Walker/Naylor Heir Hunters

Each year, thousands of people die

with no known family and without leaving a will.

I don't think anybody knew David.

If no relatives come forward, their money will go

to the government and that's where the Heir Hunters step in.

I'll have a look for William James.

They're experts in tracing long-lost family members

who are entitled to a share of an estate.

If there was a sister, try to get her name.

Their work involves detailed research

and there is often thousands of pounds at stake.

It's urgent, because we've got to beat the competition.

You know, there will be lots of companies looking at this case.

But it's also about reuniting families

and bringing people closer together.

I was racking my brains, trying to think, "Well, who could this possibly be?"

Above all, it's about giving people the news of an unexpected windfall.

I was shocked. This is one of these things you hear about,

but you never think you're going to be in line for ever receiving

money from somebody perhaps that you've never heard of.

Could the Heir Hunters be knocking at your door?

Coming up, research into one case

uncovers the most challenging of names.

When you're hit with a surname like Smith,

it's one of your worst nightmares.

And the Heir Hunters take a huge gamble.

You can only speculate so much.

You need the certificates to prove it.

-We need that marriage, don't be?

-We need that marriage badly.

Plus how you could be entitled to inherit unclaimed estates

held by the Treasury.

Could a fortune be heading your way?

Monday morning in central London

and the team at Heir Hunting firm Fraser & Fraser

are hard at work on a new case that's just come in.

-Do want a new job?

-OK.

This chap died last week.

David Walker.

Owns his property, has other assets,

quite a valuable estate.

In fact, the team estimate this case could be worth over £100,000.

So it's now their number-one priority.

All we do know at the moment is the deceased name

and his mother's maiden name.

David Walker passed away in May 2013, in Newcastle.

He was 69 years old.

Neighbour Albert Bendin knew him for over 40 years.

He kept himself very much to himself.

You might not see him for months upon a time, you know,

and I knew him from being a younger man, not a boy,

a younger man, because he lived here, I think, 60-odd years.

Although there were neighbours, they had very separate lives.

Once or twice when I walked past, he would have said,

"Well, how are you? And how's things?"

He wasn't harmful to anybody that I knew, you know,

he would respond by "good day" or "good morning",

but outside of that,

I don't think anybody knew David,

you know, other than his mother.

David lived all his life in the family home with his mother Edna

until her death in 2002.

When his mother died, he didn't withdraw,

but he didn't expand his life as a bachelor

living in that house on his own.

With no will and no known next of kin,

the team have been given the task of tracing David's heirs.

We need to move on this really quickly,

so I'm going to try to find next of kin as quickly as possible,

just in case they want to become involved in the arrangement

of the deceased's funeral and, of course, would like to attend.

A lot of the company's work comes from cases

that are advertised by the Treasury solicitors Bona Vacantia department,

but they also get cases referred to them by other sources too.

We pick up a huge number of private referrals.

They come from members of the public or councils or neighbours

or someone who just happens to know about someone

who's passed away and know about us.

Although the case has been referred to the team, it may have also

been given to any one of their rival heir-hunting firms.

And so, they're going to have to work fast

to make sure they stay ahead.

But the people who've referred the case to the team are going

to give them what could be some vital information.

They're going to fax me through a family tree

that they found in his possession, um...

which suggests that he was a bachelor only child,

mother's maiden name Turner. She didn't have all the details there,

-but she's going to fax it through.

-OK.

-Could you start the initial research?

To receive a ready-made family tree is almost unheard of.

Potentially, having all the information they need in front of them

gives the team a huge head start,

although they will have to verify the information

that they've been given.

They've already been told that David's mother's maiden name

was Turner, and it's not good news.

The problem is with a Walker on one side and a Turner on the other,

both fairly common surnames, it's so likely that you're going to find

a lot of Walker-Turner births in Newcastle,

so it's identifying the correct one.

They waste no time in starting the research

and confirming the information they've been given.

We look for a speculative marriage for the parents of the deceased,

which now proves to be right because the mother is Edna,

because she's actually shown on the electoral register

residing with her son, the deceased.

All ties in, really, the deceased is a bachelor and an only child

and there he is sharing with his mother on the electoral register.

