Forrestel/Van Hoeck Heir Hunters

Heir hunters are trained to track down the relatives

of those who've died without leaving a will.

She died 16th April.

Their work involves expert research.

Nothing in this job gets the adrenaline going

like making enquiries.

And it's often a race against time...

Because you're in a competitive basis, there is a time constraint.

..as rival companies are never far away.

And they make their money through commission.

They hand over thousands of pounds to family members

who had no idea they were in line to inherit.

It's all come out of the blue, really.

The whole thing was just so exciting.

I didn't know then what I know now about my own family.

But most of all, they tell people of an unexpected windfall.

So, could the heir hunters be knocking out your door?

Coming up:

The heir hunters discover the world's stage

when they take on an international case.

She was an actress.

It seems that they had something in common that way.

How romantic.

Unravelling the mystery of a man surprises a family member.

I had to read it two or three times because I thought,

"Wow, what is this?"

Plus, could a fortune be heading your way?

How you could be entitled to inherit unclaimed estates

held by the Treasury.

It's Friday morning in the offices of heir hunting firm

Fraser & Fraser.

I've got an enquiry in W9.

Go on, Dave, get out of the way!

The company's highly experienced research team

are working on a number of cases,

many of which have been advertised as unclaimed

by the government's Bona Vacantia division,

part of the Treasury Solicitor's office.

We find that cases are being solved much more quickly these days.

There's a lot more interest in this line of work.

We find that they're using the internet more.

There's much more resources out there.

But this is not the only source of heir hunting cases.

-He's been dead four years by then.

-Dead four years by then.

Work can come from other areas, including solicitor referrals

and tip-offs from neighbours.

But the team also work with other probate research firms

from around the world.

And today, they've been given a case that has come in from the Big Apple.

This is a case called Mary Forrestal who died in Buffalo, New York,

passed to us by American agents,

as she was supposed to be born over here in the UK.

So, therefore there's potential beneficiaries over here,

which we're looking into.

The estate is thought to be worth about 150,000,

which is about £90,000.

-Well, that side of all have to be worked over then.

-Exactly.

David Pacifico is one of the firm's longest-serving case managers,

so kicks off the investigation.

-Shall I take it?

-Yes, please.

-I'll print off the tree then.

-Yep.

Mary was 85 years old when she passed away in a nursing home

in the New York district of Buffalo.

At this stage, the team know very little about her,

or when she moved to the US.

But as she was born in Britain,

the team are going to be searching for UK-based heirs.

Yes, that's the one, yeah. She died 16th of April.

To find out if there are any living relatives in the UK to inherit,

the research team need to build up Mary's family tree.

But as she died in America, they have to follow their laws.

International case manager Simon Mills is also working on this case.

New York intestacy law is quite complicated,

but a simplified version,

if we can't find near kin,

which would be brothers, sisters, children, nieces and nephews,

and we have to go as far out as cousins,

if we find a first cousin, or a closest living generation,

nobody else below that generation would be entitled.

The first step is to trace where Mary was born.

So, we'd be concentrating on the maternal side of the family,

so it's a case of finding the birth,

finding the mother's information from the marriage and her birth,

and working on the maternal side of the family.

Researcher Emily has narrowed down Mary's birthplace to London.

We weren't quite sure.

We weren't even told where the deceased was born,

but we identified the birth in Lambeth in 1928.

From this, Emily hopes to learn who Mary's parents were.

We've worked the maternal side of the family

after identifying the parents' marriage in St Giles in London.

Mary Elizabeth Forrestal was born in July 1928.

She was Winifred Ellen Mayern and Richard Forrestal's second child.

She has a brother.

The deceased and her brother were both born over here.

Emily is off to a good start,

quickly establishing Mary's close family.

But she then hits a stumbling block

while looking for a marriage or a death for Mary's brother, Richard.

Was he still alive? Had he married and had children?

Oh, has HE got it?

So, as Emily tries to unearth some more information

about the brother...

..travelling researcher Bob Barrett is already out on the road.

He's set off from home in the hope there'll be heirs to visit.

His job is visiting, picking up documents,

and signing up heirs.

