Cambridgeshire Murders (5 page)

S
ome people quite literally get away with murder, but because of a coincidental meeting with a sharp-witted woman, this was not to be the case for Thomas Weems of Godmanchester.

Thomas was a strongly built man in his early twenties when, around the start of 1818, he began courting a local girl, Mary Ann Sawyer. Mary was still in her teens and described as being of a ‘very unprepossessing appearance'. Before long their relationship faltered, and so, in order to hold on to her lover, Mary claimed that she was pregnant. Thomas did his best to disentangle himself, even moving from Godmanchester to Great Staunton, where he was eventually arrested and forced to accept responsibility for Mary and their unborn child.

Thomas found work in a mill near Goldington, Bedfordshire, and although the couple married at the local church, they did not live together; Thomas chose to live in Goldington while Mary returned to Godmanchester to live with her grandfather in St Ann's Lane. When, during Thomas's several visits to Mary over the following months, it became apparent that Mary had lied and the pregnancy was false, Thomas left his job and searched for other work, moving south until he eventually took employment as a miller in Edmonton, north London.

He had only been in Edmonton for a short time when he met Maria Woodward, whom he described as ‘as fine a young woman as any in the world'. After a courtship of about two months he proposed and she accepted. It seems that it was at this point that he decided that he would have to murder his wife. He told Maria that he needed to return to Huntingdon for money, and that they would marry as soon as he returned.

At the start of May Thomas began his journey back to Godmanchester. On the way he met John Beck, a postboy. The two had grown up together in Godmanchester, and Beck, returning to Huntingdon from Royston, offered him a lift in his chaise.
¹
It seems that it never occurred to Thomas Weems that he should have been more discreet. On their journey Thomas told John of his new position in Edmonton and that he had met a young woman whom he was determined to marry. John was aware that Thomas was already married and warned him against bigamy. Thomas replied to this was that he was going to fetch his wife and would soon get rid of her.

John dropped Thomas on the outskirts of Godmanchester, but saw Thomas and Mary together later in the week, early on Thursday evening. Thomas informed him that they would be leaving for Edmonton the following morning while his wife said that they were planning to walk. John was shocked and told Thomas that it would be impossible for Mary to walk that far. The reply was that, if that was the case, she ‘might stop on the road and be damned'.

Thomas and Mary left early on the morning of Friday 7 May
²
and after about 15 or 16 miles of constant walking they stopped near the villages of Wendy and Arrington and Mary lay down on the grass to rest.

Susannah Bird lived in Wendy and had set out to travel to Royston. Ahead of her she saw a man and woman sitting at the roadside; the woman sat on the right-hand side of the road near a field belonging to a local farmer called Mr Russell, and the man sat opposite and was toting a bundle. Susannah passed by, but after she had walked on a little further she looked back and saw that they had both entered Mr Russell's field. They stood looking around them and she thought they might be watching her. She looked back several times but eventually lost sight of them and walked on to Royston.

It was about one o'clock when Susannah made her return journey. On meeting Thomas, who was still carrying the bundle but continuing his journey alone, she asked what had become of the woman he had been with. ‘I left her behind', he replied. ‘She is about spun up. I cannot get her any further, so I left her to get on by the coach.'

Unfortunately for him, Susannah Bird was not the sort of woman who took things at face value, and while he walked on she looked out for the coach. When it arrived she looked both inside and out but did not spot Mary. This raised her suspicions further. She saw a Mr Sell hoeing in the field next to Mr Russell's and told him of her concerns, saying she ‘would go to the next field, and see if she could discover what betided the young woman'.

On doing so Susannah immediately discovered that the grass was trodden down ‘as if some persons had been struggling on the ground' and then spotted a finger and a pair of shoes protruding from a pile of grass. She called out to Mr Sell, who quickly uncovered a body. Mary Ann Weems was lying in a ditch, her face obscured by her shawl and bonnet. There was also the mark of a man's footprint in the ground. Susannah described the body later, in court: ‘the face and neck were very black, appeared to have been caused by strangulation, as there was a coloured garter round the neck, with a slip noose drawn very tight.'

