A tiff between an employer and her maid led to one of Victorian Britain's most sensational crimes in 1879. The maid in question was Kate Webster, who had been taken on by a widow named Julia Martha Thomas in Richmond, Surrey. Their rows became increasingly melodramatic, until the day an enraged Webster pushed Thomas down a flight of stairs before throttling her to death. She then chopped up her employer with a carving knife and boiled the body parts to prevent her being identified.
When Webster was eventually apprehended, she became instantly infamous - Madame Tussaud's created a wax figure of the "Richmond Murderess", and stories were even spread that she'd kept her victim's fat and tried to sell it as dripping. In a bizarre final twist to the tale, Julia Martha Thomas's skull was accidentally discovered more than 130 years later... on land owned by Sir David Attenborough.