Nothing in this job gets the adrenaline going more

than talking to people and making enquiries.

While they try to find out what happened to Mary's brother,

the team decide to take a gamble and research the wider family.

-We found the mother on the census, on the 1911 census.

-Good.

-Thank you!

The 1911 census

gives the team an instant snapshot of Mary's immediate family.

They can see that Winifred, the mother of the deceased,

was living with her parents Fred and Elizabeth.

There were also several other siblings of Winifred's

living with her. So, that revealed all of Mary's aunts and uncles.

So, the team have established that in total, Winifred had 10 siblings.

However, four had died as children.

That left six siblings,

whose children would be Mary's first cousins, and potential heirs.

That would all depend on whether her brother was still alive.

All right? Thanks very much. OK, bye.

The team then receive some news from their American partners.

The brother of the deceased, we know has passed away, and never married.

So, therefore we are looking at aunts and uncles of the deceased,

and any children of those aunts and uncles,

so they would be cousins to the deceased.

Mary's brother Richard had died in 1983 in Buffalo, New York.

He had also never married or had children.

So, what took Winifred and her husband Richard stateside?

Richard was from Buffalo, in New York.

There's a passport application for the Richard Forrestal

going from America to England, and he needs to state his purpose.

And on that, he says artist,

and that he's been to places like Australia and South Africa.

And that as well as an artist. So, he's obviously well travelled.

The fact that Mary's father was born in New York may explain

why the family went over there to live,

despite the fact Mary and her brother were born in the UK.

And as Emily continues trawling through records,

it emerges that Mary's mum Winifred, and dad Richard,

may have led a glamorous life.

The father of the deceased

and the mother of the deceased both seem to be quite artistic people.

The father, Richard Forrestal,

he was actually listed on certain shipping records as being an artist,

and his purpose for travel

was to go round to exhibitions and things like that.

Whatever their careers,

the team have now learned from passenger records

that Richard and Winifred moved their young family from Southampton

to New York, and company partner Neil has seen plenty of cases

where families made this epic voyage.

The passage from Southampton to New York is a very common journey.

It's a journey taken by hundreds and thousands of people.

People from all over the world travelled to New York.

The journey, though, was harsh. The journey was very hard.

The conditions were very cramped, very, very small,

and people were confined to their cabin,

or wherever they could make room.

It's a very, very hard journey, lasting a few days.

And then, even when you get to New York, you're then kept

on a ship outside Ellis Island in New York, waiting to be off-loaded.

A new life had begun for the Forrestal family,

and Mary, who was just eight years on at the time of her move,

would spend the rest of her life living on US soil.

But, back in the office, the team are focused on her UK roots.

On this case we discovered that the deceased had four aunts

and uncles, who went on to marry and have children.

So, the whole case now rests on Mary's first cousins.

If she finds out all of them are dead, the heir hunters

won't get their commission, and the work will have been a waste of time.

Because this case originated from New York,

we therefore had to take the nearest relative

as the ones that would be entitled.

In this case, it was first cousins.

And there's some bad news.

So far, it looks as if all of Mary's first cousins have died.

It's giving me a headache, I tell you!

But then, there's a glimmer of hope,

as they can't find any records of death for the three children

of Mary's uncle, Frederick William Mayern.

Are they still alive?

-Are you satisfied?

-I think it looks pretty good.

So, with all hope of finding an heir

resting on the children of Frederick, the pressure is on.

And they can't risk leaving one stone unturned.

We could miss a vital record, a marriage or a death,

because we've only looked one way.

While the Treasury Solicitor publishes a list of new cases

every day, the heir hunters can't always find the vital clues

that lead them to entitled relatives.

These cases remain on the government's unclaimed list

for up to 30 years,

and can provide a very different challenge for the heir hunters.

Any case that is in the Treasury Solicitor's list

is an unsolved case.

It's really part of the process to find stumbling blocks,

but because you're in a competitive process,

you have to be mindful but there's a time constraint.

Like other firms, Celtic Research, run by father and son team

Peter and Hector Birchwood, find the list incredibly useful.

But sometimes there is very little information to kick off the search.

This was the situation in early 2013,

when Hector took on the case of Ronald van Herk.

