Massey/Barnett Heir Hunters

A quiet suburban street in Wimbledon, South West London,

was home to Nathan Barnett.

When the heir hunters take on his case,

they discover his estate to be much larger than they expect.

We were stunned.

£200,000 was left in Nathan's bank accounts.

And a seemingly simple investigation turns into a tough six-month slog.

Unfortunately, for us

it was a more drawn-out process then we'd have hoped.

It's going to be a busy day for the heir hunters,

with two challenging cases to crack.

Today, we uncover more about Britain's risque wartime history.

The owner of the windmill came up with the idea of having

nudes on the British stage.

And we learn how Jewish immigrants reaching British shores

in the late 1800s faced a tough start.

The area was very dilapidated, there were very few facilities.

They would have lived something like 30 to a house.

Plus how you could be entitled to inherit an unclaimed estate.

Could a fortune be heading your way?

It's a busy Monday morning

at London-based heir hunting firm, Finders.

A new case has just come in via a private referral

and is being handled by case manager Ryan Gregory.

OK, Ryan. So this is the Florence June Massey case.

Have a look at the tree.

The only details the team have been given are Florence's name,

address and her date of death.

But Ryan has already tracked down records for her.

She passed away in September, a spinster.

It looks like she was probably born in Holywell,

but she passed away in Portsmouth, in Hampshire.

The waterfront town of Southsea, Portsmouth

was home to Florence June Massey for more than 70 years.

Known to her friends as June,

she left a lasting impression on everyone she met.

June was a very happy person.

She enjoyed music and loved the music

and always had that little sparkle in her eye.

June moved into the Bluebell's care home in Portsmouth in 2009,

where she became good friends with Dizzy Page.

Dizzy organised the home's activities,

which June always took part in.

She loved the dressing up side of all of that,

you know, putting the hats on... Always wearing a hat.

The Easter bonnets and the Halloween hats and...

She'd wear a hat for any occasion.

She loved the outdoors and being close to nature,

so she would never be too far from the garden.

June used to love sitting out here, just watching the birds.

She'd sit many an afternoon and we'd have afternoon tea out here.

It was June's favourite spot,

as she could watch her beloved birds in the garden's aviary.

June particularly enjoyed watching them have their bird baths.

BIRD CHEEPS And there was a little, yellow canary

that used to come and sit here. He was a bright yellow canary

and she'd sit and talk to it and it was very sweet.

Very special, yeah.

Sadly, Florence June Massey passed away on 21st September 2013.

She was 85 years old.

She died without making a will and with no known family,

so the search is now on to find heirs to her estate.

Research has revealed that Florence was born on 13th June 1928.

Her parents were Francis Gordon Massey and Gladys Pattie Dawson.

The team know that Florence was a spinster,

so having established she had no children of her own,

the next job is to see if her parents had any other children.

What we've done is we have done a quick issue search

to find out any siblings that she may have had.

We have established that she had a sister that died a spinster.

With no descendants on this sister's line,

Ryan and the team continue to look for more siblings.

There was a brother called Francis that passed away, age 0,

within the first year of being born.

And then there's one other brother,

also called Francis, but with a different middle name.

And we're just trying to find out what happened to him.

As neither of Florence's other siblings married or had children,

Ryan and the team are trying to trace her brother,

Francis Walter Massey.

At the moment we know, so far, that he was born in 1924.

We know he... isn't married, or wasn't married.

So we just need to find out if he's still alive, where he is,

or if he's passed away, whether he did have any children out there.

Although this case has been privately referred to the company,

there are no guarantees that it won't also be published

on the Treasury Solicitor's bona vacantia list

of unclaimed estates.

So time is of the essence.

And it's not long before they come up with a lead

on Florence's brother, Francis.

As it stands, it doesn't particularly

look like a tricky case.

I mean, it can be a bit more difficult to find somebody

if they're close kin, if they're relatively elderly.

Sometimes someone drops off our databases if they're in a care home,

or if they've emigrated overseas.

But Ryan has managed to find a record for Francis.

