She Boiled Her Employer and Wore Her Clothes for Two Weeks | The Kate Webster Murder
In 1879, Irish maid Kate Webster threw her employer down the stairs, strangled her, then carefully cut the body apart and boiled the pieces in a laundry copper. For the next two weeks she lived in the dead woman’s house, wore her clothes, sold her furniture, and introduced herself as Mrs. Thomas.
When the remains washed up in the Thames the press called it the “Barnes Mystery.” The killer fled to Ireland. The missing head stayed hidden for 131 years—until it turned up in David Attenborough’s garden.
This is one of the most grotesque true crimes of the Victorian age.
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