Body parts all over Norwich.

Alright?

Welcome to the 412 of you who have joined since last week. Now that you’ve subscribed, the weather in Norwich will always be as good as it is today. That’s how it works.

Today, I’m going to tell you a story about the most interesting murder that ever took place in Norwich. Not just because of the murder itself, but because of what happened afterwards.

Warning: This newsletter will be gruesome and potentially distressing for some of you. I’m not in the business of omitting the gruesome details, so if you’re squeamish, there’ll be no hard feelings if you need to tap out.

Take a seat in your good chair, grab a teaspoon from the drawer and crack open a fresh pot of Colmans. Things are about to get spicy.

Meet William and Martha.

We all know a couple who constantly bicker. For anyone who knew them, William and Martha were that couple.

William - the first of two Williams we’ll meet today - was a tailor who lived with his wife, Martha (the only Martha we’ll meet today) on Tabernacle Street, which no longer exists. It would’ve been near the Great Hospital, staggering distance from The Adam and Eve pub.

According to a neighbour, on the evening of 15th June, 1851, they had been arguing, which was a common pastime for the pair. Less common was the fact that, during this particular argument, William grabbed some scissors in a fit of rage and stabbed Martha to death with them.

Suddenly, silence. William was alone with the body of his wife, a pool of her blood and the seedlings of a plan.

How to dispose of a corpse in Norwich.

The next day started like any other for William. He got up, presumably stepped over his dead wife’s body, circumnavigated the drying pool of blood, and went to a job interview in Yarmouth. I can only assume he aced it.

But when he got back that day, he noticed that her body was beginning to smell. As it turns out, you can’t just leave a body in your front room and hope that it eventually disappears. Who knew? William realised that he’d need to get rid of it.

His solution was obvious. He would chop up Martha’s body and boil each piece in a large pan, hoping to reduce it down into a more manageable broth.

As you’ve likely already surmised, this didn’t work. Starting with her head, William learned that body parts don’t just dissolve if you keep them on the hob for long enough. You just end up with par-boiled body parts instead.

Plan B: William would dispose of each body part around Norwich, heading out for evening strolls and hiding a body part in a bush, gutter or drain each time. Before long, Martha’s body would be scattered across the City.

The investigation.

Nobody was suspicious of Martha’s sudden disappearance. William claimed that she had left him during one of their arguments and returned to the refuge of her family. A feasible explanation given their fiery reputation.

Still, William had a problem: a few weeks had passed, and Martha’s body parts were starting to turn up across the city. A piece of pelvis here. A finger there. Some entrails blocking a drain. A combination of animals and the weather revealed them, and an investigation was launched to discover who they belonged to.

Unbelievably, the prevailing theory was not that anything sinister had taken place. Instead, the incident was blamed on Norwich’s medical students, who were known for their macabre sense of humour. The whole thing was dismissed as a silly prank.

William was in the clear.

The aftermath.

William remarried 11 years later in 1862. By 1868, he was running The Key and Castle pub on Oak Street (the pub is now closed, but you can still visit The Key and Castle Yard in the same place).

17 years had passed since his sinister strolls around the city, and his life was, by all accounts, happy and normal.

Then, on January 1st 1869, something remarkable happened.

Have you ever found yourself enjoying one too many ales on New Year’s Eve? It appears that’s what happened to William Sheward because, the next morning, he walked into a police station in London and confessed to everything.

A punishment that fits the crime.

William immediately suffered from post-hangover regret. He retracted his confession, blaming his drunken state for his fanciful story. But it was too late. On 20th April, 1869, William was hanged at the Norwich City Gaol (which was where the Roman Catholic Cathedral now sits).

The story doesn’t end there. Remember that I mentioned there are two Williams in this story? Well, the second one is William Calcraft: the most notorious hangman in 19th-century England.

Calcraft was the official Executioner of the City of London and Middlesex, but his services were in demand across the country. On April 20th, 1869, he found himself in Norwich.

Calcraft was famous (and somewhat controversial) for his signature move: The Short-Drop. Unlike most hangmen, who afforded their ‘clients’ enough rope to ensure the neck was broken upon hitting the bottom of their fall, Calcraft preferred a shorter length of rope. This meant his victims were usually strangled to death (which could take minutes), rather than afforded the luxury of an immediate demise.

He was even known to pull at the legs of his dying victims to accelerate the process: a practice beloved by his audience until public executions were outlawed in 1868.

William Sheward’s death, just like his wife’s 18 years prior, was not going to be a pleasant one.

A bonus fact

Whilst William was buried in the prison grounds, most of Martha’s remains were buried in the undercroft beneath the Guildhall.

Here’s a picture of a special blessing that took place in 2019 - Martha’s great-great-great niece, Sandra Francis, was in attendance.

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See you next Sunday,

Secret Norwich.