Kristen (0:00)

Hey, Kristen, how's it tracking with Carvana Value Tracker? What else? Oh, it's tracking, in fact. Value surge alert. Trucks up 2.5%, vans down 1.7. Just as predicted.

Genevieve Manion (0:14)

Mm.

Kristen (0:15)

So we gonna. I don't know. Could sell. Could hold the power to always know our car's worth. Exhilarating, isn't it? Tracking Always know your car's worth with Carvana Value tracker.

Genevieve Manion (0:30)

The missing child is Lucia Blix, 9 years old.

Kristen (0:34)

Please let her come back home safely.

Genevieve Manion (0:38)

April 16th. The kidnappers plundered meticulously.

Kristen (0:41)

If money is what it takes to get her back, we're gonna pay it.

Genevieve Manion (0:45)

The secrets they hide.

Kristen (0:46)

You can't talk about this. You can't write about it.

Genevieve Manion (0:49)

Are the clues.

Kristen (0:50)

The mother's hiding something. I know it's to find her.

Genevieve Manion (0:53)

Tell me where she is.

Kristen (0:55)

The Stolen girl series premiere April 16 on Freeform and stream on Hulu.

Genevieve Manion (1:02)

Hello, and welcome to My Victorian Nightmare. I'm your host, Genevieve Manion, and I'm here to talk about mysterious deaths, morbid fascinations, disturbing stories, and otherwise spooky events from the Victorian era. Because to me, there's just something especially intriguing, creepy, and oddly comforting about horror and mayhem from the 19th century. So listener discretion is advised. Hello, friends, and welcome to this, my 38th episode. I hope that you had a fabulous week, despite all the horrors, and that you are finding some peace and inspiration. I had a fabulous week. I have been posting some witchy tips on my Instagram that folks have been enjoying, and that is always nice when people enjoy your things that you do. If you want to learn more about the craft. I will probably be posting more of those up there. It's a good time to learn different ways to protect your energy, I'd say, not squandering it on goobers who don't deserve it. Also, I have some really exciting news. I have officially joined the Q Code Network family. Look at me. I think that this means I'm a professional podcaster now, but I dare not call myself that. I. I can't say that I'm a podcaster yet. No disrespect to other people who proudly wear that moniker. I'm just. It just doesn't feel right. Mostly because I still feel like I don't know what I'm doing. My friend Peter was like, you could call yourself a content creator. And I was like, but that's gallons worse. Hectares worse. I've landed on Victorian Historian because it is not true. It rhymes. It's kind of silly. And if people ask me to elaborate, I'm just going to say no and remain deliciously mysterious. Oh. As I was saying, I joined such a cool network. Q Code. Check out all of their amazing shows. I got drinks with the CSO shortly after sealing the deal and I thought it was going to be like a quick how do you do? And he was like, you like tiki drinks? And I was like, my blood is coconut cream. They're my favorite. And we had a really great night. So I am well pleased to be part of the team. This is really exciting for me. I've got some really exciting collaborations also in the pipeline as well that I cannot wait to tell you about as they come about. I feel like this show was like a little black seed that I planted a year ago and it's just grown into something I am just so proud of and grateful to share with you. So thank you so much for continuing to listen to me be creepy, because that is my very favorite thing to be. Speaking of being creepy, I got a message from a gal who sent me some topic suggestions and I will be sharing with you today one of the topics that she sent me. And as I've mentioned before, I finding topics for this show is much trickier than you may think. Not only must the topic be Victorian, not only must there be enough information about the topic that I can jabber on about it for like 30 minutes, but most of that 30 minutes needs to be spooky, ooky, and all of it needs to be interesting to me. And I'm the worst. I get bored so easily. I have no attention span. I need information to be so intriguing and weird that it stings the roof of my mouth to keep me engaged. This is why I've been having trouble putting together a Mary Shelley episode. Like she did some creepy cool stuff. She squirreled away Percy Shelley's heart in her desk and invented science fiction. Awesome. But finding all the Sour Patch Kid level ooggity boogetiness that I need to really get into it, it's just been too much work. I hope to get there one day, but this is all a long way of saying A gal named Rhonda Dunlap sent me two suggestions and I was like, okay, I'm not familiar with either of these. Let me take