Mystery!
At 250 acres, Singleton Park is
the largest park in Swansea. Originally it was known as the Singleton Estate
and comprised of 12 farms; it was owned by the Vivian family. In 1919
the estate was purchased by the then Swansea Borough Council and in 1920 Kew
Gardens trained gardener, Daniel Bliss began to transform it into the
wonderful open space that we know today.
In 1918 an event
occurred that would make a good story for Agatha Christie’s
Hercule Poirot to get his ‘little grey cells’ working on.
Using primary sources[1]
let’s see what we can piece together.
On 5th
June 1918, a complete skeleton of a man was found in a secluded part of the
woods on the Singleton Estate, following the discovery of a skull by two
schoolboys on the night before. Imagine the mother’s surprise and shock, when
she was making her son’s bed to find a skull. She told her son to take the
skull to the police.
The secluded wood was
100 yards from Brynmill Lane and 400 yards from the Mumbles Road – the nearest
building is Singleton Lodge.
It seemed that this
mystery would never be solved as the only clue that the police had to go on was
the empty medicine bottle which bore the name Mr. J. H. Kent. Mr J. H. Kent, of 45 St. Helen’s Road came into
business in April 1908; he supplied poisons in very distinctive bottles.
Sadly
the trail goes cold here as an inquest was heard, but unfortunately the
conclusions were not printed in the local papers, and the inquest papers
haven’t survived due to a flooding in the local coroner’s office. Trying to
obtain a death certificate is next to impossible without a name.
Where else could we turn to try
and establish who this man was? During the latter period of the Victorian era, a chemist’s shop
was intensely alluring, packed full of interesting smelling lotions and potions
in bottles of all shapes, sizes and colours. The register which the chemist had
to keep, would have details of every prescription dispensed, detailing the
name, address and profession of the recipient. The Pharmacy Act, 1868, stated
that drugs could only be sold if the purchaser was known to the seller or an
intermediary known to both. All drugs had to be sold in containers with the
seller’s name and address. All these poisons had to be entered into the Poison
Register. Unlike today, there was a more laissez-faire attitude during this
period, when there were a number of toxic substances available, which included
arsenic, belladonna, opium and laudanum. Patients would have to have had a
strong constitution to take such remedies and might have felt a lot worse for
taking them.
What about the phial of
capsules that was found? During this period, every pill, tablet, lozenge and cachet was
handmade by the chemist and his assistants. However capsules, were more fiddly
to produce. If Mr Kent’s registers had survived we
might have been able to identify the man, sadly it will remain a mystery.
Map
right: OS 25” Glamorgan XXIII.12 (Swansea) Edition 1917 Map – Permission of
National Library of Scotland
Copyright
– The Bay Magazine – August/September 2018
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