The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle. — 1869-04-24 (Stourbridge, West Midlands, England)

WILLIAM SHEWARD."  J GODWIN JOHNSON, Viaiting Magistrate. ROBERT WADE, Chaplain of the N,rwieh City Gaol. JOHN IIoWARTH, Governor of the said Gaol. The above confession was made quite spontaneously on the part of the convict, who displayed a singular calmness while it was being taken dawn. It was afterwards carried by Mr. Johnson, visiting justice, to London, and submitted to the Home Secretary, in accordance with Sheward's request.  The Times has a leader upon the above confession, in which the following remarks occur : All doubts respecting the justice of his sentence must now be dismissed. Ilia circumstantial confession agrees completely with all his former statements, and is consistent even to minute particulars with the ascertained facts, lie once asked a metropolitan constable, for example, whether In his first confession he charged himself with " wilful " murder. The meaning of the inquiry is now apparent, since he states that the murder wag committed in the heat of an altercation. It is worth notice, again, as a point in confirmation, that the surg,iii who examined the remains in 1851 was of opinion that the hands and feet had been Immersed hi sonic non-corrosive fluid—probably hot water. Sheward now confesses that he boiled them, in the hope of reducing them to fragments. He states that he never knew his present wife until twelve months after the murder, and that the sudden rassion in which his crime was committed arose from a standing quarrel about money There was. indeed, some evidence at the trial to show that he knew his second wife at the time of the murder, or, at least, within two or three months after it; but mistakes of a few months ! may easily be made at a distance of eighteen years in matters which at the time called for no particular notice. If the motive now assigned by the convict seem a slight occasion for so heinous a crime, that is nothing more than a common characteristic of the most brutal murders.  A more chocking and tilagustlng narrative has never, perhaps, been laid before the public eye ; but there was sufficient mystery about the case to render it worth while for the whole story to be explained. Now that we have all the facts before us, it will still remain, as we have said, an extraordinary chapter lathe annals of crime, and that in more respects than one. In the first place, this is clearly a murder which would never have been discovered except for the prisoner's own confession. Nearly eighteen years had elapsed since it was committed, and it had passed out of recollection. No one was on the watch to observe traces of the murderer, for, in point of fact, it was not known, and barely Surmised, that the victim had been murdered. It was notorious, indeed, that a murder had been committed at Norwich In June, 1951 ; but it had never been so much as suggested that Mrs. Slieward was the person murdered. It is true it came out at the trial that some of the wife's relatives were not satisfied vdth the account rtheward gave other disappearance. One of them was said to have asked him point blank, "What have you done with ray sister?" and, on his explanation that "she went away and left him penniless." to have replied, "You are a false man; my mister never went away and left you." But, what