Gower tales of the Unexpected

 

Gower was designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in 1956 and was the first area in the United Kingdom to be granted this status. One person who was instrumental in this being granted was the psychoanalyst, Ernest Jones. Jones was the lifelong friend of Sigmund Freud. Jones’ first wife the composer Morfydd Llwyn Owen, had died 1918, in mysterious circumstances.

Gower does have a dark and mysterious past, and in this article, we’ll be looking at two cases. 2023 marks the bicentennial of the first event.

We’ll start slightly earlier than 1823, at Christmas 1822, the Talbot family of Penrice, were informed that “bones of elephants” had been found after Daniel Davies and Rev. Davies had found animal bones earlier that year. The following January Rev. William Buckland, Professor of Geology at Oxford University, arrived for a week. During this time, Buckland made a discovery of more bones in Paviland Cave, between Port Eynon and Rhossili. Buckland mistakenly identified the bones as female and they became attributed to the Red Lady of Paviland. The bones were in fact male and had been dyed with red ochre. They have since been researched and have been dated as 33,000 Before Present (BP).

At that time the cave was situated at the cliff’s edge, but at the time of the burial was situated 70 miles inland. What’s the significance of the use of red ochre? It is thought that it was simply used to mark the burial and the body wouldn’t be accidentally dug up!

Sadly, at the time of Buckland’s discovery, Swansea didn’t have a museum. This wasn’t opened until 1841, so Buckland took the bones back with him to Oxford. Today, the skeleton is on display at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. However, other excavations yielded more than 4,000 flints, teeth and bones, which are on display at both Swansea Museum and the National Museum, Cardiff.

 

In this next case, which is a delicate story, we start in 1961, when three potholers, Graham Jones, John Gerke and Christopher MacNamara made a gruesome discovery in a disused lead mine at Brandy Cove. They discovered a rotting sack containing human remains. These remains were identified to be those of Mamie Stuart, who disappeared during December 1919 from her home in Caswell Bay.

MacNamara, Gerke and Jones the three potholers, November 1961. Brandy Cove

Who was Mamie Stuart?  Stuart was born in Sunderland in 1893 and named Amie. Having the aspiration to perform at the London’s West End, Stuart, with the consent of her parents performed as a chorus girl with a troupe. Whilst with this troupe, she adopted the name “Mamie”. By 1917, the troupe had disbanded, however, before this Stuart met and made an acquittance with marine engineer, George Shotton, who also came from Sunderland.

Shotton claimed to be a widower, and a year later they were married. After a honeymoon, the couple went from Bristol to Swansea where lived first at Trafalgar Terrace before moving to Caswell Bay.

Stuart was last seen November/December 1919. Prior to her disappearance, Stuart had posted letters to her parents claiming that her marriage was an unhappy one. Her parents wrote back, but the letter was returned. Christmas 1919 they received a telegram with the compliments of the season.

George Shotton and Mamie Stuart

In March 1920 staff at the Swansea Grosvenor Hotel noticed that a leather trunk had been left and unclaimed for three months. As there was no forwarding address, the manager opened the trunk and found that it contained items of women’s clothing and a bible. They contacted the police.

Scotland Yard thought that Stuart had been murdered at the hands of Shotton, but they didn’t have a body so couldn’t charge him. An extensive search was carried out, but they had no luck in finding Stuart. Shotton however was charged with bigamy, because at the time of his marriage to Stuart he had already been married since September 1905 and had a son called Arthur. He was found guilty of bigamy and sentenced to 18 months imprison-ment with hard labour at Swansea Goal.

Following his release in 1922, Shotton was divorced from his wife and moved to Monmouthshire. By 1938 he had moved to Balham, South London to look after his mother. Shotton was again sent to prison during that year, having been found guilty of attacking his sister. Following his release, he cut all his ties with his family and finally moved to Bristol.

Stuart’s remains were discovered in 1961, but when the police made further enquiries they discovered that Shotton had died in 1958.

It wouldn’t be until 2019, a century after Stuart had disappeared that she was finally buried alongside her parents at Bishopwearmouth Cemetery, Sunderland, and this was because Stuart’s great niece saw a television programme and discovered that Stuart’s bones were in Cardiff University where they had retained her skeleton for educational purposes.

Copyright - The Bay Magazine, February 2023