Michael was born in Aberbargoed in Monmouthshire in south Wales. Before leaving the town, he held part-time jobs as a gardener and labourer. His father Thomas, a coal miner, killed himself when Michael was 15, and his mother died when he was 31. Homeless, friendless, depressed and with no money, Michael drifted to London where he lived on the streets. He was found in an abandoned warehouse close to King's Cross, seriously ill from ingesting rat poison that contained phosphorus. Two days later, he died at age 34 in St. Pancras Hospital. His death may have been suicide although he may have simply been hungry, as the poison he ingested was a paste smeared on bread crusts to attract rats.
Operation Mincemeat
After being ingested, phosphide reacts with hydrochloric acid in the stomach, generating phosphine, a highly toxic gas. Bentley Purchase, coroner of St Pancras District, explained, "This dose was not sufficient to kill him outright, and its only effect was so to impair the functioning of the liver that he died a little time afterwards". When Purchase obtained Glyndwr's body, it was identified as being in suitable condition for a man who would appear to have floated ashore several days after having died at sea by hypothermia and drowning. Before Michael, finding a usable cadaver had been difficult, as indiscreet inquiries would cause talk, and it was impossible to tell a dead man's next of kin what the body was wanted for. The dead man's parents had died and no known relatives were found. The body was released on the condition that the man's real identity would never be revealed. Ewen Montagu later claimed the man died from pneumonia, and that the family had been contacted and permission obtained, but neither of those claims was true. On 30 April, Lt. Norman Jewell, captain of the submarine HMS Seraph, read the 39th Psalm, and Michael's body was gently pushed into the sea where the tide, aided by the push of the submarine's propellers, would bring it ashore off Huelva on the Spanish Atlantic coast. Attached to Michael's body was a briefcase containing secret documents that had been fabricated by the British Security Service. The purpose was to make German intelligence think Michael had been a courier delivering documents to a British general. The documents were crafted to deceive the Germans into thinking that the British were preparing to invade Greece and Sardinia, rather than Sicily, and they succeeded in doing so. Michael's body was picked up by a fisherman and he was buried, with full military honours, as Major William Martin. His grave, No.1886, is in the San Marco section of the cemetery of Nuestra Señora, in Huelva, Spain. The headstone reads:
The Latin phrase translates as "It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country." In 1998, the British Government revealed the body's true identity. A new inscription was added to the gravestone:
