It was during the mid 19th century that parts of Mrs.
Martha Sheward turned up all over the streets of the city of Norwich,
stuffed into gullies and blocking drains. At the time, of course, nobody
associated these portions of female anatomy with that of Mrs. Martha
Sheward of Norwich.
Instead the finger was
pointed at some Norwich medical students who were known for their
macabre sense of humour and it was put down as a medical prank in
very bad taste.
There are two reasons why
the police did not link the body parts with Mrs. Sheward, firstly
the head was never recovered and secondly they had no idea that
Mrs. Sheward had been murdered.
That was until the murderer
of Mrs. Martha Steward and the person who had chopped her body
into small chunks, walked into a police station in South London in
1869 and confessed to an astonished desk clerk that he had
murdered his wife. The confessor to the murder was none other than
the then landlord of the Key and Castle Public house at no. 105,
Oak Street, Norwich and the husband of the victim Mr. William
Sheward. What makes this confession somewhat unusual though is the
amount of time that had elapsed since the crime had been
committed. Which was around eighteen years.
It was only after the trial and a guilty verdict that
Sheward broke down and confessed all the gruesome details relating to
the demise of the his first wife the late Mrs. Sheward.
A row had taken place in their small terraced house
in Tabernacle Street (which is now the west end of Bishopsgate) over
money; a common cause of friction between the Shewards. However, on this
occasion Williams temper got the better of him and he grabbed his
cut-throat razor and slashed his wife's throat from ear to ear.
Despite the fact that his
wife now lay at his feet in an ever-increasing pool of blood
William Sheward still managed to keep an appointment for a job
interview in Great Yarmouth, after changing his blood splattered
clothes first.
Upon
his return he found that his wife's body had not been discovered so he
decided to dispose of the corpse. He did this by hacking his spouse's
body up into small manageable chunks. Starting with Mrs. Sheward's hands
and feet and so on.
He then decided to reduce
these pieces still further by placing them in boiling water and
heating them up on the kitchen stove. He began with her hands then
her head and then the feet. Next he placed some of the now
slightly cooked flesh into a pail.
Over the next few nights
starting at Tabernacle Street, William Sheward roamed the Norwich
streets with his grisly pail and its contents. Tossing out a
finger here, a toe there and so on and so forth. Martha's
entrails, it has been reported, he poked down one of the drains.
Some of Mrs Sheward's parts were scavenged by dogs, rats and the
like, but some of course where found. The process of chopping and
then boiling was long and laborious and as time went by the rest
of Martha’s remains began to putrefy and to smell. William became
concerned that the neighbours might start to ask questions about
the strange aroma emanating from his house so decided to speed up
the process by leaving out the boiling stage.
At the time neighbours accepted Sheward's report that
his wife had left him and returned to her family. So in all it appeared
to be the perfect crime. With the death of his wife Williams fortunes
took a turn for the better and he even married again and he and his
second wife took over the Key and Castle Public house at no. 105, Oak
Street, Norwich. Then for no apparent reason eighteen years after the
murder of his wife on January 1st 1869 William decided to confess whilst
on a trip to London.
On the
20th April 1869 William Sheward was hanged at Norwich City Gaol.
His executioner is said to have been William Calcraft,
one of the longest serving executioners of that era. Calcraft was known
for his 'short drops' which used to result in the majority of his
'clients' strangling to death rather than having their necks broken.
So ended the life of William Sheward of Norwich,
husband of Martha Sheward' who ended up all over Norwich.
To this day it is not known
what became of Martha Sheward's head, for her husband would not
say.
