William Sheward
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William Sheward (died 20 April 1869) was a British man who murdered and dismembered his wife in June 1851. The crime went unsolved until 1869, when William confessed to the police.
Biography edit
William, living in Greenwich, married his housekeeper Martha Sheward in 1836. They moved to Wymondham, Norfolk, two years later, and from there to Norwich. William worked for a pawnbroker named Mr. Christie.
William and his wife regularly argued, usually about £400 he had deposited with Mr. Christie which Martha insisted he retrieve. On 14 June 1851, Mr. Christie asked William to go to Yarmouth on an errand. The following day William was shaving before leaving for Yarmouth when Martha stopped him and once again demanded he go to Mr. Christie and get the money. William lost his temper and an altercation occurred during which William slit Martha's throat with his straight razor. Over the next few days, he burned the bloody clothes and dismembered his wife's body, boiling the remains in the fire to conceal the smell of decomposition, before dumping the remains at various points around the city.
The week after the murder, on 21 June, man named Charles Johnson found the bodies' hand while walking his dog. A foot was found by the police 200 yards away. The following day, another dog walker named Thomas Dent found a pelvis on the same street. Over the next five days, more bones and pieces of flesh were found across the city, along with muscles, breasts and entrails. Attempts were made by police to reconstruct the victim out of the pieces they had; however, the victim could not be identified because the head was never found and doctors misidentified the body as belonging to a woman between 16 and 26 years of age (Martha was 54). As a result, the true identity of the victim was never suspected and William escaped detection.
Over the next 18 years, Martha Sheward's family attempted to get William to let them see her. William rebuffed all of their attempts, even refusing to let Martha's brother inform her of an inheritance and claiming she was unable to attend her sisters funeral. He later remarried, claiming that Martha had left him and gone to New Zealand, and left Norwich. However, William was consumed with fear that his crime would be exposed and this began to take its toll; he fell into alcoholism and his troubles holding down a job got worse. He also began to develop rheumatism.
In December 1868, William went up to London, telling his wife that he was "in trouble of which you will soon learn". Upon arriving in London on New Years Day 1869, he went down to Walworth Police Station and told the desk sergeant "I have a charge to make against myself. It is the wilful murder of my first wife at Norwich." When asked if he was serious, he explained that he had been intending to kill himself with a straight razor, which he handed over, before breaking down in tears and being escorted to the cell. He then made a signed confession reaffirming what he had said when he walked in. The following day he made a more detailed statement explaining that he had slit his wife's throat during an argument, dismembered her body and distributed the parts around Norwich. Two days later he attempted to recant his confession, but by this point police had obtained facts about the crime from Norwich and found that it matched the details of the confession. William was charged with the murder of Martha Sheward and returned to Norwich for trial.
At William's trial, numerous witnesses testified to the discovery of the body parts, how William had controlled Martha and how she had never been seen by anyone after the body parts began being discovered. William was found guilty, sentenced to death and hanged by William Calcraft on 20 April 1869.