'How I traced long-lost relatives in Yorkshire to hand over police medals found in skip'
Police have gone to remarkable lengths to reunite a set of 120-year-old medals – found in a skip – with long-lost relatives in Yorkshire.
The medals, which date back to 1897, 1902 and 1911, and belonged to a PC Richard Summersgill, were discovered by Met Police sergeant John Bown in the skip at Holloway Police Station, just before they were lost forever.
Colleague PC Spencer Keayes made it his personal mission to trace any descendents, spending 10 months on a search which had numerous promising leads, dead ends and disappointments.
He finally traced a great grand niece, who lives near Driffield, and “remembers her mum having an old Met Police whistle and chain but never knew where she got it from”.
Richard Summersgill was born as one of 13 siblings in the rural backwater of Weaverthorpe, in the Yorkshire Wolds, in 1865.
He clearly wanted a different kind of life, says PC Keayes, and he moved to London where he married, became a policeman and had two children. There are no longer any living descendents, or even the original police station – that was blown up by the Luftwaffe in 1941.
In fact PC Keayes thinks it is likely that the medals were handed into the new police station following daughter Mary Catherine's death. She never married and had no children staying in the family home until her death in 1988.
More detective work turned up a brother to Richard who had joined the Met a year earlier. But that turned out to be another dead end as he didn’t have children either. PC Keayes then went to the next obvious place – the still small community of Weaverthorpe.
A helpful churchwarden posted on social media information about his search, and eventually came up with the woman, who said the name and story sounded familiar.
More research confirmed that her great grandmother, Sarah Ann Summersgill, was Richard’s younger sister.
The search for his grave was even more complicated, as he wasn’t buried in the family plot in London, and eventually his last resting place was found in York, alongside an older brother. He’d died in 1941 after prostate surgery.
PC Keayes says he is getting the medals remounted and inscribed with a brass plaque, and will travel to Yorkshire with his colleague to hand them to the relative and visit the grave. He told The Yorkshire Post he had taken the discovery of the abandoned medals "personally” and wanted to do what he could to reunite them with the family.