The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1869-04-03 00:00:00

THE NORWICH MURDER OF 1851.

On Tuesday, at the Norwich Assizes, William Mr. Metcalfe closed his speech at hall-past one, and, after
Sheward was found guilty of the murder of his wife a few minutes interval, liaren ligott c uninenced his sum-
in June, 1851, and was sentenced to death. The ming up, which occupied over an hour in its delivery. The
case appeared to excite great interest, and a num. learned Judge was obviously perplexed by his determination
her id ladies were present. The prisoner is a man of tiis tr,ingdzsrireoi gitt
ptiui ttlitehee vti.l een&e,,,oa,creyiliaroilcilx ii,rivxnel 7
ordinary appearance and rather short in stature. He Rightly or wrongly, he avoided the responsibility of expreas.
is sail to have been very ill, and a few days ago it was ing ally definite opinion as to the general bearing of the
doubted if he would be well enough to take his trial, evidence one way or another, and contented himself with
He was assisted into the dock, and appeared to he reading over his notes to the jury, and eonimenting
suffering from great debility. He remained seated upon the value of each individual description of testi-
during the day, and his head was scarcely visible above rjrit)lyk;nesclauat
,a-uteit‘hoe, riotasttleofas ilsthieuyettadscteltreemilit
react
the dock, but his face appeared always to be turned ,:ver the report cf the evidence in any well-edited newlpaper.
towards the witnesses, llis lordship, however, laid down one important principle
The attention of the jury was especially directed which, it accepted, was fatal to the chief plea for the pet-
to th apparent discrepancy in the age d the s,ovif. If the case, he declart-d, had rested on circumstaatial
'e i !
deceased, who was fifty-four at the time of , the I;,%;iT ie hail be Crril>rtii',l
nenctvelli hair .itshbaeterg or :10i.d,easns
her disappearance, and in that of the remains , alleged to have been mart', red. But the confession of the
which were found, for the latter were said at I prisoner, in his opinion, constituted direct evidence, and
the time of the discos/1 ry to have been those of a much therefore it was not necessary for the jury lobe aboolutely
younger woman. A great deal of the evidence which certain about the identity of the remains found with those
of Mrs. itheward, in order to be justified in finding a verdict
has been before the public was recapitulated, and the guilty.
trial, which commenced on Monday morning, was con-
The jury left the court at three o'clock, and a long in-
cluded on Tuesday. terval a .psed liefere their return. When it was found they
His lordship, in summing up, laid much stress on the did not give in their verdict :.t once, it was chioc they did
importance of the official placard issued in 1851, offer- consider the doubt as to the identity of the ti Ily auflicient
ing a reward for information RA to the mutilated limbs i to justify them in disfuissieg the case ; and, except on this
plea, there could be lit
of a body found scattered about in various
.parts of 1 tie hope of the prisoner's acquittal.
Norwich, winch stated they were the remains of a i Throughout the wlnde of this weary waiting, the wietched
woman between 16 and 26 years id age, Mrs. Sheward
being at the time of her disappearance 54 years old, 1.,,,„,
I recutigeireiViiienbtelinegt'ield litina."davLaVe" 'but 'thethei‘itglriffrtilteYe
as lie sat there was very painful. The Judge i
but he left the jury to decide for themselves on the being absent, there was one loud buzz of talking
medical testimony. He also pointed out other (Riff- ! throughout the void ; tile assize was just ending,
culties, but concluded by telling them that if they he. ! and lawyers and lawy era' clerks were bustling about, making
lieved the sta.. ement made by the prisoner on the Ist rangements for girlsgrgPaWetr. oUl"
of January, 1869, to be a true confession of guilt, it ; thei,.rot departur%
roen
d 'oUrsileirg',l' inwo il'inati dibieedvtomee,ttner
aliliatat4noUntieloemrers4ki f p
would be their duty to convict him. , chalices of the verdict : the doors were constantly opening
The Jury, after deliberating for more than an hour, and shutting, and visitors came pressing in to get a glimpse
returned into court with a verdict of Guilty. of the prisoner. And all this time the man whose life or
His Lordship then, without any comment, passed death was being d, tided hi the room hard by, sat perfectly
still, pale, and motionless, with his grey head bowed down
sentence of death in the usual form. girds as if he would feign escape the gaze a the hundreds
The prisoner, although evidently feeble, listened to owt eyes that stared a him ceaselessly.
his sentence with apparent indifference. At last the end came. "Guilty" was the verdict of the
jury, and sentence of death was passed in due form, without
comment of any kind. That the sentence was just, and that
Sheward had told the truth in his confession, cannot, I
think, be doubted by any one who has followed this mys-
terious case. Vet, hail it not been for the man's confession,
no conviction could have been possible; ainl, terrible as the
crime was, the length of time which has elapsed since its
commission, the hard-working fife which the man has led for
no long a peri.d, and the remorse which bade him confess hig
guilt long after all fea'r of det,tion niust have vaiiished,
will surely—as Mr. O'Malley hinted in his opening speech—be
accounted reason for not inflicting the extreme penalty of
the law.

