Boiled to Bones: The Gruesome Murder of Julia Martha Thomas

We're back in Victorian South London with a case so grim it became known as the Barnes mystery. In March 1879, widow Julia Martha Thomas hired a new servant, Kate Webster - a decision that would prove fatal. Within weeks Julia was dead, dismembered in her own kitchen copper, and Kate was strutting around Richmond in her employer's clothes, even trying to sell off the furniture. 

In this episode we unravel the murder, the cover-up, and the sensational Old Bailey trial that made Kate infamous as the "Richmond Murderess". Along the way, we talk about whether we thrive under our own jurisdiction (spoiler: no), how not to make coffee when you're already in a mood, and the ongoing curse of smashed plates and dead mice. 

Sources include:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-14034969

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9dORAA9Ll4

https://radar.brookes.ac.uk/radar/file/5536ba5a-c8d3-4492-ae2d-2836a0f6cad3/1/Chapter%206%20Kilday%20%28True%20Crime%20Histories%29.pdf

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/104299579/julia_martha-thomas

https://historianandrew.medium.com/why-kate-websters-murder-of-julia-martha-thomas-captivated-london-in-1879-adbc17dd0b63

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0lfwfjc

https://truecrimearchives.blog/kate-webster-axe-murderess-of-richmond/

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna43653402

https://www.irishpost.com/features/ten-facts-kate-webster-irish-maid-hanged-dismembering-employer-victorian-london-131185

Transcript

EP 02 - Julia Martha Thomas

Hello. Hi. I'm Rachel.

I'm Hannah. And this is the Sinister South Podcast, your weekly foray into the underbelly of South London. It's as if you'd planned it.

It's as if I remembered I have to do that part as soon as you clapped and said, let's go. And I was like, oh crap. Have not thought what to say.

Oh dear. Hello, how are you? Hi. I'm really good, thanks.

I'm in a good mood today. I like that. Although I feel like I've had one of those work days where you start a million things and finish zero of them.

But I also am not in an anxiety fit of like, oh my god, deadlines. So feeling very like, okay, I can do that tomorrow as well. Like, bad, bad, bad.

And we've had some nice news about a couple of friends being with child. Oh yes, yeah. Which is very exciting for them.

In my world. Just to say, it's neither of us. Fuck off.

Could you imagine if this is how I decided to tell my mum? By the way. There's some news you might want to listen. Yeah, decided to lose eight stone so I could grow eight stone.

Now I'm alright, thanks. I am fine. Oh dear.

But yeah, so all very pleasant in my land. I love that for you. On a good weekend we had a party.

It is usually called Shedstival. Yes. But this year it was really scaled back, like basically to the masses that normally get invited.

It was cancelled. Right. And then only a select few got added to a WhatsApp group as, it's not actually cancelled.

We just don't want that many people here. Yeah, first. And it was really nice and I saw, like it's always good fun to spend time with my uncle and my aunt.

Yeah. And my cousins and all of that. But also my brother's friends who, they used to, obviously when I lived there, my brother, with having such an age gap, my brother was at school and everything.

So having his school friends, like they used to be around our house 24-7. Yeah. And I never really, obviously never really get to see them anymore.

Why would I? So they were all there and it was just like, they're like really funny grown up men now. And I was like, wow, this is insane. You're all four.

What's going on? Oh, I feel that's so hard. But they're talking to me about their jobs. Yeah, I know.

What do you mean? I know. Well, you've just been born. Everything I feel when my younger brother not only had a baby, but is now getting married.

I'm like, what? Sorry? No, you are forever seven. What is happening? And I also managed to swerve at the hangover I should have had. Nice.

Yesterday was very pleasant, had a lovely walk and had some pasta. So yeah. All in all, a very successful few days in my world.

I love that for you. That's very exciting. I think I also, well, I'm just not a pre-menstrual anymore.

So I can actually see through the fog of war, which is what I'm deciding to call the five days before. And also did my, like, on my personal insta, I do a round up of the month at the end of every month. And I just was looking back and was like, actually, it's been August was a fucking great month.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And mad work wise and, you know, hiccups with what we were meant to do. Record, record, record.

Thank God it's not me trying to talk today. Recording wise, but all in all, a very, a very successful month. Do you know what? I love that for you.

That makes me very happy for you. Well done. Isn't it wild just how different my personality is? Either side of being a woman.

Yeah. I mean, it's also the same either side of having a coffee. I was very short with you this morning, to be fair.

I've had a morning. You had had a morning. To be like, oh, honestly, you had had a morning.

I'd broken up. There was no coffee. I'd smashed two plates, trying to put, I didn't even know why I was rushing to put the washing up away.

Like, I could have, like, no one's in my, no one cares. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was coming here, like, I could have done it this evening when I got home.

No, no. Me trying to rush, smashing plates on the floor. Then I found a dead mouse, thanks, cats.

And then realised, as I went to leave, that I'd left the car at Mum's. So I was like, do you know what? So by the time I'd walked to Mum's, got the car driven here, I was like, if she doesn't, and then there was fanning around with filters. Oh, I know.

I was like, I probably, I just want Nescafe. I know. I need to buy some Nescafe.

I don't care. It's because Will has his Pontius coffee. And I get it, and I, like, if there, if it was another day, I'd have been like, oh, fancy coffee and do it in a fancy way.

Lovely. But then, but I was just like, I need coffee, and I need it now. And I don't understand why.

It's fucking cold by the time it gets to me. You might be big, strong boys drinking a big, strong coffee. Yeah, I know.

But you all have to have it Luke bloody warm. It is mad. I hate it.

The little, the little stupid. Will, I love you. I don't know.

You have your reasons. But like he has this, like, small, what I can only describe as a watering can with a really long spout. And you have to put the hot water in that to then pour it into the drippy filter thing.

I'm like, what happened to just getting a kettle and just whacking over some granules? I don't understand. That's all I needed this morning. So yeah, I must buy some.

And that became completely your fault. Yeah, no, I know. I'm aware.

I have also just realized, look, what's up. We did this last time. Oh, I need to take it.

Anyway, whatever. We're going to take the coffee into the house. So yes, in general, that's me.

How are you? How am I? I am well, I am good. School is going back very soon. We had a lovely like last couple of weeks with the small one because the big one has been surfing up in Devon.

And yeah, she now knows how to surf. And it's all very legend. But yeah, I had a really nice week with the little one.

We went out to the cinema on Friday night with her, the three of us, and had a cheeky Nando's was all very sweet. But I have realized that it is very much tell me you've got ADHD without telling me you've got ADHD. We did just go for a walk in the park.

And it was like, and then I found this stick and I'm on my scooter. Oh, look a plane. It genuinely did.

She did say those three things that quick. I was like, I get it because I think it's how my brain works too, mate. But whoa, a wee intense.

When there's a five year old, he's got zero filter and doesn't understand. It is just every single thing that pops into her head then comes out and just try to tell her to try to use your scoot, like scoot along on your scooter. You're doing really well.

You're going really fast. I'm really impressed with how brave you are. Try and look forward.

It's not down. Try not to kill at least six dogs and yourself by going into the road. And a toddler in the boat.

Oh, wow. Okay. So yes.

I was very pleasant. I went on the swings. It was lovely.

You were, you were fully. It was a, it was like, honestly, I don't haven't really spoken about it to you. Well, but it was a very big weight loss test for me.

Yeah. I was like, I could fit on a swing. And it's not going to break.

It's definitely not going to break. You fit on the swing and you went on the zipline. I went on the zipline.

Didn't get stuck in the dirt. Unlike me. No, you.

Who on the way back was just like, eh, eh, eh. I did tell you to stop making that noise. It was weird.

Everyone was weird. It freaked out all the kids. All involved.

That was the sound of my bum hitting the floor. They're just getting stuck in the wood chippings. But there we go.

Anyway. Yeah, no. But other than that, it's all been good.

It works. Works work back at it properly this week. I did one of those things I wear.

I've realised that when the kids are on holiday, because I work for myself and because I work in my own house, like the idea of actually getting up and having a morning, like it's like I could realistically get out five minutes before my first phone call of the day. And it would be fine. I tend not to, but I can't definitely can't when I've got to get the kids ready for school because it is, okay, we need to be up.