It dates back to 2004 and shows Francis living at the same address

as his sister, Florence. And they never parted.

June and Frank came here together in 2009.

Erm...and...

And I joined The Bluebell about a couple of weeks after.

Francis had cared for June for many years,

but when his health deteriorated, they've moved into care together.

It's very sweet to have a brother and sister coming together.

Knowing that they've got each other to rely on.

But sadly, Frank died a week after being here.

I believe that they were very close

and I believe that she was with him

when he died and held his hand.

Back in the office, Ryan and the team

are getting to grips with Francis's records.

We can assume that he was probably a bachelor,

if he was living with his sister for a lot of his life,

but we're not sure. Erm...

So it could be tricky, if we can't find him.

We're hoping that we'll be able to,

or maybe just find a death entry for him.

And it isn't long before they locate some info.

We've actually just found out that he died in 2009,

in Portsmouth, which is the right area.

We've done a marriage search, also, so we know that he died a bachelor.

So we can draw a line under that and then we're going to start

to look into the maternal and paternal families.

Using census records, Ryan and the team

are able to establish that Florence's grandparents,

Francis Massey and Harriet Armstrong, had six children,

including Florence's father, Francis Massey.

The records also show that Florence's paternal family

came from Chester.

It looks as though the Massey parents, the deceased grandparents,

are alone in 1911, which suggests that

the daughters and the son have all moved out.

Possibly married, so we're going to have to try and find out

who each of the girls married

and then find out if they have any children and go down from there.

Ryan begins to search the marriage indexes for Florence's aunt, Gladys.

If we start with the youngest, we'll be able to find

a cousin who may still be alive.

Fingers crossed.

But they can't find a record of her,

so the team begin to search the death indexes from 1890

for people with that name.

Luckily, there was only a handful.

One of the death entries that came up in that search

was a Gladys Beatrice Newbold.

So it could be that she's just

dropped the A name during her lifetime.

Ryan searches the marriage index again

using Gladys's new-found middle initial of A.

There is a Gladys A Massey marrying a Henry J Newbold.

It's in Lambeth, so it's not in Chester,

but it seems as though the family may have moved around a little bit.

And it transpires that whilst Gladys married her husband

under the name Henry Newbold,

just over a decade later,

he would become one of the biggest stars of British wartime radio.

And be known to millions of listeners by his stage name,

Clay Keyes.

Clay Keyes was a fast talking,

breezy kind of chap.

He was a very pleasant man. Always dressed very smartly.

I seem to remember, in fact, that...

I seldom remember seeing him in anything other than a brown suit,

rather similar to the jacket that I've got on today, in fact.

During World War II, Clay Keyes was the host of a radio variety show

called The Old Town Hall,

which ran for a staggering 64 weeks in its first series.

Although Clay was known as a comedian,

he was the host of The Old Town Hall programme,

so there wasn't so much direct comedy from him.

Erm... The er...

it was more introducing parts of the programme

that would take part.

A typical variety show was the cast

with an orchestra sitting behind them.

35 piece orchestra, in many cases.

And there was always a singer in the programme.

Comedy tended to be more situation comedy,

they were more scripted, of course.

And they were acted.

Florence's aunt Gladys also played an important role

in Clay's comedy shows.

There was a sketch played by an actor named Richard Goolden

called Old Ebenezer. He was supposed to be a night watchman.

And they were scripted shows.

The scripts, in fact, were written by Gladys Keyes.

And, eventually, when the Ebenezer sketches went out of favour,

she became the actress and was Martha, the gossip carrier

in following series of that programme.

The popular shows were broadcast from The Monseigneur,

a converted news cinema in London

and always in front of a live audience.

There used to be a BBC ticket unit and people used to apply to

that ticket unit for admission to the shows.

And they were never at a loss to find an audience for them.

And they used to flock to all the theatres that we were using,

regardless of the fact that there were bombs dropping at times.

Wartime comedy radio shows played a huge part

in boosting morale during times of hardship.

Audiences wanted them. To get out of the depression of the war,

its starvation, its deaths.

