The Skull Under David Attenborough's Home That Revived A Murder Case | Murder Maps | Absolute Crime

foreign [Music] thank you on the 5th of July 2011 an unusual inquest took place in London at the West London coroners Court officials gathered to resolve a 130 year old mystery the previous October builders in Richmond Southwest London had made a startling discovery while working at the home of naturalist sir David Attenborough they're Unearthed to human skull in his garden it was old the bones were shattered the Jaws bare of teeth an investigation was launched it soon led police to a murder case that was more than a century old the coroner ruled that the skull had belonged to a woman the victim of a crime that had shocked Britain it was a murder which upended the social order and struck at the heart of Victorian society [Music] the Richmond murder was a notorious case from the 1870s in that you had a female murderer and you had a female victim but it was also a subversion of traditional Victorian roles in that you had a servant killing her employer so there's a real threat to the social order here that kind of makes it a particularly newsworthy case because the body was dismembered mutilated and the parts scattered think it was the mutilation that provoked the repulsion and horror of the crime a lot of people would be nervous of their staff at the best of times so it caused a lot of controversy people would have been talking about it there would have been lots of inches of newspaper coverage about the whole thing it's a fear for the middle classes and the upper classes to employee servants thinking hang on my servant could turn on me the murder woman's name was Julia Thomas at the time of her death in 1879 she was in her mid-50s she had been twice widowed and had lived on her own for six years Julia Martha Thomas was quite Centric woman she was seen by her neighbors as kind of quite odd she was a lonely person she liked to go traveling on her own she was constantly on the move and frequently friends and relations didn't know where she where she'd actually just disappeared so she was obviously an intelligent and educated woman she'd formally worked as a school teacher but after being widowed she'd settled in this little semi-detached Villa in Richmond she was perhaps typical of a certain class of lady in those Victorian times she wasn't working class she wasn't wealthy either she was sort of in between she had pretensions to a gentility which her circumstances didn't really cover so she'd like to sort of flaunt her jewelry and her rings and pretend to be something that she wasn't but in fact to cover up shortages of money she picked when he had to take in lodges he ate Mrs Thomas had moved to number two Mayfield Cottages in the expanding London suburb of Richmond it was a large property for a woman on her own and Mrs Thomas decided she would like some help the victorians were very concerned with status obviously if you were laboring class you you would fend for yourself or get your children to help but anyone above that level would aspire to having at least one servant people like Mrs Thomas would be trying to keep up appearances and to some extent she would think well having somebody to help out would be something that her friends would perhaps expect her to do and so it wasn't unusual for somebody in Mrs Thomas's position to employ somebody it was very easy to employ ourselves they were very very cheap the servant living in the wages could be as little as five or six pounds a year which a lot of people in the lower scale of society could actually afford there were well over a million people at this time engaged in domestic service and servants had a hierarchy which reflected the social hierarchy that might have been in the Downton Abbey type of environment or it could be a much more small scale thing working for somebody like Mrs Thomas a friend of Mrs Thomas in Richmond thought she had the answer in January 1879 her child woman a sort of part-time cleaner had fallen ill so in her absence Mrs Thomas's friend employed a 30 year old Irish Woman by the name of Kate Webster the young woman impressed her new employer who had no hesitation in recommending her to Mrs Thomas for the full-time position at Mayfield at the end of January Webster moved into the house and started work as Mrs Thomas's servant [Music] Kate would described herself as a general servant which meant she could be called upon to do all sorts of jobs in the household she would have been expected to do anything that Julia wanted her to do so it would have been an early start kind of fan setting fires making sure the house was warm she had been expected to do all the washing of clothes the drying of clothes all the cooking all the cleaning this is just her on her own having to do the whole thing no washing machines or vacuum cleaners in those days so a lot of the the housework was was physically quite demanding and cleaning the house took a long time [Music] there will be an awful lot of work involved and the servant could start work say about six o'clock and probably wouldn't be finished till about nine o'clock in the evening Webster was young and tall and strong everything Mrs Thomas was not she would the Widow thought to be the perfect help around the house but Kate Webster was not all she seemed [Music] she blurs her identity by telling so many lies in her teen she says she married Captain Webster by whom she had four children a husband and the four children died but she adopted uh his name she came over to England at the age of 18 by which time she already had convictions of a theft and once in England she carried on regularly committing thefts being convicted for theft