diamond geezer

In 1879 all London was gripped by the gruesome murder of a widow in this Richmond cottage. The subsequent trial heard how Julia Martha Thomas had been choked to death by her maidservant, the body then dismembered, boiled and thrown headless into the Thames. The torso washed up downstream a few days later and Kate Webster was duly condemned to hang at Wandsworth Prison. But the remains were never formally identified as Julia's, not until 2010 when the octogenarian who owned the house nextdoor started work on an extension and a skull was unexpectedly unearthed. Today of all days, it's quite a tale.

Julia Martha Thomas was a former schoolteacher in her mid-50s who lived alone at 2 Mayfield Cottages in Park Road, Richmond. She'd had several maids, not many of whom had found her easy to work for, and in January 1879 made a fresh appointment on the recommendation of a friend. Alas people couldn't check references in those days and there was plenty about Kate Webster to be concerned about. She'd grown up in County Wexford and by the age of 15 had already been imprisoned for larceny. At 18 she moved to Liverpool and was imprisoned for larceny there, this time a four year sentence. She then moved to Hammersmith (another 18 months) and Teddington (another twelve months), and by the time of her Richmond appointment had already spent a fifth of her life in penal servitude. If only Julia had known.

The two women didn't get on, Julia finding Kate too lax and Kate finding Julia too strict. After only five weeks Kate was given warning to leave but wangled a few extra days, only to head to the alehouse on the last afternoon rather than accompanying Julia to church. A furious argument ensued during which Julia was pushed down the stairs, and things went rapidly downhill from there.

Mrs. Thomas came in and went upstairs. I went up after her, and we had an argument, which ripened into a quarrel, and in the height of my anger and rage I threw her from the top of the stairs to the ground floor. She had a heavy fall, and I became agitated at what had occurred, lost all control of myself, and, to prevent her screaming and getting me into trouble, I caught her by the throat, and in the struggle she was choked, and I threw her on the floor.

I determined to do away with the body as best I could. I chopped the head from the body with the assistance of a razor which I used to cut through the flesh afterwards. I also used the meat saw and the carving knife to cut the body up with. I prepared the copper with water to boil the body to prevent identity; and as soon as I had succeeded in cutting it up I placed it in the copper and boiled it. I opened the stomach with the carving knife, and burned up as much of the parts as I could.

Kate stashed most of the body parts in a wooden chest and a Gladstone bag, but one foot wouldn't fit so she chucked it in a rubbish heap in Twickenham, and the skull she buried behind the pub at the top of the road. The chest proved too heavy to move so she asked a friend's son to help her drag it to the station, and as they were crossing Richmond Bridge contrived to push it into the water. Such were her silver-tongued skills that none of this aroused any suspicions. Unfortunately for Kate the chest washed up at Barnes Bridge the following morning where it was spotted by a coal porter and taken to the police. But at this stage nobody could identify the body, not even when the spare foot was discovered, so the unidentified remains were laid to rest in Barnes Cemetery, case closed.

Kate might have got away with her crime had she not taken to dressing up as Mrs Thomas while selling off the contents of the house. She returned to her former stomping ground in Hammersmith and met up with the publican of The Rising Sun public house who agreed to take away all the furniture for the sum of £68. But when he turned up in Richmond with his cart and asked to meet with 'Mrs Thomas' - yes that's her - the neighbours spotted the deception. Kate realised the game was up, fleeing post haste back to Ireland aboard a coal steamer.

I did deviate to Hammersmith to take a look at The Rising Sun, homing in on 20 Cardross Street, but the pub closed in the 1960s and has been converted to a private home. Also the new owners had got the builders in, gutting the interior to add a rear extension and loft conversion, continuing my bad luck this week of visiting historic buildings temporarily under wraps. So, back to Richmond.

When police turned up at Mayfield Cottages they discovered several blood stains, burnt finger-bones in the hearth and dubious fatty deposits behind the copper. Kate had also been careless enough to leave behind a letter giving her home address in Ireland, and although she was actually hiding out at her uncle's farm the Irish police consulted her criminal record and caught her there anyway. Kate was brought back to England for a first hearing at Richmond Magistrates Court and then, as public interest in the case grew exponentially, a full trial at the Old Bailey.

The case opened on 2nd July 1879 with Kate denying everything, instead attempting to shift blame to the Hammersmith publican and her friends who'd helped carry the chest. But several witnesses came forward to help piece together the real story, with some even claiming Webster had sold them pots of lard and dripping rendered from boiled human fat. The case lasted six days, accompanied by much hysterical reporting in the press, with the jury taking just an hour and a quarter to find her guilty. Kate attempted to dodge the death penalty by claiming she was pregnant, the judge forced to employ a team of twelve matrons to confirm she wasn't. Only on the night before her execution did she finally confess all, and at 9am the next morning Wandsworth's hangman took her life.

The contents of 2 Mayfield Cottages were duly auctioned, with the Hammersmith publican successful in gaining most of the furniture including the knife with which Mrs Thomas had been dismembered. Daytrippers flocked to the backstreets of Richmond Hill just to see the cursed house, and nobody would live in it until almost twenty years had passed. Madame Tussauds swiftly created a wax effigy and placed it in their Chamber of Horrors, thus well into the 20th century Kate Webster still appeared alongside Dr Crippen, Burke and Hare. This is what happens when you brutally dismember your employer and are utterly useless at covering your tracks.

Park Road eventually returned to normal, indeed became a desirable address. These days Mayfield Cottages make a smart pair bedecked with shrubbery and wisteria, while nextdoor is a gorgeous blue-painted house whose garden path wends between several lush specimens. But Julia's skull remained undiscovered for well over a century, that is until the local pub - The Hole In The Wall - went up for sale. The owner of the blue house was worried it might become flats so bought it for himself and transformed it into a library. During the renovation work in 2010 a "dark circular object" was uncovered which turned out to be a woman's skull. Not only was it fractured but the bone also had low collagen levels, as would be expected after boiling. No DNA confirmation was possible as Thomas had no known offspring but the coroner concluded yes this was indeed the last piece of the mystery.

The blue house has been owned by the same man for over 70 years, bought in 1952 when he was a humble trainee BBC producer. You know him well, he's Sir David Attenborough and today is the widely-celebrated occasion of his 100th birthday. He says he'd never live anywhere else thanks to the unbeatable combination of a temperate climate, a cultured city and the glories of Richmond Park barely a five minute walk away. And here he's returned after all the great projects of his lifetime, from commissioning The Old Grey Whistle Test to making Life On Earth, back to the cosy home sandwiched between a notorious crime scene and the burial place of a fractured skull. Not just a great naturalist and TV executive but the unlikely solver of a murder mystery even older than he is.