Heir hunters tracing the family of a British woman who died without a will uncovered secrets that had remained hidden for decades – while giving her long-lost cousin the missing details she had spent years desperately searching for.
When Lynn Howell, from Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, died in 2022 aged 75, she left a modest estate with no known living relatives, prompting probate research firm Fraser and Fraser to look into the case.
But the team – best known for featuring on the BBC One show Heir Hunters – swiftly hit an obstacle after struggling to locate the birth certificate of Lynn’s mother, Joan Phyllis Beard.
After persevering, they discovered Joan had actually been abandoned as a newborn baby at St George’s Hospital in Hanover Square, London, in 1922, before being looked after by foster parents.
Researchers found Joan’s birth mother was a woman named Thelma Edge – an unmarried typist living in London – who had conceived her daughter out of wedlock.
What they did not anticipate is that more than 5,000 miles away, one of Lynn’s relatives had spent the last 20 years also looking into Thelma’s past – and it was only with her passing that the missing pieces of the family tree would finally fall into place.
Lynn’s first cousin Charmaine Bird, who was born in South Africa but now based in Dubai, had believed her mother Elizabeth had grown up alone with no other family.
‘My mum was an orphan, and it affected her every single day of her life,’ Charmaine told Daily Mail. ‘She never felt like she belonged anywhere. She always felt very unwanted. She used to say repeatedly, “I was nobody’s child. Nobody wanted me.”
Charmaine Bird searched more than 20 years to trace her mother’s family – but it was only with the death of her unknown cousin in the UK that she finally found the answers
Charmaine’s mother, Elizabeth Jones, had grown up believing she was an orphan and did not know where or how many siblings she had
Charmaine’s grandmother, Thelma, bore a striking resemblance to her mother – but never acknowledged Elizabeth as her daughter and tried to bury her previous marriages
‘I promised her before she died in 2011 that I would keep searching for answers – and I never stopped’.
As a very young child, Elizabeth Jones was separated from her siblings and raised in an orphanage in Transkei, today part of South Africa.
Years later, she married and relocated almost 2,000 miles away to another town – where the strangest of coincidences occurred.
Unknowingly, she had moved to a town just 14 miles from where her biological mother was living.
Charmaine said: ‘There was a man who kept approaching Elizabeth asking if she was related to a woman in the town named Thelma. My mum would say “no, I’m an orphan and I don’t have any family”.
‘But the man kept insisting, telling her she looked so much like her and urged her to contact the woman. It turned out he was right.’
With trepidation, Elizabeth called the number she had been given and asked if Thelma was her biological mother.
But the response was not one Elizabeth had anticipated.
‘I am your mother – but you were a leaf I tore out of a book a long ago,’ Thelma coldly replied. ‘I have a different life now – and I don’t want you to call me again.’
Elizabeth and Charmaine had just stumbled across Thelma Edge – the same woman who had abandoned a baby in London years earlier, who was now remarried and known as Thelma Stuart.
Despite her assertion that she wanted nothing to do with her daughter, Thelma later ended up divorcing her husband and being taken in by Elizabeth, who looked after her until her death in 1980 aged 77. Many commented on how physically identical the pair looked.
But to the end, Elizabeth never felt loved by her mother.
‘I was there when she went to say goodbye – and she still didn’t accept her,’ explained Charmaine. ‘She sobbed in my arms and said, “Charmaine, I’m never going to know who I am, never”‘.
Her mother’s emotional turmoil prompted Charmaine to relentlessly research the family tree.
Thanks to her efforts, Elizabeth discovered who her father was and reunited with her sister, Gwen, as well as her half-sister, Colleen, from another marriage.
Charmaine even managed to track down Elizabeth’s older brother, Owen, in 2003 – bringing the pair together in an emotional reunion after they had been separated for more than 70 years.
‘The moment he saw her, he held her face in his hands and said, “My darling sister. I remember when they took you away,” Charmaine said. “She sobbed like a baby. They were so alike – their hands, their smiles, even the way they looked at each other.2
But Charmaine never knew anything of Thelma’s life in London or the other children she had. It was only with the help of Fraser and Fraser that Charmaine was able to fill in the many other gaps, including the existence of Joan – Lynn Howell’s mother and Elizabeth’s older half-sister.
Researchers found that between 1923 and 1937, Thelma married four times and gave birth to eight children.
Charmaine managed to track down Elizabeth’s brother, Owen, in 2003 – bringing the pair together in an emotional reunion after they had been separated for more than 70 years
Elizabeth not only had a brother, Owen, and sister, Gwen, but also three half-sisters and two half-brothers.
Charmaine learnt how Thelma had abandoned her first daughter after giving birth as an unmarried mother, while her second daughter, Thelma Rose, was placed in an orphanage shortly after her first husband died.
Thelma began life again with her second husband and Charmaine’s grandfather, Edward Jones, but the marriage fell apart.
She then tied the knot again, but tragedy struck once more after her new husband died of a heart attack when Elizabeth was four.
Her brother Owen was later able to relate how Thelma was left to bring up the three children as a single mother – and quickly feel into destitution.
‘He remembered how she would stand at the roadside and ask truck drivers for food. One of them gave her a bag of sugar, but she really needed maize meal to make porridge for the children.
‘He remembers her crying and saying, “What am I going to do with a bag of sugar? How do I feed these children?” She was really struggling.’
Elizabeth was placed in an orphanage – the same one where her older half-sister Thelma Rose had been left at years previously – while her brother and sister ended up living with their father.
When she married for the fourth time, Thelma seemingly started over once again – and went on to have two more children. She told no-one of her past until the day she was confronted by Elizabeth many years later.
Charmaine said: ‘Before we knew all of this, we were really quite resentful of my grandmother, because my mother loved people and she gave all her love to Thelma – even though she really received it in return.
‘Now that we found out more, I can understand that life was very hard for women on their own, especially in those days. There’s a part of me that thinks about how hard her life was and how much she had to go through.
‘The only thing I’m upset with Thelma was that she never wanted to acknowledge my mother.
‘She was just too proud, she didn’t want the indignity of having a child that just appeared when no-one knew she had been married previously. She would not say sorry and it just broke my mother’s heart.’
Charmaine’s mother, Elizabeth (centre) grew up alone but went on to have nine children, 27 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren. Thanks to the efforts of Fraser and Fraser, she now knows her mother was also one of eight children
Having grown up and spent most of her adult life without a family, Elizabeth went on to marry and become ‘the most loving mother’.
‘She had nine children, 27 grandchildren, 17 great-grandchildren – and there were about 20 other people that called her ‘mummy’ or ‘granny’.
‘My mother was just the most incredible soul that wanted to love and nurture others.’
Charmaine says she wishes she had known about her first cousin Lynn while she was alive, but thanks to the research by Fraser and Fraser she has finally been able to piece together her family history – and now knows her mother was far from ‘alone’.
In total, Fraser and Fraser traced 20 beneficiaries of Lynn Howell, including Charmaine – but finding out more about her family history feels more valuable than any inheritance, she explained.
‘When I saw the researcher put my mother’s name into this large family tree, I just burst into tears. At last I knew Elizabeth finally belonged, she had found her place.’
