Squire Kynston

Squire Kynston was found dead in the cellar of an empty house in Ancoats.

His body was found by a workman who had been engaged in the demolition of the house in Chapel Street behind London Road Station. The house had been unoccupied for about a year. The workman said that as soon as he entered the ground floor rooms he thought that the stench that pervaded the place could not have arisen from mere dampness. He said that the smell attracted him to the cellar and that as he descended the steps he stumbled and nearly fell over Squire Kynston's body.

The workmen said that he then immediately went off for the police.

When the police arrived they attempted to lift his body and said that the moment they touched it that his head rolled away from his trunk, and they said that it was obvious that his body had lain there for weeks in seclusion.

The police said that only a little flesh remained and that his body was so decomposed that it had to be removed to the mortuary in a bag.

They said that there was a thin strap round his neck that once might have been tight but had been hanging loosely when he was found. They said that over one of his shoulders there was a slab of 'flag' and that his head was partially under a 'slop stone'.

The police noted that his body had apparently been without clothing and that that fact suggested that he might have been the victim of an outrage.

The post-mortem stated that his skeletal body was too decomposed to show a cause of death, and that his internal organs had been eaten away by rats.

He had lived with his mother in Whitsuntide at 7 back Grey Street at the time he vanished. His mother said that she had not heard of Squire Kynston for about a year. She said that Squire Kynston had never been a particularly good lad. She said that one night in August 1906 he had stayed out all night and that when she had met him the following day in Butler Street, Ancoats, she had said to him, 'You naughty boy, go right home and stay in the house'. She added that she had boxed his ears whilst doing so. However, she said that he didn't go home and that she never saw him again. She said that she later heard that he was with his cousin and so concluded that he was staying at his sister’s house, adding that she didn't go there to see because she and her sister were not the best of friends, but added that she never doubted that Squire Kynston was safe and sound.

It was reported that the results of the police investigation suggested murder.

Chapel Street was described as a dismal and shabby thoroughfare in Ancoats. The cellar was said to have been in a block of an untenanted property that had been previously used by the lowest class of people. Chapel Street was just across Tipping Street from Hoyle Street where Thomas Smith was found in a similarly disused building the year earlier. Chapel Street is now called Cotter Street and is mostly redeveloped although the corner of Nivin Street, which was then called North Street, has a period structure as does the nearby Randerson Street, then Randerson Court, area.

An open verdict was returned.