You couldn't be frivolous,

other than listening to a radio programme.

The power of radio during the war was tremendous.

Comedy sketches and variety shows

became a permanent fixture on BBC radio after the war.

And this can, in part, be put down to the success

of Florence's Uncle Henry's famous sketch show.

The BBC had changed during the war, completely.

Instead of being just educative, or serious all the time,

it really thought that it ought to be a morale booster

for the population.

And more and more comedy programmes were created.

Clay Keyes was valuable at the time,

particularly with his programme The Old Town Hall.

It was an incredible favourite programme.

Back in the office, discovering Gladys and Henry's marriage

has given Ryan a much-needed lead.

We're going to see if Gladys had any children.

If one of them is still alive,

hopefully, we'll be able to talk to them and they'll be able to say,

"Yeah, my mum was from Chester," and, you know,

"This was her background and history." Yeah.

To speed things up, Ryan sets the rest of the team

searching for possible descendants of Florence's other maternal aunts.

Was there a sister called Frances?

-There's a Maud...

-Mm.

-..in there, as well.

-She's actually Frances Maud...

-And she's born 1880.

-OK.

-She messes around with her name.

Oh, you've got her... So you've got a 1911.

1911, she was with Gladys.

And the dad, Gordon and Lillian, as well.

-So we know Lillian was a spinster.

-Yeah.

But the search is quickly thrown into confusion

as Florence's aunts seem to be listed under many different names.

-OK, Ryan, so Lillian Massey...

-Yes.

-The aunt.

-What we've found out is that she was single in 1911.

-Yep.

Did she drop her middle names?

To Ryan's frustration, names have been swapped, dropped and changed

making it impossible to find exact matches for Florence's aunts.

So I think the only... Well, it might be the only answer is to check

-all of those marriages, but that death is possible.

-OK.

-It's not exact, but it's possible.

-I'm going to get the birth...

and then we'll try and find a date.

-Take it from there. OK.

-Cheers, Tony.

And as research continues,

the search becomes ever more complicated

and things don't quite work out the way Ryan wants.

You're kind of going on your own steam

and hoping that it's going to be a quick case.

Unfortunately, well, unfortunately for us,

it was a more drawn-out process than we'd have hoped.

The busy borough of Wimbledon, south-west London,

was home to Nathan Barnett.

He'd lived in London since he was born, in 1923.

And throughout his life, Nathan worked as a civil servant,

a bookseller and a librarian.

He lived in a modest flat and was a popular figure with his neighbours.

He was a very nice gentleman. Erm...

Very upright, nicely dressed.

And...

always very pleasant when you met him.

Er...but very private.

As neighbours go,

very well-behaved and quiet.

A reserved man, probably very good.

Going to church, doing the good deeds.

He always went religiously to church.

And I think he was involved in the church, as well.

Nathan was a cultured man who liked to travel

and catch plays and operas in the West End.

And he had a very striking appearance.

He had lovely, lovely silver...

grey hair. And it was so thick.

Beautiful hair.

And it was always neat and tidy.

Sadly, Nathan passed away on 15th March 2012.

A friend organised his funeral

and he was buried in a Catholic cemetery in Brighton.

But Nathan hadn't written a will,

so his home was simply closed up and left.

It was more than a year after his death that Nathan's case

became known to London-based heir hunting firm, Fraser & Fraser.

The case of Nathan's didn't really come from a usual source.

One of the neighbours phoned up to say that there was an empty house,

been left dormant for over a year in the street and asked

if we could help sort it out.

Cases are usually published

on the Treasury Solicitor's bona vacantia list of unclaimed estates,

but this wasn't one that the team had come across before.

This situation's quite unusual, cos there was a friend of the deceased,

who was dealing with his funeral and trying to sort out his affairs.

Now, unfortunately, they were a little lost about what to do

and didn't really refer it to the council.

In most situations, these properties get referred to the council

and they sort them out, or pass it on to the Treasury Solicitor.