Travelling along the same road was the Revd Mr Brown, a magistrate from Conington who drew level with the field just as the body was being uncovered. Susannah gave him an accurate description of Thomas. Brown issued an arrest warrant and dispatched the local constable, Jackson, along with an assistant. The men took a chaise and followed the fugitive south, apprehending him as he rode in a wagon between Puckeridge and High Cross.

The county coroner opened the inquest at 8 p.m. and had barely finished swearing in the jury when the magistrate and constables arrived with Thomas in custody. The inquest continued into the night, eventually closing after 1 a.m. on Saturday 8 May. The jury returned a verdict of wilful murder against Thomas Weems, who was immediately taken to the county gaol at Cambridge to await trial at the next assizes.

On Wednesday 4 August 1819 Thomas was brought before Mr Justice Burrough. John Beck, Susannah Bird and the inhabitants of Wendy who had been involved in the discovery of Mary's body and the felon's apprehension were all called as witnesses. Maria Woodward came from Edmonton to give evidence. She described how she had met Thomas Weems after he had taken up his position at the mill. He had told her he was a single man, and they had courted for nine weeks before his proposal, which she had immediately accepted. She gave her evidence but was clearly upset. At her distress Thomas reached out and they shook hands.

The other witness of note was Mr Orridge, the Cambridge gaoler, who said that he had been present on two occasions when Thomas had received visitors. One was his father and the other his sister. It was during his sister's visit that Orridge had overheard Thomas say that it ‘was no use denying it any longer, as he should be telling a falsehood every time, which would be only adding one sin to another'. Shortly after this, he had confessed and his confession was read out to the court:

After I had been at work at Randall's, of Edmonton, about a month, I formed an acquaintance with Maria Woodward, whom I told that I was single, and promised her marriage, and then made up my mind to return into Huntingdonshire to murder my wife. I thought of cutting her throat, but afterwards changed my mind; and if I could hang her I would. On the 1st of May I left Edmonton for Godmanchester, and on the 5th returned for Edmonton about 5 o'clock in the morning. After proceeding on the journey 14 or 15 miles, my wife complained of being tired. I asked her whether she had not some toast in her pocket that was left at breakfast, she said yes; I then said, you can sit down and eat it, and I will take a nap until the coach comes up. We sat down together, and she began to eat; at this moment the horrid thought of destroying her came into my head, and I grasped my hands around her throat, pressed her windpipe with the thumbs, and exclaimed, ‘Now I'll be the death of you', and held her so for about five minutes.

At this point Thomas demonstrated how he had positioned himself as he had strangled Mary, who had apparently only managed to utter ‘Oh, Lord!' The confession continued:

I afterwards took one of her garters off, tied it round her neck, put her into a drain, threw some grass over her, then left her. I intended reaching Edmonton on the Friday night, and on Saturday morning going to the clerk to have the banns published between myself and Maria Woodward.

When he took the stand Thomas stated that he had been disgusted with the conduct of his wife, who had not only tricked him into marriage but had picked his pocket of 35s and had been to Fenstanton with another man. He began to say that he knew it would be a sin to marry while his wife lived, but at this point in his testimony he became too agitated to continue.

The jury retired but took only five minutes before they returned the guilty verdict. The date of the execution was set for two days later, Friday 6 August, with the judge agreeing that, after pronouncement of death, the condemned man's body should be dissected and anatomised.

A few minutes after 12 p.m. on the appointed day, on gallows erected over the gateway of the county gaol, the execution was watched by large crowds. The body was then left to hang for an hour before being taken by the sheriff's officers and constables in a cart to the chemical lecture room in the botanical gardens. At about 1.30 p.m. Professor Cumming
³
began to apply electrical charges to the face and body. The audience consisted of Cambridge's medical community as well as members of the university and several respected Cambridge residents. One report of the event stated that ‘The galvanic stimulus was applied to the supra-orbitary nerve (beneath the eye-brow) and the heel, when the most extraordinary grimaces were exhibited every time that the electric discharges were made – every muscle in his face was simultaneously thrown into fearful action: rage, horror, despair, anguish and ghostly smiles united their hideous expressions in the murderer's face.'

