Heir Hunters: My thoughts on a missing life - disabled people's missing narratives

I was watching Heir Hunters this morning, you know that programme where they research the family trees of people who have died with out leaving a will. If you like social history or family history it’s interesting stuff. Sometimes they unearth secrets about the person who has died, sometimes they find long lost relatives and usually someone ends up inheriting some money they weren’t expecting. I like the ones where they discover a recluse had in fact been a code breaker at Bletchley during the war, or someone was a long forgotten author or when they help families find out what happened to their brother or uncle who disappeared. 

This morning part of the programme was about the death of a lady called Vera. She had died in a care home and had no close relatives still living.  Not that uncommon considering she was quite old and hadn’t had children. Vera interested me because she was blind and had been since childhood. She had been blind since birth. They showed some lovely pictures of her smiling wearing a pink knitted hat on a day out from the care home. The staff at the care home said some innocuous stuff about her liking to hear the birds, be in the garden and going to the seaside. But it was all rather bland and impersonal which worried me slightly.

Inside though, I was really excited - maybe they would uncover that Vera had done some secret work during the war. I know it was unlikely, but maybe she’d been employed listening to radio transmissions or morse code, maybe she had been an audio typist? Maybe her life story was about her being a musician or maybe it would be the story of so many disabled people in the 20th century, one of being in institutions or being cared for by family until they died and she had to go into a care home?

If Vera’s story was that of many blind people in the mid 20th century it would likely have included: 

• attending a special school for the blind, probably a boarding school, 
• then having a limited option of careers, working perhaps in a blind co-operative or factory, or maybe being a piano tuner or typist
• or being supported by family until there was no family left and the care home beckoned. 

That in its self is interesting social history, if you’re interested in disabled people’s lives and how their lives have changed in the last century.

Heir Hunters covered none of this. The programme instead focussed on a branch of her family who's modern descendants had no knowledge she existed, but this branch of the family had done exciting things. There had been a 19th century diver and a WW2 leaflet printer. I was more than a little disappointed. Vera left £12,000 to a relative, who was also very grateful that Vera had opened up a branch of their family tree he had yet to discover. He seemed a nice chap.

I did wonder where she had got that 12k from? A pension? Savings? Money she had been bequeathed? She must have had some kind of life before the care home!

I tweeted Heir Hunters on Twitter, they are a friendly bunch and got back to me straight away saying that they research all of the deceased who featured on the show and they could not find any information about Vera’s life. 

I believe them, I am sure they must have to research all the people they feature, not just the TV side of things but of course the Heir Hunters themselves have to. But really, there was nothing more that could have been said about Vera’s life? She was just an old lady, who had been blind, who had some interesting relatives and left another relative who knew nothing about her £12,000?

Why does this even matter? Well it’s because this so often is the narrative about disabled people, or should I say the lack of a narrative. They’re just people who move a story along in some way but have no story themselves. In this case maybe it was impossible to piece together this lady’s life. The trouble is there are plenty of disabled people’s lives that aren’t documented, pieced together or listened to within history. Heir Hunters is really a social history programme, its about bringing the recent past back to life through researching family trees. It’s something we can all relate to. It is also an entertainment programme, informing but also enjoyable. It's about solving mysteries. But so often disabled people's lives are a mystery to mainstream entertainment, arts and history output. 

Sadly through my work as a disability rights advocate and my background in history (My degree is in Literary and Historical Studies) I know that the stories of disabled people’s lives, before very recent times, are often missing. It’s as if, like Vera, they just didn’t have any lives. But that’s not true, it’s just you have to look in different places to find disabled people’s stories, you have to read between the cracks in history, you have to really dig and dig. I've not watched enough episodes of Heir Hunters to know if they have unearthed some exciting stories about disabled people. I'm not blaming them, this is a problem with history and how it's taught and covered by the media full stop.

And why is it important to dig and search out these histories and stories about disabled people’s lives? Well for a number of reasons. It’s our, that’s disabled people’s, history as much as anyone else’s, if we only hear about one group through our history, we end up with a very skewed view of then and now. History can inspire people today. Imagine Vera’s story had been one about her being some kind of audio typist or telephonist during the war, that would have inspired me and maybe any blind children or parents of blind children watching. If the story had been like one experienced by many disabled people in the mid 20th century, as I outlined above, it would have served to show how far we have come since then. How many more choices blind people have today. Or maybe it would have shown that progress isn't as rapid as you might think. But we’ll never know, because instead I’m left with this uneasy feeling again that there was a story there about Vera, that just couldn’t be unearthed, because it was too much hard work, not interesting enough or maybe even more sadly, because genuinely there was no record of Vera’s life and what does that say about our society? 

I've been saying for the longest time I want to write a book, well maybe I should imagine Vera's life for her and write that? Or maybe I can make sue that other disabled people's stories aren't lost in the future. The current narratives about disability range from being about "scroungers" to Paralympic "super heroes" the truth of course is somewhere else completely and as vibrant and mundane as everyone else's story. So lets make sure that our story is told in all it's brilliance, including our struggle for equal rights and the ordinariness of every day life.