Read Cambridgeshire Murders for Free Online

of 1983 one of Bellingham’s descendants, Henry Bellingham, was elected as Conservative Member for Norfolk North West constituency; in 1997 one of his opponents was Roger Percival, by coincidence a descendant of Spencer Perceval.
    Perceval was not well liked and when the news of his death reached many parts of the country it was greeted with great celebration.

4
THE EARLY BIRD CATCHES THE KILLER
    S ome people quite literally get away with murder, but because of a coincidental meeting with a sharp-witted woman, this was not to be the case for Thomas Weems of Godmanchester.
    Thomas was a strongly built man in his early twenties when, around the start of 1818, he began courting a local girl, Mary Ann Sawyer. Mary was still in her teens and described as being of a ‘very unprepossessing appearance’. Before long their relationship faltered, and so, in order to hold on to her lover, Mary claimed that she was pregnant. Thomas did his best to disentangle himself, even moving from Godmanchester to Great Staunton, where he was eventually arrested and forced to accept responsibility for Mary and their unborn child.
    Thomas found work in a mill near Goldington, Bedfordshire, and although the couple married at the local church, they did not live together; Thomas chose to live in Goldington while Mary returned to Godmanchester to live with her grandfather in St Ann’s Lane. When, during Thomas’s several visits to Mary over the following months, it became apparent that Mary had lied and the pregnancy was false, Thomas left his job and searched for other work, moving south until he eventually took employment as a miller in Edmonton, north London.
    He had only been in Edmonton for a short time when he met Maria Woodward, whom he described as ‘as fine a young woman as any in the world’. After a courtship of about two months he proposed and she accepted. It seems that it was at this point that he decided that he would have to murder his wife. He told Maria that he needed to return to Huntingdon for money, and that they would marry as soon as he returned.
    At the start of May Thomas began his journey back to Godmanchester. On the way he met John Beck, a postboy. The two had grown up together in Godmanchester, and Beck, returning to Huntingdon from Royston, offered him a lift in his chaise. 1 It seems that it never occurred to Thomas Weems that he should have been more discreet. On their journey Thomas told John of his new position in Edmonton and that he had met a young woman whom he was determined to marry. John was aware that Thomas was already married and warned him against bigamy. Thomas replied to this was that he was going to fetch his wife and would soon get rid of her.
    John dropped Thomas on the outskirts of Godmanchester, but saw Thomas and Mary together later in the week, early on Thursday evening. Thomas informed him that they would be leaving for Edmonton the following morning while his wife said that they were planning to walk. John was shocked and told Thomas that it would be impossible for Mary to walk that far. The reply was that, if that was the case, she ‘might stop on the road and be damned’.
    Thomas and Mary left early on the morning of Friday 7 May 2 and after about 15 or 16 miles of constant walking they stopped near the villages of Wendy and Arrington and Mary lay down on the grass to rest.
    Susannah Bird lived in Wendy and had set out to travel to Royston. Ahead of her she saw a man and woman sitting at the roadside; the woman sat on the right-hand side of the road near a field belonging to a local farmer called Mr Russell, and the man sat opposite and was toting a bundle. Susannah passed by, but after she had walked on a little further she looked back and saw that they had both entered Mr Russell’s field. They stood looking around them and she thought they might be watching her. She looked back several times but eventually lost sight of them and walked on to Royston.
    It