David Walker was born in August 1943

to Thomas Henry Walker

and Edna May Turner.

Confirmation that the deceased is definitely an only child.

Again, that confirms the information Accounts has given me,

which means now the heirs have to come via the father's

or mother's family, so they can only be, probably,

first cousins or their descendants' cousins once removed.

They have to widen their search,

but will the ready-made family tree solve the case for them?

-Um... I'll go up and see if that fax has come in.

-All right.

This could be the easiest case that Dave's ever had to solve,

but only if the family tree is accurate.

OK, let's start with our man.

All they need to do is look for any possible

aunts and uncles or their living descendants.

The family tree shows the deceased here

and relates to his mother's family and going back in time.

None of this is relevant to us,

because it's too distant for purposes related to an intestacy.

Great for a family tree, but no good to us.

It's disappointing news for Dave,

as under English and Welsh intestacy laws,

you can only inherit if you're descended

from the deceased's grandparents.

So Dave turns his attention to the one part of the tree

that is helpful.

The mother...

is shown on this tree to have one sibling.

There is no indication that they have descendants, so this kind of gives

you an indication that there's probably no-one entitled

on the maternal family.

The tree may not have given Dave the head start he was hoping for,

but he is focusing on the positives.

It kind of...works both ways.

If there was a family tree and it had all the heirs on it,

they'd all know about it and wouldn't need us.

Great piece of work by someone.

It's just no use to us.

The team do have to double-check

that the information they've been given is correct,

but, in the meantime, they turn their attention

to David's father, Thomas Henry Walker.

At the moment, he's a mystery

and with such a common name,

will the team be able to identify the right one?

What? Sorry, go back to that list.

These are the only three Newcastle deaths.

He was born before that, so that can't be one.

18... No, it could be...

The team are finding various records for Thomas Walkers.

However, it's knowing which is the right one

that is proving to be difficult.

Let me question mark that.

All we're trying to do is find the right death for the father.

By finding the right death, we'll be able to find the right birth

without the need of, initially, having the marriage certificate.

We desperately need this certificate, the marriage of the parents.

The marriage certificate would give not only Thomas' age,

allowing them to find the right birth record,

but hopefully, his father's name too.

Until they can get their hands on the certificate,

they look at all the Thomas Henry Walkers born around the right time.

And Noel wants to cover all bases and widen the search.

Make sure that there's not another birth of a plain Thomas Walker

by 1908 or 1909 in Newcastle.

If there isn't, Dave...

-I'll tell you what. Here's my wallet, I bet there is.

-Do you reckon?

DAVE CHUCKLES

Not surprisingly, Dave wins his bet

but with so little information to go on,

the team can only rely on guesswork for so long.

-We need the certificates to prove it.

-We need that manage, don't we?

We need that marriage badly.

Although they're struggling with the paternal family,

Noel has been able to confirm Dave's suspicions about the maternal side.

With regards to the mother's side of the family,

there isn't going to be any beneficiaries at all.

She had one... The mother had one brother who died without any

issue, so that is completely dead.

With confirmation that there are no maternal heirs,

all hopes rest with the paternal family

and the race to beat the competition is on.

-Right.

-No one said this job would be easy.

For heir hunters, an unusual name is a great place to start.

However, they never know where it is going to lead.

In 2012, genealogy firm Finders were faced

with what they hoped to be a straightforward case

of Marson Frank Naylor.

Based in London, the company is one of the largest probate research firms in the UK

and for managing director Daniel Curran, it's a rewarding business.

There is a big plus on some cases

where you find people that have a life changing experience,

whether that's through the money they inherit or through the family

they get to know about that they never knew about before.

When the firm got to work tracing heirs

to Marson Frank Naylor's £230,000 estate,

it was up to case manager Ryan Gregory to lead the team.

The case of Marson Frank Naylor

first came to our attention in June 2012.

We found out it was with the Treasury Solicitor's office

and we began work on it.

Marson Frank Naylor died on 12 March 2012

in Chesham, a picturesque market town in the Chiltern Hills.

To his friends he was known as Frank

and neighbour William Phillips remembers him fondly.

I moved in 27 years ago.

When we moved in, Frank was already there with his mother, Mary.