The Daily News gives the following outline, from !
the beginning to the end, of this remarkable case :--
One of the strangest tragedies of justice which have ever
been enacted on the stage of real life was bought to the
cheing scene of its last act but en Tuesday afternoon at
Norwich
The drama itself opened more than eighteen years ago,
when a quit, inoffensive, and hitrable citizen, with a wile
considerably older than himself, went to live in that ancient
city. Nothing peimliar marked the intercourse of the couple
with their neighbours, but the man was in the prime of life I
and vigour, and his compabioll in life was in the commencing
decline of age; and though some of his wife's relations Inul I
noticed his f iimiliarities with another female, it was not
known that any domestic disturbance had arb,en in conse-
quence.
About the middle of the summer the wife suddenly dis-
appeared; the husband gave out that she was away on a
journey, and his statement was implicitly believed, as there
seemed to he no reason to mistrust him. It was the year of
the Great Exhibition, and it was natural that everybody who
could should go from home to the metropolis, and it was not
at all sorprising that a clever, active, ladylike old woman like
Mrs. Wiliam Slieward should want to to to see the great
metropolitan show. A little later in the smumer one ot her
relatives chid, and her husband sent word that she was still
from home and conk) not attend the funeral.
Two Nears later a relative died under whose will she might
have claimed sonie whiney, but her husband declined to take
any part in the distribution of the property, and it passed (I!
others. Meanwhile, he had tolil lier friends that she hail
gone away from him, and that lie knew nothing of her where-,
idioms; that at parting teem her at the station she had re-
fused to promise either to write to him or to her sister; awl
as he never &die I them about her, an I they got tired of
asking hint, the Airtain of oblivion gradually fell upon her,
and it was nr, souse I that she had gone id into the wide
spaces of the Vorld, and vanished from the sight and know-
ledge of her husband and her friends.
Meanwhile a fend ol sensation hail rowed the ancient city
from its slumbers. On the longest summer day of that same
Exhildtion year it got noised abroad iu the city that a young
man who was out walking in tile suburbs in the bright sum-
mer afternoon had seen his dog c any home a piece of flesh
it had found in a plantaii di by the road-alde, and that on
his arrival at home he had found it be a human hand. On
the next day another piece was found, and day by day,
an the neighbourhood was diPgently searched, other pieces
were discover il—nose mother twat. then a foot, an ankle, a
leg !One, another lot. anti one day the bowels, till scores
of pieces had been gathered Waller from distant parts, from
plantations, hinter rows, river.sides, ew-o-s, and drains. all
of which evidently formed pieces of a female b•aly which
hail been cut up after death, and sown pecemeal around the
suldubs of Norwich. It was even discovered that the person
who had thus endeavoured to secrete the rem tins, was at his
work even while the search was going on, tor fresh pieces