a look. Oh, God. Oh no. And we've got a show. Two shows. I will have to get to her second suggestion another day. Because today, dear listener, I will be discussing the Richmond murderess, Kate Webster. This story has everything. A brutal murder, dismembering, mysterious skulls ghost nuns, cutting edge execution techniques and Sir David Attenborough intricately knitted and the very fabric of this bone chilling saga sweater. It starts fairly tame but then quickly takes a turn for the worst and I am taking you right into that creepy closet with me. But first a little Haunted Housekeeping. Thank you so much for rating the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. I am almost at 20,000 followers just on Spotify and I cannot get over this. Thank you so much for your comments that you leave me and well chosen topic recommendations. I am so sorry that I am not able to respond to every message know that I see them and I am so grateful to everyone who reaches out. Some folks sent me some really really beautiful messages regarding my open from last week's show. I was so touched and beyond grateful. Lots of crying out of my coffee this week. I love you guys. You can email me@myvictorianightmaremail.com and if you would like to listen to the show ad free, you can find the link to my patreon okay, let's begin. Kate Webster was born as Catherine Lawler in County Wexford, Ireland in 1849, but the exact details of her history here are a bit wobbly at best. Much of the historical accounts of her childhood and early adult life are based on her own accounts, which are very unreliable as she changed her story numerous times throughout her life. She claimed to have married a sea captain with last name of Webster, which was where she said she got her name. She claimed to have given birth to four children, all of whom died along with her husband in a very short period of time. Although there is no record of this marriage or the children's births that I could find. One aspect of her history that is thoroughly documented, however, and not just her own word of it, is her well documented prison career. She was imprisoned numerous times for thievery and larceny, going as far back as when she was only only 15 years old. She was imprisoned for larceny in Wexford in December 1864. Incidentally, I looked up what the difference was between theft and larceny and that was a stupid thing to do. After reading the exact same definitions and a number of resources only like worded slightly differently and thinking I was going insane, I found some examples that eventually cleared it up. Theft is the stealing of property, but not just like physical property. You can have theft of intellectual property. Identity theft isn't theft of physical property, but it's still theft, whereas larceny is theft of physical property, but different states have different definitions, so that's why you'll turn your brain inside out trying to get to the bottom of it if you just go in cold like I did. Anyway, Within a year of being released from prison in Wexford at 16, she moved to England in 1868 and went right back to prison with a four year sentence for larceny and sentenced to hard labor in Liverpool. What were you doing at 16? I was in a cherry red Toyota Corolla, wearing a vintage lace nightgown with combat boots, singing this Charming man at the top of my lungs. She was doing backbreaking labor in a penal colony when she was finally released. She moved From Liverpool in 1872 to Rose Gardens, West London. She had a child there, but the father's identity is unclear. She claimed three different men were the father at different times, one of them being one of the men that she would thieve and larsen with, a man with the last name Strong. She took this poor kid all over London, thieving here, larsening there. She used numerous aliases, including Webb, Gibbs, Gibbons and her maiden name, Lawlor. Some believe she was indeed never married and was simply using Webster as just another alias for most of her life. In 1875, just two years after she had been released from jail in Liverpool, she went back to prison with 36 charges of larceny. She was sentenced, sentenced to 18 months in Wandsworth Prison. And again, like five minutes after getting out, she was back in the clink for larceny and sentenced to another 12 months in February 1877. Luckily, her son was cared for during this time by a friend named Sarah Kreis. She was a charwoman for Ms. Loderm of Richmond. A charwoman was a maid that was not like a live in servant, but someone who would come in daily and work only for a few hours. When Kate was yet again released from prison, this friend Sarah fell il and Kate stepped in to do some cleaning for Mrs. Loder. This lady was friends with a woman named