So this is quite unusual with the family becoming lost

in the paperwork and not having any of the authority

to do any more work.

On first inspection, it would seem

that the property was owned by Nathan.

This was good news for the heir hunters,

as could make this a high-value case.

We checked the Land Registry to see if his name was on the title deeds.

For a surprise to us, it wasn't on the deeds.

A gentleman by the name of Thomas Gibson Bell was on there,

so it could have been possible the deceased was renting the property

and it had been empty because the landlord

hadn't done anything with it, so therefore,

the case could have been not worth pursuing.

So we needed to make a bit more of an investigation

into who Thomas Gibson Bell was.

This was a huge blow for the team.

If Nathan had rented the property,

then it wouldn't be worth pursuing.

But they didn't give up that quickly.

We had to have a look at the electoral register

to see who Thomas Gibson Bell was and it appears

that he was living with the deceased for a number of years.

But he disappeared in 1986,

which is usually an indication that a person has died.

Mike checked the death indexes for that year

and confirmed that he had, indeed, passed away.

The team then tracked down a will left by Thomas

and was surprised by its instructions.

When we got a copy of the will,

we noticed that Nathan David Barnett was the heir to that will

and, therefore, inherited most of his estate.

Now that they've confirmed that the property did, in fact,

belong to Nathan, the search was on

to find heirs to his estimated £330,000 estate.

We discovered that Nathan was not married.

And he never had any children.

We then had to go backwards through the family

to see if he had any brothers or sisters.

That may be still alive.

The team traced Nathan's birth record,

which gave them his mother's maiden name.

This information then allowed them

to trace a marriage certificate for Nathan's parents.

Now, the names that we have are Barnett and Freedman.

Unfortunately, we couldn't locate a marriage record straight away

as the parents of the deceased,

the father's name was actually Lazarus Bronstein, not Barnett.

Nathan's father, Lazarus Bronstein,

was born in Russia in the late 1800s.

As a young man he, like almost two million others,

were forced to flee their homeland.

A large number of Jews arrived from Eastern Europe

at the turn-of-the-century,

because there were numerous pogroms against them.

They were blamed for the assassination of Tsar Alexander II.

And, therefore,

they left in very large numbers from the Russian Empire.

Lazarus made the long trip to the UK and settled in east London.

95% of the population there were Jewish

and Nathan's father stayed for many years.

The Jews headed to London, because it was,

of course, the largest city in the world at the time.

It was the centre of the British Empire.

In London, Nathan's grandfather met his wife, Annie Freedman,

who had also fled from Russia.

Life for the Barnett family, as for all the Jewish immigrants

at the turn of the century, would have been very hard indeed.

And the area was very dilapidated, with very few facilities.

They would have lived something like 30 a house.

Erm...and they were exploited, not only by their employers,

but by the landlords of these properties, as well.

Many Jewish immigrants from that time changed their names.

Lazarus would have changed his name from Bronstein to Barnett

in the hope of an easier start.

He wanted to appear Anglicised. He might have had reason to do it -

reasons for finding employment or setting up a business.

He would have found easier to be Anglicised.

Lazarus did find a job as a tailor.

It was a semi-skilled job, which had opportunities to rise up the ladder.

He worked on Berwick Street, in Soho, where the rag trade

still thrives today.

Berwick Street became a major centre

of Jewish tailoring in London.

I mean, the tailors really came over from the East End of London.

There were very close links between Soho and the East End.

And Berwick Street, really until the 1960s,

remained an almost entirely Jewish street.

It had kosher restaurants, Jewish-owned dress shops.

Eventually, the Jewish community began to move away

from the East End of London.

Their main move came placed as a result of the Second World War.

The borough of Stepney, which we're in now,

was the most bombed borough in the whole of Britain,

because of the docks and because of its proximity to the city of London.

So a lot of the houses were destroyed.

Jewish people began to move to north-west London and Essex

and very few are left in the East End today.

Jews wanted to improve themselves all the time.

They wanted better conditions, better living conditions

for themselves and their children. They wanted better schooling.