He had an estate worth about £60,000.

Ronald died on 16th October 2011.

He was 67 years old.

That's all we really had to work on at the time.

We really didn't have very much information at all.

We had a date of death, we had a place of death, and we had his name.

Ronald was a retired postering manager,

and had been living in Battersea, south London, for many years.

And he was a well-loved character around his community.

-He was a big, friendly giant.

-He was, he was.

But if you look at him, you might not necessarily think so.

-You'd have to know him.

-Yeah.

Because first impressions is of someone... You might think

that they were a bit more like a Hell's Angel type.

Yeah, that kind of type coming across.

-But a real, solid look to him.

-Yeah. He was like that, he was.

But he was a very, very nice, talkative person.

-He was tall, a good six foot.

-Yeah, very tall.

-And he was very bulky up here.

-Butch!

-He had a lot of meat up here.

And back then he used to ride a big motorcycle.

Neighbours Susan and Andrea always looked forward to seeing him.

No matter how much he was in his remission going to the hospital,

getting his treatment, for his illness,

he was, "How are you, Ron? "Oh, you know, so-so,

"but we've got to get on with it. Have a good day."

And he'll have that bit of banter with you, that little laugh with you.

And I miss that about him. I miss that.

Andrea will always remember Ronald fondly.

His partner knocked on my door, and said,

"I know you've got your two boys here,"

and he said, "I'm sure Ron would have liked you to take this."

And he stood there and presented us with Ron's computer.

I said, "Thank you, Ron." I've got it until this day now.

Heir Hunter Hector quickly established

Ronald had married in 1983.

But the couple later divorced and there were no children,

so this would be a case of looking for his siblings.

For Hector, the first thing he needed to establish

was when Ronald was born.

We got a date of birth from the death record.

So we know that he's born in 1944.

And we had a date given on that death certificate,

I believe it was 20th January.

But we couldn't really find a birth that matched that information.

So, was the search over before it had even begun?

The team widened their hunt for Ronald van Herk,

but still came up with nothing.

Following that, my initial thought was that he was adopted.

And that was the next step in trying to locate his family.

Hector's hunch paid off.

It transpired Ronald's mother had died during childbirth,

while his father had been killed in the war.

Ronald was adopted by a close friend of his mum, Ethel,

and her husband, Arthur van Herk.

Adoption during the war was common practice,

and once you're adopted, in terms of intestacy laws,

your adopted family become your blood relatives.

Children were just passed around on railway stations, very casually.

In 1939, an act was passed to regulate adoption.

But because the war then started, this was delayed until 1943.

But even after that, children were still passed around quite a lot.

It wasn't really till the late '40s and 1950s

that adoption became much more tightened up.

For Ronald, this meant he was soon in the arms

of his new, loving parents.

I would imagine that Ronald

would have been cared for in the hospital,

and as soon as possible the doctors or nurse

would have just sorted out somebody to take him on,

and if the mother's friend was nearby, and probably visiting,

and offered, she would have been seen as an ideal person.

And they would just hand over the baby

as soon as it was able to leave the hospital.

So, Hector and his team of heir hunters

were now looking into the Van Herk family.

The adoption gave us some information

about the deceased's adoptive father.

Arthur van Herk worked for the RAF.

I think originally he was a cabinet maker.

Once I located their marriage I could see

that he really wasn't a career soldier.

So, that then led me to locate his family in Belgium,

which is where he was from,

and we then located four individual branches

that would be entitled cousin branches of the deceased.

So, after a tricky start to the search,

the hunt had begun to pick up pace, with Hector having found four heirs

on Ronald's paternal side.

However, the maternal side was set to put a spanner in the works.

Her maiden name was Smith, and that's the most common name

in the English language,

the most common surname in the English language.

Hector and his team would have their work cut out

in the search for Ronald's mum's siblings.

Their first task was to establish who Ethel's parents were.

Once I had found Ronald's mother's death,

I could see that she was born in Norfolk,

which then allowed me to locate her birth certificate.

In that birth certificate, I could see that her father

was working as, I believe, a paymaster for the British Army.

It's a very specific role.

