OK.

Things like cards and coins and the classics of magic,

things like cup and balls, the linking rings.

All of these, basically,

are sleight-of-hand tricks so minimal props, I would have thought.

And as he stuck with his new career for the rest of his life,

it is clear he must have had a real flair for it.

He would have had to have been an excellent entertainer with

magic tricks because if he was only average he would not have survived

long in that environment because it is a very exclusive environment

and the way that you're going to perpetuate work is that you're

going to entertain a group of people,

there are going to be people there that you haven't seen before

and they're going to want to book you for their next party so if his

show was rubbish, then he's not going to get booked for the next show.

So I think he would have had to have been pretty good

to make a living from it.

In Kent, Dave Hadley has wrapped up the meeting with Clive and Iris.

-Bye.

-Thanks very much.

And he is pleased with the result.

They weren't able to tell me anything about the deceased

because they didn't even know he existed.

But the information they gave me confirmed one or two points

so I'm fairly confident we have got the right people.

And they have signed agreements so I'm going to get on the phone now,

speak to Gareth, give him the good news

and I think it's a job well done.

In the office, case manager Gareth Langford now

knows of 13 heirs to Harry Hooper's estate.

When we were originally drawing up the tree, we had

one, two, three, four, five half-brothers and sisters

but in actual fact, there were quite a few more.

As well as Clive and Iris from

his father's third relationship,

Harry has another half-brother

from his father's first marriage, who is still alive.

The seven other children from this marriage have all now passed away

so their children and grandchildren

will all be in line to inherit their share.

This tree, you know, at first glance,

looks like a normal maternal, paternal cousin tree.

In actual fact, it's a near kin tree.

What we are dealing with, all the relatives that we have spoken to

and met are half-blood relatives and that obviously takes

precedent over any cousins that may have an interest in this matter.

For Clive and Iris, the news that they're heirs to the estate

of a half-brother they'd never even heard of has come as a shock.

When we got the call today, we were extremely surprised.

Unbelievable, really, you know.

And sad, in a way, because you only hear about these things

when somebody else has sadly passed away.

I've often thought about them and wonder what happened to them but...

Yeah, but it's nice to know that we've got some more members of the

family and at some point, of course, it would be nice to meet them.

A few weeks later

and Gareth's work on the case has drawn to a close.

We have managed to locate every heir and that is always, you know,

the most important part of the case.

And the value has now been revealed to be approximately £19,000.

Not as much as we hoped but we have located all the heirs

and the research, in the end, was relatively simple so I think,

all in all, quite a good result.

But there is one outstanding piece of the puzzle

that is still troubling Gareth.

One of the big questions in my mind now is, you know,

the deceased father was a magician.

Was he named after Harry Houdini?

Was Harry Hooper named after Houdini?

If you would like advice

about building a family tree or making a will, go to

bbc.co.uk/heirhunters.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd