Parnell/Gibson Heir Hunters

In the UK, around 30 million adults haven't made a will.

If they die with no known relatives,

their money could go to the Government

and that's where the heir hunters step in.

We've got an awful lot of near kin, but we're not getting any heirs.

They use specially honed research skills to trace long lost relatives.

We know who the deceased is and they don't.

And it's quite a large estate, which is interesting.

They delve into the past and uncover family secrets.

There were meant to be three sets of twins.

-Do you agree or not?

-No.

-No. Two?

-Four.

-Oh, God!

It's a race against time to beat the competition.

We always treat ever case like this, that it will be competitive,

hence researching it as quickly as possible.

And bring news of an unexpected windfall.

Hopefully he'll be proud that it went to his family members.

Could the heir hunters be knocking at your door?

Coming up,

the heir hunters pull out all the stops to track down beneficiaries.

There is a couple of people that we want still to trace.

Shall we just carry on working till nightfall?

And a 12-year search for heirs lifts the lid on an amazing family secret.

"Honorary Major Joseph Napier Tew has been

"dismissed from service by sentence of general court marshal."

Plus, could a fortune be heading your way?

Find out how you could inherit unclaimed estates

held by the Treasury.

Tuesday morning in London,

and at the offices of probate researchers Finders,

they staff are knee-deep in a complicated job.

'We're working on a case today of Alan George Parnell,

'a bachelor who died without issue.'

We're looking at paternal, maternal families,

which both seem to be huge.

Research started a couple of days ago, but it's only today that

boss Daniel Curran and his team have begun to make headway.

PHONE RINGS

Hello. Would you be available for a visit today?

Although the company received this case as a referral

from a firm of solicitors,

they can't be sure they're the only ones looking for heirs.

A case that you think might be privately referred,

it could end up with someone else through some other means,

so we treat everything with the same degree of urgency.

You don't want to take a chance. You never really know for sure.

Alan George Parnell died in November,

2012 at a nursing home in Ashton, Northamptonshire.

He was 87 years old.

Michael Wadsworth was his friend for the last 16 years of his life.

Got to know Alan because he was a regular giver to our church.

I became the treasurer of the church and therefore I visited him

to pick the giving up, not every week, but maybe once a month.

And I got to know him. And I could see that he liked company,

so I started to visit him more often.

Alan had served in the Essex Regiment during World War II

and was badly injured in Normandy during the D-Day landings.

They were bombarded with shells and he received a serious leg wound.

He couldn't walk and he lay in the wood.

And the Germans came, they found him.

And he tells me they looked at him and saw what he was like,

and they thought, "He's not going to be of any use to the allies any more

"in this war."

They patched him up and left him and he lay there overnight.

And the English came along the following day,

and he was taken off to a field station...

where his leg was amputated there.

He was just 19 years old at the time.

It must have been traumatic, but he didn't seem to make a lot of that.

He felt probably that he was glad to be alive.

And decided, I think, probably to make the best of it.

He loved a laugh. He's always got a smile.

I think he was a lonely man in many ways.

He loved to talk to the ladies.

I think he really would have loved to have got married,

but he never did.

Many of the cases that heir hunters deal with involve people who

have completely lost touch with their family,

but Alan Parnell was different.

He'd maintained close contact with a first cousin,

and after Alan died,

he and another relative contacted solicitor Jim Kearns.

They had a will in place,

but on looking at the will it proved to be invalid.

So I quickly established that we had a intestacy on our hands,

and so advised them that they

needed to establish who all the beneficiaries would be.

In the will, Alan had left his whole estate to his brother Maurice,

but as he had died two years previously, the money would

now have to be divided up amongst Alan's closes living relatives.

There was just one small snag.

The cousins had no idea how many other relatives Alan had.

They were able to tell me a lot about the family,

but they had very little knowledge of the paternal side...

of the case.

So there was going to need to be a lot of research

to be done to establish who they are.

We really don't have the resources to find all the family members,

and there's a lot of research involved in order to trace them.

Jim immediately realised it was a case for the heir hunters

and passed the information on.

Now in the office,

the search for Alan's missing heirs is in full swing.

We got hold of a copy of the deceased's birth certificate,

and on it, it lists his parents as George William Parnell

and Annie Parnell, formerly Nourish.