It narrowed down the field, and I was able to find a record for him,

a military record, which gave all the places that he served in.

One of the countries George travelled to was Bermuda.

He had joined the Army in Britain in 1861,

and came to Bermuda with the Second Regiment's 2nd Battalion.

Britain had a regiment stationed in Bermuda at all times.

There was always a British regiment stationed in Bermuda

from the American Revolutionary War.

So, when one finished their tour, another one would come.

And some people stayed on afterwards, as it seemed this gentleman did.

It was here in Bermuda that George met his future wife, Louise.

She was the daughter of John Charles Bethley Clarke,

the island's first police superintendent.

You don't get an established police force in Bermuda

until the 1870s.

So, him becoming the first police superintendent at the time,

I'm sure they would have considered very carefully

who they appointed to the post.

There are certain things

that have always been part of a Bermuda childhood.

Swimming off the rocks. There's a lot of volcanic rock.

So, although there are beaches,

they probably wouldn't have been in school,

so they probably would have had a nanny.

Often they would have been local women of African descent.

Louise Clarke and George Smith married in 1895,

and went on to have eight children.

But for heir hunter Hector,

tracking down all these Smiths was proving difficult again.

You may find 10 different John Smiths

whose fathers are Thomas Smith.

There many problems with this is that the name is widespread.

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,

that's cases that have been referred to us between 1997 and 2013,

which have been dealt with by the Treasury Solicitor

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

Today, we're 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 is the case of George William Baker,

who died on 20 August 1989, in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire.

His parents were John Robert Baker and Esther Mary Bruce.

They had George baptised

at Buckden Wesleyan Methodist Church

on 3rd June 1910.

He also had a sister called Dorothy Ann Baker,

who died just before her brother, in December 1988.

Did you know George, and/or any of his relatives?

Are you one of his relatives entitled to a share of his estate?

Next is the case of Ellen Breiden-Bach,

who died aged 98 on 1st September 2009.

She was also known as Ellen Norah-Tilley.

The name Breiden-Bach originates from Germany,

and in Britain, it's in London that the name is most commonly found.

Did you know Ellen, or do you have any information about her family?

She lived all her life in Edmonton, north London,

after being born here on 7th April 1911.

Both George and Ellen's estate remain unclaimed,

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.

Do you have any clues that could help solve

the case of George William Baker, or Ellen Breiden-Bach?

Or maybe you believe you're related.

You could have thousands of pounds coming your way.

At the offices of Fraser & Fraser in London, its mid-afternoon

and the team are searching for heirs of Mary Forrestal

who has left an estate worth around £90,000.

She died 16th April.

But they are grappling with a hunt that has come from America.

-That side will have to be worked over.

-Exactly.

Mary Elizabeth Forrestal was born in the UK,

-but she died in Buffalo, New York.

-There's nothing for her

as a maiden name.

Although not much is known about Mary at this stage,

company boss Neil has managed to talk to some of her friends

in New York.

We think she was living a very happy, very enjoyable life.

A very chatty lady. Loved her gardening,

and was heavily involved in the local church.

But her life could have been very different.

At one time it looked as though she was going to become a nun,

and everyone around her thought she may have really joined the church.

As it happens, she moved into the aviation industry

and she worked there for the whole of her life.

In their search for British beneficiaries

to the estate of Mary Forrestal,

the heir hunters have discovered her father originated from New York,

and was an artist.

As for her mother, Winnie, before she married her American love,

artistic life had led her on exciting trips around the globe.

She was an actress on one of the shipping records.

So it seems that they had something in common that way,

I should imagine.

How romantic.

The team found Winnie on a 1921 shipping record from Liverpool

to Canada, and then on a return trip back home several months later.

Also on the boat were a lot of other actors and actresses,

so was she part of a tour company?

Winnie's career opened the world to her, but embarking on such

an adventure as a young woman must have been a big decision.

Companies or troops of actors travelling abroad,

particularly to North America, as Winnie did to Canada

and then to Seattle, this was not in the least bit unusual.

And at this particular time,

there was a significant increase in the number of companies

who went abroad.

That situation was brought about by the recession, that happened largely

across western Europe, but very keenly in the UK in the early 1920s.

