John. In 1896, Samuel was 39 years of age when he married Ellen Bodkin, aged 30. John was their first son, followed by a brother, William Samuel, in 1903. In 1914, Adams' father died of a stroke. Four years later, his brother died in the 1918 influenza pandemic. After attending Coleraine Academical Institution for several years, Adams matriculated at The Queen's University of Belfast at age 17. There he was seen as a "plodder" and "lone wolf" by his lecturers and, partly because of an illness (probably tuberculosis) he missed a year of studies. He graduated in 1921, having failed to qualify for honours. In 1921, surgeon Arthur Rendle Short offered Adams a position as assistant houseman at Bristol Royal Infirmary. He spent a year there but did not prove a success. On Short's advice, Adams applied for a job as a general practitioner in a Christian practice in Eastbourne, Sussex. Eastbourne Adams arrived in Eastbourne in 1922, where he lived with his mother and his cousin, Sarah Florence Henry. In 1929, he borrowed £2,000 (equivalent to £100,753 at 2022 prices) from a patient, William Mawhood, and bought an eighteen-room house called Kent Lodge, in Trinity Trees (then known as Seaside Road), a select address. Adams would frequently invite himself to the Mawhoods' residence at mealtime, even bringing his mother and cousin. He also began charging items to their accounts at local stores without their permission. Mrs Mawhood would later describe Adams to the police as "a real scrounger". When Mr Mawhood died in 1949, Adams visited his widow, uninvited, and took a 22-carat-gold pen from her bedroom dressing table, saying he wanted "something of her husband's". He never visited her again. Gossip regarding Adams' unconventional methods had started by the mid-1930s. In 1935, he inherited £7,385 from a patient, Matilda Whitton; her whole estate amounted to £11,465, equivalent to £416,489 and £646,588 respectively at 2022 values. Whitton's will was contested by her relatives but upheld in court, though a codicil giving Adams' mother £100 was overturned. Adams then began receiving "anonymous postcards" about him "bumping off" patients, as he admitted in a newspaper interview in 1957. These were received at a rate of three or four a year until the Second World War, and then commenced again in 1945. In 1939 or 1941, Adams started injecting a Mrs Agnes Pike with drugs, including morphine. After some time in his