The Scattering of Martha Sheward

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

Needless to say, William was found guilty of murder and was hanged at Norwich Gaol on 20th April 1869.  But do you know what the strangest thing was in his sorry tale?  He would never tell anyone where he'd put Martha's head.  

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

The Tabernacle Murder

 Tabernacle Street as it is today

Life was definitely bad...ish for these two individuals.

In the mid 19^th century one or two body parts began springing up across the bustling city of Norwich (UK) but nobody suspected any ill doing. It was a well known fact that some Norwich medical students had a penchant for pranks and it was assumed that these parts had at one time been connected to cadavers on which the students had been practising their surgery skills and then decided to scatter them willy nilly across Norwich. It was a good while after this grisly discovery it was learnt that the remains belonged to Mrs Martha Sheward. It was 18 years after this discovery that her murderer finally confessed.

Norwich Cathedral

The Shewards lived in Tabernacle Street, now known as Bishopgate. The street is close to the River Wensum and within a couple of minutes' walk to Norwich Cathedral. William Sheward, the deceased's husband and a tailor by trade, confessed that he and Martha had had an argument over money and William had become so angry that he had picked up his cut throat razor and slit Martha's throat. On that day he had a job interview in Great Yarmouth and, rather than miss out on this job, he merely changed his clothes and went off leaving Martha dead and bloody on the floor.

Having returned he had to decide how best to get rid of Martha and opted for the slice, dice and stew method! He cut her body into small pieces and, in order to make the pieces even smaller and less smelly, he boiled them up in a pan. As he completed each batch he took to the streets of Norwich under cover of darkness and distributed his Sheward stew across the streets of Norwich – placing them in drains, under hedges, anywhere where they were unlikely to be found for a while.

As this job was so long and laborious Martha Steward began to whiff a bit and William became panicky in case his neighbours noticed this odd odour so he began cutting out the boiling process and just distributing the raw meat and bones.

In the meantime, he told his neighbours that Martha had left him and gone back to her family and those neighbours readily accepted the explanation. After all, who could ever imagine that their next door neighbour would slit his wife's throat, cut her into small pieces and boil her before throwing her into the local undergrowth?

After his wife's demise he flourished. He remarried after some years and eventually took over a pub in Oak Street, Norwich but, almost 20 years after he'd murdered his first wife, William could no longer bear the guilt so, while in London and having had a boozy New Year, on 1^st January 1869 he walked into a police station and confessed.

William Sheward was hanged at the old Norwich Gaol in April 1869 at the hands of William Calcraft, a well known hangman who was famed for allowing prisoners to die by strangulation rather than the swifter breaking of the neck.

The strange thing is that, by the time of his death, William Sheward had never divulged the whereabouts of Martha's head so we assume it's still lying somewhere around the streets of my home city.

  Bishop's Bridge

I have my own idea on what may have happened to Martha's head. I believe that William may have thrown this into the River Wensum as it was just a stone's throw from where he lived and Bishop's Bridge lies across the river at the top of Tabernacle Street (Bishopgate) but I suspect we'll never know.