Murderous Monday - Catherine Webster - Women Who Kill - Hired Help, The Only Woman To Hang At Wandsworth Prison

 

The terrible crime at Richmond at last,
On Catherine Webster now has been cast,
Tried and found guilty she is sentenced to die.
From the strong hand of justice she cannot fly.
She has tried all excuses but of no avail,
About this and murder she's told many tales,
She has tried to throw blame on others as well,
But with all her cunning at last she has fell.

Catherine Webster met her maker at the end of William Marwood's rope on 29th July 1879 at Wandsworth Prison, for the murder of her employer Mrs Julia Martha Thomas.

Catherine Webster was born Kate Lawler in Killanne, County Wexford, Ireland in 1848 and from a young age she found herself on the wrong side of the law.  At the age of 15 in the December of 1864 she was imprisoned for stealing in her home county of Wexford.  In 1867 Kate moved to Liverpool, England, where she was soon sentenced to four years imprisonment, again for stealing.  she was released in the January of 1872, but by 1875 she had again been arrested for stealing and was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment at Wandsworth Prison.  In the February of 1877 she was again sentenced for stealing and served 12 months.

On 13th January 1879 Catherine entered the employ of Julia Martha Thomas, a widow in her 50's at 2 Mayfield Cottages in Richmond.  At first the relationship between the two women was good, but it soon began to sour when Mrs Thomas became critical of Catherine's poor standard of work, time keeping and general drunkenness.  Matters became increasingly bad in the household until Mr Thomas gave Catherine notice to leave by 28th February.  Mrs Thomas recorded her decision in her last diary entry, "Gave Katherine warning to leave."

2 Mayfield Cottages

By the 28th February however Catherine had yet to find further employment or accommodation and had persuaded Mrs Thomas to allow her to stay until that Sunday, 2nd March.  A decision that was to cost Mrs Thomas her life.  Catherine had Sunday afternoons off to visit her son John who was cared for by her friend Sarah Crease, with Catherine having to return in good time to help Mrs Thomas prepare for evening service at the local Presbyterian chapel.  This Sunday Catherine visited a local hostilely and was late returning to 2 Mayfield Cottages, delaying Mrs Thomas's departure.  The two woman quarrelled before Mrs Thomas left.  Witnesses at the chapel noted that Mrs Thomas seems to be in an agitated state and left before the end of the service.

Illustrated Police News
12th July 1879

What happened next was murder, either accidental or premeditated.  According the Catherine's eventual confession the events that unfolded that evening were an accident caused by a fit of temper.


'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.'


Mrs Thomas's neighbour and landlady Mrs Ives recalled hearing what sounded like a chair falling over coming from next door.  However she heard no sounds of quarrelling.

Catherine now had that age old problem, what to do with the body of Mrs Thomas.


'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.'


Neighbours had recalled a terrible smell coming from the property and Catherine herself confessed to being 'greatly overcome both by the sight before me and the smell.'

Over the next few days Catherine continued to run the house, putting on an air of normality all the while she was packing Mrs Thomas's remains into a black Gladstone bag and a corded bonnet box. However Catherine was unable to fit on of the feet or head into the packages, she disposed of these separately.  She threw the remaining foot on a rubbish heap in Twickenham and secreted the head in a shallow grave in the stables at the Hole in The Wall public house. Mrs Thomas's skull was discovered 131 years later by workmen.

On 4th March, Catherine travelled to visit her old neighbours in Hammersmith, the Porter family, taking with her the Gladstone bag and corded bonnet box.  Catherine told the Porters that her name was now Mrs Thomas, having married and been widowed since she had seen them last.  She then invited Mr Porter and his son Robert to the Oxford and Cambridge Arms public house.  Along the way Catherine disposed of the Gladstone bag, possibly by dropping it into the Thames, the bag was never recovered.  When Catherine left the company of the Porters she disposed of the bonnet box on Richmond Bridge, this was to be Catherine's undoing.  The next day the box had washed up in shallow water by the river bank only a mile downstream.  The box was discovered by coal porter Henry Wheatley, who found the box to contain body parts wrapped in brown paper.  The police were duly summoned and an investigation was underway.