Julia Martha Thomas, the woman who Kate Webster was soon to brutally murder. And if you would follow me through this frozen dead garden here to the back door of number two Mayfield Cottages. It is 9pm it is February in Richmond. Richmond, London, 1879. And it is colder than a day old dumpling out here. Ooh, we can go to the pub next door after this and maybe grab a pot pie or something real quick. Let's just make sure that your phone is turned off. Wait, is mine off? Oh my God. I didn't even turn my phone off. I'm gonna get us killed one of these days. Okay, this back door is unlocked and we're going inside. Bed. Be quiet as a mouse. We do not want to wake Kate, who is blacked out in a chair over there by the fire. Ms. Thomas hasn't returned from church yet, but she will be here shortly. Let's creep as creepily as we can into this closet. Oh, my God. It's just another one of these damn mannequins. Like the one in the Villiska axe Murder House. Episode 14 I swear, every murder house has a mannequin propped up in the most terrifying place that they could possibly store them. There's still enough room in here for the both of us with this headless mannequin. While we wait for Ms. Thomas to get home, I'll tell you a little bit about her. Julia Martha Thomas was a widow who was a former schoolteacher. Ever since the death of her second husband, she lived alone at number two Mayfield Cottages on Park Road in Richmond, London. And the house is still there, by the way. It's a lovely two story home with a garden in the front and a garden in the back. It wasn't a heavily populated part of town in her time, but her home was next to a pub called the Hole in the Wall. Charming. Which existed until 2006. But check this out. Sir David Attenborough, who now owns the home next to the murder house, purchased it to prevent it from being turned into apartments. He had it declared a historical site, turned it into his library. Isn't that nice? While Kate was doing some light work for Mrs. Loder, Julia Thomas was in the market for a housekeeper herself. She was described as a small, well dressed lady who was about 54 years old. She was known by family, friends and neighbors to be very eccentric, often traveling for weeks or months without telling anyone where she was going. She was not wealthy, but always dressed very fancy and wore lots of jewelry to give the impression that she had more money than she did. She was described as being in the lower middle class, which in perspective. Imagine being described as being in the lower middle class today and still owning a home, having enough money to employ a housekeeper and travel for weeks or months at a time. Lower middle class in America right now, by the way, is defined as making $30,000 a year. Year. Just a little perspective there. Ms. Thomas was described in Kate's trial as having an excitable temperament and also had a reputation for being a harsh employer. So it was difficult for her to find and keep servants. Before 1879, she was only able to Keep one maid for more than just a few weeks. Ms. Thomas inquired about Kate when she was working for Ms. Loder, and all Ms. Loder knew was that she was doing a reasonable enough job in a short time there filling in for her friend. She hadn't robbed her blind or anything. She didn't know anything about her history of crime and punishment. So I'm sure she probably just said something like, she seems lovely. Ms. Thomas offered her a permanent job on the spot as a housekeeper without asking anything else about her. And she began work with her on January 20, 29th, 1879, and things turned ugly quickly. Ms. Thomas didn't appreciate the quality of her work and criticized her incessantly. Webster said. At first I thought her a nice old lady, but I found her very trying. And she used to do things to annoy me during my work. When I had finished my work in rooms, she used to go over it again after me and point out places where she said I did not clean, showing evidence of a nasty spirit towards me. End quote. Kate was having a hard time with that criticism and made Ms. Thomas feel so afraid in her own home that she was trying to persuade friends to stay in the house with her. She didn't want to be alone with Kate. So quickly she fired her. She gave her about a week's notice and said she wanted her out on the 2028 of February. This was the very last thing that she wrote in her diary that she gave Catherine warning to leave. She was hired in January, remember, so this must have been really bad, really quick. Kate convinced Ms. Thomas to let her stay two more days until the 2nd of March. She told her that if she would let her stay, she'd help her prepare for an evening service at the local Presence Presbyterian Church. Ms. Thomas agreed, but