being sent to jail she'd come out she'd commit more crimes she'd come over to England being in various places Liverpool Birmingham London and visited the inside of prisons in all those places actually she was a good thief she specialized in lodging house robbery she would go into a laundry house perhaps take up a room then steal what she could from other lodges in 1874 she had an illegitimate child she seems to have displayed quite a lot of love for this child but couldn't always look after him partly because of her need to earn money but also because she was being incarcerated she was very maternal she loved this child and she kept it to when she was in prison one occasion for three years she's quite complex she obviously has has issues she doesn't have a great deal of respect for the law but anyway she comes to England and she settles here um you know and finds work in London foreign 1879 Webster's new employer did not request any further references nor did she ask any questions about Webster's past it was a failure which would cost Mrs Thomas her life [Music] [Music] oh Kate Webster began work at number two Mayfield cottages on the 29th of January 1879. she'd come to the home of the Widow Mrs Thomas on the recommendation of a friend but the relationship between the two women deteriorated quickly Mrs Thomas was not an easy woman to work for servants didn't last long in her house she was described as a bit of a tartar with servants she could be very spicy and very unpleasant Mrs Thomas had a reputation for being difficult she was bad tempered she found faults very easily and she wasn't scared to say when she wasn't happy about something Kate Webster herself said that she would do the cleaning and then Mrs Thomas would follow straight afterwards and criticize her work she really irritated Kate by sort of following around Vincent Kate had done polishing and she would be marking the table to show where Kate had missed this and or where she'd done that or she'd night wipe this or she hadn't swept that within a week Mrs Thomas realized she'd got a somewhat volatile character on her hands because Kate didn't like this sort of criticism I think there were fundamental personality differences that meant they were always going to clash and different expectations of what they were supposed to be doing in their relationship as an employer and a servant two doors down from Mrs Thomas's house was a pub the hole in the wall Webster soon became a regular visitor the very religious Mrs Thomas did not approve relations between the twins sort of quite quickly sour and so much so that Mrs Thomas was afraid of Kate but then again it's the snobbish element of her class she could not do without a servant obviously the relationship of being deteriorating she was down at the Ale House drinking and Mrs Thomas wouldn't have approved of that she wanted to dismiss Kate Kate then negotiated to stay another couple of days it's not clear why it could have been she thought right I'm going to kill you and she needed that couple of days to plan what she was going to do and to carry out her plans or it could simply be that she wanted to pick up extra wages or she had nowhere else to go and needed a couple more nights in the Villa before moving on of course it was a drinking which eventually led to the final clash with Mrs Thomas Mrs Thomas was never usually late for church but on the first Sunday in March the service at the Presbyterian lecture hall had already begun when she arrived unable to take her usual seat she sat at the back visibly upset Kate always had Sunday afternoons off she was allowed a half day on this Sunday she'd gone to the pub and kind of had a bit to drink and I think just genuinely lost track of time Kate Webster was back late on the Sunday afternoon which prevented Mrs Thomas from apparently getting to the Presbyterian Chapel on time Mrs Thomas when she went to the church he was in a very excitable mood so excited that her face was Flash she was nervously agitated she was angry and excited and she's obviously in a rage and so much so that she left for 10 minutes before the end of the service to go back to the to Mayfield Cottage to obviously continue the realm with Kate foreign [Music] Ed when Mrs Thomas returned home she was never seen at church again nor was she seen by the neighbors next door nor by the Coleman on his rounds nor by friends who popped by Mrs Thomas the Widow of Mayfield cottages had quite vanished but another woman calling herself Mrs Thomas would soon be seen around at the railway station in Hammersmith at the Oxford and Cambridge bear house on the Kings Road this Mrs Thomas was tall and Young and she spoke with an Irish accent [Music] oh the fact that Kate dressed as Julia wearing her lovely dresses does suggest there was a bit of jealousy there in terms of she wanted that status she wanted to be seen as a lady so therefore she kind of adopted her identity both as a means of having that status for a while but also to legitimize kind of taking her possessions being able to sell those possessions on without arousing too much suspicion she saw a way of getting possession of her property Mrs Thomas's relations didn't always know when she'd moved on or a whereabouts and so Kate had probably found this out already and so she decided to impersonate Mr Thomas by wearing her clothes her jewelry her rings with the intention of taking possession of the movable property as it were which would give her an extra reserve of money she in effect needed to pass us off off was Mrs Thomas in order to sell Mrs Thomas's assets and to make some money from it on the day after Mrs Thomas's disappearance there were strange noises in number two Mayfield