On the following day there was a public viewing of the body, and the crowd that gathered at the entrance was so large that it had to be controlled by the police.

The exact burial spot of Thomas Weems remains unknown but Mary's body was displayed in the White Hart in Godmanchester before being laid to rest in the church of St Mary the Virgin, Godmanchester. Her grave was originally just marked with a small stone carved with the initials M.A.W., but later a second memorial stone was erected behind it with the words, ‘To the memory of Mary Ann Weems who was murdered in the 21st year of her age' on the front and an epitaph engraved on the back.

Notes

1 A chaise is a light-weight, two-wheeled horsedrawn carriage.

2 In the
Cambridge Chronicle
the date of Mary Ann Weems's murder was reported as having taken place on 8 May, but her epitaph refers to 7 May. Other accounts refer to her as being killed on a Friday, tying in with the date of 7 May. This date therefore has been used in this account.

3 James Cumming (1777–1861) was a chemist whose research-led teaching was exemplary, in a period when laboratories were being developed and discussed. The university provided no apparatus of its own, so by his own skill he built or adapted many of the sensitive instruments required for research and lecture demonstrations.

4 Weems's execution took place on Friday 6 August 1819; the date carved on Mary's gravestone is incorrect.

L
ittle Stukeley is situated approximately 3 miles from Huntingdon. According to the 1821 census there were just fifty-two houses, home to 385 inhabitants. Of the families, sixteen cited their employment as handicrafts and seventy-one worked in agriculture.

The village dates back to at least the times of Richard II and was originally named Stivecle. As is typical of Cambridgeshire villages, the church is impressive, having been built and extended over many decades with several parts of the building dating to the 1600s.

It was Tuesday 3 July 1827 when the residents heard the news that their rector, the Revd Joshua Waterhouse, was dead. At first it was rumoured that he had committed suicide by cutting his own throat. The incumbent vicar for about fourteen years, the 81-year-old Revd Waterhouse was well known for both his meanness and his eccentricities. It was this eccentricity that made the villagers believe that suicide would not be out of character.

However, it soon became clear that there was a murderer at large.

Born in Derbyshire in 1746, Joshua Waterhouse was the youngest of four children and the son of a respectable farmer. In 1771 he entered St Catherine's Hall, Cambridge. He gained his first degree in 1774, his second in 1777 and became a Bachelor of Divinity in 1786. He was elected to a Fellowship and resided in Coton near Cambridge. Throughout his college career he was described as ‘one of the handsomest and best-dressed men of his college'. His popularity with the ladies meant that by the time of his death he had amassed enough love letters to fill an entire sack. One of the women he courted was the radical feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft, whose work included
Vindication of the Rights of Women.

It will never be known exactly what turned Waterhouse from a popular man to the pious and eccentric 81-year-old murder victim, but J.A. Venn's
Alumni Cantabrigienses
(1752–1900) casts some light on Waterhouse's character. Venn noted that he was ‘Constantly engaged in quarrels with other fellows; in 1798 voted for himself as Senior Fellow when the election to the Mastership took place; the Lord Chancellor nominated Joseph Proctor. At Little Stukeley his costume is said to have consisted of a coarse great-coat, corduroy breeches and light grey stockings.'

Although it appears that the original records no longer exist there are numerous mentions of several complaints of immoral conduct made against Waterhouse and brought before the Bishop of Ely; and that the move to Little Stukeley was an attempt by Waterhouse to put these incidents behind him.

In 1806 Joshua Waterhouse bought a parcel of land called the Denhills in Little Stukeley and paid in the region of £2,000 for the next presentation to the rectory of Little Stukeley. In 1813 the Revd Dr Torkington died and Revd Waterhouse became the incumbent of Little Stukeley, and moved there from the rectory at Coton, Cambridge. Until his death he continued to be the rector for both churches.