Kate went to the hole in the wall instead and got drunk. Ms. Thomas was home waiting for her, and Kate sauntered in. Well after Ms. Thomas was already late. She left without her. And when she arrived at the church, she told other people that she was late because of the neglect of her servant to return home at the proper time, and that when she scolded her for making taking her late and not helping prepare what needed to be prepared, Kate flew into a terrible drunken rage. Ms. Thomas left the service early to go back to the house and confronted Kate. And she's about to walk through the door. Okay, stay still. I can see through the crack in the closet. I'll just tell you what's happening. Ms. Thomas just burst through the front door and startled Kate awake, Ms. Thomas is stomping up the stairs and Kate is now angrily following her. They're arguing at the top of the stairs and Ms. Thomas is getting frighteningly close to the edge of that top step. Kate is grabbing her by the shoulders. Ms. Thomas just hit the floor, but she's not dead. She's hurt, but she's trying to get up. Kate is now rushing back down the stairs. She's grabbing her around the throat and choking her and throwing her on the floor. Ms. Thomas is dead and we will not stay for what Kate is about to do. Kate dragged Ms. Thomas body into the kitchen and hatched a sickening plan to dispose of her body. She began dismembering her limb by limb, boiling her body parts in a laundry copper and burning her bones in the hearth. A laundry copper was like a large copper tub encased in an enamel metal exterior. It had a gas burner or wood coal fire under it used for boiling laundry, like the hot water setting on your washing machine. She said she did this to prevent any part of her from being identified. Kate described her process as such. 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. End quote. The neighbors testified that they didn't hear any sound from the home other than a loud thud like a chair falling over, but they paid no mind to it. This was likely Ms. Thomas hitting the floor after being thrown from the top of the stair. But they did take mind of the terrible smell. Boiling and rendering the fat from Ms. Thomas produced a terrible odor that even Kate admitting to being greatly overcome both from the horrible sight before me and and the smell. End quote. Over the next couple of days, Kate continued to clean the house and put on a show of normality for neighbors coming and going without any suspiciousness. She was also packing pieces of Ms. Thomas into black bags and bonnet boxes. She was unable to fit Ms. Thomas's head and one of her feet into the bags and boxes that she had, so she disposed of them separately. She disposed of her foot in a rubbish heap in Twickenham, an area of London close to the River Thames. Now There is an alleged story that Kate brought out a tub of lard which was Miss Thomas's rendered fat, and offered it to some children as well as a neighbor and to the owner of a nearby pub. This, luckily, has never been substantiated and would have been incredibly stupid of her to do. Right, like, if you're trying to avoid suspicion, you wouldn't be doling out the rendered fat of your murder victim to a bunch of kids and the owner of a local pub to fry up some pot pies. That would be a very stupid and careless thing for a criminal to do. But not nearly as stupid and careless as what she actually did do, nor half as ballsy and flamboyant. On March 4, Kate dressed herself in one of Ms. Thomas's fancy silk dresses and jewelry, grabbed the bags of Miss Thomas and did something very stupid and confusing. Kate had neighbors about six years prior who moved to live near the River Thames, not too far from where Miss Thomas lived. Kate took a bag of Miss Thomas to the home of these people. She rang the bell and said, hi, remember me? It's your old friend Kate Webster, and asked if they'd like to go get a drink at a local bar to catch up. And they were like, hi, Kate. What's that stinky old bag? She said, don't worry about it. So much has happened since the last time I saw you guys. I got married, I had a kid, my husband died, my aunt died and left me all of her money and her home, too. So now I'm the merriest of widows. To explain her clothes, Mr. Porter and his son said, okay, to the Oxford and Cambridge Arms Pub we go. Tell us all about your dead husband. Apparently, Kate was very kind and helpful to the daughter of this family when she was sick and then eventually, sadly died. So perhaps they felt indebted to her in some way and didn't want to ask too many questions. She had the younger son carry the bag with them, which weighed about 30 pounds. It was so heavy that he had to ask his father to carry it the rest of the way. And