at times it seemed as if someone was chopping wood or lighting fires or washing clothes but there were never any voices [Music] the walls between numbers one and two Mayfield Terrace were very very thin and noises could be heard very easily the neighbors started to notice things there was washing out on the line at eight o'clock the the next morning which was rather early for this to have happened there was a funny smell coming from next door Kate carried on doing the duty she would normally have done you know she was cleaning the house she was cleaning the front doorstep so they saw her and thought Oh yes everything's as normal but then Kate starts making excuses she starts saying that Julia's gone away to visit friends in the country they then see her wearing her employer's dresses and they suddenly realized they haven't seen Julia for a while and that Kate's behavior is becoming more and more out of character it's not behaving like a servant anymore it's behaving like a mistress she knew that she wouldn't be able to remain in the cottage at Richmond for very long before the authorities found out what had happened so she needed some help to dispose of the furniture to make some money [Music] on the evening of Tuesday the 4th of March Webster finally left the house she had not seen the porter family in almost six years to the porters it seemed those years had been good to Kate Webster [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] foreign on the 4th of March 1879 Kate Webster traveled across the river to Hammersmith to visit her old neighbors [Music] Henry Porter was surprised to see her looking so elegant there she wasn't my name is Thomas's dresses uh she was she was wearing sort of her jewelry she had rings it's quite cunning on her part to go back to people who haven't seen her for a while you can't possibly know what she has really been doing she's obviously got plans to get rid of all of Julia's things and she needs to come up with a convincing story she said that she had been married since she last met them she was now Mrs Thomas and she had inherited a house and she was going to dispose of the assets she said she's going to be selling all of this and then moving back to Ireland to her family they were aware of what she was doing they took her at her word when she said she was Mrs Thomas Henry Porter and his 16 year old son Robert walked Webster back to the railway station they took turns carrying her bag until they all reached a pub and stopped for a drink then Webster told them she needed to meet a friend taking her bag she left them at the bar for half an hour when she came back she had no bag it's clear that she's also looking for excuses as to where to be able to leave incriminating evidence almost suddenly she had thrown the bag into the river from probably near the middle of ham Smith bridge in that bag would actually never recovered it was about 18 to 21 inches long and about 12 inches deep and he weighed about 25 pounds [Music] it's the style known as the Gladstone bags it's quite a hefty bag she said it was a Bible and some books possibly there were books or something like that as a weight because I suspect what was in that bag of giving its length was probably the meat saw was actually used to cut up Mrs Thomas's body the length of the bag would be about right and putting some books in as extra weight would make sure that it didn't come to the surface at the railway station Webster asked Robert to accompany her back to Richmond she needed his help with something else she said at number two Mayfield she showed him a large box wrapped around with core [Music] together they lugged the box to the far end of Richmond Bridge there Webster tell Robert to put it down she'd wait for her friend alone she said he could go as Robert walked away he heard a splash [Music] the next day a grim Discovery was made in the River Thames a coal Porter was passing Barnes Railway Bridge when he spotted something near the shore half floating on the ebbing tide was a large box wrapped round with cord the man waded into the shallows and pulled it out when it was opened he realized that it looked like body parts kind of wrapped up in brown paper he called the police and a doctor and when they looked at it they realized it was the Torso of a woman [Music] well it turned out to be boiled human flesh forensic science was in a very sort of Elementary stage compared to today so there was no DNA at that stage they couldn't tell whether blood was human or animal or not for instance there were no fingerprints there was a bone an arm bone there Dr Adams who was the local Doctor Who made some calculations from the length of the bone trying to think how tall the person would be it wasn't a complete body it was just a partial body and this of course caused quite a sensation five days later in Twickenham a woman's foot sworn off at the ankle was found buried in an allotment dung Heap it matched the body in the Box by then newspapers were calling the crime the Barnes mystery clear whose body this was or whether it was even a murder victim there was some speculation that it might have been medical students who had dissected the body as part of their studies and just disposed of it after they'd finished there were lots of cases when medical students needed to practice on dead bodies and sometimes in the very early Victorian times people have been dug up from Graves and sold to medical schools for the purposes of medical research nobody Associated at that time disappeared with Mrs Thomas with the body parts found in the Box in the Thames all the while in Richmond Kate Webster was still living in number two Mayfield Cottages her old friends the porters