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.
Swansea Police passed the case on to the County Constabulary. Sergeant Wood, made further investigations at the scene, where he found lying near the skeleton a revolver, an empty medicine bottle and a phial of capsules, along with two English sovereigns minted 1899 and a farthing.






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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