shortly after they popped into the bar and got settled, Kate said, oh, brb, I have a friend nearby I just need to say hi to. I'll just be back in like a half hour. And they were like, okay. She grabbed the bag, popped out, and tossed it in the River Thames. She went back into the bar without it, and they. They didn't question anything. They were probably just happy that she didn't bring it back. They went back to the house Enjoyed a cup of tea. And while they were there, Kate asked their young son Robert, to drive a wagon back to Ms. Thomas's place to pick up a box that was too heavy for her to carry. He did, and as they were crossing the Richmond Bridge, she told him to stop. Now, I read through a number of articles that all gave this same confusing sequence of events here. The boy, Robert, said he stopped the wagon and heard a splash, but he did not say that he helped Kate dump the body over the bridge into the river. But this box supposedly was too heavy for her to carry herself. That's why she asked him to take the wagon in the first place. But, you know, perhaps it wasn't so heavy that she could lift it herself, but it was too heavy to drag all the way to the Thames on her own. Regardless, young Robert said he didn't really see her drop the box in the water. He just heard a splash and noticed the box was gone and didn't ask any more questions. But the next day, the box was found. It had washed up about five miles downstream. A coal porter named Henry Wheatley spotted it on his rounds early in the morning. He actually got excited and thought that the box might contain treasure. Specifically, he thought the box might contained things stolen in a robbery. He opened it up, and much to his chagrin and horror, he found the body parts of Ms. Thomas crudely wrapped in wet brown paper. He immediately reported it to the police. They came to collect it and found that it consisted of the trunk of a body, presumably in more than one piece and without the entrails or legs. The head was also missing, and Kate never said what happened to it. It was assumed that it was thrown separately in the river and simply never recovered. Around the same time, Ms. Thomas's foot was found where Kate had left it in the garbage dump in Twickenham. Police believed the corpse found in the Thames and the foot were connected, but they couldn't identify anyone from these pieces. And Ms. Thomas was also believed to be alive and well by her neighbors. So it was quite a mystery who this person might be. For all the stupid things that Kate did, Her boiling of the body parts did indeed throw the medical examiner off the scent. He believed the body must have belonged to a much younger woman than Ms. Thomas. Her remains were buried in Barnes Cemetery on 19 March, not too long after the papers cooked up a headline for this situation, the Barnes Mystery, and fueled speculation that this must be connected to a dastardly surgeon somewhere who bought the body off of body Snatchers. I speak at length about Body snatchers in episode 34. If you want to learn more about that horrible stuff and the torpedoes that folks would use to blow them to smithereens. Kate continued to live at Ms. Thomas House, wearing her clothes and pretending to be her while dealing with tradesmen. She sold Miss Thomas's furniture to a man named John Church to finish his new bar, which he called the Rising Sun. Considering how many times this woman was caught for theft and larceny in her life, and how easily it appears that she was caught numerous times, you'd think that she'd be a little more careful here. But then again, maybe she was caught so easily because clearly she really knew how to leave a trace. Willikers. All this furniture selling started to make the neighbors very suspicious. They hadn't seen Ms. Thomas for two weeks. A lady named Ms. Ives, who lived next door, who was actually Ms. Thomas's landlady, popped round to talk to the men rounding up the furniture into their carts. She asked, who told you to do this? And the guy pointed right to Kate and said, Ms. Thomas, over there. The jig was up and Kate made a break for it. She grabbed her six year old son. Yes, Remember how she had a son? He was there all this time. She picked him up and ran to the train station. And despite how incredibly heartbreaking that there was a child involved in any of this, it. It is kind of funny to imagine a woman in an extra fancy silk Victorian dress with pearls and dangly earrings and a huge feathery hat bounding down the road with a six year old like a four wheeled ferret. She caught the train to Liverpool and traveled from there back to Ireland. Mr. Church Just as quickly realized he'd been tricked into buying another person's furniture. So he contacted the police. They came and