Finding the deceased's birth certificate is usually

the first step in the hunt for heirs.

Armed with the names of the mother and father, the team can establish

whether they had any more children

who could be heirs to the estate.

The team do already know there is

at least one younger sibling,

a brother called Maurice,

who died before Alan,

leaving him most of his money.

Effectively, the deceased inherited his brother's estate,

and the combined estates form part of the deceased's sole estate

and that's the one we're working on now.

The money from his younger brother means Alan's estate is all

the more valuable - an estimated £100,000.

As the heir hunters work on commission for a percentage

of the estate, it's a case well worth working.

We want to make sure that we do a good job and do it thoroughly.

Having established that Alan never married nor had children,

and that his parents and brother died before him,

the heir hunters are now looking for any aunts or uncles whose

descendants could be in line to inherit.

We know there are a couple of maternal cousins alive,

or believed to be cousins. We have to verify that.

By studying birth and marriage certificates,

Danny and the team have discovered that Alan's paternal

grandparents were called Edward Parnell and Sarah Fish.

They had 14 children, 5 of whom died as infants,

leaving Alan's father George with eight brothers and sisters.

Only one had no children, which means the team now has to

track down the descendants of seven of Alan's aunts and uncles.

PHONE RINGS

This is another uncle,

so we've just got to see if there's any issue to this marriage.

It's clear the heir hunters have their work cut out.

A huge family means a huge amount of research work,

and the team will be keen to start finding

and contacting beneficiaries as soon as possible.

Have a quick look at that.

There is a couple of people that we want still to trace.

Shall we just carry on working till nightfall?

But could the next phone call crack the case?

Hello. Is that Jill?

Hi, it's Daniel Curran here.

Thanks... You're on the way to your holiday, are you? OK.

Well, what it is, is we're just finishing off tracing

a number of beneficiaries to the estate of Alan Parnell.

Danny has made contact with a woman he believes is

the granddaughter of one of Alan's paternal uncles.

One of the deceased's paternal uncles was Frank Alfred Parnell,

who was born in 1892 and died in 1964.

He had three children.

So Frank Alfred Junior, a first cousin to the deceased,

had four daughters.

And the lady that we're now going to see, Jill, is traced.

Jill, the daughter of Alan's first cousin Frank,

has agreed to meet the heir hunters to discuss the matter further,

so Danny calls in one of the company's travelling researchers.

The travelling researchers are a vital cog in the heir hunting wheel.

They work on the road, collecting documents, talking to neighbours

and, crucially, meeting and signing up heirs.

Jill, the potential heir to Alan's estate, lives in Great Yarmouth.

But today she happens to be on holiday in Berkshire,

so Stuart is dispatched to track her down.

I've spoken to the lady, who is making her way down here.

But we're trying to get in very quickly to see her

and have the contracts signed.

We're trying to short cut things by seeing her in her hotel rather

than wait, and that's what we aim to do.

Hello, is that Jill?

Oh, how long do you have to go, do you think?

Oh, brilliant!

Take it easy. See you in a minute.

OK, bye.

Could Stuart have the team's first heir in his sight?

-Stuart. Nice to meet you.

-Hello.

Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you.

Hopefully, it's worthwhile you coming all this way

because you're a beneficiary.

Did you know about that?

No. Only from the phone call I had this morning.

Well, it's a chap called George Alan Parnell.

He died in November last year.

You said George. Because I've done part of our family tree

and a George just came into it somewhere.

Yeah, so that does sound a bit more familiar.

That's very helpful to us. Well...

it's been described that you are the first cousin, once removed.

After Stuart explains how Alan fits into her family tree,

Jill signs a contract for the heir hunters to work on her behalf

in return for an agreed percentage of any inheritance

which may be coming her way.

It's a great result for the team,

particularly as Jill is an amateur genealogist.

She actually, her hobby, is keeping a family tree,

which is absolutely great.

But there's still a long road to travel before the team's

work on this case is done.

Seems to die as a bachelor. I can't find a marriage for him.

So...a couple of lines that might have died out on that one.

Some cases are tough nuts to crack,

but at heir hunting firm Fraser and Fraser,

boss Neil does not like to admit defeat.

Heir hunting's pretty tricky, pretty hard.

When we initially can't get on to a case, it doesn't mean we've given up.

It's just the start of it, really, for us.

It will be a case which we may not be able to solve for the first week,

maybe the first month.

Sometimes it's considerably longer.

For more than a decade,

the case of a woman called Ellen Gibson had the heir hunters stumped.

We started it in 2000, and it wasn't until 2012

that we broke on to the family and started making headway.

Ellen Gibson died on the 17th of January,

2000 at a nursing home in Worthing, West Sussex.

She was 81 years old.

Her former neighbour Ron Herndon

remembers her as a very private woman.

I can't recollect anyone coming to visit Ellen.

I'm not aware of any friends she had.

No photos of Ellen survive, and all that's really known about her

life is that she'd been badly hurt in an accident.

Ellen fell off a horse and she must have broken her back...

because there's no way she could stand or walk or anything.

Well, it's very tragic. She couldn't have been very old.

For that to happen to someone...

I can't believe how I'd feel about it. It's terrible.

Despite her disability, Ellen continued to live alone

until shortly before her death.

She was looked after regularly by a number of nurses

and people that came,

so she seemed to get by and seemed happy enough.

Ellen's estate was published on the Treasury Solicitor's Bona Vacantia

list of unclaimed estates in 2000.

For veteran case manager David Pacifico,

it was immediately clear that this would be one worth working.

We knew that it was quite a high value estate,

in the region of about £60,000,

so it was worth looking into it.

The original research revealed that Ellen

never married nor had children.

So to find beneficiaries, the team had to look further into her family.

But the research was hampered by the fact

that Ellen had been born abroad.

Ellen was born in India and this was confirmed by the death

certificate, which would show in which country she was born.

To check for her birth or baptism record,

we would have to go to the British Library,

where they have got Indian records there.

After sifting through hundreds of records,

the team finally tracked down a baptism certificate for Ellen.

From the baptismal certificate,

we knew she was born the 31st of December, 1919

at a place called Bangalore,

and was shown to be the daughter of Thomas Moore Gibson and Ellen Gibson.

The next step was to find out if Ellen had any brothers or sisters.

If she did, they or their descendants would be her next of kin

and in line to inherit a share of her estate.

But despite a thorough search of records,

the heir hunters could find no trace of any siblings.

With her being an only child, we'd obviously be looking for aunts

and uncles and descendants of aunts and uncles,

both on her father's side and her mother's side.

As baptism certificates do not give the mother's maiden name,

the team decided to concentrate their efforts on the paternal

side of Ellen's family. In so doing,

they uncovered some fascinating information

about her father's life and death.

Thomas Moore Gibson died on the SS Empire Mermaid

in 1941 during the Second World War.

Thomas Gibson was a second engineer officer in the Merchant Navy.

He worked on cargo ships carrying vital supplies into Britain.

It was a perilous place to be.

As the war progressed, these ships became prime

targets for the enemy in what became known as the Battle of the Atlantic.

The Battle of the Atlantic is probably the longest campaign

the Navy fought at sea.

It's basically defending

the supply lines and getting ships across the Atlantic,

and it's the German's attempt to try and cut that off -

principally with U-boats, but the Luftwaffe also participated.

On the 26th of March, 1941,

the SS Empire Mermaid was on the last leg of her

voyage from the east coast of America to Hull

when she was attacked by a long-range German aircraft.

Being aboard a ship under attack must have been terrifying

because you've got high-pressure steam, fires

running at 300 degrees centigrade, hot coals, the ingress of water...

It... I think it's almost unimaginable.

The ship sank two days later.

23 men lost their lives, among them Thomas Gibson.

His body was never found,

but he was commemorated at a memorial in London, along with

thousands of other merchant seamen who died during the war.

The Merchant Navy was absolutely vital to the war effort.

No Merchant Navy, you don't get supplies to keep civilians alive,

you don't get munitions for the Army and the Navy

and the Air Force to fight with.

It's absolutely vital. You can't underestimate it.

A search of marriage and birth certificates revealed that

Thomas Gibson had two siblings - Andrew and Jessie.

Sadly, Jessie died as a baby.

And although Andrew went on to marry,

he died at the age of 28 leaving no children.

It was bad news for the heir hunters.

It means the paternal line is dead.

With nowhere left to go on Ellen's father's side of the family,

the team had to turn their attention to the maternal side.

They knew that Ellen's mother died in 1961,

but her death certificate did not show her maiden name.

The fact that we knew her name but not her maiden name was very

frustrating because we knew approximately where she was born,

but without the maiden name we couldn't identify the birth.

Without this information, it was impossible to find out

if Ellen had any maternal aunts and uncles

and the heir hunt ground to a halt.

It would be 12 years before it was up and running again.

Heir hunters track down thousands of rightful beneficiaries every year,

but despite their best efforts, not all cases can be cracked.

In fact, there are thousands of estates on the Treasury's

Bona Vacantia list that have so far eluded the heir hunters.

When the Bona Vacantia Division passes money to the Treasury,

it puts the case on its own claim list

and it stays on there for 12 years to be claimed.

If someone makes a valid claim within that period,

then the money is paid back.

Today we're focusing on two cases that are yet to be

solved by the heir hunters.

Could you be the beneficiary they're looking for?

Could you be about to inherit some money from a long lost relative?

First is the case of Tina Kim Barnett,

who died on the 17th of December, 2007 in Isleworth, Middlesex.

Tina was born on 4th July, 1937 and her maiden name was Hill.

She sometimes used the name Lillian Joan Hill.

Despite this information, there has been no success in tracing

heirs to her estate.

Could Tina be a member of your family?

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

Next, do you recognise the name Louise Icilda Carby?

She died on the 11th of May, 2012 in Hampstead, north London.

She was born on the 1st of April, 1925 in Jamaica and never married.

She's thought to have moved to the UK in the 1950s

and worked as a cleaner for British Rail.

Both Tina and Louise's estates remain unclaimed,

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

The money raised by the Bona Vacantia Division is passed

annually to the Treasury and it goes into the consolidated fund

to benefit the country as a whole.

Do you have any clues that could help solve

the cases of Tina Kim Barnett or Louise Icilda Carby?

Could you be a long lost relative?

If so, you could have thousands of pounds coming your way.

At heir hunting firm Finders,

the team is trying to track down beneficiaries

to the £100,000 estate of Alan Parnell.

Are you in touch with any of your cousins who maybe know a bit

more about the family?

So far, they've had some success in tracking down Alan's father's

side of the family.

So, having mapped out most of the paternal family,

I think we're just missing one more person -

a descendant of Edward Nathaniel Parnell.

But now they need to concentrate on the maternal side.

Alan Parnell was born on the 28th of August, 1925.

Throughout his life, he stayed close to Geoff Pearson,

his first cousin on his mother's side.

He was quite a happy man, really.

He had a few jokes here and there, you know.

I used to go and fetch him in the car,

and he used to come over and have an evening together here.

He always liked to come over because I make my own bread

and stuff, you know.

And...we'd have a half of beer and a sandwich,

and we'd have a chat for the evening, you know.

He used to like museums and...

old cars, old airplanes.

And I used to take him out in the car and we used to go round these.

He was a good friend...

and we got on well together.

When Alan died, Geoff and another cousin took a copy of Alan's will

to a local solicitor.

But the will turned out to be invalid, which meant that Alan's

estate would have to be divided up

amongst his closest living relatives.

As a first cousin, Geoff was entitled to inherit,

but he had no idea how many other relatives might also be heirs.

I just knew his father.

I didn't know any of his other relations at all.

The solicitor called in the heir hunters,

who soon realised that the case was far from straightforward.

Arthur seems to die as a bachelor. I can't find a marriage for him.

And I don't think there's going to be a probate.

-OK.

-And that's it.

-And that's it on those two,

so a couple of lines that might have died out on that one.

From marriage and birth certificates,

Danny and the team have been able to establish the names of Alan's

maternal grandparents - George and Elizabeth Nourish.

And the research has thrown up

an interesting fact about George's occupation.

Her father, George Nourish, was a shoe finisher,

which seemed to be a common occupation

in Northamptonshire around that time.

By the end of the 19th century,

shoe making was a booming industry in Northampton,

with 250 factories employing thousands of people.

As the industry grew in Northampton, then people,

particularly from more country areas,

came into Northampton,

increased the population and started to work in shoe making

and then in the shoe factories.

It was a really great opportunity to get employment.

