The Kidwelly Mystery

In 1898, a Yorkshire solicitor named Harold Greenwood and his wife Mabel moved to the small Welsh town of Kidwelly.  The couple eventually had four children, and their household was further supplemented by Mabel’s unmarried sister, Edith Bowater.  Edith furnished a small room for herself and contributed to the family expenses.

Greenwood’s practice in nearby Llanelly was not very successful, perhaps at least partly because of his unpopularity--gossipers thought he was too much of a bon vivant with an eye for the ladies.  In contrast, Mabel was well-liked, and active in the social pastimes of the area.  Despite Harold’s marginal income, the family was able to keep a fine mansion, Rumsey House.  Mrs. Greenwood came from a wealthy and prominent family, and had her own private income which kept the family in more than comfortable circumstances.  Although the residents of Kidwelly never warmed to Harold, he and Mabel were considered to be a happy and affectionate couple.

Mabel Greenwood was a bit of a hypochondriac.  Although the doctors never found much of anything wrong with her, she thought of herself as “delicate” with a “weak heart,” and lived in terror of developing cancer.  From the beginning of 1919, Mabel told the family doctor, Thomas Griffiths, that she frequently had pains around her heart and abdomen.  He shrugged it off as the symptoms of “change of life,” and gave her various innocuous potions.  However, her health continued to deteriorate.

Life in Kidwelly puttered along in an unremarkable fashion until Sunday, June 15, 1919.  The day began pleasantly enough.  Mabel wrote letters and did some reading.  Harold tinkered with his car.  The couple, along with their 21-year-old daughter Irene and 10-year son Kenneth (the other two Greenwood children were at boarding school) met for lunch at 1 p.m.  Their cook had prepared a joint with vegetables on the side, with gooseberry tart and custard for dessert.  A bottle of burgundy was provided for the adults.  Harold did not have any of the wine, but Mabel enjoyed a glass.  After the meal, Mabel had a brief nap, after which she rested on a deck chair on their lawn.

Around 6:30 p.m., Mabel began to complain of heart pains.  Harold gave her some brandy, after which she had spasms of vomiting.  She thought the gooseberry tart had disagreed with her.  Dr. Griffiths was called in.  He diagnosed Mabel’s malady as an ordinary stomach upset.  He prescribed sips of brandy and soda, along with a bismuth mixture.

An hour later, Mabel’s closest friend, Florence Phillips, came to visit.  After learning from Harold that Mabel was ill, Florence asked the District Nurse, Elizabeth Jones, to examine Mabel.  Nurse Jones thought that something was very wrong with Mrs. Greenwood, but Dr. Griffiths continued to insist it was merely a temporary stomach bug.  Sadly, Nurse Jones was proven correct when, at 3 a.m., Mabel died, aged only 47.

Mrs. Greenwood’s strange and sudden end had many people in Kidwelly giving Mr. Greenwood the side-eye.  Even so, the matter probably would not have been pursued any further if not for the fact that, after enduring a whole four months of lonely widowerhood, Harold married one Gladys Jones, the daughter of an old friend.  It was widely rumored that their romance had begun some time before Mabel’s untimely death.  (As a side note, while Harold was preparing to marry Gladys, he also proposed to Dr. Griffith’s sister May.  It’s always prudent to have a backup plan.)  The scandal that erupted from this whirlwind marriage was so intense that it was felt that an exhumation of the first Mrs. Greenwood was called for.  The autopsy found no sign of heart disease, but it did discover a grain of arsenic in Mabel’s body.  The next thing Harold knew he was standing trial for murder.

Greenwood had the great good fortune to be represented by Edward Marshall Hall.  Hall has made previous appearances on this blog, always in the role of “The Murderer’s Best Friend.”  During his long and distinguished career, this brilliant barrister managed to save an impressive list of accused villains from the hangman--whether they deserved to be saved or not.

Greenwood during his trial

During the trial, Hall did his usual masterly job of destroying a seemingly open-and-shut case.  He argued that Mabel succumbed to chronic, but perfectly natural health problems that went overlooked thanks to Dr. Griffiths being an obvious quack.  The presence of arsenic in Mabel’s body was undoubtedly due to the medicines Griffiths had prescribed.  Also noted in Harold’s defense was the fact that with Mabel’s death, her private income, on which her husband had so heavily depended, went into a trust fund for her children.

The prosecution’s case was a simple one:  Harold, wishing to marry another woman, doctored Mabel’s lunchtime Burgundy with weed killer.  However, this theory instantly crumbled into dust when young Irene Greenwood testified that she also had a glass from the bottle of wine at lunch, and two more glasses at supper.  That, as they say, was that.  The prosecution could mutter all they wanted about Irene committing perjury to save her father’s neck, but, of course, they couldn’t prove it.  (Oddly, it doesn’t seem to have occurred to the Crown lawyers that Harold might have put poison in one of Mabel’s many bottles of patent medicine--bottles which all mysteriously vanished after her death.)

Harold may have been acquitted in a courtroom, but the jury of public opinion thought otherwise.  He became such a pariah, he and his new wife changed their name to “Pilkington,” moved to a tiny village in Herefordshire, and earnestly hoped the world would forget about them.  Unfortunately for Harold, the controversy over his first wife’s death lingered for the rest of his days.  In 1922, he won £150 in damages after a waxworks exhibit in Cardiff included his effigy in their Chamber of Horrors.  Later that year, he wrote for “John Bull” an account of the murder trial of his fellow accused wife-poisoner, our old friend Major Herbert Armstrong.  Facing bankruptcy, Harold applied for the position of Clerk to Ross Urban Council, but was rejected.  Broken in his finances, his reputation, and his health, 55-year-old Greenwood died a sad death in January 1929.  Whether Greenwood was innocent of his first wife’s death or not (true-crime authors still argue over that question,) he certainly paid a high price for his hasty remarriage.