Modern day Bishopsgate
Life was indeed extremely bad(ish) for poor Martha Sheward and yet I also have to feel just a tad sorry for her husband William.
William and Martha were a married couple and lived unhappily in a terraced house in Tabernacle Street (now Bishopsgate), Norwich. William was a tailor and was the breadwinner but money was tight and Martha was most definitely not a happy bunny.
They were both in their 50's and it was known that they were prone to arguments ... usually over finances, but one morning in June 1851 Martha overstepped the mark and William blew a gasket. On the spur of the moment, he took his cut throat razor and slit her throat.
Martha fell to the floor and lay in a pool of blood but William didn't immediately try to hide the body or clean up the blood. Instead, cool as a cucumber, he left her on the floor, made sure he had on clean clothes and calmly travelled a distance of 20 miles or so to Great Yarmouth for a job interview.
When he returned home Martha was still laying on the floor and William obviously realised that he was going to have to dispose of her somehow but without raising the suspicions of the neighbours. The street was mainly terraced houses so it wasn't going to be easy to hide the body.
After thinking about it, William decided the best way was to chop Martha into small pieces, boil the bits and then scatter them around the streets of Norwich. After he'd boiled the body parts he then took to the streets under the cloak of darkness and scattered the boiled flesh hither and thither across the city.
But one thing William hadn't considered was the fact that, after a couple of days the flesh started to putrefy and stank to high heaven, so he had to cut out the middle stage of cooking and just 'chop and chuck'.
Unfortunately, the flesh began blocking up the drains throughout Norwich and it was then that the police found it was down to human body parts, but they put it down to local medical students' high jinks In those days bodies were given to medical schools to use in their surgical training.
William told his neighbours that Martha had left him and returned to her family elsewhere in the country so no suspicion lay at his feet.
He then went on to marry again and he and his second wife became landlords of a Norwich pub and William's fortunes changed for the better.
Nobody would ever have known about his razor rage except for the fact that on New Year's Day 1869, over 17 years later, William, who was spending some time in London, walked into a police station and confessed to the murder. There didn't seem to be any logical reason for him to do so. He'd had a happier second marriage, had done quite well for himself and then, out of the blue, confessed to his first wife's murder. It didn't really make sense
I live in the Norwich area and worked there for around 30 years and I'm still fascinated to know where the head is!
M