As a shoe finisher,

George Nourish would have been responsible for making sure the

soles and heels were perfect before the shoes were boxed up to be sold.

But it was far from an easy job.

Life would have been quite hard,

and one of the occupational hazards would be

he would be inhaling the gas fumes, which would have been used to heat up

the inks and the waxes that he would have used on the bottom of the shoes.

And there were plenty of other dangers.

The noise caused a lot of nervous problems.

Obviously health and safety rules and regulations mean you

now wear ear protectors,

but obviously back then there was no such thing.

So, they were quite dangerous places to work in.

Wages were not high.

And as the team has discovered that George

and his wife had ten children in total,

it's likely he would have struggled to support his family.

It is a hard job. Wages would have fluctuated.

He could have been paid weekly.

He could have been paid on piece work rates,

so depending on how much he could produce.

And I think it would have been a hard life and a struggle.

Of Alan's mother Annie's nine siblings, at least four went

on to have children, so the heir hunters have their work cut out.

Yeah.

I just need the date of birth.

Danny's discovered that one of the sisters, Jenny,

had two children.

One, Leslie, has now passed away.

But he thinks he may have tracked down his older sister.

We're at the point now where we're just going to ring up

a cousin to the deceased, who is 91.

Someone who's of a good age, hopefully

will have a good memory of the family.

PHONE RINGS

Oh, hello. My name's Daniel Curran.

We're trying to trace some relatives to an estate of someone

that's passed away. Do you remember an Alan Parnell?

It's the right person.

And what's more,

she's a mine of information about Alan's mother's family.

Lovely. Thanks very much for your time. Thank you. Bye-bye.

If I'm as well as her at 91, I'll be very happy.

The cousin was also able to clear up

something that had been puzzling the heir hunters.

She confirmed that her brother had a son.

There's a rumour he had no issue.

As it transpired,

his father married a lady who'd had previously been married,

so in the indexes the birth of their son was recorded using the mother's

maiden name and not the name she married under the second time.

The man in question is Leslie Horne,

Alan's first cousin once removed and a possible heir to his estate.

It's vital the firm reach him before any rival companies.

And, once again, they call in a travelling researcher.

Can you get hold of John Boylan?

So you need to text him

-and just say, "We've got another one for you to go and see."

-OK.

That the details.

Travelling rep John is one of the firm's most experienced researchers.

And it's clear he loves his job.

You get to talk to people from all walks of life,

and their histories are always interesting.

When you're coming with potentially good news,

it's amazing how receptive they usually are to you.

It's quite nice.

After a short drive, John is all set to visit his next potential heir.

This looks like our last call.

The windows are closed, I don't know if there's anybody going to be in.

We'll have a look and see.

John is hoping to confirm that Leslie is indeed a beneficiary

to Alan's estate.

And that he'll agree to let the heir hunters

handle his claim in a return for a percentage of his inheritance.

-Mr Horne?

-That's it.

-John Boylan.

-Nice to meet you.

-I understand you knew I was coming.

-I did, yeah.

John explains to Leslie

that Alan Parnell was his father's first cousin.

Your father is no longer with us.

And therefore you then become in line to potentially receive

a proportion of any inheritance that there may be attributed to him.

The news has come as a surprise to Leslie.

It's a name that really doesn't ring a bell.

I wish it did, because I know most of my family

but that side of it doesn't.

My father passed away when I was 19.

We just lost touch after the wake we had for him and I never saw

his sister and her husband and that side of the family again.

Thanks very much.

-Cheers, bye-bye.

-Bye.

It's been a successful visit.

Danny, please.

-ON PHONE:

-'Yeah, I'll just put you through.'

Thank you.

-'Hi, is that John?'

-Yeah, hi, Danny.

Good result at the end of the day. He has agreed.

I've got all the details, got the contract signed.

'Fantastic you got the full set?'

-Yeah, we have.

-'Well done.'

A few days later, the heir hunters are well on the way

to putting the case of Alan Parnell to bed.

So the estate of Alan George Parnell

was fully resolved with 41 heirs being found.

There was 9 on the maternal side and 32 on the paternal side.

At the end of the day, we do a big family tree,

get all the certificates, documents and proof

and everything together, so it's quite a substantial report.

It all worked out quite well.

