Murder of Mabel Greenwood

[1] Harold Greenwood, a Yorkshire solicitor, moved to Wales in 1898[2] where he, his wife Mabel (née Bowater)[3] and their four children lived comfortably with domestic staff, in Kidwelly, Carmarthenshire.

[4] Mabel had been an active and popular member of the local community[2] and in October 1919 the gossip had reached such a level that the police proposed to exhume the body for forensic examination; when Greenwood was informed of this, he replied "Just the very thing – I am quite agreeable".

[4] Accordingly, an inquest was held at Kidwelly Town Hall[2] in June 1920 at which the jury returned a unanimous verdict of "murder by arsenical poisoning ... administered by Harold Greenwood".

[7] In the case of Hannah Williams, the maid, Hall successfully showed that her evidence had been strongly influenced by a police officer who had interviewed her sometime after the death, and that she had changed her story on several occasions.

[7] His final witness was Irene Greenwood, the accused's 22-year-old daughter, who stated that she had also drunk, without ill effect, from the wine bottle alleged by the prosecution to have been the source of the poison that killed Mabel.