On Tuesday, 21 July 1807, at about eleven o’clock at night, Sarah Leeder perceived a floating shape upon the common pond. She prodded it with a stick. The object sank, then rose again; in the darkness, unable to discern what lay before her eyes, she returned home. On the morrow, she went back. Two hands were visible beneath the surface, together with the blood-stained sleeves of a shirt. She called a boy to raise the neighbourhood. A quarter of an hour later, the inhabitants drew the corpse from the water. It was Samuel Alden: his countenance was hacked to pieces, his head almost severed from the neck.
The body was conveyed in a cart to the house he had shared with Martha, his wife, and their young son. To comprehend how he had ended in the pond, the witnesses retraced the evening of Saturday, 18 July. Edmund Draper had met Samuel at the White Horse in Attleburgh. Martha was present; she announced she was returning home with the child and took her leave. Draper remained drinking with her husband until near midnight, then accompanied him home. Draper affirmed he was entirely sober; Samuel, however, could scarcely walk. Draper witnessed no quarrel. The cottage possessed but two principal rooms, the kitchen and the bedchamber, parted by a narrow passage. Stepping within for a few moments, he remarked a hearth fire burning more fiercely than common. Samuel was yet alive when Draper departed.
Towards three o'clock in the morning, Charles Hill passed before the house on his way to Shelfanger. The door stood open; Martha was standing a few paces off. She told him she had returned from town with Samuel and Draper, and had then seen her husband go out again, whither she could not tell. Draper, however, had seen her quit the public house before them. She explained further that she had gone to fetch water from the pit in the garden, on the other side of the road. Inside the house, Hill caught sight of a heap of old clothes by the hearth. Martha said they covered her sleeping boy, a child of some seven years.
On Sunday morning, Martha spoke with William Parson, whom she encountered in company with Mary Orvice. She recounted to him that two men dressed as sailors had passed her door about two o’clock, and that she had begged them to turn Samuel back should they meet him. She feared, she said, that he might be murdered or drowned. On the following day, she asserted that she had walked more than thirty miles in search of him.
On Monday evening, Sarah Leeder had lent Martha a spade, requested on the pretext that a neighbour’s sow had rooted up her potatoes. The tool bore the initials J.H. After the discovery of the corpse, Leeder found it beside an open hole in the ditch that encircled the Aldens’ garden. The hole was not deep; blood was found hard by. The spade thus linked an article borrowed to the place where the body had been laid prior to its removal to the pond, though of itself it could not reveal who had dug the earth.
The inhabitants likewise searched the house. The foot of the bed, the mattress, the wall behind it, the chimney-board, and the narrow passage bore marks of blood; on the board, certain stains appeared to have been scraped away with a knife. A stained sack lay upon the bed, alongside a piece of another that seemed partially washed. In the outhouse, a separate sack was discovered hidden beneath nearly an hundred flags of turf. A billhook, likewise stained with blood yet bearing marks of washing, was found in a dark room.
Mary Orvice lived but a short distance away. According to her testimony, Martha sent for her on Sunday the 19th and said to her, “I have killed my husband.” She led her into the bedchamber, where Samuel already lay dead. Orvice saw a bloody billhook upon the floor. Martha asked her to hold a sack whilst she put the body into it. Orvice maintained that Martha had then carried the sack out of the house alone, crossed the road, and deposited Samuel in the ditch, which she covered with earth. Orvice then withdrew. She did not profess to have aided in the murder.
The following evening, Orvice declared she was again in Martha’s company. She saw her draw the body unaided from the ditch to the pond, within the sack, and slide it into the water. Thereafter, Martha carried the sack away. Orvice did not pretend to have assisted her during this second removal. This distinction was of consequence: at the trial, the judge cautioned the jury that her testimony might be that of an accomplice to the concealment, and ought to be received with great circumspection.
The remaining depositions furnished points of comparison. The blood observed in the bedchamber and the passage corresponded to the passage Orvice described; the hole in the ditch and the borrowed spade marked one of its stages. Parson and Hill reported the conflicting accounts Martha had given touching her husband’s disappearance. The stained billhook and the sacks discovered formed further material evidence. No witness had seen the fatal stroke. The jurors were therefore left to weigh Orvice’s declaration against the neighbours’ observations, the physical traces, and Martha’s own answers.
On 27 July, before Sir Nash Grose at the Norfolk Assizes, Martha was called to answer for the death of her husband. When called upon for her defence, she delivered a confused tale. According to Borrow, her chief endeavour was to cast suspicion upon Orvice’s testimony and to implicate her in the deed, rather than plainly to deny the charge. The judge directed the jurors to weigh Orvice’s words with jealousy by reason of her part in removing the corpse, yet to receive what they elucidated where the essential facts were corroborated by other witnesses.
After a brief deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of guilty. The judge sentenced her to be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution, there hanged, and her body delivered to be dissected. Following her condemnation and prior to her execution, Borrow relates that she confessed to the murder. In this account, Samuel was intoxicated on the night of 18 July; an altercation arose, and he threatened her with blows. When he threw himself upon the bed, she resolved to kill him, ran to fetch a billhook from the adjoining room, and struck him upon the forehead. She maintained that Orvice had borne no part in the slaughter, but had aided her in putting the body into the sack.
On Friday, 31 July, at midday, Martha was conveyed upon a hurdle to Castle Hill and executed.