He was a quiet man. Very quiet. A gentleman.

He dressed quite nicely.

Always very polite and especially to the young ladies,

and old ladies as well.

He always wore a hat and if you ever came round,

he would always take his hat off...

You know, which is an old-fashioned thing that nobody does these days, you know.

He was a very pleasant gentleman.

Yes, he was. A very nice man.

You couldn't fault him, really.

With very little information to go on,

Ryan started the search for Marson's heirs.

When we started working on the case,

literally all we had was the deceased's name

and a postcode for where he lived.

They quickly established that Marson lived with his mother, Mary,

until her death in 1991,

and that he continued to live in the family home,

which was valued in the region of £200,000.

We found out the deceased owned their property.

We knew we had to put everything into it

in the office to get things moving as quickly as possible.

There's always the possibility that other heir hunting firms

are on the case as well.

The race was on to track the rightful heirs before the competition.

Heir hunters work on commission, earning money by taking a percentage

of the estate which is agreed with any heirs they find.

If a rival firm signs up the heirs first,

Ryan and the team won't make a single penny.

Because the case was apparently of quite high-value,

we had a few different people working on the case.

One person's job was to try and find out whether Marson

was married during his lifetime and whether he had any children.

Because the name Marson is very uncommon,

it was quite quick for us to verify that Marson never actually married

during his lifetime and so it was unlikely that he had any children.

With no children, the team then had to look to siblings

or nieces and nephews, as they would be next in line to inherit.

From his birth certificate,

they knew that Marson's parents were Frank and Mary Ann Naylor.

Frank was born in 1897, making him 17 at the outbreak of World War I.

He signed up and served for a time

before transferring to the Machine Gun Corps.

It was a front-line fighting force

that served in all the main theatres of war.

They soon became known for great heroism

but also a high casualty rate,

earning them the nickname The Suicide Club.

There is no doubt that Frank

would have seen some of the most brutal horrors of the war.

But he was one of the lucky ones who, against the odds,

survived and returned to the UK.

In 1936 he married Mary, whose maiden name was the name

that heir hunters dread the most - Smith.

It's the most common surname in the UK,

belonging to over half a million people.

As soon as we knew Marson's mother's maiden name was Smith,

we then had to do a search

to try and find out whether he had any siblings.

We had to do a Smith birth search, which is quite a huge feat.

With such a prevalent name, the search had to be narrowed down.

Now we know that Marson was born in the Marylebone area

so we really have to focus our search quite close to Marylebone

and the surrounding areas

and that was where we found Marson's sister, Teresa.

Marson and his older sister lived a short distance from each other.

They remained close all their lives and sadly,

she died just two years before him.

We were able to obtain a copy of Teresa's death certificate

quite quickly after finding out that she had passed away.

From the death certificate we were also able to ascertain that

Marson was actually the informant, which,

one, showed us it was unlikely Teresa had any children of her own

but two, it showed they had a connection when she passed away.

And actually, she probably was one of his last known close living relatives.

Further research confirms that although Teresa married,

she didn't have children.

So with no living siblings or nieces and nephews,

the search for Marson's heirs had to extend to the wider family.

Marson's mother Mary was born to Anthony Smith

and Louisa Bryars in 1904.

The team had to try to find Mary's siblings.

Although the maternal grandmother's surname was Bryars,

there were still a lot of certificates that would have

to be ordered in order to establish who was born after 1911.

Bryars is a relatively uncommon name but once you combine it with Smith,

you are more likely to find births from other families

and potentially waste time following the wrong lead.

But the team had a trick up their sleeve - the census.

The most recent one that researchers have access to was recorded in 1911.

It takes a snapshot of a household on one day every 10 years.

It's an invaluable resource for researchers as it shows

the person's name, age, occupation

and relation to others in the household.

If Ryan could find Mary and her parents on the census,

it could shed some light on how many siblings she had

and narrow down the search.

There were six children listed on the 1911 census

and after carrying out the birth search,

we identified a further four children

who would be brothers and sisters of Mary Ann Smith.

The other four children were found by meticulously

searching through birth records.

Mary was one of the six listed on the census

but it gave the team more information than that.