We need to do this. They need to get ready. We've got packed bags.

We've got to do this, blah, blah, blah. And every term since my biggest has been at school, I've been telling myself that I would be better and that lunches would be packed the night before, that uniforms will all be sorted, that bags will be packed. And then in the morning, it's just so lovely.

Oh, hello, darling children. Have some nutritious breakfast and then brush your teeth, get your shoes on and we will make our way. It's never that.

It is always chaos. There's always me. Get one of them going.

But, mommy, I haven't had breakfast here. I've got a fucking breakfast bar. Get out of the house.

When that happens, I'm always awake. So, over the summer holidays when actually there's nothing, there's no routine, it is like we just get up whenever. And it's like, but this morning I took that to the extremes because I think I knew it was the last day of doing it.

Because I woke up when my mother called me at 9.37. And I think I walked in the door. At 9.40. And I was just like, oh, hello, hello. Quickly get dressed, quickly brush my teeth.

I think that's why I was a bit like, by this point, I've already conversed with the public. Like, I was very conscious of like getting here. I had a call with my other client.

And I was like, right, get here in time to bully you into making me a coffee, sit down, set up everything. So I'm ready to go without being flustered. So I'd gone in, like walked towards my mum's and then gone into a shop to buy a vape.

I don't know why I need to tell the world that I'm disgusting. But I like spicy batteries, sue me. I love it.

And the woman, she was so cheerful. And she was like, hang on. I need to do a pinch punch.

And I was like, can I just have the vape please? I'm in a rush. And then I had to check myself and I was like, I'm so sorry, happy first of September. I'm just, I'm not a morning person.

And I had to apologize to her. And she's like, it's fine, you can have the vape. So I'm sorry.

Just a horrible bastard. So by the time I got here, I was like, I've already had to speak to the public Rachel. It is unacceptable.

Get out of fucking bed. Oh, it will be the last time for a long time. So not until maybe Christmas.

Don't you get like two weeks off in October? No, one week. One week. One week in October.

But it will either be that they're in some sort of club situation. So which means we're still getting up at the same time. I mean, fair.

I don't get some holidays. No, that is true. But yeah, it's the only time I have an excuse.

So yeah, my body just took it to the extreme this morning. It was just like, you're not here to speak on behalf of all childless women. When I say, get out of bed and stop fucking moaning.

It's not that I'm quite happy to get out of bed. It's just there's something nice about the concept that you don't have to. I think that's the difference.

It's the, I have to get up because I have to sort the children. But then you know, see, I think, well, maybe I'm just proving what you're saying. I think we're both people that do not thrive under our own jurisdiction.

No. We need those like shit. I've got to get up.

I've got to do this. I've got to go. Yeah, it's true.

We need that to turn our brains on. Yeah. I mean, to be fair, that was me last week after getting back for a whole day and just saying to you, I was like, I'm not doing any of the stuff I meant to do.

I'm sitting here waiting for you. I was like, are we going on this walk? Are we going on this walk? Are we going on? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I can see over your shoulder and I'm like, oh, you're just scrolling on fucking LinkedIn, are we? I see.

So it's not even like you're doing anything. And then we got to the point where we could have gone for the walk and I fully got into doing work. Sorry, I'm just in a flow state now.

I was like, I'm going to flow state up your ass in a minute. So I'm going to fucking do it. So I left before I was horrible to you again.

Just keep being horrible to you. You're not like we don't work when you're out of routine. I know.

I don't worry. It's all going back to normal. I do not thrive in your summer holidays.

Oh dear. But yes, it'll all be business as per usual as of Wednesday. So that will be that will be excellent stuff.

It'll be good. I did also then spend the whole of today writing this case. I wasn't going to dump you in.

No, I'm fine for it to be dumped in. Basically, Travis, what happened was because of changing stuff around and us being lax before summer, we ended up. You obviously got last week's episode, which was meant to have been the end of the previous episode, previous season.

But we decided it would be fine. And then I was going to do a very large case as the first episode. But then we decided to move that and you'll get that later.

And then I just completely forgot that we'd done that. So hadn't written a case. I was like, what time do you want to record? And you just looked at me like, holy crap.

It's like, well, well, the sound of that keyboard today, Trevor's, it was on fire. I had type in like, well, she's probably she's managed to get it done and pull it out of her ass. It's all good.

And I actually think it's quite an interesting case. She's sometimes it's good when you like because you have researched and read about it already and stuff. So it's not like you're coming into it completely cold today.

But sometimes it's good when you've had time for the research like percolate and then you're not writing it in because I think we're quite similar in that we write in. I'll write a bit, then I'll do a bit more research and then it'll be the next day and I'll write a bit more. And then I'll read it through and then write a bit and then read it through and decide to change bits, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And it kind of becomes we run the risk of over manufacturing it. A hundred percent we do. So it's something like I quite enjoy.

It might be a bit of the pressure of I've got to do it today. I've got to get it done. It's like, right.

And then actually don't overthink all the decisions you could make. So it's like all those little tidbits that you've got and all those like half written thoughts that then you just go, right, well, I've got to pull all of this together somehow now. So yeah, but it's a good case.

It's a historic one. I'm taking you back in time. It's been ages.

I know it has been a while. So are we comfy? Is everybody settled and comfy? I've got my water. I've got my vape.

I'm good to go. All good. OK, then.

So this is a case that I think some of the Trevors may already be familiar with because it's actually been covered by some other podcasts, a couple of quite big ones, including Morbid, which is obviously one of the very big ones. And one of my current favorites, which is called After Dark, which if anyone is into historical cases, not just true crime, but like they do scary. Yeah, they do some stuff about like paranormal and like they do one on one episode that really stuck with me was on The Last Witch in Scotland.

Wow. But it's all based. It's all factually correct.

It's all historical historians talking about this period in time and then kind of using the case as a way of talking about the context of the world as it was back then. I am just sorry. Yeah, it is on topic, but off topic slightly.

OK. I will not veer you off course again. OK.

We will get to the story. But I thought of you the other night. Go on.

In the middle of the night. Oh, OK. So as you know, I'm a huge fan of the Calm app.

Yes. But only really, I don't use the meditations or anything. I really only use the sleep stories.

Yes. And I have my favorites and, you know, my favorite voices and whatever. Anyway, one of my favorite narrators, I kind of thought, I maybe haven't looked through his whole catalog and had to look through.

And so I put one on and it's a gothic sleep story and it's all about. I've immediately forgotten his name. Fucking cool story, bro.

Keep this in. Yeah, the thingy heart. Tell us our heart.

Yeah. But who is that? Is that Pung? Yeah. Is it Pung? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Edgar Allan Poe. There we go. His name just out of my head.

And it's I. Well, I would tell you what it was about, but I got too scared by the intro. I was like, oh, no, this isn't for me. This is this is much more for Rachel.

This is for me. I'm going to put one on about I don't know Jane Austen or something. I don't know.

I'm going to listen to Prime Prejudice. I said this. I'm definitely going to have to look that up.

Yes. It's very, very good. I think I can I think in my membership, I can gift a sleep story every now and again.

So I'll see if I can give it to you. That would be amazing. Cool.

Thank you. Anyway, but yeah, no, the my favorite one at the moment is this After Dark one. And it's done.

It's on BBC Sounds as well. And it is just two historians who their names are completely blanking in my mind right now. But they are fairly well known historians and they talk about the history around the cases that they talk about.

It's very cool. So yes, if you are into that sort of stuff, I would definitely say check it out if you haven't already. Also, trigger warning for lots of things, but mainly for dismemberment.

Oh, wow. And generalized violence and murder. As is as is our way.

As is our way. So here we go. On a cold March morning in 1879, a coal porter walking by the River Thames near Barnes, southwest London, spotted a box washed up by the riverbank.

Curious, he prized it open and then recoiled in horror. Inside wrapped in brown paper were human remains. An entire female body missing its head and one foot.

