The Threatening Letters to Daniel Daniel: A Dramatic Reconstruction

The case that rose before the Swansea Assizes did not merely trouble the court; it brooded over it. It came like a storm rolling down from the coal‑black hills — a tale of desperation, fury, and a mind buckling under the weight of its own ruin. At its centre stood John Rees, fifty years old, once a colliery proprietor of Caerphilly, now a man hollowed by loss and driven to the brink of catastrophe. His target was Alderman Daniel Daniel, the anthracite magnate whose name carried authority across the Welsh coalfield, and whose decisions, Rees believed, had shattered his life.

What began as failed negotiations over the Llanton Colliery did not simply sour — it curdled into obsession. And from that obsession poured a sequence of letters so violent, so despairing, that they seemed less like correspondence and more like the cries of a man drowning.

A Colliery Lost, a Life Unravelling

Rees had once walked the galleries of the colliery with pride. Now he wrote on the same paper he had used in those better days, as though trying to summon back a world already gone. He believed Daniel Daniel and Colonel Jones had “sold it to the bank,” leaving him ruined, his wife dying, his children broken, and his own mind teetering on the edge of oblivion.

In his letters, he did not merely accuse — he lamented, he raged, he begged. Life and death had become twin doors, equally meaningless.

The First Threats

On February 8th, the first true warning arrived at Daniel Daniel’s home in Crynant. It was not a letter; it was an eruption.

“The next one will be a shot from my revolver into your head… You have made me absolutely mad, and nothing is on my mind but shooting you.”

The threat was not veiled. It was stark, cold, and delivered with the conviction of a man who believed himself betrayed beyond forgiveness. Rees vowed to kill Daniel before the next meeting — or at the County Hall if he must — unless a cheque for £15,000 was sent to “save your life.”

The valleys whispered: A man does not write such words unless something inside him has already broken.

A Revolver Prepared

The next day, Rees walked into a Cardiff shop and placed his revolver on the counter, instructing that it be put into “perfect working order.” It was a chilling act — not merely preparation, but intention.

By February 20th, another letter arrived, this time written in red ink. The colour was deliberate: a flare of fury, urgency, and a mind spiralling into darkness.

“End of My Tether”

A third letter, dated February 15th, revealed the depth of Rees’s collapse:

“I am now come to the end of my tether… It will be as much pleasure to shoot you and myself as to shoot two rabbits.”

He declared Daniel his “victim,” insisted the world would say “Serve him right!”, and promised that within a month the deed would be done. It was not a threat. It was a prophecy spoken by a man who believed fate had already chosen its path.

Arrest and Collapse

When Superintendent Rees Davies finally arrested him, Rees admitted sending the letters. At first he was calm — eerily calm — as though resigned to the doom he had carved for himself. Then, like a storm breaking across the mountains, he erupted into frenzy, shouting that he would “shoot the two and then commit suicide.”

Moments later, he fell silent again, subdued, saying he would write to Daniel and withdraw everything. He insisted he had not meant the threats.

It was as though two men lived within him: one forged from grief, the other from the coal‑black madness of the mines.

A Mind in Breakdown

Dr. James Rutherford of a Bristol mental hospital testified that Rees had been on the verge of a complete mental breakdown when placed under his care. At that time, the doctor said, Rees would not have understood the nature of the letters he was writing. Now, however, he appeared normal — “quite a different man.”

The tragedy was clear: the threats had come from a mind collapsing under unbearable strain.

Verdict

The jury returned the verdict that seemed carved into the very bones of the case:

“Guilty but insane.”

Mr. Justice Branson ordered that John Rees be detained during His Majesty’s pleasure, closing a grim and tumultuous chapter in the history of the South Wales coal industry — a chapter where desperation became violence, and a man’s unravelled mind cast a long shadow across the valleys.