Wife of Charles Monsey

Sacred to the memory of Mary Monsey, the wife of Charles Monsey of this parish, died on 29th April 1881 aged 46.

Here she lies in Worstead churchyard, in Norfolk, just a name on a stone, a married woman, no children. She died young-ish – maybe consumption, maybe cancer. No husband buried with her. Perhaps he remarried and his buried with his second wife?

Nope.

Charles Monsey battered Mary Frances Monsey to death in their front garden, in full view of their neighbours, at 6:30pm on a Friday evening.

They had a curious, but by no means unusual, relationship. Charles was born in Norfolk, and worked as a customs and excise officer in Shrewsbury. He retired on a good pension in 1862, and moved to Middlesbrough where he engaged a housekeeper, Mary Frances Ross. The relationship became sexual. For a while, they lived happily, then separated in 1876 due to violence – Charles claimed it was because Mary was violent to him, which considering later events seems unlikely.

Nonetheless, they married in Middlesbrough in 1878, and in late 1879, they moved to Meeting House Hill at Worstead. In 1881, he was fifty seven, eleven years older than his wife. Charles was respected in the village, on account of being a man of means, and his previous position, but the neighbours also noticed how often Charles beat his wife, often publicly striking her.

According to the testimony given at the inquest, Mary was a Roman Catholic and Charles was a Protestant. This caused many arguments. Both parties were alleged to be difficult: Mary was self-indulgent, wilful and argumentative, while Charles was ‘not right in the head’, and ‘not accountable for his actions’. One story claimed that Mary refused to do any housework, and forced Charles to wait on her. Since he engaged her initially as a housekeeper, this can be taken with a pinch of salt.

On the day of the murder, the couple had an argument, although the reason for the argument was never given. Charles alleged that Mary pulled some crocuses up from the garden and threw them at him as he sat in his living room chair. Charles attacked her, kicking and punching her to the ground. Mary tried to stand, but fell back down. Charles fetched a hatchet from the house and beat her head with it until she died, causing horrific injuries. An audience of neighbours saw this happen, but were paralysed by either shock or fear and unable to help.

Charles behaviour after the murder was not entirely sane. He asked the neighbours to help him conceal the body, as though this was an entirely rational thing to ask them to do. He dragged the body into the shed by the side of the house, and locked the door. He was absolutely saturated in blood, so washed his hands and then threw the bloody water on the garden. A neighbour said he had a wild look in his eye. The police officer who arrested him said Charles was calm, composed and apparently unconcerned about his wife or his actions.

Mary was buried immediately following the inquest, while Charles was remanded in Norwich prison awaiting trial. His trial was postponed due to enquiries about his mental state. It transpired, much too late to be of use, that on 14th April 1881, Charles had written a strange letter to the Bishop of London. In the letter, he accused the church at Salisbury of forcing him into early retirement and asked for an additional thirty pounds a year in pension! The Bishop had passed the letter on to the Bishop of Norwich, but nothing further had been done. It then came to light that Charles had been treated for insanity in the 1840s, and had taken early retirement from Customs and Excise due to insanity. While living in Middlesbrough, he had desecrated a church by smashing a stained glass window and placing three herrings in the aperture, declaring them to be Christ and the two thieves crucified. None of this was reported in the local paper, and Charles does not appear to have ever been treated in an asylum.

In June 1881, Charles was certified insane and removed to Broadmoor, thus avoiding a trial entirely. He died there in 1890. Perhaps if he had been removed from society earlier, as was the custom with Victorian lunatics, poor Mary Frances would have escaped being murdered in front of her neighbours.

The reason I wrote about Mary is because of her headstone. A woman commemorated forever as a chattel of the madman who murdered her. Who ordered the headstone? Who ordered the words? The grave cost was probably met by the parish, although Charles had sufficient means to pay for it himself. It is unlikely Charles ordered the words carved on the stone, so who?

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