searched the house. They discovered bloodstains everywhere, all over the kitchen, Burned finger bones in the hearth and what is described as fatty deposits behind the copper boiler. For some reason, that particular detail gives me the most heebie jeebies. They also found a letter that was addressed to Kate from her family in Ireland, which tipped them off to try to find her. At the return address, they put out a wanted notice for both her and her son. When the wanted notice reached Ireland by wire, the head constable of the Royal Irish Constabulary recognized Kate. He had actually arrested her 14 years earlier for larceny. He was easily able to trace her to her uncle's farm and arrested her there on March 29. She was then returned to London for trial. Upon seeing Kate arrested and being Told it was for murder, the uncle refused to care for her son. The poor boy was sent to a workhouse until arrangements could be made to send him to an industrial school. These were boarding schools for educating and training neglected children and juvenile offenders. This poor little boy, there are no records about what happened to him after this. His name was John. As soon as Kate was apprehended, papers like the Illustrated Police News, Law Courts and Record had a field day. Her story got a full cover spread and a very dramatic play by play illustration of her trial. I put those illustrations on the Instagram, by the way. And as so often occurred in those days, folks couldn't wait to gawk at the house where the murder took place. They also lined the train route that she was taken on to the prison and jeered and screamed as the train went by their stations. There were also hundreds of people waiting for her to arrive at the prison in London. According to the Times paper, she was greeted by an immense crowd yesterday around the building and very great excitement prevailed. She went on trial at the old bailing on June 2, 1879. The court was was packed and even the Crown Prince of Sweden and the future King Gustav V attended the trial. Kate tried to pin the murder on John Church, the man who was tricked into buying Ms. Thomas furniture, and her very nice former neighbor, Mr. Porter. But they both luckily had solid alibis. Her lawyer argued that she couldn't have killed Ms. Thomas because she was so very devoted to her son and could never think of traumatizing him into the ground by murdering another woman in the house. This did no good. She was flippant and disrespectful of the court. She appeared to have no remorse whatsoever and evidence from all of the witnesses was quite strong. She was found guilty of murder after only an hour and a half of deliberation. Before the judge passed the sentence, he asked Kate if there was any reason why he he should not sentence her to death. And she said she was pregnant. And many a gasp and guffaw was heard in the court. So he instituted an archaic measure called a jury of matrons. Like basically just a group of ladies like women in the courtroom to determine if they thought she was pregnant. 12 women were sworn in with a surgeon and accompanied Kate to a private room for an examination. They quickly returned and said that she was full of it, which was good enough for the court. And she was officially sentenced to be hanged from the neck until she was dead. Before she was executed, she came clean and confessed to the murder, but still lied and said that the alleged father of her son John, that man with the last name Strong, was responsible because he had led her her to a life of crime. Which girl, your life of crime started at 15. That guy had nothing to do with it. And this implication that he was somehow some kind of cause of this was quickly dismissed. She finally took full responsibility the night before her execution on 29 July, and took back everything she said about the other men that she falsely implicated. At 9am in the prison, not in public, she was hanged with a new, more humane form of hanging developed by her very own hangman named William Marwood. He used the long drop technique, where he used her weight and height to determine the appropriate length of the rope to ensure that she would be dropped high enough to break her neck instantly, but not decapitate her. Instead of the standard, which was essentially kicking a plank out from under a prisoner and not allowing them to fall very far so their necks wouldn't break, they would just slowly and agonizingly choke to death. When she was pronounced dead, a black flag was raised outside of the prison walls. And although there isn't a particular record of this, I'm sure there was much rejoicing from the crowds. Her coffin was filled with lime and she was buried on the prison and property. Mr. Church was able to keep all of