It's a very interesting family tree from the heirs' point of view.

They can pass it on to their family in the future and keep a record

of all their various relatives that have been uncovered in this process.

With an estate valued at around £100,000,

some of the heirs will be in for a substantial windfall.

But for Alan's cousin Geoff, whose visit to the solicitors

sparked this whole search, more important than the money

is the chance to remember the good times with his friend and relative.

I do miss the old boy because we had some good times.

He was always just pleased to see you

and talked about anything rather than himself.

That's my memories of Alan, he was a good friend.

Not all cases are solved quickly, but the heir hunters rarely give up.

They periodically revisit estates that have previously eluded them.

And as boss Neil, from probate researchers Fraser and Fraser

has discovered, sometimes a new approach enables them

to crack the case years after it was first advertised.

Ellen Gibson was one of those cases.

It wasn't until we had a second look at it,

12 years after we first started it, that we were able to solve the case.

Ellen Gibson was born in Bangalore, India, in 1919,

but spent her final years in Worthing, West Sussex.

No pictures of Ellen have survived, and Ron Herndon,

her neighbour for many years, says she lived a reclusive life.

I never saw her outside the bungalow.

I never cast eyes on her once in all those years.

When she was younger, Ellen had been disabled in a horse-riding accident

and had to be cared for by nurses in her home.

Ellen was very badly incapacitated.

I can't recollect seeing anyone other than the nurses.

I don't think she had friends or family or anything.

Ellen never married nor her children and had no brothers and sisters.

So the heir hunters were looking for her aunts, uncles and cousins.

Case manager David Pacifico had already established that

Ellen's father's side of the family was a dead-end.

The fact that there's no relatives on the paternal line,

therefore looking only at the maternal line,

it was important to identify full details of the mother's full name.

Without this name,

the team could not track down Ellen's uncles and aunts.

Back in 2000, the original research drew a blank but 12 years later,

the team was determined to leave no stone unturned.

We were looking for the marriage of the parents,

which would confirm what the mother's maiden name was.

And I know we had great difficulty in identifying it.

We did look at one or two Ellen somethings,

because we knew the name was Ellen.

We even researched one particular

Ellen family that ended up in Australia.

We contacted the family

but it subsequently proved that was the wrong family.

It was back to the drawing board.

Finally, after several more weeks of painstaking research,

the team had a breakthrough.

We found the marriage of the parents in Madras in 1919.

Happened to be the same year as the deceased was born.

She was born three months after the date of her parents' marriage.

Subsequently, we then knew what the mother's maiden name was,

then I knew we had a very good chance of identifying the family.

According to her marriage certificate,

Ellen's mother's maiden name was Tew.

Armed with this information, the heir hunters were able to find her

birth certificate, which contained some fascinating

information about her father, Ellen's grandfather.

Our deceased mother Ellen was born in 1892.

Daughter of Joseph Napier Tew and Ellen Tew,

showing his occupation as HH Nizam's Police.

Joseph Napier Tew served as a police officer

in the Indian state of Hyderabad in the late-19th century.

At that time, although much of India was under direct British control,

Hyderabad was one of 600 states governed by a nizam, or prince.

Each princely state

would have had its own ruler.

It would have had its own system of law.

It very often had its own military as well.

But they would have accepted British control of their foreign affairs,

and they also would have agreed to a British resident or British adviser.

In 1884, Asaf Jah VI took over as Nizam.

He really was beloved of his people.

He was really admired and looked up to by the people of Hyderabad.

At the same time, he himself had a fairly lavish lifestyle.

He was one of the richest men of his time.

He had a lot of money at his disposal and he spent it freely.

His favourite things to spend it on were, first of all, clothes,

second of all, jewels, and, third of all, cars.

Indeed, it is said that

a whole wing of his palace was turned over to his wardrobe.

Perhaps aware that his charmed existence depended on the British,

the Nizam was very conspicuous in his loyalty to the Crown.

And Europeans like Joseph Napier Tew

enjoyed a privileged position in the state.

India in the 19th century would have been a highly racialised place.

What that meant is that regardless of his position

within the police, that he would have been treated very well.

We don't know exactly what his kind of living circumstances would

have been or indeed what his salary would have been,

but I think we can gather that he

would have had a pretty privileged place within Hyderabad society.

