Welcome to the start of a new blog series that was so much fun to research and write. And by fun, I mean I discovered things that totally creeped me out and kept me up at night. See, fun! And don’t get me wrong, As much as I love scary books, I do NOT like scary movies and refuse to watch them. But books that make my skin crawl? Now that’s my jam. I love both reading and writing them.
First women who deserves to be as notorious as Lizzie Borden is Kate Webster, a cheeky lass who hated her employer so much she killed her, dismembered her and boiled her before tossing the rest of the poor women in a trunk and ditching it in the River Thames.
Thirty-year-old Kate had a history of moving from job to prison to job. Her victim, 54-Year-old Julia Martha Thomas, was a twice widowed former schoolteacher, who was very invested in being viewed as posh as possible. To enhance that image (and get out of doing the dishes?) she hired live in help, but had trouble keeping them because she was notoriously exacting and mean spirited. (I wonder what kind of teacher she was?!!!) Most of her maids simply left, but not Kate Webster. After one particularly heated argument, Kate threw Julia down the stairs and then choked her to death to keep her from causing her any more trouble. Of course, Kate then had the problem of the body. But our Kate was a real problem solver, as is evidence by this quote from her eventual confession:
“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.”
Unable to burn or boil everything, she ended up stuffing as much as she could into a bag. The head and a foot didn’t fit so she simply tossed the foot into a garbage in Twickenham and buried the head in a garden which wasn’t discovered until 131 years later! (In Sir David Attenborough’s garden, no less!) Kate posed as Julia for two weeks while she was trying to dispose of the body, but neighbors became suspicious and Kate fled to Liverpool. When the police finally arrived at Julia’s cottage, they discover blood stains, finger bones and fatty deposits in the kitchen. Clearly, Julia had a point when chastising Kate about her cleanliness and a maid that doesn’t clean, is no maid at all…
Victorian England was as scandalized as it was titillated by the crime and the trial. At any rate, after a grisly and well publicized trial, Kate Webster was put to death for her crime.
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