Ms. Thomas's furniture because he did indeed pay for it. And very strangely, he also obtained not only her furniture, but her pocket watch and the knife with which she was dismembered. Looky loos also trampled all over the house. Kept keepsakes as well as rocks and twigs from the garden. The copper boy boiler was sold for 5 shillings. Not sure who sold it, but it was purchased for 5 shillings. However, no one wanted to buy the house itself for a very long time. It stayed vacant for 18 years, and even when it was finally purchased, no servants would agree to work there. Oh, this is so creepy. Although the house hasn't experienced any documented hauntings, people have claimed to see a figure of a ghostly nun hovering over where Ms. Thomas was buried in Barnes Cemetery. This murder was so notorious that Madame Tussaud created a wax effigy of Kate Webster for her hall of Horrors. She was placed beside figures of Burke and Hare, the body snatchers that I talked about in episode 34, and Holly Harvey Crippen, a man found guilty of murdering his wife. A penny dreadful was quickly published called the Life, Trial and Execution of Kate Webster, which was advertised as comprising 20 handsome pages containing her entire history with summing up Verdict and interesting particulars together with her last words and a full page engraving of the execution. I put a full picture of that page engraving on Instagram and as well as Blue Sky. Okay. While looking through articles about this case, I found something so disturbing, as if all of this isn't disturbing enough, I found an article called the Influence of Kate Webster from the Illustrated Police News. It was an August 23, volume, 1879. It reads, quote, Mary Cotterall, 57, living in Harrington Road, was charged on remand at Lambeth Police Court with attempting to commit suicide by hanging herself. On Monday. Prisoner came in and shortly afterwards the landlady heard a strange noise and on going into the passage saw the prisoner hanging by a rope. She gave an alarm and with the assistance, prisoner was cut down. And after, after much difficulty she was revived. Prisoner had been drinking. Prisoner now begged the magistrate to let her go. She only did the act for fun. Mr. Chance said it looked anything but that. Prisoner said there had been a talk about Kate Webster, and in fun she got a rope, tied it round her neck and said, now here's Kate Webster, and remembered no more. It was all a joke and she would never act in such a manner again. If His Worship would let her go, she would take the pledge not to touch a drop more strong drink. Mr. Chance ordered a further remand allowing her bail and gave her an opportunity of carrying out her promise. This article is horrific on so many levels. Thank goodness she was released. But first to be arrested for attempting suicide and saying it was just a joke where she was impersonating Kate Webster hanging. There are multitudes of oh my God in this article, but check this out. Suicide was indeed a crime in England until 1958, and it goes as far back as the 13th century. If you were found to be guilty of suicide in the 13th century, you would be denied a Christian burial. You would be carried to a crossroads in the middle of the night and dropped in a pit. Then you would have a wooden stake hammered through your body to pin you to the spot. And then all of your relatives would be stripped of all of their belongings, which would then be given to the King. The crime of allowing a family member to die by suicide was pauperism. Luckily, in most instances in the 1800s, most people suspected of committing this crime were often given bail sentences and allowed to leave. But a number of folks were not and were sentenced to prison. Unconscionable. Okay, this was a tough episode, but here is something to make you feel a little bit better. Not a lot better, but a little bit better. Remember how I said they simply presumed that Kate disposed of Miss Thomas Head in the Thames? Well she didn't. 132 years later it was found in Sir David Attenborough's garden. Seriously? Kate buried her head under the stables of the pub next door. The hole in the wall. Remember how I said he bought the pub next door and turned it into his library? David was having excavation done for a garden and that's when the skull was found. It has been radiocarbon identified as belonging to poor Ms. Thomas. Although there is no information on the Internet at least about what happened to the skull after being identified, I truly hope that it was buried and that she rests peacefully. If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more, please rate, Review, subscribe, follow, join my Patreon and leave me comments. Be kind to yourselves and I will see you in your nightmares.