MARTHA ALDEN.
EXECUTED FOR THE MURDER OF HER HUSBAND.
OF the numerous instances which we have already adduced, wherein women have committed that very worst of all crimes, the murder of their husbands, perhaps no case has been attended with more malice, art, and cruelty, than that of Martha Alden.
Her trial for this offence came on at the Summer Assizes for the county of Norfolk, in the year 1807.
From the evidence adduced, it appeared that the deceased was a labouring man of rather diminutive stature, and lived with the prisoner in a small cottage near Attleburgh, in Norfolk. On the night of Saturday the 13th of July, the deceased and his wife were in company with a man named Draper at the White Horse public-house, Attleburgh, drinking together, and about ten o’clock the prisoner went away, saying she should go home. At twelve o’clock Draper conducted Alden, who was slightly intoxicated, to his own door, and left him there with the prisoner. In the morning, at about three o’clock, a man named Hill was passing the prisoner’s house on his way to see a relation at about ten miles off, when the prisoner accosted him, saying that “She could not think what smart young man it was going down the common.” A short conversation ensued, in which the prisoner said that “she had not returned long from the town, where she had been drinking with her husband and Draper, and that her husband had then gone, she did not know where, but that she thought he had gone to a brother of his, who lived in Essex.” It was remarked by Hill, “that he knew that Alden had let himself to Mr. Parson for the harvest,” to which the prisoner assented, but said that she knew he would never come back, and that if he got a job he would never settle to it. Between six and seven o’clock the prisoner was met in the road by Mr. Parson, a farmer, accompanied by a young woman named Orrice, when she said that she had lost her husband, and expressing herself very unhappy about him, declared her belief that he was either murdered or drowned, and on the following morning she was again seen by the same person, when she said that she had walked above thirty miles in search of him, but could not find him. On the Monday evening the prisoner borrowed a spade from a neighbour named Leeder, with an alleged intention of mending her hedge, which had been destroyed by pigs, which had got in and rooted up her potatoes; and one having been lent to her, she went away, and was afterwards seen at work in the ditch surrounding her garden. Up to this time no traces of her husband had been discovered; but on Tuesday night Mrs. Leeder went to a pond on the common to look for some ducks, which she had missed, and having found them, she was on her way home, when she remarked something in a large pit or pond, which lay in her path. She went to the edge of the pond, and touched the object with a stick, and it sank and rose again; but although the moon shone, she could not distinguish what it was, and she went home. Her curiosity, however, having been raised, she returned to the spot on the following morning, and then she again touched the substance with a stick, on which it turned over, and to her terror, she saw two hands appear, the arms being clothed in a shirt, which was stained with blood. The alarm was immediately given, and the body being taken out, it proved to be that of the prisoner’s husband. It was covered only with an old coat, with a slop or shirt over it, and the head appeared to be dreadfully mangled. The face was much chopped, and the head nearly cut off, and other injuries were inflicted, which could not have been done by the unfortunate deceased himself. The body was immediately conveyed in a cart to the house of the prisoner, who was taken into custody. On her house being examined, the bedding and bed were found to be smeared with blood, and the walls of the bed-room bore marks of their having been spattered with the same fluid, but partly washed. Two sacks, also bloody, were discovered concealed under a peat-stack, and from a dark cupboard was produced a bill-hook with which the foul deed was evidently perpetrated, and from which the blood had been only partially removed. On the garden being searched, a species of grave was found to have been dug about forty yards from the house, and at the spot where the prisoner had been seen at work, sufficiently broad and long to receive the body of the deceased, but only about eighteen inches deep. In addition, however, to these facts, the testimony of the girl Orrice, whose name had been already mentioned, was procured.
She stated that she had been acquainted with the prisoner a good while, and had frequently been at her house. On Sunday (the 19th) the prisoner asked her to go with her to her house; and when she got there, the prisoner said to her, “I have killed my husband;” and, taking her into the bed-room, showed her the body lying on the bed, quite dead, with the wounds as before described: her account of the state and appearance of the room perfectly coincided with the descriptions of the former witnesses; she also saw a hook lying on the floor all bloody: when the hook was shown to her in court, she said it was the very same she had then seen. The prisoner then produced a common corn-sack, and, at her request, the witness held it whilst the prisoner put the body into it; the prisoner then carried the body from the bed-room, through the passage and kitchen, out of the house, across the road to the ditch surrounding the garden, and left it there, after throwing some mould over it. The witness then left the prisoner, and went to Larling; and the prisoner slept that night at the witness’s father’s house. On the following night, between nine and ten o’clock, the witness was again in company with the prisoner, and saw her remove the body of her husband from the ditch of the garden to the pit on the common, dragging it herself along the ground in the sack; and, when arrived at the pit, the prisoner shot the body into it out of the sack, which she afterwards carried away with her: the deceased had a shirt and slop on. The prisoner said nothing to her at the time, and she went home. The next morning (Tuesday) the witness went to the prisoner’s house, and assisted in cleaning it up, taking some warm water, and washing and scraping the wall next the bed. The prisoner took up some loose straw, and told the witness she would carry and throw it into Mr. Parson’s ditch, because it was bloody. The prisoner bade the witness to be sure not to say a word about the matter; for, if she did, she (the witness) would certainly be hanged. Upon being questioned to that effect by the judge, this witness further stated that she had told the story to her father on the Tuesday night, and to nobody else.
On his lordship asking the prisoner what she had to say in her defence, she told an incoherent story, which, however, as far as it was at all intelligible, seemed rather to aim at making the testimony of the last witness appear contradictory and suspicious, and to implicate her in the guilt of the transaction, than to deny the general charges which had been adduced against herself.
The learned judge then summed up the evidence in a very full and able manner, and the jury returned a verdict of Guilty.
The prisoner was immediately sentenced to death. Her behaviour subsequently was becoming the awful situation in which she was placed. She confessed the justice of her conviction, and admitted that she had murdered her husband with the bill-hook. She declared, however, that it was not the result of premeditated malice, but that her husband having threatened to beat her, the thought came into her head when he lay down to go to sleep.
She was drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution on the Castle-hill, on the 31st of July 1807, and there underwent the punishment of death pursuant to her sentence.