As well as finding out how many brothers and sisters

Mary Ann Smith may have had, we also found out her father,

Anthony Smith, was actually a chimney sweep.

Chimney sweeps have always been terribly proud of their trade

because their tradition goes way back and people were always very

cheerful around sweeps, for some reason or other.

It has this sort of aura.

Anthony was working in London during the early 1900s.

Not only would he have had unrivalled views

of the city's rooftops but an insight into all types of society.

Depending on his client,

there would have been a huge range of different types of chimneys.

I mean, no chimney...

There is no chimney that is exactly the same as any other chimney.

He might have gone, say, to the Bank of England,

and spent maybe a whole week doing all their chimneys.

Or he might have gone to just a small terraced house

and done one or two chimneys.

This is a very early photograph of a chimney sweep

around about the same time as Anthony.

And Anthony could have had a handcart

or he might even have had a horse and cart.

And he had his own premises.

Of course, there weren't any health hazards for Anthony

at the beginning of the 20th century.

Not like there were in the Victorian era.

50 years prior to Anthony working as a chimney sweep,

it was a very different job.

Children were used as human brushes, if you like, for about 250 years.

Unfortunately, flues didn't go straight up, not all flues,

they twisted and turned, and you needed somebody

to crawl around inside and to remove the soot with their bodies.

For the children it could be an extremely dangerous job.

The hazards weren't so much breathing in soot

but actually getting stuck in the flues...

..and caught in sort of bends and corners

and being trapped and not being able to get out.

This might sound terrible but in Victorian times,

it was quite a good trade to be in, really,

compared to children who were down the mines or in the cotton mills,

because the apprentice sweeps would be finished by lunchtime.

Chimney sweeps have a lot of folklore written around them

and are apparently good luck.

Although nobody knows exactly why a chimney sweep is thought to be lucky,

probably one of my favourite theories is that at the time of George II,

apparently he was riding his horse through the park

and his horse stumbled and a chimney sweep sort of grabbed the reins

and saved him and ever since then,

it has been decided that the luck of the sweep had saved the King.

But there are all sorts of weird and wonderful theories.

Nobody really knows.

It seems some of that luck had rubbed off on Ryan

and the team - they had already found nine entitled aunts

and uncles on the maternal tree and ten on the paternal side.

But there were still plenty of heirs to find

and team were in for a big surprise.

I've been doing the job about ten years

and I've probably had it about twice so it's still quite rare.

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 remain unsolved.

There are actually two Bona Vacantia unclaimed estates lists.

There is one list which is our current list of advertised estates.

That's updated daily.

There is also an historic unclaimed list,

cases that have been referred to us between 1997 and 2013

which have been dealt with by the Treasury's solicitor

but we are still looking for kin to come forward and claim.

Today we are focusing on two cases that are yet to be solved by the heir hunters.

Could you be the beneficiary they are looking for?

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

First the case of Ivy Mary Barnes.

She was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in January 1921.

Ivy was a widow.

She moved to England and went on to marry in 1956.

Her maiden name was Crossman.

When Ivy died on 23 January 2002 in Willesden, London,

she didn't leave a will

and no relatives have come forward to claim her estate.

Did you know Ivy?

Do you have information that could be the key to cracking this case?

Next is the case of widow Alexandra Cameron Wysocki

who was born in July 1920 in Glasgow.

She died on 2nd March 2001 in Highgate, London,

and she was also known by the name Sandra.

The name Wysocki originates from Poland

and means one who came from or lived near "wysock",

meaning high or elevated land.

Could this name be the key to unlocking Alexandra's past?

Did you know her?

Both these cases remain unsolved and if no one comes forward,

their money will go to the government.

The public can get in touch with us in writing,

either by e-mail or by post or on the phone.

And that's how we will get in touch with them as well.

Did you know Ivy Mary Barnes or Alexandra Cameron Wysocki?

Perhaps you hold the information that can solve these cases

or maybe you are the next of kin.

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

Heir hunting firm Finders were on the trail of the £230,000 estate

of Marson Frank Naylor, who died in 2012 in Chesham, Buckinghamshire.

Neighbour William Phillips lived next door to Marson for 27 years,

although it wasn't until a chance meeting that they became friends.