This new information about Ellen's grandparents

allowed the heir hunters to finally open up this complicated case.

Once we'd identified the grandparents' names, we were able

to identify at least seven siblings of the deceased mother.

One of these siblings was called Gustovas Tew.

In 1903, he married a woman called Blanche Pitt,

and the couple had five children. First cousins to Ellen.

One of the five children died as a minor.

There was another of the children who was married

but died with no children.

One we know is still alive.

The remaining two, Dorothy and Sylvia, died in 2004 and 2009,

but because they were still alive when Ellen died in 2000,

they had what's known as a vested interest.

Something which can complicate the search for beneficiaries.

What this means is we stop following the bloodline.

The beneficiary would have been entitled had they still been alive.

Instead of following their bloodline, we now

follow their line of inheritance, their will, if they've left one.

As it turned out, neither women left a will,

so the heir hunters had to go back to tracing their descendants.

They discovered that while Sylvia died a spinster,

Dorothy did indeed have a family.

Dorothy had two children, one of whom called Robert who I spoke with.

He was pleased that he was one of the correct members of the family.

At last, the team had the breakthrough it had been hoping for.

As Ellen's first cousin once removed,

Robert Dick was an heir to her estate.

And for him, it was a welcome opportunity to find out more

about a side of his family which had always remained a mystery.

The initial reaction was, "Oh, that's interesting."

I didn't know anything about my mother's side of the family,

other than a little bit about her parents.

I had traced my father's side of the family back a couple of generations,

but, you know, I might be able to find out what happened on her side.

So that's what intrigued me.

In particular,

Robert is keen to learn about his family's connection with India.

When my mother's paperwork was passed to me when my father died,

I saw her passport and it said that she was born in Kazipet,

which was a third of the way between Bangalore and Madras.

I thought, "Well, it would be nice to go there sometime."

But I was very interested in the Indian side of the whole operation.

Robert was happy for the heir hunters

to submit his claim on Ellen Gibson's estate,

and agreed that he would pay them a percentage of his inheritance.

Most heir hunters provide a family tree,

and today, boss Neil is visiting Robert to give him the tree

and tell him all about his and Ellen's family history.

Mr Dick knows absolutely nothing about his family history,

or his family background. I think it's going to be fascinating for him.

I'm quite looking forward to giving him some of the information.

For me, it's nice just to be out of the office.

-You must be Neil Fraser.

-Mr Dick, nice to meet you.

-Do come in.

Neil talks Robert through his completed family tree.

In particular, he has some interesting information

about his great grandfather, Joseph Napier Tew.

Before he joined the Nizam of Hyderabad's police force,

it seems he had a successful career in the Army.

So what we were able to find from the London Gazette is some of the

history of your great-grandfather, the grandfather of the deceased.

The first one we have here, published 22nd of January 1875,

"21st Foot, Lieutenant Joseph Napier Tew,

"to be instructor of the musket."

Joseph Napier Tew was promoted quickly through the ranks

and was made an honorary major in 1884.

He's had a 21-year career in the Army, he's made it up to

honorary major, a paymaster, while serving out in India.

You can imagine he had a very nice life.

Which was a little shocking when we found this, the next entry for him.

London Gazette, 12th of February 1886.

Just read out what it says there.

"Paymaster and Honorary Major Joseph Napier Tew

"has been dismissed the service by sentence of General Court-Martial,

"dated first of December 1885."

Joseph was found guilty of the misappropriation of 16,000 rupees.

More than £200,000 in today's money.

This must've been a major embarrassment to the British Army.

Their paymaster, the gentleman in charge of all their finances

and making sure all their officers' pay gets divvied up correctly,

has been found with his hand in his pocket.

All news to me. Brilliant. Fascinating.

I'll have to go to India!

I think you'd love to go to India.

I would love to go to India, yes, I would love to have a look into it.

In total, the heir hunters managed to trace descendants

from three of Ellen Gibson's maternal aunts and uncles,

all of whom will inherit a share of her estate.

But for Robert, the money is less important than

the chance to find out and fill in the gaps in his family history.

I suppose I must be grateful for Ellen dying intestate,

otherwise I would never have found out any of this

and perhaps some good has come of it anyway.

So, yes, it's interesting and I'm grateful to her.