And that recession affected the theatre,

as it did every other area of industry and commerce.

Some producers made a strategic decision to take their shows

to North America in an effort to make additional money,

because those shows could not continue to run in the UK.

Winnie started treading the boards

at the Brixton Theatre in south London

when she was just nine years of age.

Winifred Mayern began her career in 1908.

She started at the Brixton Theatre, which was a music hall,

popular theatre.

Opened in September 1896, the Brixton Theatre and Opera House

put on productions to rival London's West End.

But sadly, it was destroyed by a wartime bomb in 1940.

Performing in a theatre like Brixton Theatre

would have been a great challenge to a young performer.

Remember, these were big theatres.

They would often seat 1,000, 1,500, sometimes 2,000 people.

They were noisy, they were very active.

Audience responded very volubly.

They wouldn't have had the quiet response that you would expect

when you go to a West End theatre today.

One show Winnie appeared in was Oh, You Bull,

a musical produced by Lou Lake.

Richard Forrestal also starred in this show,

so was this the very first time they met?

She married into a theatrical family. Her husband was a variety performer,

we think a reasonably successful one, who worked both in America

and here in the UK. They met when she was quite young.

They married, they lived here in the UK for about 10 years.

They had two children.

And then, they decided to go and live in the United States.

The family may have firmly established themselves in America,

but Emily is on the hunt for British heirs to Mary's estate.

She's already ruled out heirs from her immediate family,

so the hunt is on for aunts and uncles and their children.

What the team have already discovered is two were bachelors,

and three aunts have no surviving children.

But what about the other five?

We've been able to establish that four of them died as children,

so all our efforts will be focused on the brother.

Everything depends on Frederick's stem.

He is the only route to heirs.

But the team have been struggling to find any trace of him.

If they can't find him they won't get to any heirs,

and all their work on this £90,000 case will have been for nothing.

-You said about the Irish connection.

-Well, exactly.

-The dad was Irish.

-How do you know that was the father?

Um...

God, schoolboy error.

Luckily, there's a breakthrough

when Emily searches for alternative spellings of the surname.

Frederick's stem... The reason why we had problems with him

is because he changed the spelling of his surname.

-He went from M-E-Y to M-A-Y.

-OK.

-So, we re-checked everything with A-Y.

-Good.

We found out that one of the heirs on this case had changed

the spelling of his name,

to be M-A-Y-E-R-N rather than M-E-Y-E-R-N.

He was the only member of his family to do so,

so we had an initial bit of trouble finding him.

But we got there eventually.

With the confusion over the name cleared up,

the team are quickly able to establish

that Frederick Mayern married a Florence and had three children,

who will be heirs to Mary's estate.

If they can be found.

-So, you reckon it's just the one stem?

-Yes, just the one stem.

Are they still alive?

Emily thinks she's found something that indicates they are.

-You're sure they are the only children of each stem?

-Yes.

There's nothing else we can do until Bob says otherwise.

Will you print off the tree then?

I can't print of the tree from down here. So you can print off the tree.

We've now discovered that there are possibly three surviving

first cousins, in which case they will be entitled in priority

to any deceased first cousins' descendants.

So we'll now pass it over to one of our travellers, just to make contact.

Time for travelling researcher Bob Barrett to swing into action.

I'm going to see a lady in Eltham today,

who's first cousin of Mary Forrestal.

Hopefully I'll get some family information from the lady.

-Hello, Mrs Powell? Bob Barrett.

-Come in.

-Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Fortunately for Bob, the heir Janet has asked her sister Alma along,

so hopefully Bob will get two heirs signed up in one visit.

Most of our work comes from the UK, people who have died in England.

But every now and again we get a job that crops up

where someone's died abroad, but had relatives from Britain.

This has happened with a cousin of yours.

-I don't know if you'd ever met, had you?

-Yes.

-Going back to when I was 16.

-Really?

-I can still remember it well.

-Just the other day!

-Yeah.

While Bob gets all the paperwork in order,

Alma remembers her father's reason for changing his name.

You were actually right with the Mayern,

Although you weren't, because Mayern was the original family name.