The newspapers quickly dubbed it the Barnes mystery. Who was this woman? Where was her head? And how had her body ended up in the tents? Now, the answers would lead detectives to a small house in Richmond, South London, to two Mayfield cottages and to the story of Julia Martha Thomas, a twice widowed school teacher and her servant, Kate Webster. What followed was, yet again, one of the most notorious murder trials of the Victorian era.

I want to do one that wasn't. I want a non notorious. One that the public was just like, give a fuck.

But yes, it was another one of those, not just because it shocked the whole of London due to its brutality, but also because the killer in this regard was a woman. So to understand Julia Martha Thomas's life and her death, we need first to take a quick look at Victorian England in the late 1870s. So I know we've kind of done this a few times before with different episodes that we've done, but this one in particular is around this whole concept of female killers and the brutal acts of killing, because it was said that there was a period of time.

I think it was just before the Victorian ages where it was believed as an almost scientific fact that women couldn't commit brutal killings. Right. Just poisoning.

Yeah, we just we couldn't do that. Only thing we could do is smother and poison. There was no way that our frail little arms and womanly stature would allow us to kill in any other way.

And that glass ceiling, man. It really, I mean, to be fair, to be fair, this was a world, as I'm sure we are all very aware, that was built very firmly on social hierarchy, appearances and the strict role that different people of different genders and different classes were expected to play. So widows like Julia held a complicated position.

On one hand, widowhood came with a certain respectability, mainly because they were seen as women who had fulfilled their duty and marriage. They weren't spinsters. Their husbands had just died.

Yeah. So they were obviously better than any woman who hadn't been married. And then on the other hand, a widow who was left without wealth or children often had quite limited means.

So her standing in sort of class terms was fairly limited. And many widows, a bit like Julia, rented out rooms or took in lodges. But they were also quite commonly seen to employ servants, even if they couldn't necessarily afford them to the full extent.

And it was mainly so that they could keep up appearances of their middle class and still be seen as respectable to the wider society. Domestic service was at the very heart of Victorian life and roughly 40% of Britain's female workforce were domestic servants in households ranging from wealthy estates to modest middle class homes. Having a servant was as much about status as it was about help with housework.

A maid in your home signaled you were genteel and respectable. You were the kind of person who didn't scrub your own floors, basically. But there was also quite an uneasy relationship between servants and employers, especially in the sort of lower middle classes.

And we kind of saw a bit of this with the Jane Clawson episode. But it rears its head again here in the fact that employers relied on their servants but didn't always trust them. And servants, meanwhile, lived under their mistresses.

And it was always the woman of the house lived under their roof. And they were expected to be loyal, deferential and invisible. And when there was a trust that when that trust between the two of them, however flimsy it was, broke down, it often did.

And that actually happened more often than we're led to believe. It didn't just feel like a personal betrayal. It was almost like the collapse of a societal order of things.

So, Victorian Britain also saw a flourishing popular press that eagerly covered lurid crimes. And sensational trials became real public spectacles with illustrated newspapers like the Illustrated Police News, which catered to the public's morbid curiosity. And realistically, they are normally where all of the images that we get of drawings of the Burmansey horror or of Harriet Staunton, all of them have come from the Illustrated Police Press.

And the late 19th century had witnessed several infamous murders feeding a societal fascination with crime. And this is before Jack the Ripper even rears his head. And we have, as I have already mentioned, covered quite a few of them.

So, you know, think back to the Burmansey horror where Frederick and Maria Manning murdered Patrick O'Connor. A tiny lady gun. A tiny lady gun.

And this case horrified the public because it challenged Victorian ideals of domestic respectability. The fact that Manning, Maria Manning was, you know, seen to quite obviously be having it off with another man and that was fine and then getting rid of him. If anyone wants to go and listen to that episode, it is... It's a really good episode if I do say so myself.

It is a very good episode. It's in season one. I can't remember... Is it my only foray into history? Into historical, I think so, until we get... You do slightly more modern history.

So, you've done things like The 40 Elephants and things like that. And obviously the most historical one we've ever done, you did, which was Christopher Marlowe. Oh, of course.

I forgot about Marlowe. But yes, if you want to go back, that's in season one. And then Jane Clawson, as we've already mentioned, so she was a domestic servant who was murdered in 1871 at the hands of her alleged lover and baby daddy who also happened to be the son of her employer.

And that is... That's a horrible case. Yeah, that's season one, episode three, I think. Something like that.

And then Charles Bravo in 1876. So, his mysterious poisoning exposed the darker side of those genteel households where appearances hid very deep tensions, i.e. people murdering their spouses with poison. And then the penge mystery, which was Harriet Staunton and her slow death from neglect at the hands of her own family.

So, Julia Thomas's case sits right alongside these. She is a widow that's clinging to respectability, a servant who comes to work with her has a violent past, as we will get into. And then this is a crime that was said to have overturned every Victorian assumption about class and gender, which is no wonder that the press and the public couldn't look away.

So, when we look at Julia Martha Thomas, we're not just talking about one woman in Richmond. We're looking at the way that Victorian society judged women and respectability. Julia had been through two marriages, and by the late 1870s, she was living alone in a modest cottage.

She wasn't wealthy, but she worked hard to present herself as genteel. She had fine jewellery, good clothes, and she had a servant. She was born around 1823.

I don't know where. In fact, before her death and final chapter in life, there is next to nothing known about this woman. I don't know the names of her parents.

I don't know whether she had any siblings. I don't know where she was born or what her childhood was like, but I do know that by the time of her death, she was in her mid-50s, twice widowed, living alone in Richmond. She had worked as a schoolteacher earlier in life.

Her last husband had died in 1873, and that is all the information about her husbands as well. So, she'd not been left with a huge inheritance or anything like that. She had some money, but it was modest.

She was said to have sometimes taken in lodgers, as we mentioned before, but she did make the point of keeping up appearances. She was said to dress very well. She had very neat clothes.

Her doctor described her as being, quote, a small, well-dressed lady, which says a lot about the impression she gave to people. Tell us about her. We can all dream that that's what our doctors say about us.

Small, well-dressed. Excellent. Her neighbours and friends generally thought of her fondly.

She was seen to be very sociable. She was often at church and would chat with people at the local pub, which was called The Hole in the Wall, and it sat right next to her cottage, so she would be there quite regularly. She was also said to love travelling, and she would often be away for weeks at a time, which made her seem a little bit eccentric, apparently, but she was also quite an independent woman.

And again, because she was a widow, it wasn't necessarily, she wasn't frowned upon for having some eccentricities. It was kind of just, well, she was respectable. It's fine.

She's in her later years. You know, mid-50s in those days was quite old. I mean, it kind of sounds, I mean, apart from the dead husbands thing.

I'm sure it was very sad. But it kind of sounds dreamy. Yeah, exactly, right? Just being able to take off.

I've got a modest income, I'm all right. I've got my house. I live right next door to the pub I like to go to.

I travel for weeks at a time. I'm just living my life. I wouldn't turn my nose off, had I? I mean, I'm right with you, mate.

But yeah, so she resided alone at two Mayfield cottages, which is a weird thing that comes up. It was also, in some sources, said to be called two vine cottages. I don't know which one is right.

I'm sticking with Mayfield just because it came up more often. But this was on Park Road in Richmond. And this was a two-story, semi-detached villa with front and rear gardens.

Beautiful. Very location, location, location. Where Julia did have a reputation, though, was as an employer.

So she was known to be exacting, and some of her previous staff also went as far as to call her domineering. One previous maid actually called her a tartar. Oh! Now, I had no idea what this meant.

Apparently, a tartar is someone who is domineering, irritable, hard to please, and harsh. Is it spelled like tartar sauce? Yeah, like tartar, T-A-R-T-A-R, which I'm now just deciding that's going to be in my nickname. I'm happy to be called... She was a tartar woman.

Yes, shake your tartars. She's irritable, hard to please, and harsh. I'm absolutely down with that.

I mean, it sounds like me this morning, to be fair. Servants were expected to meet her very high standards. Now, when I say servants, she only ever, from what I could find, had sort of one servant at a time.

So she didn't have a staff, but she had a very high turnover of domestic servants. Most of them didn't last long because they couldn't meet up with either. They couldn't meet her standards, or they were like, I am not working for this woman.