He went to the Royal British Legion,

and that's where I met him.

And it was probably five years after I moved in that I realised

he was a member of the Royal British Legion.

Other than that I was...

I didn't know the man, really.

And then I got to know him better.

He liked to play snooker. I am an awful snooker player.

I mean, I am the worst snooker player you've ever met

and Frank used to say, "You're no dang good as a partner.

"I can't have a partner like you for long!"

I used to say, "That's all right, Frank. You play with somebody else."

Marson was a regular figure at his Royal British Legion club

and a supporter of the organisation

that was set up for ex-servicemen like his father

who had returned from fighting in the war.

The Royal British Legion is a welfare...

service welfare organisation.

It started in 1921 as predominantly a club based organisation

so that soldiers who came back from the First World War

who had seen images that no one in England would possibly understand

could congregate together, find comradeship

and begin to go through what is recognised now

as that sort of counselling process to bring them back into normality.

The Legion began with some support from fairly wealthy benefactors

together with a lot of the welfare support in local communities,

where local neighbourhoods would look after each other.

Because communities were much more isolated in those days,

long before the Internet and telephone.

At its peak, the Legion had more than one million members

providing invaluable support to the men who had served in the war.

I think probably, between the two World Wars,

the Royal British Legion was one of those focal points for the community,

without which the communities themselves may not have existed.

Between the wars they were hugely important,

particularly bearing in mind the experiences that the adult males,

predominantly, had been through in the previous decade.

Although it was a place where ex-servicemen could find help,

it also offered them other activities.

They were able to play dominoes, darts and just generally congregate

as they would anywhere else but in this particular instance,

congregate with people with shared experience.

They are still going strong today and continue to offer support.

The membership of the Legion was set up specifically for ex-servicemen.

As time progressed, it became servicemen, ex-servicemen

and affiliate memberships for their friends who lived in the local towns.

In the office, Ryan and the team were making progress

on tracking down Marson's beneficiaries.

They had established that any possible heirs to this estate

would be descended from siblings of his mother Mary or father Frank.

In total they had found 19 entitled aunts and uncles

so there was a lot of work to do.

But the team's research was about to uncover an unusual revelation.

What we actually discovered was that Mary Ann Smith's sister,

Annie Smith, was born in 1910.

She actually married her sister's brother-in-law, Leonard Naylor.

So there is a crossover between the Naylor side of the family

and the Smith side of the family.

Which meant that Marson's maternal aunt Annie

married his paternal uncle, Leonard.

So any children born from that marriage would be Marson's cousins,

who were blood related through not only their mother

but their father, too.

Any potential heirs on that stem would be in for a shock.

Effectively means they would be receiving double the amount of money

that they would have than if they appeared on just one side.

The crossover between the maternal and paternal families

does happen occasionally.

I've been doing the job about ten years and I've probably had

it about twice so it's still quite rare but it does happen.

The team were making headway

but they still had to track down Mary's other eight siblings.

They discovered that four died without leaving living descendants.

The remaining siblings did go on to marry and have children.

One of which was Louisa.

Both Louisa and her son George have passed away,

meaning that her grandson Stephen

is entitled to a share of Marson's estate.

Stephen is Marson's cousin once removed

and was more than surprised to hear from Ryan,

especially as he got the call when attending a very special occasion.

The first time I heard the name Marson Naylor

was when I was at my daughter's wedding.

He explained what the situation was

and I was up for receiving some money!

I was shocked.

Because it's one of these things you sort of hear about

but you never think you are going to be in line for ever receiving

some money from somebody, perhaps, that you've never heard of.

So I feel very lucky, but I think anybody would.

It turned out Stephen would be one of the many heirs

Ryan had to contact as the case quickly spiralled

into one of the largest he has dealt with.

As there was almost 60 beneficiaries in this case,

obviously it's a very large family tree

and very rare to have a case with so many beneficiaries.

So we were very fortunate we managed to find everybody entitled.

Although the inheritance is being shared by so many heirs,

becoming a beneficiary came just at the right time for Stephen.

I had already booked a holiday to go to Sri Lanka

for my partner's 60th birthday so of course, that paid for that.

