At eight o’clock on the morning of Monday, the thirtieth of November 1885, James Berry pulled the lever. The trapdoors opened beneath Robert Goodale’s feet, and the rope jerked upward. The watching officials and reporters in the pit of Norwich Castle’s scaffold thought at first that the noose had slipped, or that the rope itself had snapped. When Berry, the prison governor, and the jail surgeon climbed down beneath the gallows, they found the truth was far worse.

The rope had not slipped, and it had not broken. It had taken the condemned man’s head clean from his body. The governor, who had spent days testing and retesting the scaffold in hopes of preventing exactly this kind of disaster, fairly broke down and wept. How the small Fenland village of Walsoken, on the Norfolk-Cambridgeshire border, had come to this was a story that began months earlier, in a quarrelsome marriage and a farmer’s seven acres of rich East Anglian soil.

Walsoken was no place for murder. In 1885 it was even more rural than it is today, a scattering of farms and small holdings built around a medieval church, in a landscape that had yielded Bronze Age and Roman finds and had been recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086. Yet it was here, that September, that Bathsheba Goodale vanished. Bathsheba was forty-nine, the daughter of a metalworker, a woman of some means who had taught music to upper-class families and owned more than one property in the nearby town of Wisbech.

She lived with her husband, forty-five-year-old Robert Goodale, a farmer and gardener who came from a long line of farmers, and with their two sons, nineteen-year-old Robert Jr. and sixteen-year-old Frank. Robert Sr. held a small holding of around seven acres in Walsoken, where he grew fruit and vegetables for market and kept a few cattle.

In addition to the family home, Bathsheba owned a house occupied by Sarah Ann Goodale, the widow of Robert’s late brother, and a small, remote cottage beside their farmland, too far from comfort to live in, used instead to store produce. Each day the family walked three miles from Wisbech to their plot in Walsoken, worked the land, and returned home around six in the evening. The marriage was a stormy one. Robert and Bathsheba argued frequently—she complained of his drinking, he of her cooking—and over the six months before her disappearance, the quarrels had grown more frequent and more violent.

Every afternoon, after taking the cows to the grazing land, Robert would drink beer and cider and pick a fresh fight. He was heard threatening her in a drunken rage, saying he would knock her down. Bathsheba would retreat in tears to Sarah Ann’s house, and sometimes she was so frightened of her husband’s moods that she spent the night with a neighbor. On one occasion, a young farm boy named George Gage saw Robert chasing Bathsheba with a sharp, curved hedge-cutting tool, shouting that he would chop her down if she did not come back.

She took refuge in the nearest cottage, belonging to the Kiernan family, but Robert followed and hammered on the door. When Mrs. Harriet Kiernan answered, he claimed he did not want to hurt his wife, only to have her come home. The woman told Bathsheba her husband was waiting outside, but Bathsheba refused, saying she would not go, that he would kill her.

On Tuesday the fifteenth of September 1885, the family worked their land as usual, harvesting fruit and potatoes. But that evening, only Robert returned home. Bathsheba was nowhere to be seen. When the sons asked where their mother was, Robert said he had left her at the farm.

When she did not come home, the boys began asking the neighbors if they had seen her, then went back to Walsoken to search their land. Their father stayed behind, resting in his chair at home, showing no apparent concern. A pub owner named Golda Gray, who lived just a few yards from the Goodale home in Wisbech, heard that Bathsheba was missing and went to see Robert around seven that evening. He asked directly whether Robert knew anything about his wife’s absence, since she had not returned from the field.

Goodale replied quietly that he did not know where she was. When Robert Jr. and Frank returned home without their mother, Gray challenged the father. It was very strange, he said, that Robert should sit there in such an unconcerned way.

Why did he not go and search for her? Robert insisted she had often left him and would turn up all right. Knowing about the couple’s explosive arguments, Gray asked whether Robert had had harsh words with his wife that day. Goodale denied it.

Gray finally left at around half past ten, with still no sign of Bathsheba. At about six the next morning, Robert wandered into Gray’s pub unshaven, still wearing the previous day’s clothes. When Gray again remarked on his lack of concern for his wife, Robert got up and left without a word. Sometime later he met a friend, a laborer named Joe Barnes, who noticed he looked pale.

Goodale said wearily that he had done the bloody job at last. When Barnes asked what he meant, Goodale replied that he had settled her, that she would not bark at him anymore. Barnes had not yet heard that Bathsheba was missing, and assumed Goodale was talking about putting down a dog. By now, everyone except Bathsheba’s husband was frantic.

The sons resumed their search, helped by a neighbor named William Took. Soon they heard a puzzling account from the farm boy, George Gage. Gage told them that the previous evening he had gone to the well to draw water for the horses. The lid had been on as usual, but he noticed the chain was missing.

When he peered inside, the normally clear water looked black and tainted. The well was about twenty feet deep with around three feet of water at the bottom. Lifting the lid, someone took notice of women’s clothing floating on the water. A pole was fetched, and the surface was disturbed, revealing the body of a woman.