Oh, I see.

But it was changed because it was too German.

-Was it a German family, then?

-Yes.

I've heard one or two cases where people of German origin

have had to change their name because of the war.

-You won't find another one in the phone book.

-Really?

-Yeah.

Mary may have moved over 3,000 miles away,

but she wasn't forgotten by cousins Alma and Janet.

She used to send us lovely presents when we were small.

You know, lovely coats. And Alma got dresses, and different things.

I did used to get some nice stuff.

'And bubble gum. That's what I remember, the bubble gum.

'It was beautiful.'

I can still remember the taste, actually.

It's like a strawberry. You couldn't half blow some bubbles.

I remember the pram that they sent over when I was a baby.

I can still remember being taken to the nursery in it.

A lovely Silver Cross, green.

I used to get some lovely dresses sent by the family over,

because obviously, Dad dying young,

they seemed to take Mum under their wing, you know?

And they sent some beautiful things over.

And we used to get silver dollars, which we still keep.

The cousins to whom she used to send precious gifts

will now get to share in her estate.

It's all come out of the blue, really.

It's not something that you wish on anybody,

when it comes, you think, well, we didn't know

whether you was being pulled when we got the phone call, you know?

-Bye-bye, now.

-Bye-bye.

It's the end of the day,

and a worthwhile visit to South London for Bob,

who agreed a fee with the two heirs for securing their inheritance.

As for Janet and Alma, while unexpected, becoming an heir

does have its advantages, and has brought back fond memories of Mary.

A nice interview. I managed to catch two heirs at once,

and a charming couple of ladies.

So, it was very nice of them to both be there.

I hope at the end of the day it all works out worthwhile for them.

Bob puts in a call with the good news to the team.

-They've both signed agreements with us.

-'They've both signed?'

-They have.

-'Excellent, well done.'

For Bob, his job is done. Well, for today, anyway.

And the team have also signed Frederick's son,

which means they've found all three British heirs to Mary's estate.

Done. Take that away from me.

Mary's father was American,

so the US agents are researching

the paternal side of the tree in the hope of finding heirs.

Research on this case has been fantastic. There's a great result.

We've identified the only three heirs we believe exist.

They are all on the maternal side,

the side we've been concentrating on, so that's really good news.

Heir hunter Hector Birchwood

and the team from Celtic Research

were hard at work on the case of Ronald van Herk.

Having traced four heirs in Belgium, they were now

on the hunt for Ronald's maternal side of the family, the Smiths.

It was really only through a stroke of luck that we managed

to locate her father's military record.

Ronald died from cancer in 2011

at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London.

His mother had died in childbirth,

and his father was killed during the war, so he'd been adopted

as a baby by his mum's best friend Ethel and her husband,

Arthur van Herk.

Hector had managed to trace Arthur's side of the family to Belgium.

However, it had been a bit trickier tracking down the maternal side

due to the common surname of Smith.

Eventually, the heir hunters discovered Ethel

was one of eight children, born to George and Louise Smith.

Out of Ethel's seven siblings, only two had children.

Her sister Doris had one child, while Madeleine Mary Smith had four.

We knew how many children we had to look for.

And so we really tried to narrow the field down,

to the ones who had the most unusual names.

Madeleine Mary was a relatively less common name,

even with a surname like Smith.

And eventually, that led us to her granddaughter,

who was also named Madeleine.

That helped me locate the family.

Finally, all the hard work put into this case

by the heir hunters had paid off.

Hector and his team had found the three heirs to Ronald's estate,

and it was Madeleine who led him to Kathleen, Ronald's first cousin.

Kathleen now lives in a nursing home,

but has always been fascinated by her family history,

And knew about her grandfather's type in Bermuda.

Do you remember this, Mum?

I think Cedric and Bea must have sent you that from Bermuda.

Cos this is the Louise's father, Mr John Charles Bethley Clarke.

You said that was him there, Mum.

Madeleine has been helping her mum through the inheritance process,

since she received the letter from Hector,

as Kathleen is recovering from an operation.

I had to read it two or three times, because I thought, wow, what is this?

And so I said to Mum, "This is about you

"and your relatives going back to Bermuda, Mum.