So, inevitably, they moved out,

particularly to Essex and most of the Jews who live in Essex now

came from the East End of London.

Using the surname of Bronstein,

the team were able to trace a marriage certificate

for Lazarus and birth certificates for his children.

Records revealed that Lazarus Bronstein married Annie Freedman

on 12th June 1904 in Whitechapel, London.

And the couple went on to have eight children, including Nathan.

This meant that Mike now had to track down

these brothers and sisters of Nathan and their descendants.

It made it slightly more difficult for us, because we weren't sure

what names they were using when they were registering their children.

Now, if they were using a variation of names,

then we'd have to check under quite a few different possibilities

to make sure that we had the full extent of Nathan's family.

And the team soon began to uncover more information

about Nathan's nonconformist lifestyle.

He was only a black sheep, like my mum,

because they didn't follow the Jewish faith.

Every year in Britain, thousands of people

get a surprise knock on the door from the heir hunters,

who bring welcome news of an unexpected inheritance.

Obviously, I was surprised, cos I never expected anything like that.

Never had a call like it before, really.

We were quite excited, but also sad,

because neither of us had seen Barry for over 20 years.

But there are still thousands of unsolved cases

on the Treasury Solicitor's bona vacantia list,

where heirs need to be found.

Could you be one of them?

Today, we've got details of two estates on the list

that are yet to be claimed.

The first case is Leaford George Barrett,

who died on 24th February 2013

in Hackney, East London.

He married Mary Doreen Hackworth

in the same area on 21th June 1986.

Leaford was widowed, when Mary passed away on 23th December 2004,

when she was 80 years old.

The name Barrett is a popular Anglo-Irish surname

in both south-east England and south-west Ireland

and is particularly prevalent in County Cork.

Does the name ring any bells with you?

Do you have any clues that would help crack this case?

Next, 74-year-old Bernard Edward Barton was born in Harrow, Middlesex

on 11th September 1931.

He died a bachelor on 5th September 2006

in Colchester, Essex.

The name Barton is a distinguished Anglo-Saxon name,

meaning barley farm,

and dates back to 942 AD.

Does the name Bernard Barton mean anything to you?

Could you be the beneficiary they're looking for?

If you know anything that could help solve the cases

of Leaford George Barrett or Bernard Edward Barton,

then you would need to make a claim on their estate

via the Treasury Solicitor's office.

Perhaps you could be the next of kin.

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

Heir hunting company, Finders, and case manager Ryan Gregory,

are hot on the trail of heirs

to the £50,000 estate of Florence June Massey.

She lived in The Bluebells Nursing Home in Portsmouth

with her devoted brother Francis.

When Francis sadly passed away, she became good friends with Dizzy Page.

June and I had quite a special relationship

because I spent a lot of one-to-one time with her.

We'd go out for trips out and we'd spend a lot of time in her room,

sitting and chatting. I will remember June as a special lady, yeah.

We gelled and I felt like I was her friend

and perhaps her only...

person at the end.

June and her brother Francis were inseparable.

Francis had devoted his life to June and was her sole carer right up

until his death. Before then, they did everything together.

I've been told that this park is where June and Frank used to walk

and spend many happy hours here just walking round the park.

To me, it's got a real nice feel to it and I can imagine them two

having plenty of afternoons, great afternoons, yeah.

I miss June and this is a very special place for her

and I'm glad that I can be here today to think about her and Frank

walking around and enjoying the sunshine here.

It's been several months since Ryan

and the team started searching for heirs to Florence's estate.

Having discovered her aunt Gladys married Henry Newbould

in London in 1928, they've been able to trace the couple's only daughter.

So, whilst we found one of these paternal cousins pretty early on

in our research, we contacted her immediately. Unfortunately

she wasn't able to provide us with much more information on the family.

Heirs can be a great source of information about other family

members, sometimes saving the heir hunters hours,

even weeks of complex research.

But in this case, sadly things weren't that simple.

It's frustrating for us when we contact the beneficiary quite

quickly and they're not able to give us any more information.