The police were sent for. Sergeant James Ruffton of the Wisbech Borough arrived with local men John Freeman and William Kiernan. Nearby they noticed a wet ladder with a blood-stained handprint at the top. Freeman, the smallest of the group, climbed down into the well and lifted the body out.

It was Bathsheba Goodale. Her clothing was torn. She wore only one glove, and she had suffered severe wounds to her head. Police deduced the ladder had been used to push the body down until it was fully submerged at the bottom of the well.

The well was drained, and Bathsheba’s straw hat, her missing glove, and scraps of torn clothing were retrieved. The police soon heard from locals about Robert Goodale’s strange, emotionless reaction to his wife’s disappearance and the discovery of her body. Sergeant Ruffton noticed spots of blood on Goodale’s hat, boots, waistcoat, and trousers. Asked how they had got there, Goodale claimed he had had a nosebleed.

When he was placed under arrest on suspicion of murder, he asked where Bathsheba had been found and requested to be taken to see her. Ruffton agreed and took him to the well, which by then had attracted a curious crowd of onlookers. Two months later, on Friday the thirteenth of November 1885, Robert Goodale stood trial at the Norfolk County Assizes, with Sir James Fitzjames Stephen presiding. Horace Brown led for the defense, Mr.

Blofeld for the prosecution. Goodale had been a sturdily built man, about five feet eleven and weighing fifteen stone, his muscles honed by years of farming, described by some as a true son of the soil. But the two months in prison had left him pale and unwell. The court heard a collection of circumstantial but compelling evidence.

Medical evidence was given by surgeon William Groom. He explained that there were three wounds to the victim’s head, consistent with a billhook, a heavy-bladed agricultural tool. None of these wounds, however, was fatal. After being rendered unconscious, Bathsheba had been thrown into the well, where she died by drowning.

The day of the murder was reconstructed through a series of witnesses. A man named Bob Peck had been walking along the riverbank between three and four in the afternoon when he heard a man and woman arguing. Passing the same spot about twenty minutes later, he saw Robert and Bathsheba standing close together. Robert then walked away and sat on the riverbank, while Bathsheba remained where she was.

Peck called out that it was a nice day. Robert replied, with a trace of sarcasm, that yes, it was. At four o’clock, nine-year-old Frank Keyman, the son of Goodale’s nearest neighbor, passed along the embankment and saw Robert lying down. Bathsheba was sitting beside him and offered the boy some pears.

Frank replied that his father was expecting him home, so he could not stop. He would be the last person, apart from her killer, to see Bathsheba Goodale alive. Later, another witness, Sam Hunt, saw Robert about a hundred yards from his home. Hunt noticed his trousers were soaked up to the knees and he had mud on his sleeves.

Goodale was wiping his boots on the grass. Hunt called out, asking if he had been in the river. Goodale replied cryptically, neither confirming nor denying, that he should like to go, wouldn’t Hunt? Hunt went on his way, thinking little of the conversation until after the body was found.

A carter named Tom Spraggins was driving towards Wisbech at around five in the evening when Goodale hailed him and asked for a lift. Spraggins noticed his wet clothing and politely inquired how the fruit harvesting was going. Goodale replied gloomily that he thought he had pulled all the fruit he should ever pull, adding quickly, except an odd basket or two for the house. Spraggins stopped en route to make a delivery to a man named James Walker, who also noticed the passenger’s wet trousers and asked if he had been fishing.

Goodale replied that he had only been washing himself in the river. Dr. Thomas Stevenson gave evidence about the bloodstains seen on Goodale’s clothing. He noted there had been rust and paint stains on the trousers which could have been mistaken for blood.

But he observed that the bottoms of the trousers had been stiffened by washing, suggesting that Goodale had tried to remove the evidence in the river. The laborer Joe Barnes also gave testimony about the conversation he had had with Goodale on the morning after the murder, in which Goodale had said he had done the bloody job at last. The defense tried to discredit Barnes, pointing out that he was an ex-convict who may have made the statement in order to gain favor with the police. Robert Goodale appeared indifferent throughout the trial.

The only moment he became animated was when Bathsheba’s straw hat was produced. A police officer demonstrated how the cuts in it corresponded with the injuries to the victim’s head. At that point Goodale leaned forward and examined the hat closely before sinking back into his chair. On Saturday the fourteenth of November, the jury took just fifteen minutes to return a guilty verdict.

When asked if he had anything to say, Goodale moved his lips as if attempting to speak, but no sound came out. As Justice Stephen pronounced the death sentence, Goodale gripped the rail of the dock but said nothing. The execution was set for just over two weeks later, on Monday the thirtieth of November. While awaiting his fate, Goodale behaved well in prison and was visited by his sister and his two sons for the final time on Friday the twenty-seventh of November.

That evening, he asked to speak to the prison governor and confessed that he had struck his wife after she told him she preferred other men. He admitted he had hit her but maintained that she had fallen into the well and that he had not pushed her deliberately. He claimed the ladder had not been used to push her down but had been an attempt to rescue her. The medical evidence and witness testimony did not support his account.