It was very nice and almost the exact amount as well

so that was very good.

Considering the difficulties the team faced,

Ryan is counting his blessings.

In this case we had a couple of main challenges.

One of those was coming across potential competition in the case.

We were lucky in this instance we were able to get to all

the beneficiaries before any other competition did.

And there were the other complexity which was the Smith surname,

which no genealogist particularly wants to come up against.

So when you have a Smith family and you find beneficiaries on it,

there is also a sense of achievement

that you have managed to take it through to its conclusion.

Back in central London the team led by case manager David Slee

are busy tracking down heirs to David Walker's £100,000 estate.

David Walker died in May 2013.

He lived all his life in the family home in Newcastle.

Since starting the case they have discovered there are no

maternal heirs so all hope rests with his father's family.

Noel has been searching through various records,

trying to find any that relate to Thomas Henry Walker, David's father,

and he has a hunch that one he has found might be right.

I think we've got the birth of the father of the deceased

in 1904 in Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne.

He is the son of Thomas Henry Walker and Alice Henderson.

At the time of David's birth,

Thomas Walker was working as a pharmaceutical chemist,

and doing so during a remarkable period in the development of medicine.

Thomas Walker would have been

working as a pharmacist during the beginning

of the therapeutic revolution

that began just after the Second World War.

Pre-war, Germany were the biggest pharmaceutical manufacturer.

I think they...

About 39% of all exports were from Germany in 1938

compared to 12% in England.

So when the war broke out, a lot of medicines were cut off.

There was a lot of work to do so the Allies joined forces.

In the post-war period, the Allies, America and Britain in particular,

worked together to develop new medicines and pool resources

in terms of money and scientific expertise

to get research teams working together.

That led to a massive surge in the development of new,

effective treatments.

It was a time of innovation and some of the most important

medical sciences in history were developed.

Penicillin was one of the things that was developed in 1939.

As the first antibiotic, that played an important role

in treating war wounds and things like that,

to stop them being infected.

Health was clearly very important to the government in the post-war

period and the National Health Service was set up in 1948

so there was a big push to protect the nation's health.

Thomas would have been directly involved

in dispensing these new medicines to the public.

The 1868 Pharmacy Act meant that all people dispensing medicines

had to register with the society,

just so they are accountable

and we knew who was responsible in these kind of roles.

Thomas Walker qualified in 1932 as a chemist and druggist

and he seems to have just registered under his home address

so unfortunately we haven't managed to find out where he worked.

And he stays at that address pretty much his whole career in Newcastle.

Although a lot of formation about Thomas's work is available,

the team are finding the search for his family more difficult.

They believe they know when Thomas was born

and who his parents are but they can't find any record of siblings.

If David had no aunts or uncles,

there is no one in line to inherit

and his estate will go to the government.

But the team don't give up.

At the minute I'm trying to find him

and his family on the census.

Hopefully we'll open up the paternal side of the family.

With all avenues exhausted, Noel hopes he's had a breakthrough.

We have found a 1911 census with him and his mother

on the 1911 census with his half-brothers and sisters,

which suggested to us that Mum had been married before.

The team hope they've found the right family.

They believe Thomas's mother, Alice Henderson,

was married before meeting his father.

She married an Alfred Armstrong and had six children.

They and their descendants could be entitled

to a share of David's estate.

With no documented proof they are running with the assumption

they have found the right Thomas Walker

and start looking into the children.

-Why don't you top line on the births?

-Whack them in.

-Whack them all in.

-I've got them all apart from her.

-1901, she's still a widow.

1902 she marries him.

They're the only surviving children - Joan, Herbert, Mamie and Alfred.

-Mamie...

-Is this Mamie... She's Mamie on both, isn't she?

-Yeah.

Mamie Armstrong is one of Alice's six children

from her first marriage, making her and any descendants heirs.

Phone Newcastle.

No one said this job would be easy.

Our priority is, at the minute, to apply for certificate

we will receive back tomorrow morning to confirm

that what we are doing at this moment in time is correct.

And until we get the proof, the paper proof in front of us,

we are still surmising a lot.

The team have placed a priority order

for the marriage certificate online.