So, yeah, she had a bit of a... There was a bit of churn, shall we say. And so by 1879, she was once again looking for a new maid. When it comes to Kate's origins... So Kate is the maid in question.

When it comes to Kate's origins, much like Julia's, we are largely in the dark. Kate was born Catherine Lawler around 1849, and she came from the rural village of Killan, County Wexford, in Ireland. Oh, I've got Irish Lawlers.

Have you? I do. Well, my great-granddad was a Lawler. Oh.

Well, no, he wasn't. Sorry, he was McDonald, but there's Lawlers in his side of the family. But it was a lot like he had a... I mean, he actually had a quintessential evil stepmother.

It's very interesting, but it's a pub chat. Oh, OK. Not potentially a... Well, I don't know.

It could be a podcast chat at some point. Yeah. Try and tie it back to South London somehow.

I'm trying to figure it out. And then years later, Granny moved to London. But, yeah, like, they're Lawlers in... I don't know about Wexford necessarily.

They were big farmers. So, like, he would have been Stonyford and Kilkenny. Yeah.

Wexford's not a million miles away, I don't think. I'm not going to lie, mate. If there is some sort of... You don't think I want to be related to her? I mean... I mean... We'll get into what she does.

In for me. I'll have that. I'll take it.

Fair, fair, fair. I'll... Yeah. Yeah.

But, yeah, records of her parents' uncharted are scarce and much of what she later claimed about her early years was said to be incredibly contradictory and also very unverifiable. But what we do know is that from her teens, Kate, which was what she liked to go by, her life was marked by crime and lots of instability. She started young.

At just 15, she was convicted of larceny, which is the theft of goods with the intent to permanently deprive the owner, which is different to robbery, which is where usually there is some sort of physical harm that is done to someone. I did not know that until today. So, there we go.

There we go. And, yeah, so she was then imprisoned in Wexford. This was her first documented brush with the law.

We don't know if it actually was. It was just the first one that's been recorded. But it was definitely... First time she got caught, maybe.

Yeah. But it was definitely not the last. So, by 1867, when she was still only in her late teens, she crossed the sea to England and she ended up in Liverpool for a bit, which was not unusual for people from Ireland.

But when she was in Liverpool, she was arrested again for theft. And this time she was sentenced to four years of penal servitude, which sounds... Yeah. But I didn't know what it was.

Such children. I didn't know what it was. And apparently, penal servitude... Is what happens when you get married.

Yes. Well done. It was brought in under the 1853 penal servitude act and it basically was imprisonment that was harsher than just imprisonment.

So, essentially, it's like imprisonment with forced labour. Right. But what I didn't know was that it was put in place to replace the transportation to colonies like Australia.

Okay. So, it's what came after that. Right.

So, I wonder what would have happened had she been shipped off to Australia. But there we go. And it did involve prolonged confinement with hard labour and for women that often meant long days of oakum picking, which means I'm picking old ship's rope with tarred hands.

Oh, wow. Yeah. But they could also have done laundry duty or grinding work on prison tread wheels.

All of this was basically just meant to be very monotonous. Sounds tough. Yeah.

But quite punishing on the old bones, I suppose. Anyway. I don't know what's happened to me.

After her release in 1872, Kate moved to London. Police records from this period describe her as a habitual offender. By 1875, she'd been convicted again, this time on 36 counts of larceny.

And she was sentenced to 18 months in Wandsworth prison. And a year after finishing that sentence, she was arrested yet again in 1877 for more theft and was given an extra 12 months. So, not only was she a thief, she wasn't a very fucking good one.

No, no, no, no. Her habitual and shit was basically, I think, how we sum it up. Kate was also known for using a carousel of aliases.

Sometimes she went by Webster, sometimes Gibbs, sometimes Gibbons. Other times she stuck with her maiden name of Lawler. Whatever suited her at the time and the situation that she was in.

She spun a lot of stories about having married a sea captain named Webster. And she claimed to have had four children with him, but none of this has ever been proven. What we do know is that in April of 1874, she gave birth to a son who she named John in Kingston upon Thames.

Now, his father's identity is uncertain, and at different times, Kate gave... Sorry, at different times, Kate gave at least three different names for his father. Right, OK. So, we don't really know who this man was, but it was definitely something of a dalliance rather than a long-term relationship, which obviously would have not only as she a thief and has been in prison as a female, but she's now had a baby out of wedlock.

So, she is the lowest of the low in Victorian society. And while Kate cycled in and out of prison, John was largely cared for by some of her friends, including a local charwoman. I'm learning so many new words.

Come on now. So, a charwoman is an archaic term for someone who is hired to do casual cleaning work but who doesn't live with the family. OK.

So, they are a domestic servant but not a live-in one. Yeah. And I suppose the kind of precursor for today's domestic cleaners.

But yeah, so he mainly lived with a charwoman who was friends with Kate. I'm not sure I'll call my cleaner a charwoman. I don't necessarily want her to hurt me or hate me.

I feel like it's quite derogatory. Yeah, it doesn't feel nice. But yes.

So, for most of his young life, John lived with one of these ladies who was friends with Kate and her name was Sarah Crease, which I thought was quite funny. Because she does cleaning. Although Tatar and the Charwoman is an excellent band name.

I like it. Is it as good, though, as stocky blunder the thumb? Because I do think that one was quite... Although no longer true for the stocky blonde. But there we go.

Descriptions of Kate from neighbours and court reporters, later on, spoilers, were very unflattering. She was described as being tall, physically strong with a freckled complexion and prominent teeth. She was often labelled as being ill-favored, which was a very harsh language of the time.

And her manner was described as brisk, brisk, brusque, brusque. That one. And she apparently, quote, inspired unease in those around her.

Oh. So by the end of the 1870s, Kate was still struggling to live within the law. She was in and out of prison and she had very few prospects because of it.

So she drifted between casual work where she could get it and petty theft. And in January of 1879, by sheer chance, she found herself recommended for a domestic post in Richmond at the home of a 50-something widow named Julia Martha Thomas. Here we go.

She found this work through her friend, Sarah Crease, who was looking after her son. So Sarah had mentioned to Kate that she had often done work for respectable families, either going in to kind of be like holiday cover for the domestic servants, or just kind of an additional bit of help when they needed it. And she could make an introduction to one of her clients who was called Miss Lucy Loder.

And Kate had met Miss Loder when she had gone to help Sarah with some of her household chores. And on the surface, at least, Kate had made quite a decent impression on Miss Loder. And Loder was then an acquaintance of Julia, and that's how they met.

Julia was really eager to fill the vacancy because her reputation had preceded her. And there were many, many women in the domestic service line of work who were absolutely not going to go and work for her. So when she was given someone who was ready-made, she jumped at the chance.

She didn't check her background or her history. She didn't ask for references. She didn't do any of that.

She just knew she needed a servant. She'd been with that one for too long. People were starting to say that she wasn't as respectable as she was.

Let's just get her in, was the vibes. I see. So on the 29th of January 1879, Kate Webster, as she was going by at that point in time, moved into two Mayfield cottages.

At first, things seemed very civil. Kate later recalled that she thought Julia was, at first, quote, a nice old lady. Also, can I just say, 50-something is not told? It's all relative.

It is all relative. And Julia, for her part, initially was said to try and ease Kate into the role. She lowered her high expectations for the first few days to kind of get her up to speed and understand that she wouldn't know how to do things exactly the way she wanted them off the bat.

But the goodwill very quickly wore thin. I don't think either of these women had the temperament to deal with each other is essentially what the outcome was. Julia, as we've mentioned, was exacting in her standards.

She would check Kate's cleaning, point out where it wasn't up to standard. She would occasionally redo tasks in front of Kate. And Kate, who was someone who was already quite anti-establishment and bristled at authority, said that she felt like this constant criticism was really starting to weigh on her.

And she later admitted that Julia had, quote, a nasty spirit towards me and that she soon developed ill feelings towards her mistress. And it wasn't just in the house. Julia's neighbours had also picked up on the tension.

