CHAPTER 7

Murdered and Chopped Up
1879

One of the most dangerous classes in the world is the drifting and friendless woman. She is the most harmless, and often the most useful of mortals, but she is the inevitable inciter of crime in others … She is a stray chicken in a world of foxes – Sherlock Holmes

This chapter concerns the least unknown story in the book – both brutal and macabre. Perhaps the key character is Mrs Julia Martha Thomas. Born in St James’, Piccadilly, in about 1824, she was twice married; firstly to one Mr Murray, whom she was widowed by 1851, and then to James Thomas. Thomas was a printer’s reader and the couple lived in Finsbury in 1871, at Melbourne Terrace, then at Hazelville Road, Hornsey Lane. Two years later, on 28 June 1873, her second husband had followed the first one to the grave (he left just under £1,500 to her in his will). They had had no children, or at least none who survived infancy. Such a high rate of mortality among both adults and, especially children, was not uncommon at the time. Charles Menhennick, of Ambler Road, Finsbury, was a friend and described her thus:

Mrs Thomas was an amiable, good natured sort of lady – she was about 55 or 56 years of age – she was not stout, she was animated in her manner and appeared reasonably strong – she was not an invalid, she was an ordinary person … she played the piano well.

She also enjoyed a little work in the garden, attending chapel and was comfortably off. She was about five feet four in height. It is not certain what she did after her second husband’s death, but by March 1877 she was living in salubrious Richmond, at Mary Ann Kent’s house, in St Mary’s Villas (now part of Townshend Road). She left in April 1878. She then put an advert in a newspaper, reading, ‘A lady wished to meet with an elderly or widow lady to join in taking a house, at once in Richmond: companionship desired; willing to let rooms not required; could furnish in part; references exchanged. J.T.’ She was unsuccessful, so briefly rented a house in St Mary’s Grove, Richmond.