Sly - In hot blood : a casebook of historic British crimes of passion

Cheam, Surrey, 1828

William Wittman was a poor physical specimen of a man. He was short in stature and having once broken his back in an accident, he was also a hunchback, who was not perfect in his limbs. A former holder of a very lowly position in the Excise Office, he lived in Walworth with his wife Sarah and their son, William junior. The couple lived very unhappily together Sarah, who was said to be from the most degraded walk of society, was younger than her husband, very strong and robust and possessed a fearsome temper.

The death of Williams father enabled him to give up work and live on the income from properties bequeathed to him in his fathers will. He moved Sarah and five-year-old William to a cottage in Cheam but sadly the couples relationship worsened when both husband and wife began to drink heavily. Sarah frequently used violence on her rather weedy husband and towards the end of 1828 William was driven to apply to a magistrate for a warrant against her for assault. He described several instances of his wifes violent conduct, showing the chief constable cuts and bruises to illustrate his allegations and saying that he constantly went in absolute danger of his life. He claimed to be in mortal fear of his wife, saying that if he wasnt protected in some way or another he felt sure she would end up killing him. Unfortunately, the magistrates could do little to help Wittman and he was advised to go to magistrates at Epsom, that being the nearest town to his home.

Whether or not William ever consulted the Epsom magistrates is not known but he continued to complain of Sarahs violence towards him and, on one occasion, tried to persuade a friend to go home with him, since he was too afraid of his wifes uncontrollable temper to go alone. Sadly, the friend had other commitments and soon afterwards the situation between the warring Wittmans came to a head, with tragic consequences.

When the couple first moved to Cheam, they employed a young servant girl. The Wittmans made some improvements to their new home, employing a plumber and painter named Prosser, who quickly moved into the cottage as a lodger and began a dalliance with the servant. It is easy to imagine that the virile Prosser might have proved more sexually attractive to Sarah Wittman than her crippled, deformed husband and before long she dismissed the maid and took the girls place in Prossers bed. When Wittman protested, Sarah exploded in a rage and whenever he tried to remonstrate with her about the impropriety of her conduct, she physically attacked him, hitting him with a poker, smashing a chair over his head and destroying everything around her in an uncontrolled fury. Eventually, Wittman seems to have come to view Prosser as an ally rather than an enemy and, on occasions when Sarahs temper reached its crescendo, her husband would take refuge in Prossers bedroom, sharing his bed until Sarahs wrath abated.

In December 1828, Sarah destroyed all of the couples silver spoons in a temper and smashed three family pictures to smithereens. Nevertheless, when her husband became aware that she had slept in Prossers bed on the night of 11 December, he felt obliged to ask her about it. Sarah immediately snatched up a poker from the fireplace and hit her husband twice on the head, stunning him. One of Wittmans hobbies was shooting small birds in his garden and he usually kept a loaded gun handy for taking outside. Now, he realised that Sarah was going for the gun, which stood in the corner of the back parlour. He grabbed her and the couple grappled for possession of the weapon for a few moments before the gun went off, shooting Sarah in the face.

As soon as Wittman realised that his wife was shot he ran to the back door, finding it locked and the key not in its normal place. Knowing that the front door was always kept locked and anxious to get help as quickly as possible, Wittman scrambled out of a window and ran to the home of his nearest neighbour, Mathew Stedman, telling him that there had been a terrible accident and begging him for assistance. I am afraid I have shot my wife, he told Stedman, blood streaming down his face from the cuts on his head. Look at my head. See how I was struck. I fired the gun afterwards in the heat of passion, Wittman continued excitedly.

Stedman and two friends who were at his house that evening went back to the Wittmans cottage with him, climbing in through the open window. There was a lamp burning on the table, which Wittman picked up, using it to light their way into the kitchen, where Sarah lay partially dressed on her back on the floor near to the fireplace. William Perkins knelt down beside her and felt for a pulse. It does not beat, she is quite dead, he declared.