Meanwhile Catherine continued to live at the home of her victim, 2 Mayfield Cottages. Posing as Mrs Thomas she sold a large amount of Mrs Thomas's furniture to John Church, a publican, to help furnish his public house, The Rising Sun.

By now neighbours were becoming increasingly concerned and suspicious about the whereabouts of Mr Thomas.  On 18th March when the carts arrived to remove Mrs Thomas's furniture a neighbour enquired to one of the men who had ordered the removal of the goods.  The man stated that Mrs Thomas had done so, whilst indicating Catherine to be Mrs Thomas.  Catherine realised she had been exposed and fled the scene immediately.  The police were summoned to 2 Mayfield cottages where they found blood stains, charred finger bones in the fire place and fatty deposits in the copper.  A wanted notice for Catherine was immediately issued.

Catherine had fled to Liverpool where she later took a coal streamer back to Ireland.  News reached Scotland Yard that Catherine was hiding out at her uncle's farm in Killanne in Ireland.  It was there that she was arrested on 29th March.

Illustrated Police News
19th July 1879

Catherine was sent to trail at The Old Bailey on 2nd July 1879, the trial lasted for six days while numerous witnesses pieced together the complicated story as to how Mrs Thomas had met her end.  Catherine protested her innocence throughout the trail, even attempting to implicate John church, the Porters and the absent father of her son.  However it only to took the jury an hour and a quarter to find Catherine guilty of the wilful and premeditated murder of Mrs Thomas.  Catherine was hung for her crime, her remains buried in an unmarked grave in Wandsworth Prison.

Illustrated Police News
2nd August 1879

Murderous Monday - Unsolved Murder - Ann Reville, Butcher's Wife.

Mrs Ann Reville, murdered for bad meat?

Ann Reville had been born Mary Ann Chudley in Cheriton Bishop, Devon in 1843 to John Chudley, a carpenter, and his wife Grace Gosland.  In 1874 Mary Ann married Hezekiah Reville in Reading, Berkshire.

In 1881 the Reville family ran a butcher's shop in Windsor Road, Slough, Berkshire.  Living above the shop were Hezekiah Reville, his wife Ann and their two young daughters Alice Jane and Emily Gertrude.

At that time Hezekiah Reville employed two boys,  sixteen year old Alfred Augustus Payne, son of Alfred Payne, a beer house keeper and gardener, and his wife Emily Goldswaine, and fourteen year old Philip Glass, son of Alfred Glass, a fly driver (horse coach), and his wife Mary Ann Pile.

On the 1881 Census, Alfred Augustus Payne cane be found listed as Augustus Payne, living with his parents and siblings at The Royal Oak beer house in Slough High Street.  Philip Glass can be found living with his parents and elder sister, also Mary Ann, at Royal Cottages, Mackenzie Street, Slough, Berkshire.

Both boys worked long, hard hours and it seems Mrs Reville had cause to reprimand Alfred Payne on his habit of frequenting the beer houses of Slough, which resulted him being late for work on several occasions.  Philip Glass remembered hearing Mrs Reville speak sharply to Alfred on one occasion, causing Alfred to threaten to give notice.  However, Mr Reville managed to talk him out of it.  Items from the shop had begun to go missing, including a quantity of steak.  Mrs Reville began to suspect both Alfred and Philip of dishonest practices.

However, everything appeared to be well between Mrs Reville and the two boys on the evening of 11th April 1881 when Mrs Mary Callen of Arbour Vale arrived at the butcher's shop to purchase a half pound steak.  Mrs Callen paid for her steak, giving the money to Philip, after which he passed it to Mrs Reville who was working in a small office room behind the shop.  Mrs Reville's two young daughters were asleep upstairs in their room and Mr Reville had since left the shop, later accounts giving that time to be between 7:30pm and 8:10pm.  Both Alfred and Philip remained at the shop after Mr Reville's departure with Philip leaving around 8:20pm and Alfred following ten minutes after.