However, with a day already spent on the case,

Dave doesn't want to waste any more time.

The certificates should arrive tomorrow afternoon

but without knowing if another company are working the case,

every minute counts.

Dave wants the certificate as soon as possible so he puts a call in.

Hi, Colin. It's David.

Bachelor, only child. The son of a Thomas Henry or Harry Walker.

The team have an army of travelling researchers based all over the UK

whose job out on the road is to make enquiries,

collect documents and crucially, sign up heirs.

Nothing in this job gets the adrenaline going

more than making enquiries.

A large part of my jobs is visiting registry offices

and obtaining certificates for births, deaths and marriages.

Some offices you can go into and you can get a certificate

within half an hour and another one you will go in

and they will want seven days or even 28 days.

One of the company's travelling researchers is in the north-east

and has been sent to collect the certificates.

But for today, that is as much as the team can do.

They have to wait until the morning when, hopefully,

the all-important marriage certificate can be collected.

We will bash this estate tomorrow morning. We need to.

To see what happens on the paternal side.

Even though we can't do anything more today, really,

we won't let it go in the morning.

It will be all hands to the pump again.

The case could be blown wide open

if they have been researching the wrong family.

They need that crucial marriage certificate.

Will all their work pay off?

The following morning, they pick up where they left off.

We've got to try and get this up-to-date. Today would be nice.

They are expecting a result by tomorrow.

Dave finally hears back from the travelling researcher

and is hoping for good news.

All right. I'll leave that with you. Thanks, Colin.

Speak to you later. Bye-bye.

What I've just learnt is the registry office in Newcastle

won't issue any certificates anyway.

So pointless us even having the agent attend the office.

This is a major blow as the team desperately needs

that marriage certificate to prove their research.

But there is still hope because as well as sending a researcher

to try and pick up the certificate in person

they have also ordered copies to be sent in the post

and they should arrive today.

There's not a lot we can do until we get proper proof

but whether or not it's right or wrong is another story.

But the certificates that are actually coming back

this morning will prove whether what the complete picture

of what we are working is right or wrong.

And when the certificates come in an hour later,

Noel and Dave can see if their hunches were right.

-1896...

-13th. Brilliant. Brilliant.

The copy of the marriage of the deceased's parents.

And what's crucial is that one of the witnesses is Mamie Lincoln.

Mamie Lincoln, we know,

is the half-blood sister to the deceased's father.

What's really useful is it ties together the half-blood

and the full blood, as we first suspected.

But we needed confirmation and this is proof beyond all reasonable doubt

we are now on the right family.

With Thomas's half-sister as a witness on the marriage certificate,

the team know that all their work has paid off

and can put together a tree.

Dave can start calling heirs,

knowing finally that they have the right family.

Musician and festival organiser Peter Lincoln

is one of 12 heirs that will inherit a share of David's estate.

Being a half cousin once removed,

he was more than surprised to hear from the team.

It was just weird cos I thought... I was racking my brains...

When I first received the letter I was racking my brains,

trying to think who could this possibly be

and what's it all about and is it real or is it a scam?

So I asked around, asked my brother

and he'd heard of probate researchers

and the work that they do

and he thought it was worth my while to follow it up.

We were both kind of intrigued, you know.

I had never met David Henry Walker myself.

My mother was aware of him and had met him years ago

and as far as I know, she knew his parents

and that's literally all I know about him.

So when it was pointed out a relative of mine had passed away

in Newcastle I was quite shocked - who could this possibly be?

But of course, I didn't even know he existed in the first place.

It's given Peter a chance to reflect on his family.

I found the whole thing fascinating and funnily enough, my dad,

who died in 2007, was really into family history,

so he would have been...he was a really keen genealogist

and he would have been desperate to have got his claws into this!

Peter is still struggling to believe it's happened to him.

The whole idea of somehow suddenly coming in to a shedload of cash

out of the blue, from a relative

that wasn't even a full blood relative

and I've never met just seems kind of seriously unlikely.

However unlikely it may have been,

Dave's counting his blessings

that there are half-blood relatives to be found.

We're very fortunate that the paternal grandmother

had previously married.

Otherwise this would have been an estate with no heirs

and it would have gone to the Crown.