So she lived close by to her landlady, who was a lady called Mrs. Ives. And she remembered Julia being very uneasy about being alone in the house with Kate. Julia would ask friends from church to come and stay overnight, telling them outright that she didn't like being left with her maid.

And by mid-February, Julia had had enough. Hadn't been long. Hadn't been long at all.

Couple of weeks. Mid-February, Julia had had enough. And she wrote in her diary on the 28th of February, so just literally a day away from being a month since Kate moved in.

She wrote in her diary that she had, quote, given Catherine warning to leave. However, we now know that Kate somehow, we don't know how, but Kate had persuaded her, had persuaded Julia to let her stay for a couple more days and agreeing by Sunday the 2nd of March, she would be out. So she literally did by herself two days of time.

And Julia, it's kind of assumed that she didn't want to necessarily be seen as uncharitable. She didn't want to be seen as mean. I mean, she's already got a reputation for being shit with her staff.

Exactly. She doesn't need this on top of it. Exactly.

To then kick a woman out where she's not got anything else lined up would be quite unfair. So she agreed to this two day extension. And this small act of leniency would prove fatal.

So the relationship between these two women by this point was completely poisoned. Julia was trying to keep control of her home and her status. Kate was said to be defiant, aggressive, and was also seen to be drinking incredibly heavily at the hole in the wall instead of attending to her duties.

So she would see, she would be seen according to neighbours. They would see her more at the pub than they saw her at the house. Right.

Okay. So when Julia left for evening service at her Presbyterian Church on that Sunday, the 2nd of March, 1879, she was agitated. She had arrived late to the service and explained to fellow churchgoers that her servant had delayed her by not returning on time to the house to help her prepare to leave.

She mentioned that Kate had flown into a temper when she was scolded for being late. And she ended up leaving, she cut her worship short and returned home a lot earlier than usual. Because she just had this sort of vibe that something wasn't right.

Now what happened next is only known from Kate's later confession. So we kind of need to take it with a little bit of caution because she is the only narrator to this story. And she is the only surviving witness.

So it's kind of all we've got to go on, but we have to just kind of bear that in mind. So Julia's usual routine when returning from church was apparently to go straight upstairs to her bedroom and to get changed for supper. So the staircase was situated in the middle of the house and it was leading, it led from the front room upstairs.

So she was usually off to go up there, she would not normally see Kate. But on the 2nd of March, Kate followed her upstairs and she stated that Julia demanded that she leave the house immediately. And on the staircase, well they were both on the staircase, an argument escalated.

And Kate said, In the height of my anger and rage, I threw her from the top of the stairs. Neighbours would later recall hearing a heavy thud with Mrs Ives stating she believed it was the fall of a chair where in reality it was Julia's body crashing to the floor at the bottom of the staircase. Now she was badly hurt, but she wasn't dead yet.

Kate stated that she climbed down after her saying that she became agitated at what had occurred. I lost all control of myself, and to prevent her screaming and getting me in trouble, I caught her by the throat. Julia struggled, but Kate's grip was far too strong, and within moments she had strangled her to death on the parlour floor.

So within minutes of arriving home, Julia was dead. Kate Webster later admitted that she panicked, but her next steps were chillingly methodical. Now I'm going to tell everyone you need to do a trigger warning here, like this is a bit nasty.

So she dragged Julia's body into the small kitchen at the back of the cottage, and there, faced with the problem of what to do, Kate made a decision that would horrify the public for decades to come. She would dismember and destroy the body. Later in her confession, Kate spoke about what she did with a disturbing bluntness.

Quote, I reached for a razor to open Julia's body, then a carving knife to slice through flesh, and finally a saw to hack through bone. Her head was severed and her limbs were separated from her torso. And if that wasn't bad enough, Kate then took her desire to obliterate her mistress to the next degree.

Now every Victorian household at the time, obviously, because it's Victorian, every Victorian household had what was called a copper. Now this isn't a policeman, which would have been very useful. It was a great metal pot which was usually used for boiling laundry, and Julia's had been filled with water that day ready for the wash.

And Kate lit a fire underneath it, and one by one, she lowered her employer into the boiling water. Oh, God. The house was said to have quote, filled with the stench of cooking flesh.

Oh, man alive. Neighbours would later recall it as quote, an odour that clung in the air and seeped through the walls. However, despite the thud and questionable smells, they wrote it off as usual domestic activities, as many people would use their coppers on a Sunday and they would wash their clothes and their bed linens.

So they just assumed... Something terrible has happened. Something happened. To the bed linen.

Few, if any, stopped to question it. They kind of just took it as okay, that's over there. But Kate wasn't finished.

Jesus. She burned what she could in the fireplace, including Julia's organs, scraps of the clothing that she was wearing, and anything that she couldn't fit into the copper. Ash and fat mingled in the grate, coating it with a residue that investigators would later scrape out as evidence.

And through it all, Kate tidied and cleaned as she went. Something that I would love her to teach Will to do after he cooks. Blood stains were scrubbed.

She mopped the floor. She washed and folded all of Julia's clothing. She wanted the cottage to look as though nothing had happened because she had this slightly audacious idea that she would just pretend that Julia wasn't dead.

That Julia was away. No. Or... We'll get to it.

Okay. That she just wasn't dead. When she'd finished her grisly work, she put on Julia's dresses and jewellery.

Oh! And stepped out into Richmond as though she were the mistress of Mayfield cottages. Small and well-dressed, or was it that large, ungainly, or what? Prominent teeth. Yep, yep, yep.

Okay. It's definitely, definitely going to work. Okay.

She had reduced Julia's body to pieces. What was left, she packed into two containers. One, a heavy, black Gladstone bag, which is like the old timey Doctor's bags.

Blackstone books. You had to. Sorry.

But yeah, you know, the Doctor's bags that you always see in period dramas, one of those. And a smaller wooden box. But there was a problem.

Julia's head wouldn't fit, nor would one of her feet. So then Kate, dressed as Julia, dumped the foot onto a rubbish heap in Twickenham. Now, some sources called it a dung heap.

I couldn't tell the difference, but it's that. Either way, not pleasant. It's a heap of something.

And the head, she buried under stables near the hole in the wall pub. And it would stay hidden for more than a century. Whoa.

And I'll get to the head a bit later. So on Tuesday, the 4th of March, Kate carried the Gladstone bag to Barnes. She visited.

Now, this is, this got me a bit confused and I had to reread it like on all the sources about five times. And I can't make head or tail of it. Pardon the call.

Pardon the pun. So Kate, dressed as Julia, goes to meet some acquaintances who were known as the Porter family. Now, I couldn't tell.

Are they acquaintances of Kate or Julia? Don't know. But she introduced herself as Mrs. Thomas. Right.

So if she was, if they were acquaintances of Kate's, they're going to be like, are you all right, Kate? What are you doing? What is happening? And if they're acquaintances of Julia's, they're going to be like, you had a growth spurt at the age of 54. Are you all right, Kate? What are you doing? What are you doing? Anyway, so I couldn't, couldn't figure out. But that's what she did.

She goes to visit the Porter family. And as I say, she introduced herself as Mrs. Thomas, a widowed lady who'd inherited a house nearby. And on that day, she managed to offload the Gladstone bag.

We don't know where, it's assumed the Thames, but the bag has never been found. And that evening, she enlisted the help of 16-year-old Robert Porter, so the son of the family, to help her carry the heavier box. Right.

Across Richmond Bridge. And when they were about halfway across the bridge, Kate suddenly just heaved it over the side into the Thames. And she told Robert it was nothing important, just rubbish.

And he then said that he just thought no more of it. Okay, cool. What's cool? What are we doing with this box? We've got to go to this house.

Can you help me move this? Yeah, sure, Rach. Oh, well. Done.

There we go. I don't think any more of that. No questions asked.

Yeah, it's a very bizarre part of the story. And there was no amount of research that I could do that made it any clearer. So it's kind of just, that's what happened.

People very accepting. Very accepting. But the river, as we know, gave up its secrets quite quickly when it came to this box.