At around 8:30pm that evening, a neighbour Mrs Eliza Beasley called on her friend Mrs Reville as she often did for company.  She found the door to the shop open and upon entering the shop she saw her friend sitting in her chair in the little office, facing the window.  The book she had been working on sat open on the table.  At first Mrs Beasley thought her friend had simply fainted but closer inspection found Mrs Reville had been dealt three blows with a meat cleaver, two across her head and one at the back of the neck.  Police Sergeant Hebbes was duly summoned to the scene of the crime.

Sergeant Hebbes examined the body and the little office, the shop account book Mrs Reville had been working on had been left open on March 19th, on the floor he found some money, a pen, a handkerchief and splashes of blood.  Further investigation of the shop turned up a bloodied cleaver, to which a few strands of human hair clung.  Also a note was discovered, addressed to Mr Reville it read:

"You never will sell me no more bad meat like you did on Saturday.  I told Mrs Austin at Chalvey, that I would do for her.  I done it for the bad meat she sold me on Saturday last. 

H. Collins, Colnbrook."


Naturally suspicion first fell upon Mrs Reville's husband but several witnesses could attest to his whereabouts that evening.  After leaving his house, Mr Reville had called on Mr James Wilmot's bakery on William Street before visiting Mr Richard Jenkins grocery shop.  From there he stopped off at Mr George Cornish's shop to purchase some tobacco before ending the evening in The White Hart Pub in the High Street.

Suspicion then passed to Alfred Payne, he was arrested at his home, The Royal Oak in the High Street, the same evening and taken to Slough Police Station.  There he gave evidence that:

"I've only got to say that Mrs Reville was sitting at the books when I came out of the door.  She said 'Good night' to me and I asked if I should shut the door.  She said, 'No, turn the gas down and leave the door open'.  The tools where all laid together on the block when I came outside except the knife, and that lay out against the weights and scale.  It was 8:32 when I came out of the door, and I made straight home.  I looked at the clock.  That's all I've got to say. I don't want to say any more."


It was concluded that by the positioning of the body and the fact Mrs Reville had not risen from her chair when her assailant entered the room, the murderer was known to her.  The mysterious Mrs Austin and H. Collins mentioned in the note could not be traced.  Alfred Payne's clothes were sent to be checked for possible bloodstains.  The mysterious note and a  suspected sample of Alfred's handwriting from the account book were sent for analysis by a handwriting expert. 

Too small spots of blood were discovered on Alfred's shirt and the handwriting expert concluded that the handwriting on the mysterious note was that of Alfred's.  Superintendent Thomas Durham felt that there was enough evidence to charge Alfred Payne with the murder of Mrs Ann Reville. 

The trial started on 26th April 1881 and concluded on 29th April with Mr Attenborough for the defence of Alfred arguing that the case against rested on the fact that it seemed impossible for anyone else to have slain Mrs Reville, rather than actual evidence against Alfred. He also argued that no one could be certain that the samples of handwriting taken from the account book thought to be Alfred's were his.  The judge then summed up the case and the jury retired.  They wasted no time in coming to their verdict.  Alfred Payne was declared innocent of the murder of Mrs Reville and he left the court a free man.

No one else was ever charged in relation to Mrs Reville's murder.

On 6th September 1881 Alfred enlisted with The King's Royal Rifle Corps, later serving in World War One with the Bucks National Reserve then later the Royal Defence Corps, reaching the rank of Sergeant.  Alfred continued to live in Slough, later marrying Susan Davis in the September of 1890, until his death in 1941.  However, Alfred never worked as a butcher again, instead supporting his family as a general labourer. 

Mr Reville also no longer worked as a butcher after his wife's murder.  Instead he moved to Brighton and ran a bakery with his daughter Alice.  His other daughter Emily was sent to live with an aunt in Brighton until leaving to work as a housemaid in London.  Hezekiah later remarried to Alice Tullett in 1913.  He remained in Brighton, Sussex until his death in 1933.