John Eaddie's niece fulfills dad's dying wish after learning uncle was first UK man to die of AIDS

'Now it feels like he's real,' John's niece tells ITV News UK Editor Paul Brand as she sees her uncle's grave for the first time

When we went in search of the first patient in Britain to die of AIDS, it turns out we weren’t the only ones looking for him.

Last week our documentary on ITV paid tribute to John Eaddie, who has been a medical mystery ever since his death was recorded in a science journal in 1981.

Neither he nor the disease that killed him were given a name at the time, but the entry in the Lancet has subsequently been assumed to refer to the first AIDS patient in the UK. 

Since the programme aired we have been contacted by three relatives of John who have always wondered what happened to him. Now they finally have the answers they’ve been searching for.

Karen Legg is his biological niece. John was adopted as a child, like six of his siblings. Karen’s father was his brother and it was his dying wish to finally find John. 

We met Karen at her home in Bath, where she’s been searching for John for forty years. It was Karen's father's dying wish to find John - she only found out what happened to her uncle when she heard his name on ITV last week.

"I've actually fulfilled my promise to my dad," she told us.

Paul Brand's original documentary on John Eaddie aired last week

In Yorkshire, John’s adoptive family have also been dealing with unanswered questions for four decades.

Last weekend, John’s adoptive nephew Paul Bailes and adoptive niece Pam Ainslie contacted me on social media. They too had seen the documentary. 

We met them in Harrogate, where they told me John’s illness had been an open secret. 

They said: "We were aware of what happened, but it being the eighties, it wasn't accepted or talked about. The saddest part was him being alone".

We decided to unite Paul and Pam with Karen, so the two sides of John’s family could finally meet.

We took them to the cemetery in Harrogate where they saw his grave for the first time. 

"Now it feels like he's real. It's nice to put closure to something" Karen said.

Forty years after his death, John’s name will go down, not just in family history, but in national history too.