So as I said at the start, at dawn on Wednesday, the 5th of March, a coal porter named Henry Wheatley spotted a wooden box washed up near Barnes Railway Bridge. Thinking that it might hold valuables, he prized it open. And instead of jewels or gold or, you know, he found the human remains of Julia Thomas.

Now, word spread incredibly fast. The press called it the Barnes Mystery. Doctors examined the remains, but without a head, they couldn't be certain of the victim's identity, nor of her cause of death.

And because of her size and slightness, they actually thought that she was a young woman in her 20s rather than a very, very old woman in her 50s. And just days after the majority of her body was discovered, Julia's severed foot was found. An inquest was held, but the coroner's jury returned an open verdict because they didn't know anything else.

And the body was quietly buried in Barnes Cemetery on the 19th of March as a Jane Doe. Now, while the newspapers splashed lurid headlines about the Barnes Mystery, Kate Webster was still living at two Mayfield cottages. She dressed in Julia's silk gowns.

She wore her jewelry. She introduced herself around Richmond as Mrs. Thomas. And to the casual eye, people who didn't necessarily know Julia particularly well, it looked as though the respectable widow had simply carried on with her life.

But Julia's neighbors weren't fooled for long. Now, what I love about it at all, what I love about this next sentence is just this next sentence absolutely floored me when I read it in a piece of research. Quote, they knew her habits, her voice and her appearance.

And this, Mrs. Thomas, wasn't quite the same. Really? Still, Kate pressed her head because this woman has zero chill whatsoever and genuinely believed she could make other people believe she was 100% a mid-50s woman who looked and sounded nothing like the woman she was pretending to be. And on March the 9th, she struck a deal with a local publican, Mr. John Church.

Now, this was not John Church. He wasn't anything to do with the hole in the wall. I did double check this.

Different pub, different publican. Because I was like, are you actually fucking kidding me? No, different publican. Are all women invisible? Especially when they're over the age of 15, apparently.

No, this is a different man from a different pub. His name was John Church. And he struck a deal with Kate that he would buy all of Julia's household furniture and goods for a princely sum of 68 pounds.

Now, Kate took an 18 pound deposit because she wasn't having him run off on her and arranged for the rest to be collected the following week. So then on the 18th of March, Mr. Church arrived with his men and a cart to remove all the furniture from the house. And that was when Julia's landlady, Mrs. Ives, intervened.

She said that she hadn't seen Julia for nearly a fortnight and she found it incredibly suspicious that her belongings were being carted off. Now, apparently this was because Julia used to go off and travel. Yes.

It wasn't necessarily really seen. The fact that she hadn't seen there in a fortnight wasn't the bit that bumped her. It was more the fact that well, why is she selling her furniture? On her landlady.

Kate literally just needed to calm the fuck down and just say Julia was on holiday. Yeah. Yeah.

No, no, no. She is Julia now. So yes, Kate's dumb.

She's a bit, she's a bit thick. I'm not going to lie. So Mrs. Ives then asked who had arranged the sale and the men pointed at Kate, calling her Mrs. Thomas.

And this was the moment that Kate apparently realised her cover was blown. She didn't argue. She didn't explain.

She just bolted. Right. She dropped everything, ran from the cottage.

This is what I found quite interesting. She collected her son. Oh, wow.

OK. So she picked up John from Sarah Crease and made straight for the train in central London and then from there she headed to Liverpool then across the sea to her family's farm in Killan County, Wexford. OK.

So she went right the way back home. Back in Richmond, John Church checked the furniture that he'd paid for and found a letter addressed to not Mrs. Thomas, but to Mrs. Julia Martha Thomas. And so that was when he realised that this is not the same person.

And it confirmed what the neighbours had already suspected that the woman posing as the widow was an imposter. So it's taken two weeks for them to figure out. Yeah, I was going to say she's surrounded by Sherlock's.

God. They all really pay attention. But it takes two weeks.

But eventually when the police are notified that there's something fishy going on, they do move quite quickly. OK. And they go to two Mayfields cottages.

They search it from top to bottom. They find blood stains on the floorboards but underneath, like further down in the woods. So she'd done a very good job of clearing it from the top but it had soaked through.

They also then found charred bones and fatty deposits in the copper and the fireplace. And this was enough for them to connect the dots. They believed that the dismembered body from the Thames and the disappearance of Julia Thomas were one and the same case.

So Scotland Yard issued a wanted notice for Kate Webster. They described her build and her prominent teeth. And they noted that she was travelling with her young son.

By the time that this got to Wexford, because eventually it did, the local constabulary, they knew her. They knew who Kate was. And so on March the 29th of 1879, police arrested her at her uncle's farm in Killan.

She was returned to London in custody. Her son was sadly taken into care. And I have no idea what happened to him after that.

And Kate was then charged with the willful murder of Julia Martha Thomas. Now, we mentioned the Victorian press earlier on in the sort of context around the case. And the reason I mentioned it is because they went ham on this case.

They covered every single detail of Kate's arrest and her return to London. It wasn't just the murder itself. They were literally all over this woman.

And the public were here for it. Newspaper reports described crowds gathering at stations all along the railway line in Ireland jeering and craning to catch a glimpse of the woman accused of butchering her mistress. At, oh God, I'm going to get this wrong.

At Enniskorthi, Wexford and Dublin, people swarmed the platforms. And in one account, in the Manchester Guardian, they noted that, quote, many privileged and curious persons, including not a few ladies, pressed into early court hearings just to see her. The Times said that her first appearance before magistrates in Richmond, quote, an immense crowd and very great excitement prevailed.

So at this point, Kate's kind of stopped being just a prisoner. She's become a real spectacle. And this was because the idea of a woman committing such a brutal crime really fascinated the Victorians.

And to be fair, some could argue probably still fascinates us today. I mean, we're sitting here doing it. We are, exactly.

But I think it's also, if you think of more modern day cases like Johanna Dennehy, for example, like the fact that that was knives and a frenzy attack. Yeah, it does fascinate. Yeah, it stops being that, oh, was it poison? Yeah.

It's something different. So the press leaned heavily in on gendered language. They described her as a virago and a, quote, fiend in female form.

What's a virago? A domineering, violent or bad-tempered woman. Ooh! So, yeah. A loud, overbearing woman, a woman of great stature, strength and courage.

Oh, apparently. There we go. So, yes, that's what she was described as and a fiend in female form.

And the Illustrated Police News, as we mentioned earlier, called her, quote, an awful butcher. Well, the Freeman's Journal in Dublin... I mean, she did it. I don't know if you can call her an awful butcher.

I think it's just, I mean, I wouldn't have even known where to start, bless her. So she's got some. Well, the Freeman's Journal in Dublin described the crime as, quote, one of the most sensational and awful chapters in the annals of human wickedness.

I mean, they're not wrong. It is fucking horrific. It is.

I mean, yeah, it's horrible. It is horrible. So the coverage also then dwelled on her appearance as we were very used to seeing still now.

Descriptions were repeated constantly. The Daily Telegraph sketched her as a, quote, tall, strongly made woman with a sallow and much freckled complexion and large prominent teeth. Her poor teeth.

Her poor teeth. These details were then repeated in The Wanted Notices and in sketches that sold newspapers. It was all very much demonised her.

And to be fair, rightly so. But it's just quite interesting. Let's not reduce women to their appearance.

Yes, she did an awful crime. She did an awful crime, exactly. Let's lead with that.

And then there was the gendered framing as well. So the Evening Standard wrote, quote, she was a woman and a mother standing accused of such fiendish acts which seemed beyond the imagination. Because God forbid we can't be both.

God forbid a woman has a hobbit. So by the time she stood in the dock at the Old Bailey that July, Kate Webster was already infamous. The Barnes Mystery wasn't just about a murder anymore.

It was about a woman who had overturned Victorian ideas of class, gender and respectability. And the press made sure that everyone knew it. Once arrested, Kate didn't stick to one story.

She did not help herself in any way. Which I suppose is not surprising when she tried to just pass herself off as someone that she definitely wasn't. She tried to throw suspicion on the very people who had been drawn into her cover-up.

So first of all, John Church, he was the man who'd obviously been brought. Yeah, he'd come to buy the furniture. And also the Porter family who she'd met in Richmond.