"Your grandparents."

She got really excited, because she delved right into the Bermuda

side of things, and met relatives from there as well.

-It's history, isn't it?

-That's just what I said to someone, Mum.

-It's historical.

-It is, it's important.

She said, "Yes, let's reply."

And I think all we had was the back of an envelope, or something,

and a pencil.

And so Mum's in her hospital bed, writing this, "Yes, I am Kathleen

"Louise Perry,"

I said, "Right, I'll send it off and I'll see what happens."

Today, Kathleen has come to see her daughter to go through letters

and rekindle memories.

They look so young!

And the topic soon comes round to Kathleen's mum, Madeleine,

and two aunts, including Ronald's mum Ethel,

who all worked as nurses.

There weren't many jobs for women in 1920, would it be?

Dolly, Ethel and my mother, they all went off to Bart's.

So, they were all there at the same time, really. All nursing.

St Bartholomew Hospital, or Barts, as it's more commonly known,

is the oldest hospital in London, dating back to 1123.

Greta Barnes was a nurse there in the 1950s.

Bart's is the oldest hospital in Britain,

and it's the oldest hospital, it's never closed its doors,

and has always remained open as a hospital.

In the 1920s, life for the Smiths sisters would have been hard.

They'd been working a 56-hour week, getting up at 6.30am in the morning,

on the ward at 7am, and then they'd be serving breakfast,

making beds, getting the patients up and spending a lot of time cleaning.

Cleaning seemed to be the most important part of the work.

And then, after they'd served lunch to patients,

they'd have a very quick lunch themselves for half an hour,

then back on the wards.

And very often that was the time that the consultants

were walking round with the matron,

and every bed had to be made beautifully,

and everything had to be quiet.

After that, it was back to more cleaning,

and the nurses, the Smiths certainly,

would have been preparing tea for the patients between 3pm and 4pm,

then back to bed-making, back to sorting the patients out,

and then at eight o'clock the bell would ring, and the sister

would be saying prayers before the nurses were allowed to go off duty.

St Bart's was an internationally renowned hospital.

I'm not at all surprised to find that the three Smith sisters

chose to go to a hospital like that.

Because it was the feather in the cap to be able

to get into place like Bart's.

All three sisters continued to have very successful nursing careers.

Kathleen followed in her mother's footsteps, becoming a nurse,

and even Madeleine works in the caring profession.

But the family's nursing history isn't the only thing

that comes to light when leafing through the family the memorabilia.

Madeleine has come across a letter

which sets a very different slant on Ronald's adoption,

by his mum's best friend, Ethel.

"Ron, adopted son,

"was the son of a Canadian doctor who was killed in action in Italy,

"and a friend of Essie's," that's Ethel, "who made a baby for Essie."

That's what Mum's put here.

"And who died having Ron."

This sounds to me, then,

that Ethel's friend was having this baby for Ethel.

Ethel couldn't have children of her own.

She desperately wanted a family,

so this friend has had the baby for Ethel.

Whether Ronald was a surrogate or simply adopted,

he was brought up from birth by the Van Herks,

and they became his true family.

I think the case was extremely difficult to solve

on the maternal side of the family.

The paternal side was a little bit more straightforward.

The estate has been divided into six branches,

two on the maternal side, and four on the paternal side.

Of the four maternal heirs, one is in Australia,

and the rest are in the UK.

All of the paternal heirs are in Belgium.

With family dotted all over the world,

photographs and letters are even more treasured.

That's Ethel and Ronnie.

And for Kathleen and Madeleine,

a chance to reflect on long-gone family tales.

I just remember that he was a baby, that Ethel brought...

He could be two there, couldn't he?

And it's all been an emotional process for Kathleen.

They said a long time ago, but I've forgotten.

Apart from anything else, it's been nice to discover

all of the family history,

because we probably wouldn't have looked into it as much.

-TEARFULLY:

-I've always cared about that sort of thing.

I didn't think anybody in my family would want to bother with it...

-Well, there we are.

-..or anything else.

I don't know why I've done it, really.

Finally, it's all coming together.

It's a reward to me that somebody's interested.