had introduced her to an ex-army man John Church he was after new furniture for his Pub in Hammersmith Webster posing as Mrs Thomas claimed an aunt had left her the house and all its furniture they agreed a price of 68 pounds it wasn't unusual for there to be auctions and sales of people's personal effects and Furniture it might happen after they died but it might happen if they were made bankrupt or they had some other financial difficulty such sales were quite normal because people were often on the move from lack of payment lack of rent and very often it was a case of Moonlighting and leaving lodgings without paying rent it's also not unusual that church would have been interested if he's looking to furnish his pub at a knock down rate none of that is unusual apart from the fact that it's taking place at a cottage that this woman does not own I think he must have had a suspicion that he wasn't Kate I think he just didn't want to ask too many questions because purchasing that furniture was doing him a favor as well then they made an arrangement with somebody who had a van and of course it was horse drawn van in in those days to come along and to pick up the furniture from Mayfield cottages it was on the 18th of March more than two weeks after Mrs Thomas disappeared the Kate Webster's deception finally crumbled that was the day John Church came to Richmond with removal band in order to collect the furnitureade board but he was soon to realize that Webster was not who she claimed to be when the furniture was being transferred into the van Miss Ives the landlady next door asked about Mrs Thomas she hadn't seen Mrs Thomas for a couple of weeks and asked where's the furniture going immediately her suspicions were aroused and so were churches because he thought there was something suspicious and the furniture was taken off the van back into the house Kate at this point it's all a panicked and she had some dresses taken out the house and just thrown in the wagon to take back to Church's Pub this was Kate's big mistake in the pocket of one of the dresses which were taken back to Robert Church's Pub Mrs Church found two letters one was from Kate uncle in Ireland and one was from a friend of Mrs Thomas something in this letter made him realize that the woman he'd been dealing with was not a Mrs Thomas but somebody else pretending to be her Webster's turn to vanish she took her young son and left Mayfield cottages for the last time that night she took a train from King's cross to Liverpool and a boat from there back to Ireland by then the police were on her Trail alerted at last to The Disappearance of Mrs Thomas they searched her home and found it in total disarray beds had been moved carpets taken up boxes of linen lay ready for removal and among the ashes of the kitchen fire they found charred bones and burnt buttons and in the large copper used to clean clothes fatty residue clung to the metal of a box which actually matched the box that had been found near Barnes Bridge they've had a bit of cord which matched the cord or the rope that had been tying up the box that is when they actually realized that the remains found by Barnes Bridge are actually linked to the premises there was quite a lot of body fat that had been left around the laundry copper where the body had been boiled the author found blood in Julia's bedroom showing that something had happened there so there was enough evidence in terms of blood left in various places and this body fat to show that something very nasty you know unusually nasty had taken place there Webster took Refuge at her uncle's Farm outside enniscorthy but the Royal Irish Constable tracked her down and she was arrested there on the 29th of March police from Scotland Yard soon came to take her back to London the evidence against Webster seemed overwhelming and if she was to stand any chance of avoiding the Noose she would have to put it around someone else's neck on the steamboat between Dublin and holyhead she told the police her story [Music] the body in the Box was Mrs Thomas there could be no doubt about that the Barn's mystery had become the Richmond murder but who was responsible for the crime Mrs Thomas's servant Kate Webster had been arrested in Ireland and charged with the murder but she denied it and blamed instead a man named John Church [Music] she was very keen to kind of shift the blame onto men I think she was quite aware as well that people would be expecting a man to be responsible for this murder she blamed John church and Mr Porter and maintained that they had carried out the murder while she had been out of the house and that she'd been intimidated and scared into complying with their demands that she kept quiet about it her allegations might be believed because these were kind of more lower class men they were from the local area you know that was quite believable on the 30th of March police charged John church with murder the man laughed when he heard Webster's accusation he hardly knew the woman the next day however he was taken before the magistrates and remanded in custody Church however had a solid Alibi numerous people had seen him at his Pub on the night of the murder he couldn't have committed the crime on the 18th of April 1879 the charges against him were dismissed some people couldn't believe that he had taken all this furniture without knowing where it really come from and that he must have been in cahoots with Kate there's always a question mark over how much John Church knew for a body to have been cut up and disposed of in that Cottage looking around the premises quite thoroughly not noticing blood stains then people would have questioned that he should have known what