Mamie Stuart: the Missing Chorus Girl with an Abusive Husband

Born in Sunderland, in 1893, Amy Stuart was an English woman who disappeared from her home at age 26, in Caswell Bay, Wales, in 1919. She discovered a passion for dancing at an early age, as well as aspirations to perform in music halls and West End theaters. At age 15, with her parents’ consent, Stuart performed as a chorus girl in a troupe called The Magnets. She adopted the name Mamie and left home to pursue her show-business career, some time after which she formed her own dance troupe, naming it The Five Verona Girls. This troupe performed all over the United Kingdom, and became popular for – in a more conservative era – the dancers showing their legs, sometimes up to knee height. In 1917, the troupe broke up following one of the girls getting pregnant, and another breaking her ankle.

When she was 23, not long after the disbandment of The Five Verona Girls, Stuart moved back into her parents’ house in Sunderland, where she met marine engineer George Shotton. He introduced himself as a widower, and the two started seeing each other. Only months later, he proposed, and the two married in South Shields in 1918. The two lived in Bristol, but after a while moved to Swansea and then to Caswell Bay, from which she maintained regular correspondence with her family in Sunderland. What she did not know, however, is that she was engaged in a bigamous marriage.

Shotton, who lied about being a widower, was already in a legal - if abusive - marriage with a woman named Mary. The two had a son named Arthur, and their marriage was violent, with Shotton frequently beating her. She and her son lived in Penarth, and Mary believed that Shotton’s long periods of absence from the house were due to his employment.

Stuart hinted in letters she’d sent in the months prior to her disappearance in 1919 that her marriage was unhappy and increasingly violent, and that she expressed a desire to leave Shotton, who among other things, forbade her from the stage. On November 12, Stuart sent her parents a letter, and as usual, they sent a reply - one which was promptly returned marked ‘house closed’. Believing the error to be on the part of the post office, they sent a telegram reply, which too returned with the same marking. Just before Christmas, the Stuarts received one last telegraph from her, with season’s greetings. No correspondence was sent by Stuart or Shotton since.

The Investigation Unfolds:

In March of 1920, staff at the Grosvenor Hotel in Swansea took notice of a leather trunk with no address left by a male guest at the hotel in December and which had gone unclaimed for close to three months. The hotel manager contacted the police, who came and opened the trunk. Inside were two women’s dresses and shoes which were substantially cut and ripped, as well as some jewelry, a Bible, a rosary, and a manicure set. Also in the chest was a scrap of paper with Stuart’s parents’ address. They told police that they had been trying to contact or locate her for months. They expressed their distress regarding her safety and presented her letters regarding her unhappy marriage to the police. They had also recently obtained a letter that Stuart had penned weeks before she went missing, telling them to contact Mrs. Hearn – a friend of hers – in case anything happened to her. She believed there was something wrong with Shotton, and desired to stop living with him. Not long after, a maid cleaning the couple’s abandoned cottage in preparation for new tenants found Stuart’s brown leather handbag hidden behind a dresser in an upstairs bedroom, which contained two pounds in change and Stuart’s sugar ration card.

By late spring, South Wales Police were convinced that Stuart had been murdered by Shotton, with the motive being rage, jealousy, control, or some combination of the three. After being contacted, Scotland Yard sent Chief Inspector William Draper to oversee the investigation of the case. Draper ordered a search of the entire area surrounding the cottage but found no traces of Stuart. A nationwide search ensued, with her description being circulated, but this also proved futile. 

Apprehension, Trial, Conviction:

The Prime suspect of both South Wales Police and Scotland Yard was George Shotton. Draper quickly located him in Penarth, living with his wife and son. Shotton admitted to knowing Stuart and left the chest for her in the Swansea hotel in December after she left him following an argument he attributed to her infidelity. He denied ever marrying her, or any knowledge of her current whereabouts. Despite his claims, it was discovered that he had married Stuart bigamously 2 years earlier and that he hadn’t married her, as she’d walked out on him; he chose to return to his life in Penarth. Scotland Yard also contacted Mrs. Hearn, Stuart’s friend. She confirmed that Stuart faced abuse at Shotton’s hand, and begged her to find Stuart if anything happened. Police could never find Stuart’s body and thus couldn’t convict him of murdering her.

Unable to prove that Shotton was the killer, the only charges that he could be convicted of were those of bigamy. In 1920, Shotton was arrested and tried for the offense two months later. To the charges of bigamy, he pleaded not guilty. He claimed that while he knew Stuart and lived with her for some time, the two separated after a fight in December. He also claimed that someone stole his name and used it to marry Stuart, and denied mistreating her at any point. However, a number of witnesses testified that the two were in fact married and that their marriage was good in the beginning. One of the witnesses was Edith, Stuart’s sister, who testified that in letters he often referred to Stuarts as “my little wife” and signed with “your own loving husband”. During the trial, the prosecution’s Sir Ellis Griffith K.C. accused Shotton of killing Stuart outright, but could not back up the accusation. Shotton was found guilty of bigamy and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. After his release, his wife Mary divorced him. In 1938 he was arrested again, this time for threatening his sister Gladys Austin with a revolver. He was sentenced to 12 months of hard labor. He severed all relations to his family upon his release, moved to Ledbury as an aircraft factory worker, and later relocated to Bristol.

Over the years, numerous accounts of sighting Stuart surfaced as far as Canada, South Africa, India, and Australia. One man, Thomas James, claimed he saw her in Karachi India (later Pakistan) in the 1920s. She traveled with a troupe of performers, and when he approached her on the subject, she denied being Stuart and hurriedly left; but James swore adamantly that it was her.

In 1961, 42 years after Stuart’s disappearance, her remains were found inside a rotting sack, down a disused mine in Caswell by three young men – Graham Jones, John Gerke, and Chris MacNamara – only about 200 yards from the house she shared with Shotton. The three men were exploring after rumors that the mine shafts were used by smugglers. While doing so, the three removed a large slab behind which Gerke noticed a human skull, a celluloid hair clip with a tuft of brown hair, several pieces of jewelry, and scraps of clothing. The Remains were taken to Cardiff for forensic examination where they were assembled into a complete skeleton – rib cage excepted – and through x-ray scans, were determined to belong to a young woman no older than 28. They couldn’t determine the cause of death. The remains' identity was confirmed by an elderly woman who was a friend of Stuart’s; she identified the wedding and engagement rings found with the bones as Stuart’s. This prompted police – with help from Interpol – to search for Shotton yet again. They located him in a cemetery, buried beneath an unmarked pauper’s grave with only his welfare number.

At a later coroner’s inquest, the bones were examined with testimony that the boy had been sawed through and separated in three equal lengths: once at her upper torso and arms, and a second just below the hips and pelvis. The Coroner, D. R. James, stated that he could not discover the cause of death, given a lack of soft tissue, but was convinced that Stuart had been murdered, citing this with a question as to why the body would be sawed and hidden in a case of suicide or accident. In conclusion, a decision was made that Stuart had been murdered, and the perpetrator was the now-deceased George Shotton.