WAS Kinsale’s Dr Robert Acton murdered by his wife?

This is the question author Adrienne Acton is hoping the people of Cork will be able to answer. His cause of death at the age of thirty-three was put down as a morphine overdose by the attending physician, Dr Goodman, but no autopsy was performed at the request of his grieving widow. Mrs Grace Acton was inconsolable by all accounts, and so her request to leave her husband’s body untouched was granted. After all, who would want to upset this meek and grieving well-to-do lady? Only a few months after his family had learned of Robert’s untimely death there was a knock at the door of David Howe Acton’s house in Kinsale. The guest was brought into the parlour. There was stunned silence when she introduced herself as Robert’s widow Mrs Grace Acton. She announced that she had travelled from New York and demanded to be financially rewarded for her great loss. She was aware that Robert had received an inheritance from his late father’s estate and expected to be in receipt of it quick fast!

She left empty-handed and made her way back to America. Her friends believed she was visiting family in Manchester England. It was only a few years later when she shot dead her fourth husband, Mr Nicholas Smith, and tried to burn the house down with all their servants asleep in their beds did the shine of respectability appear tarnished. After her own death, her father, the Governor General, stood in the morgue and announced to all within earshot that he had no idea who the woman on the slab was but that several months before his family had been made aware of a woman claiming to be his daughter. ‘She’s an imposter’, he bellowed.

However, those who knew her claimed she had a copy of the governor’s last will and testament in her possession and that she was named as a benefactor. It was a very complicated story to unravel, Adrienne says. From Robert’s life in Kinsale, attending Queens University (now UCC) to his extraordinary sporting career with Munster rugby, Harvard University and Vanderbilt University, to his meeting Grace while serving as the resident physician at Blackwells island penitentiary and insane asylum, to his strange and untimely death. ‘Ever since I stood before his grave in the Bronx NY, I promised him I would try and unravel the mystery behind his death. His wife Grace, who he kept a secret from his family in Kinsale, was a chameleon. She had five different surnames, a companion that she called her sister and a talent for reinventing herself whenever someone was close to figuring her out and unravelling her lies. ‘I’ve put the tale into a story form of 96 pages. Every word has been researched and every lead was followed up. But like all great mysteries there is one missing piece that will bring this tale to it conclusion. Perhaps someone who reads the story will find the missing piece of information that will allow Robert to finally rest in peace and the identity of the black widow to be revealed.’

As he lay in his melancholy waiting for death to arrive, had he known of her intent? Did he know that she was an imposter? Was he aware that his beloved was the beast? Copies of this book, ‘Murder Most Graceful’ can be ordered directly from Adrienne Acton. Just send your email address to her on Facebook messenger and all the details will be sent to you. She will give a talk on the book in the city library on the Grand Parade at 11am on Saturday July 11th, where copies of the book will be available to buy.

Happy hunting!

Dr Robert Acton’s grave at Woodlawn cemetery in New York