It just means that we have to go back to the drawing board

and go through all the processes.

The team continued their search for any other cousins

Florence might have had on both her mother's

and her father's side of the tree.

Florence's parents were Francis Massey and Gladys Pattie Dawson.

According to their marriage certificate, Florence's father

worked as a hallmarker at the Chester Assay Office.

Hallmarkers like Francis were responsible for authenticating

every piece of silver, gold and platinum sold in Britain.

The assaying of precious metals is just to guarantee

a certain amount of precious metal within the alloy.

So, for example, if you go out

and you buy a piece of sterling silver product off the marketplace,

you know it's made up of 92.5% silver

and the other part is copper, simple as that.

Hallmarking dates back to the 1300s

when Edward I of England passed a law requiring any item

made of silver which was for sale to be at least equal quality

to that of the coin of the realm.

When items were passed by the wardens of the Goldsmiths company,

they received the king's mark of authentication, the hallmark.

Ours have obviously got the leopard's head, for London.

Chester would have had its own town mark,

which was a sword and the wheat sheaves.

And then the date letter for that specific year.

So, since 1478, each year, appropriate year,

has had its own date letter, primarily, so you can date

a piece to a very specific period of time.

This series of marks, once applied, gave the articles full

provenance and were the oldest form of consumer protection.

Florence's father was working at the assay office in 1912 which

would have been a busy time as silver goods were in high demand.

Throughout... Especially in the 1900s,

the product that would probably have been hitting Chester

more than anything else would have been watch cases

coming in, still, from Liverpool and Coventry and those

sort of areas, from mass exportation, primarily,

to the colonies.

My own pocket watch, which I wear on a regular occasion,

is actually hallmarked for 1907 and, funnily enough,

it's actually a Chester hallmark.

Demand for silver goods reached its peak during the Victorian era.

There was so much product wanted by the consumer at that period of time,

it was really a first buzz of the consumerism

that we are all now used to. The Victorians especially had just

an accoutrement for just about everything that you went through

from eating your breakfast, i.e. to silver toast racks,

right through to when you went to bed

with silver hot water bottles and things like that.

But the 20th century brought cheaper imports and changing lifestyles

and the demand for silver goods began to decline.

Primarily fuelled by, obviously,

people not wanting product any more, things slowly went out of fashion.

Tastes changed massively.

And because of that, obviously,

closures of assay offices followed suit.

The Chester Assay Office closed its doors in 1962,

ending almost 200 years of its hallmarking history.

Chester hallmarks are becoming increasingly more popular

and more collectable as they've become rarer, obviously,

since the assay office closed in 1962.

Although Ryan and the team had uncovered interesting

information about Florence's deceased relatives,

they were still struggling to find more heirs to her estate.

They were trying to track down descendants of her aunt Mildred,

the youngest of her father's five siblings.

The line of Mildred Massey was probably the most complicated line

that we had to research on the whole family tree.

We had a few situations happen that does make our research

a little bit more difficult.

One of them being that Mildred actually married twice,

so we're dealing with change of surname through marriage.

The team had found that Florence's

aunt Mildred had a daughter, Maude,

with her first husband, William Newton.

In 1910, she married a James Faulks Lowe

and went on to have another four children.

They were all first cousins once removed and they,

or their descendants, would be heirs to her estate.

One of the Lowe children was a Francis Lowe,

he was the last born of that family.

We found a marriage for him. We then did a birth search

in order to find out how many children he had

and one of those was Peter Lowe.

Francis Lowe had two children, a daughter and a son, Peter,

who were Florence's first cousins once removed.

And Peter recalls the moment

he first heard from the heir hunters.

It was just a normal morning, I was looking at the post

and there was this letter from heir hunters

and I passed it over to Janet for her to have a look at.

I didn't really think a great deal of it and then a few minutes later,

Janet said, "I think you'd better read this." And it was the way,

the tone of her voice that made me prick my ears up, actually.

Peter and his wife already have an interest in genealogy.

Well, we know quite a lot about my paternal side through Janet's

researches over the last 20, 30 years. So, erm...