was going on there were rumors that he'd had an affair with Kate that he'd known her a lot longer than he claimed to have done you're never sure as to the truth of what Kate says she says she's had an affair with him that she's known him years yes she could have done but at the same time she's trying to blame him for a murder Kate Webster remained in custody her trial began on the 2nd of July she stuck to her story about John church but there was little evidence to support it instead witness after witness gave damning testimony against her the Six-Day trial was reported eagerly by the Press female murderers always intrigued the public but there was more to it than that foreign was being brought from Ireland she was booed and hissed on the way and she got the same treatment when she was appeared in court in London there was a great feeling of revulsion towards and this was not that's a womanly thing to do if you think about it at the time I think about 40 of the female Workforce were working as servants so when you see a servant acting in this way and disrupting that social order by killing a social Superior it has this wider social repercussion so it's not just about Kate and Julia it's about servants and employers it's about women and their working conditions their lives how they might commit violence if they've had enough the guilty verdict did not come as a surprise Webster was sentenced to death before she left the court she was asked by the judge if she had anything to urge instead of execution Webster said she was pregnant it was conventional protocol that you couldn't execute a woman when she was pregnant because in effect it was killing the unborn child as well so there would have been this long delay and also possibly the chance of reprieved during that time is the initial shock of the of the crime wore off in order to determine that she wasn't pregnant actually quite an unusual thing and was brought in in the terms of a jury of matrons was called women who were attending the court were asked to form a separate female-only jury which is quite an old-fashioned thing to do by this time this caused some controversy and the medical establishment said well this is crazy but that was the protocol and the legal system as it as it was in those days the problem with this examination was that it was quite primitive so it was designed to show the quickening of the baby I.E when it was moving all they were doing was seeing whether there was evidence of a baby moving in stomach and if there was then she was pregnant if they couldn't feel anything she wasn't but of course she could have been at the early stages of pregnancy and they would have had no means of knowing so their decision was based on an inexact science Webster was examined and proved to be lying once again she was not quick with child she would hang for her crime she was running out of people to blame as the date of her execution neared she succumbed to the pleading of her priest and made one final confession what Kate said about the enlightenment murder was that Mrs Thomas had come up the stairs very angry and they've been this heated argument which ended with Kate Shuffle Mrs Thomas down the stairs and Mrs Thomas falling heavily [Music] realizing that she'd actually hurt her and hurt her quite badly this is when Kate attacked her and got her throat and then subsequently him disemboweled her and chopped up the body he's still saying oh no it was a bit of anger it was a quarrel I just pushed her trying to suggest that there's not premeditation there that it's kind of this this bit of passion almost sort of a more understandable frustration with her employer that results in her death [Music] one of the witnesses said that on the Tuesday before the murder had occurred Kate Webster had visited her and talked about inheriting a house and having some proceeds to dispose of and to sell certainly Kate was aware that Mrs Thomas was sort of of independent means and so possibly cater may have looked on this as a possible victim but I don't think as a murder victim possibly robbing her yes and then doing a runner but I don't think she looked on murder as the solution to the problem I don't believe it at all I think given Kate's history she doesn't want to be a traditional servant she doesn't believe that she's inferior to her boss she doesn't like this kind of social strata that means that she's always below I think she's got this deep-seated anger and frustration and jealousy of her employer and I think she she has planned this murder as soon as she goes into the property and starts work and sees what Julia has she wants it she covets it [Music] [Music] thank you Kate Webster was executed at Wandsworth prison on the 29th of July 1879. she was 30 years old she had to die not only for her crime which was terrible but something about Kate Webster really upset Victorian Britain she stepped outside the bounds of what a woman was meant to be she was not gentle or kind or obedient she didn't know her place and tried to take that of someone else even as she went to The Gallows Kate Webster kept one thing back she never told them what she did with Mrs Thomas's head she'd suggested it had gone into the river in the Gladstone bag in fact she'd buried it in the Stables of the hole in the wall Pub just yards from home there it would lie undiscovered for more than a hundred years until the builders started to dig they revealed the final resting place of Julia Thomas and the final deceit of Kate Webster [Music] [Music]

Channel: Absolute Crime

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Id: 6BjEwzjOfWQ

Length: 42min 11sec (2531 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 03 2023