She claimed that Church was actually the mastermind. And according to Kate, he had been at the cottage one night, quote, the worst for drink and suggested that they together murder Julia for profit. She spun a tale that said that they would take all the possessions and quote, go off to America together.

Church, needless to say, flatly denied this. He insisted he only ever knew Kate because she presented herself as Mrs. Thomas and wanted to sell furniture. She then also tried to drag in Henry Porter, who was the father of young Robert, who she'd helped carry the box to Richmond Bridge.

Kate claimed that Porter had been, quote, in on the scheme and that he, along with his son, had helped her dispose of the remains in the Thames. Both stories completely collapsed under scrutiny. Church had multiple witnesses placing him at his own pub, The Rising Sun, on the night that Julia was killed.

And the Porters testified that while they did know Kate, they had no idea the item she was selling was stolen or that Julia had been murdered. The trial opened at the Old Bailey on the 2nd of July, 1879, and crowds of people gathered, eager to see the woman accused of dismembering her mistress. The Crown took it seriously enough to put their solicitor general, now this is a name, Sir Harding Gifford, oof, in charge of the prosecution.

I like it, yeah. And on the other side, Kate was represented by barrister Warner Slay with Justice Denman. I like Warner Slay as well.

Slay is quite a good thing. And yeah, Justice Denman presided over the proceedings. And now this case, when I say it was sensational, like it was so sensational that it even had foreign dignitaries turning up to watch it.

The Crown Prince of Sweden was spotted in the public gallery. Now from the start, Kate pleaded not guilty. Her defense was very simple.

The evidence was circumstantial. Slay argued that there was no direct proof that Julia had even been murdered and that the body parts fished out of the Thames couldn't be positively identified as hers because they couldn't find the head. Now, this is Victorian time.

Yeah, of course. We don't have, we have fingerprints but they didn't necessarily have hers on file anywhere. We didn't have DNA, anything like that.

So as far as they could see, it was just a headless, armless woman. It could have been anyone. He then, because this case can't get weirder, he then even floated the idea that Julia might have died of natural causes and that someone else had dismembered her.

Of course. Why not? That is what normally happens. You go to check on your friend or neighbor, find they've died of natural causes and think.

Well, better chop her up. Chop her up and boil her and then chuck her in the Thames. That's what she would have wanted.

That was a wish. She was a centric. But it's also like pick a lane.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Either it's not her or it is her and someone else did it. Like you can't argue that both things are true.

Oh, slay. Oh, slay. But the prosecution laid out a damning chain of evidence.

Witness after witness came forward, including neighbors who saw Kate wearing Julia's clothes and jewelry and passing herself off as her. The Porter family who testified that Kate had enlisted Robert to help carry the box to Richmond Bridge. John Church, who confirmed Kate tried to sell him the furniture.

And I love this because there's no name of it. A bonnet maker who said Kate had spoken days earlier about selling property and jewelry from an aunt. So she was trying to indicate that there was premeditation.

Now, that is the only bit of info I could find about this bonnet maker. OK. Fair.

So whether she was just there for the sake of it, we don't know. But I think it was. Or to prove premeditation or today.

So the prosecution were trying to say that this had been planned all along. She's already talking about. Yeah, exactly.

The jury also heard about forensic evidence. I mean, we say this in very loose terms from the cottage. So they heard about the blood stains on the floor.

They heard about the fatty deposits in the copper and charred bone in the grate. And although Julia's head was still missing, the remains recovered from the Thames matched a woman of her build and age when they realized that's what they were looking for. Throughout it all, Kate was completely unflinching.

Reporters described her as, quote, cold and impassive, showing little remorse. With massive teeth. Massive, massive horse teeth.

And when her attempt to implicate others failed, it only made her look more calculating. The trial lasted six days. And on the 8th of July, 1879, the jury retired.

They were out for just over an hour before returning with their verdict, guilty of willful murder. The judge asked Kate if she had anything to say before the sentence was passed. And Kate, ever the opportunist, jumped at the chance.

First, she insisted she was innocent, that she hadn't murdered Julia at all. Then, in a dramatic twist, she claimed it was actually the father of her son, John, who had killed Julia. Oh, God, here we go.

And that she was being made a scapegoat. She refused to give his name. Right, OK.

Saying only that he was the one truly responsible for the murder and dismemberment. And then she claimed that she was pregnant. Now, under English law... OK.

Yeah, under English law at the time, if a woman was found to be, quote, quick with child, any execution would be postponed until after the birth. The court, therefore, paused proceedings until Kate's claims could be verified. Now, this bit absolutely blew my mind.

Because I assumed paused until her claims could be verified. It's like, OK, well, we'll take her back to prison and then we're going to have to get a doctor to come in and we'll deal with this. Or wait until she comes on.

Yeah, yeah, no. An old procedure was then dusted off. Is it something about frogs? No! That is a pregnancy test thing.

Or peeing on a frog. Something about frogs, yeah. No, that's not what it is.

OK. But that's very interesting. We should circle back.

You looked at me as if I'd lost my fucking mind, then. No, an old procedure was dusted off, which was known as the jury of matrons. Now, this is basically they picked 12 women who were in the courtroom, any 12 women.

And they were sworn in to the court. And then they were accompanied by a surgeon to examine Kate right there and then. Oh! They then returned and announced that she wasn't pregnant.

OK, yeah. There we go. Not pregnant.

I mean, it would save money on clear blues. It really would. I don't know how.

You should get 12 random women in the street, like, excuse me. I just need a jury of matrons. Are you busy? It's been a week.

I'm a bit nervous. No, I'd probably not love you fine. But yeah, so this was dusted off.

I mean, I think we could all agree that she definitely wasn't. No. But it also still feels a little bit... A little bit mad.

Like, OK. And then with this claim dismissed, there was nothing left for poor Kate to do. And Justice Denman pronounced the mandatory sentence of the time.

Kate Webster was to be taken back to Wandsworth Prison, where she had previously been incarcerated. And she was to be, quote, hanged by the neck until dead. Even then, Kate didn't stop grasping for an escape.

From her cell, she wrote petitions for clemency, claiming her prime was not premeditated, that she was impoverished, desperate and led astray. And she painted herself as a victim of circumstance. But the Home Secretary at the time, on a cross, reviewed the case and found that there were no grounds for mercy.

And Queen Victoria's government refused to intervene. So Kate's date of execution was set for the 29th of July, 1879. Because they didn't fuck about with him, are they? You're going to die and it's going to be in a week.

Have fun. In the days before her death, Kate gave conflicting confessions. At one point, she again tried to implicate the man she said was her lover, a man named Strong, claiming that he had been involved.

But on the morning of the 29th of July, she basically kind of dropped all the pretense. The crowds had gathered outside Wandsworth Prison. But at this point, executions weren't public anymore.

But that didn't dampen the fascination. Dickens got his wish. Exactly.

And people waited for the black flag to be hoisted, which was a traditional signal that justice had been carried out. Inside, Kate Webster had spent a restless night and she made one final confession, this time taking sole responsibility for the murder. I'm surprised she didn't blame her dentist.

She probably would have got off with it. At this point, yeah, exactly. She took sole responsibility clearing John Church supporters and anyone else that she had previously accused.

It was a last act of truth or at least resignation before she was sent to the gallows. And at nine o'clock sharp, executioner William Marwood led her to the scaffold. He was known for his long drop method, which is a technique designed to break the neck instantly and cause a swift death.

Kate was reported to have walked steadily showing little emotion. She was placed over the trapdoor. The noose adjusted and within moments the lever was pulled.

The drop fell, her neck snapped and Catherine Webster was dead. Outside, the black flag was raised above the prison walls and the crowd cheered. It was a stark reminder of how notorious Kate had become, not just as a murderer, but in the Victorian imagination as a female fiend, someone who had overturned every expectation.

As was custom, her body was buried in an unmarked grave within the prison grounds, no headstone, just earth over a woman whose name had filled hundreds of newspaper columns by this point. Meanwhile, Julia's little cottage at two Mayfield's cottages Park Road Richmond was emptied. An auction of her possessions was held the very next day.