But it still came as a surprise to find that we hadn't got

everybody. I'd never heard of the name Florence Massey,

it was a complete mystery to me.

The couple had built up a huge catalogue of their relatives

from Peter's grandfather's side of the family

but his grandmother's side needed more investigating.

I went on the internet and found her death and from that I was

able to piece together where she'd come from, which part of the family.

Florence is here on the map...

..and her father was Gordon Massey...

..and her mother was Gladys Pattie Dawson.

Contact from the heir hunters was the first time

they'd heard of a relative named Florence.

I was a little bit sad to think that she'd died without, apparently,

anybody being around so...

It's always sad that... A sad, lonely death.

So, obviously, I'm pleased to be a beneficiary but I do feel

a little bit of sadness that it ended,

from her point of view, as it did.

But the news did allow these keen genealogists

to conclude 30 years of research and complete their family tree.

I've learned an awful lot more about my paternal side.

It's been very exciting, very interesting

and we've found quite a lot of very surprising facts

and some quite intriguing information

about various members that we would never have known otherwise.

Peter isn't the only one who waited a long time to wrap up his research.

In the end, this case took the heir hunters

almost six months to complete.

The case of Florence June Massey was a real example of a case

that you need patience and persistence in order to push through

all the research and find all the heirs that are entitled.

Many of Florence's older relatives changed or dropped their names.

Her aunt Mildred married twice creating a complicated tree.

And the first heir the team located was unable to confirm

or add to any of their findings.

This run of bad luck led to a challenging six months but

Ryan and his team finally brought the case of Florence June Massey

to a pleasing end.

All in all, there was 26 heirs to this case

which is a large number for us to get through.

It was a really good case for us to crack.

We managed to contact all the beneficiaries

without coming across any competition which is great for us.

At heir-hunting company, Fraser & Fraser,

case manager Mike Pow has been tracking down heirs

to Nathan Barnett's estate, which he believed to be around £330,000.

The team had discovered that Nathan was one of eight children,

born to his Jewish parents, Lazarus and Annie Bronstein.

They changed their name to Barnett after

moving from Russia in the late 1800s and it seems that this

pattern was repeated throughout the next generation.

With some of the children, it was slightly difficult

because they'd changed their names to something that

kind of resembled the name but wasn't their name.

Something from Sully to Sydney is going to cause problems

when we're trying to look for marriages and death records.

However, one sister of Nathan's was relatively easy to trace.

Bessie Barnett was born in 1921 into the strong Jewish community

of Stepney, East London.

But in her early 20s, she was to embark on a career that would

set her apart from her traditional Jewish roots

when she became a dancer at Soho's infamous Windmill club.

The Windmill, for me, is really our version of the Moulin Rouge.

In 1932, in order to revitalise their shows, the owner

of the Windmill came up with the idea of having

nudes on the British stage.

Now, this had never been done before

and so they had to approach the Lord Chamberlain to ask permission.

So, the Lord Chamberlain agreed but under three stipulations.

And that was that the ladies were never allowed to move,

that they had to be presented in an artistic fashion

and that they had to perform with very subdued lighting.

So, in this way, they managed to have, for the first time,

full nudes on the British stage.

The Windmill shows caused a sensation.

Not surprisingly, they were a huge hit

with the soldiers of World War II.

But they also drew in some of London's finest.

For Bessie, in the 1950s, it would

have been worlds apart from the family life she left behind.

The shows were attended by the aristocracy, by politicians,

by ordinary people, by celebrities, and they went wild for this idea.

It wasn't just the nude tableaus.

The Windmill launched the career of some amazing comedians,

had some amazing variety artists, so it became a massive favourite,

particularly during the war, for the soldiers.

BURLESQUE PIANO MUSIC PLAYS

But the excitement of something different would sometimes

bring out the mischievous side of the soldiers who would

go to the theatre with mice in their pockets.

They used to place the mice on the floor in the hope that

they would scuttle onto the stage

and scare the Windmill girls into moving and running around whilst

they were nude, which, of course, they weren't allowed to do.

