Kenneth Glad
What initially appeared to be an ordinary garden project soon revealed a link to a crime that had haunted Victorian Britain for more than a century.
In 1879, a woman named Julia Martha Thomas, lived in a house in Richmond near London, UK. She lived with her servant, Kate Webster, but an argument between the two women escalated into violence and ended in tragedy.
Thomas’ death was recorded at the time, but much of her body was never recovered. It became known as the “Barnes Mystery” or the “Richmond Murder”
Fast forward 131 years, when builders varried out landscaping work at the Richmond property, now belonging to Sir David Attenborough, they came across a buried human skull, according to UNILAD.
Police was called, forencic examinations were conducted, but it turned out that the skull was not from a recent murder case:
It was Thomas’.
A case revisited
In historical accounts, the case was sometimes referred to as the “Barnes mystery,” a label reflecting uncertainty over the whereabouts of her remains.
Following the forensic review, a London coroner examined the identification together with archived court material.
Medical findings concluded that Thomas died from asphyxiation combined with a head injury.
The presence of the skull at the Richmond property addressed a gap that had remained unresolved since the original investigation.
The Barnes Mystery
The murder case was shrouded in mystery at the time that it happened.
According to historical records, no one found out about the murder for weeks, because Webster disposed of Thomas’ body by dismembering it and then posing as her deceased employer.
Although never proven, some records state that Webster even tried to offer the fat from Thomas’ boiled bones to street children and neighbours.
Webster later admitted killing her employer and told the court: “She had a heavy fall, and I became agitated at what had occurred, lost all control of myself, and to prevent her screaming and getting me into trouble, I caught her by the throat. In the struggle, she was choked, and I threw her on the floor.”
After a six-day trial, Webster was sentenced to death and was hanged on July 29th 1879.
More than 130 years later, when the skull recovered in 2010 was formally identified, the coroner issued a verdict of unlawful killing.
Sources: UNILAD, historical court records