The governor sent his statement to the home secretary, but no reprieve was granted. The hangman appointed to carry out the sentence was James Berry. Berry was from Yorkshire and had a varied career, having worked as a shoe salesman, a railway porter, and a police constable before becoming an executioner. He charged ten pounds for each execution, equivalent to around fifteen hundred pounds today.

If Berry was anxious about the upcoming hanging, it was understandable. Earlier that year, on the twenty-third of February, he had been involved in the farcical attempted execution of John Lee, convicted of the murder of Emma Keyse in Babbacombe, Devon. A misaligned hinge or warped wood under the gallows platform had jammed the trap after the scaffold had been moved and reassembled, causing it to fail to open three times. John Lee was reprieved due to the traumatic ordeal and became known as the man they could not hang.

Just a few months later, Berry hanged Moses Shrimpton, a sixty-five-year-old poacher who had killed a police officer. Although death appeared to have been instantaneous, the sight revealed when the hood was lifted was a disturbing one. Shrimpton’s throat had been torn apart, his windpipe exposed, and blood flowing freely. Berry insisted he had calculated the drop correctly, but later admitted he had misjudged how the man’s advancing age affected the condition of the flesh on his neck.

Berry’s next few executions went smoothly. But the hanging of Robert Goodale would survive in the annals of crime as one of the most infamous botched hangings in the country. Berry had originally supplied his own ropes, but by this time the government issued standardized ropes to ensure consistency and to prevent the sale of used ropes as gruesome relics. According to historian Neil Storey, Goodale was the second largest man Berry had ever executed, requiring a drop of seven feet eight inches.

However, when Berry peered through the Judas hole to discreetly observe Goodale in his cell, he judged that although his frame was large, he had been physically weakened by his time in custody and his neck was not muscular. As a result, according to his own later testimony, Berry departed from the standard calculation and reduced the drop to five feet nine and a half inches. But following recent reports of botched hangings, the governor was uneasy and ordered repeat tests of the scaffold in the days before the execution, carried out under the supervision of the prison engineer. At Norwich Castle on the morning of the thirtieth of November, Berry conducted his final test of the gallows.

The under-sheriff J. B. T. Hales, the jail surgeon Mr.

Haynes S. Robinson, prison governor Dent, and several members of the local press gathered in anticipation. Goodale had slept soundly overnight, eaten an early breakfast, and received a visit from Reverend Wheeler in his final hours. While many condemned men are reported to go to the gallows with quietude and resignation, Berry later recorded that Goodale screamed and cried as he was pinioned, struggling against the straps placed around his body.

He refused to walk towards the gallows and had to be dragged along, a display which deeply unnerved the officials and the hangman himself. In his final seconds, Goodale repeatedly wept, calling on God to receive his soul. His legs buckled as he stood on the trap, and two warders had to hold him upright while Berry completed the final preparations: the final pinion around the legs, the white hood over the head, and the noose around the neck. Goodale refused the offer of any final words.

At exactly eight o’clock, Berry pulled the lever. In the moments that followed, the executioner’s worst fears were realized. Another disaster had occurred, more ghastly than those that had gone before. When the onlookers saw the rope jerk upwards, they thought at first that the noose had somehow slipped from the prisoner’s head or that the rope had broken.

But when Berry, accompanied by the governor and the jail surgeon, descended into the pit below, they saw that the prisoner’s head had been entirely severed from the body. Berry later wrote in his memoirs that death had been instantaneous, so the poor fellow had not suffered in any way, but it was terrible to think such a revolting thing should have occurred. They were all unnerved and shocked. The governor, whose efforts to prevent any accident had kept his nerves at full strain, fairly broke down and wept.

An inquest was held on the body of Robert Goodale, as was required in all cases of judicial hanging. The witnesses all attested to Berry’s thoroughness, and the jury concluded that no one, including the hangman, was to blame for the decapitation. A reporter and author named Charles Mackay of the Norfolk Chronicle was present at the execution and later reflected that he had had the dubious honor of attending what was effectively the last judicial beheading in England. Despite being cleared of any blame, Berry was haunted by the incident for the remainder of his career.

He retired in 1892 and turned to religion, becoming a preacher and eventually campaigning against the death penalty. Today, Walsoken remains a semi-rural village, though it is now considered an extension of Wisbech. More residential housing has been built, though the medieval All Saints Church remains a historical focal point. One might assume that the murder of Bathsheba Goodale was the only such case in the small bucolic community, but there was in fact an incident a century earlier, in 1788.

A seventeen-year-old apprentice farrier named Henry Sell was executed for the murder of his master’s wife, Elizabeth Clark, after poisoning her tea with arsenic. He had also attempted to poison his master, William Clark, who survived. Perhaps Sherlock Holmes’s remarks about the frequency of violence in the countryside were not entirely misplaced, though such crimes still feel more striking when committed in an apparently peaceful landscape.