These exciting new shows helped the Windmill become an unlikely

symbol of London's wartime resilience.

They never closed during the war and, especially, during the Blitz.

And even during the 12-day period of compulsory closure for all

theatres, the Windmill company kept rehearsing,

so their slogan became, "We never closed."

At this time, the Blitz would have brought out

the fighting spirit in Bessie.

Girls like Bessie must have been real characters, I think,

to have that strength and that zeal,

that commitment to really want to seize the moment,

which is very much a Blitz spirit, particularly in Soho.

You wouldn't know what was going to happen tomorrow.

She must have been a very vibrant person,

a very exciting person and, erm, I think really embodies that

kind of fun, exuberant spirit of the Blitz, really, and of London.

For many years, the Windmill continued to do a roaring trade

but with the rise of the more liberated '60s,

it was seen as dated and it eventually closed.

Today, it's reopened and is trading very clearly on its risque past.

Back in the office, things were also about to get more

revealing for heir hunter Mike Pow.

We found out that, out of the eight siblings,

including Nathan, six of them had married.

And although they'd all predeceased, they all seem to have had children.

The team found that many of Nathan's nieces and nephews were still alive.

They tracked them down and contacted each person individually.

Some of the first heirs that Mike got in contact with were

Nathan's nieces, Gloria and Penny,

both daughters of Windmill dancer Bessie.

The sisters lost touch with their uncle when their mum died in 1998

and didn't know he had passed away until the heir hunters got in touch.

I felt really sad but mainly because...

I thought that he was alone

and we hadn't been informed.

And I felt sad because of my mum too because it was her favourite...

Well, it was her youngest brother and they were really close.

So, immediately, we just wanted to find out why and where

and where he was buried, so that we could do that for our mum.

Gloria hadn't seen her uncle for many, many years.

But he certainly left a lasting impression.

My last memory of my uncle was probably...was when I was a child

at a funeral and my memories of him

are always that he was like a 1920s film star.

And he reminded me of someone out...

You know, like, the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, you know,

that style, sort of thing.

I just really remember him as being very tall, very handsome...

and sparkly eyes.

Gloria's sister, Penny, had more recent memories of her uncle.

I did have a chance meeting with him

in St James's Park one day in my lunch hour

and I recognised him immediately by his hair, the family hair,

the grey hair. And he was very tall and elegant and well-dressed,

how I'd always remembered him, and how my mum had always

spoken of him... That was what he was like.

So, I stopped him and he knew immediately who I was

and we had a long chat and sat down on a bench

and then we went our separate ways and, you know, so...

That's my last memory of my uncle Nat.

Like Penny's mum, Bessie, Nathan broke away from the family

and didn't have much contact with them.

I think he was only a black sheep, like my mum,

because they didn't follow the Jewish faith, they both left...

I think it came from their childhood.

My uncle Nat may have felt a bit of pressure

when he was younger to conform to the Jewish faith...

..and it probably made him rebel as he got older.

He was very flamboyant character, he was very well travelled,

very well educated.

He had his partner, Tom, that he lived with and he travelled

round the world with him and they had a lovely lifestyle and...

That way, I do think he was also born before his time

because his generation wouldn't have been

so open as he was about his sexuality, so I'm really

pleased he was able to live his life how we wanted to live it.

Once Mike and the team had contacted all of the heirs,

they were then able to access Nathan's property where

they discovered one last surprise.

Because we search the property thoroughly,

we often find different assets, bank accounts.

This case, though, we were stunned.

£200,000 was left in Nathan's bank accounts.

That's a huge amount of money. It takes the whole value

of this estate to well over £500,000.

In total, the 13 heirs that the team traced are now entitled

to their share of Nathan's estate,

valued at over £500,000.

But for Penny and her own family, this hasn't been about the money.

We're much happier now we know that he had a nice funeral with

friends that attended and he had a Catholic ceremony, which he would

have loved, and he'd love where he was buried, it's a beautiful place.

So we're a lot happier about that.