Locals came not just to buy, but to gawk. John Church ended up purchasing many of Julia's belongings, including really grimly the carving knife that Kate had used. No, come on now.

But the laundry copper, where Julia's body had been boiled, also sold for five shillings. There we go. The cottage itself became tainted ground and for years it stood empty.

Servants refused to work there. Neighbours whispered about ghosts. Julia Thomas's murder had kind of stayed in the public imagination and the press kept returning to the story, like in weeks and months even after Kate's death.

They described her as malicious, reckless and willfully evil. There were ballads sung about her, and Madame Tussaud unveiled a waxwork of her in the Chamber of Horrors where she was named the Richmond Murderess as she joined the ranks of Victorian legend. Don't talk to me about Madame Tussauds.

I'm sorry, that's a sore subject. For Julia's neighbours, the horror was real and close. For the wider public, it was theatre.

But beneath the spectacle lay the truth. A woman who had lived a careful, respectable life was erased by the person that she had allowed into her own home. And now, before we finish, for a wild turn.

Okay. Fast forward to October 2010. Builders are working in a garden in a house in Richmond, not far from where Julia had lived, when they unearthed a human skull.

Hey. Police were called and forensic tests were carried out. The result was astonishing.

In July 2011, a coroner confirmed that the skull was indeed that of Julia Martha Thomas, finally identified 131 years after her murder. And the house where it was found? Have a guess who might have owned the house. You'll never.

You'll never guess. Oh, well, it was only none other than Sir David Attenborough. Shut up! Yes, the nation's grandfather broadcast her naturalist.

He bought the property in the 1980s, not knowing that it sat on the very spot where Kate Webster once lived and worked and the former site of the hole in the wall pub. So, yeah. And it's one of those stranger than fiction.

Yeah. That's mad. Yeah.

Julia's head, hidden by her killer in 1879, reappears in a 21st century garden of Britain's most beloved broadcaster. The coroner's report concluded that Julia had died from asphyxiation and head trauma, perfectly consistent with Kate's final confession of pushing her down the stairs and then strangling her. So, after more than a century, her record was finally complete.

And it tied up all those last loose ends of a case that had haunted Richmond for generations. Julia Martha Thomas was no longer just the victim in the Barnes mystery or the Richmond murder. She was once again a woman with a name, a life, and now, at least, her head.

Julia Martha Thomas was a woman of her time, a widow careful with her reputation, determined to live a respectable life in a small Richmond cottage. She couldn't have known that letting her servants stay on just a few extra days would be the decision that ended her life. Kate Webster's crime horrified Victorian society, not just because of its brutality, but because it upended every assumption about class, gender and order.

A servant murdering her mistress, cutting her up and walking out in her clothes was a nightmare of Victorian anxieties made real. And yet, for all the lurid headlines, what often gets lost is Julia herself. She wasn't just the Barnes mystery or the Richmond murder.

She was a woman who had taught, travelled, worshipped at her church and tried to live with dignity. Kate was executed, the neighbours whispered, the cottage stood empty for years, but the story lived on, in the press, in Madame Tussauds' Chamber of Horrors and eventually in the unlikely discovery of Julia's skull. It's a reminder that behind the Victorian sensationalism and the gory details was a simple truth.

A woman's trust was betrayed in her own home and for all the fascination with Kate Webster, it's Julia's name that we should remember. The end. Well, that was brilliant.

Thanks, mate. I really, really enjoyed that one. Thank you.

Well, I mean, it's horrible to say, isn't it? There's no way of saying it. It's true crime. I get your point.

I get your point. Expertly told, darling. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. I just... Fascinating.

I mean, and you're right, like, for all the levity that comes with historical ones, because it's a bit easier... It's much easier. ...to be removed from it. Like, a woman was murdered in her own home... Yeah.

...for simply being nice enough to not turf a woman out on the street. And then when she did go, right, that's it. That was the end of it.

That's the end of her life. And it's just that, like, the way that she was completely obliterated, that's the bit that is, like... It's bad enough that she was killed, but it's almost as if, like, you can kind of... Not that you can forgive a crime of passion, but it's... I was thinking that when you were talking about the trial and the amount of times Kate was trying to get out of it by blaming this person, that person, and their dog. Yeah.

If... If she had... I mean, even to the point where... Even if the strangulation had come to light, not, oh, she just died from falling down the stairs... ...then... I just feel like there could potentially have been some mercy or some leniency... ...in... It was a crime of passion. You were terrified. You've lived this completely... ...unboundaried, unregulated life... Mm.

...full of crime and distortion and... ...and just... ...unease... Yeah. ...that then, you know... ...shit happens almost... Yeah. ...kind of thing.

But the fact that it's so... ...what she then went and did is so brutal. Yeah. And it's not like... I mean, it's bad enough that she's boiling bodies and all the rest of it.

Like, that is... That is the lurid part of it. That is the sensationalism. I think there's even one of the sources that I've used is something like the boiled body story of Kate Webster.

Right, yeah. Like, that's... ...bad enough. But then, there's the added indignity of... ...one, assuming that people are stupid enough... Yeah.

...to realise that you are not... Who you say you are, right? And it's someone they know. Exactly. But that you've then... ...it's the added level of being that calculating of, like, I'm going to completely get rid of her entirely... ...and then live her life to cover up what I've done.

And who knows what she would have gone on to do if she hadn't been caught? Like, would she have carried on being Mrs. Thomas? Or would she have gone somewhere? Would she have ended up back in Ireland regardless? Yeah. Like, we don't know. But yeah, it's fascinating.

And obviously, I'll put a picture of Kate Webster up. Like, she is an imposing-looking woman... Right. ...regardless of her teeth.

She's quite... And it is a photo of her. Wow. And it is quite sinister.

Yeah. But we only have drawings of Julia. So it's... Yeah, it's a bit... But then I suppose that's kind of the case in all of... Yeah, and not enough, yeah.

...the true crime stuff ends up being that it's... The victim is just that, a victim, rather than the focal point. So people don't necessarily... Yeah. Kind of put them front and centre, which is sad.

But... Well, there we go. There we go, indeed. Yeah.

I suppose that just leaves us with the nice bits, right? It does. So we have a website. We do.

We have... Oh, it's sinistersouthpod.com. Code.uk. Code.uk. We have an email address, which is sinistersouthpodcastatgmail.com. We have Instagram and TikTok, Sinister South Pod. Yep. The Facebook group run by the... Who knows whether she's nice or not.

At this stage with no idea. No idea. Which is Trevor's Unite.

Yep. There's the Patreon. Which we always forget.

Which we always forget exists. But content does appear. It's coming.

Yeah. I think that's it. Yeah.

It's everything. You can come and drop us a line. Come and say hi.

One day soon, potentially maybe Rachel might allow me to be in a floating head again. We just need to be together on a Friday. I have been here with makeup on, Baines.

Are you free this Friday? Bring your makeup and we'll do it this Friday. And then potentially next time we actually record... Oh, no. Well, I don't know.

I don't know why I'm saying this. I'm just going to say we're going to the spa and I'm excited. Oh, we are going to the spa.

I'm not going to do what I did last time we went somewhere. I went like, should we bring all the equipment? We were. No, we're not bringing the bloody equipment.

We did take it to Manchester. I know. We did nothing.

We carted, or you, really. I tried to help occasionally, but it was very performative. Carted all of that equipment to Manchester for absolutely fuck all reason.

No, it stayed in my suitcase for two nights and then it came home again. Fun times. Look, do you know what? The mics deserve a little trip out every now and then.

A little holiday. It's all fine. But yeah.

Okay. Well, I'll see you all next week then, eh? Yeah, it's your turn next week. Do you know what you're doing? Nope.

Okay, cool. Good. It works out.

We figure it out. It's always better when I don't know. Yeah, it's good.

It's good. All right. Well, we love you Trevz.

Love Trevz. That's disgusting. Get in the bin.

As you will, delete this entire file. Burn it. Burn the laptop.

Boil it. Boil it. I'm going to go and throw these in the Thames.

Sorry, Trevz. We love you. I'll speak to you soon.

Trev, Trev. Tada. All right.

We love you.