The Sun. — 1869-01-11 (London, England)

THE. NORWICH MURDER.  it appears to be now supposed that William Sheward, who is charged on his own confession with the murder of nis first wife, Martha Sheward, at Norwich, in June 1851. will retract his confession, and that he and his friends will endeavour to shew that when he made his statement he was labouring under a kind of monomania. The confession of Sheward seems to be verified by the facts which have been bronght to light, except in one particular, and that is certainly a material one. At the time of the murder Mrs. Sheward must have been approaching her 60th year, and the witnesses examined on Friday, barore the Norw:ch magistrates, referred to her as "an old woman." But the medical gentlemen who examined the remains found near Norwich in June and July 1851, came to the conclusion that they were those of a young woman. This will be seen by the annexed copy of an official placard issued at Norwich towards the close of June 1851 :--" Several parts of a human body belonging to a person supposed to h4ve been recently murdered, and to be that of a young woman between the ages of ' and 26 years, having been within the last few days foul 1 in the environs of Norwich, information is r, (poste 1 to be given to the chief constable, at the police-office, Guildhall, Norwich, of all femal s who have been recently missing, together with any particulars which may lead to the detection of the person cr persons who committed the supposed murder. The portions of the body already found comprise the right hand and foot and several bones, with numerous pieces of skin and flesh. Further search is making for the head and remaining parts of the body.—H. WOODCOCK, Mayor, Guildhall, Norwich, June 27, 1851." It is obviously most important that this discrepancy in the evidence should be explained away if possible, and that the best medical testimony on the subject should be obtained. The remains will be disinterred from the collar or vault, in the Norwich Guildhall, in wh'&l they have been so long buried ; whether it will be possible to solve the questions as to the age of the woman of whom they formed a part I remains to be seen. A shirt much smeared with blood was found on Mousehold Heath, near Norwich, contemporaneously with the discovery of the remains ; this shirt was taken to the Norwich police-station, and was kept for some time, but after some months it was unfortunately destroyed, and no evidence can be consequently produced as to whom it belonged. With reference to the ' neglect of the local authorities to hold an inquest, it may be remarked that a theory gained credence at the time that the remains had been distributed by some medical students, and that they formed part of a corpse which had been experimented upon. Dr. Ranking, a medical gentleman now dead, who also looked at the remains, stoutly, however, opposed this conclusion at the time, as he thought that the bones, flesh, &c., had been carelessly hacked asunder, and had not been separated in a scientific manner. Of the medical gentlemen who were officially consulted by the magistrates in 1851, one (Mr. B. H. Norgate) is dead, and the two others, • Mr. W. P. Nichols and Dr. Donald Dalrymple, are still living, and residing in or near Norwich. Dr. Dalrymple, it may be added, is now member for Bath.