I definitely started to get tired. The jog had been longer than planned. The trip had, as usual, taken place in beautiful surroundings along the Thames. Past some cozy pubs and an old brewery. To the sound of shouts from the coxs that made the rowers row in time in the scullers who slipped past.
But then I got the idea that I should try a new route.
The trail led to historic fates
A narrow walkway behind a high brick wall led me away from the river and first into a pleasant residential area. Then past an old factory. The trip continued through a park, over a major road and down to a sports facility.
And there I knew where I was left, and that I was immediately back on the Thames. I had cut a piece of land by running an inner route instead of the one along the river. Now I just had to find my way back to the river.
Behind the sports facility’s parking lot, I found something resembling a path. It led me into a forest. A fairly overgrown forest – you can actually find such in the big city of London as well.
A headless angel at the Children’s Cemetery in London. I went back after the original run with photographer Håvard Blekastad Almås to get pictures for this correspondent letter.
Photo: Håvard Blekastad Almås / NRKPhoto: Håvard Blekastad Almås / NRK
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It was then that I noticed what gave me a welcome excuse to slow down. And this is really where this story begins. The jogging trip was supposed to lead me into the Victorian era and back. To the father of football, an Arab boy and a beheaded woman. And to David Attenborough.
An overgrown burial ground
In front of me on the path I saw a stone clad in green moss. But it was no ordinary stone. I looked up and saw more. Some standing, others lying, and then a cross also appeared.
As I looked to the right, I discovered more, many more, in the forest. Among the stones were also headless statues, some with wings, others without. Overgrown with ivy and covered with leaves. I had ended up in the middle of an old cemetery.
I started reading on the tombstones. Brushed the bush away, chased a squirrel that came bouncing. It was war graves from the First and Second World Wars. Other tombs from the interwar period and the Victorian era.
Among those buried there is the doctor who died of diphtheria after being infected by his patient in 1884. I could read that until I finally returned home.
The Arab boy
The big internet could also tell about the Syrian server with the same terminal. He who inherited the employer’s wealth and got a pub named after him.
The Arab Boy from 1849 is said to be the oldest pub in the Putney district. While the boy himself ended up in an overgrown forest down by the Thames, the pub lives on in the best condition. There is the quiz night every Thursday.
The pub is named after a Syrian waiter and is said to be Putney’s oldest.
Photo: Håvard Blekastad Almås / NRKPhoto: Håvard Blekastad Almås / NRK
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I wonder if the quiz asks who is buried with the Arab boy who gave the pub its name. The football-interested pub guests could have taken a point then, because they might have known that there is also the man who is considered the father of modern football.
The father of modern football
Only parts of his name appear on the stone tomb. The first two letters are covered with leaves from wild bushes that have taken control of the cemetery.
Here the father of modern football is buried. Ebenezer Cobb Morley founded the FA Football Association and the FA Cup.
Photo: Håvard Blekastad Almås / NRKPhoto: Håvard Blekastad Almås / NRK
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Ebenezer Cobb Morley founded the Children’s Football Club in 1862 and captained the team. They won their first match against Richmond, but when they were to play against Blackheath in south-east London in their second match, the game was completely different.
There they were in the habit of taking the ball in their hands and kicking people in the leg. The game was more like rugby than Morley could like.
He founded the football association FA to create common rules for football. There he received a narrow majority to ban hands and kicking.
But he had to give in to another suggestion. Unfortunately. I’m reasonably sure I have many with me to regret it. Imagine how much easier football would have been if he had gotten the newly formed football association to remove the offside rule. But it sat too far inside.
Overgrown graves at Barnes gravlund hide many fates.
Photo: Håvard Blekastad Almås / NRKPhoto: Håvard Blekastad Almås / NRK
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An unknown place in the camp nearby is also Julia Martha Thomas. That is, parts of her lie there. She was buried in an unmarked grave in 1879. No one knew that the body belonged to a 54-year-old widow who had been a teacher. But they had understood that she had been given a cruel end.
The Barnes Mystery
We’re talking about a bestial murder, a mystery that shook the people of London and became a serial in British newspapers. It was a kind of warm-up to the nine years later Jack the Ripper.
The widow’s maid was tired of the temperamental wife Thomas teasing all the work she was doing. One Sunday, she came home a little late from a morning at the beer camp, and had to go through for it. She had had time off, but should have been home earlier to help the widow get to church on time.
There was a heated argument between the two before the service, which continued when the widow returned home. The quarrel ended with the maid pushing Julia Martha Thomas down the stairs. Thomas screamed in pain, and to prevent the screams, the maid choked her just as much. But she was not content with that.
She cut up the corpses into several parts, boiled them to prevent identification and burned up the entrails. It is said that she tried to sell the soup she had cooked on the meat to the pub next door, but it was never confirmed.
She put the boiled body parts in a suitcase and in a box, which she then took down to the Thames. She threw the suitcase out at Hammersmith, the box went into the river further southwest at Richmond.
David Attenborough’s findings
A foot she could not fit, she threw on a rubbish heap in Twickenham. While Julia Martha’s severed head was buried under the pub Hole in the Wall two houses beyond, the one she is said to have tried to sell soup to.
The tide in the Thames is known to be hectic. Twice a day, the water level changes up to seven meters. The currents are steady. The suitcase was never found.
But that was the box. And also the foot. Police found that the body parts belonged together and that a murder had been committed. But they still did not know who she was when they buried Julia Martha Thomas. Only after a couple of weeks did the neighbors start calling for the widow. The maid was eventually arrested. She confessed and was sentenced to death.
The story does not end there. Over 130 years later, in 2010, the pub had Hole in the Wall got a new owner who would renovate. The man next door wanted to expand. His house was located between the pub and the house of the parted Julia Martha Thomas. The man’s name is David Attenborough.
And guess what he found when he was refurbishing the pub premises?
Julia Martha Thomas lived on the left. David Attenborough lives in the blue house, and has bought the neighboring building on the right, which was previously the pub where Thomas’ severed head was found in 2010.
Photo: Håvard Blekastad Almås / NRKPhoto: Håvard Blekastad Almås / NRK
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Underground, but on top of some Victorian tiles, construction workers found a round, dark object that turned out to be Widow Thomas’ severed head.
The Barnes mystery was finally solved. But the head was never reunited with the other body parts. There is still only a foot and a half of the remains that were thrown in the Thames buried in the overgrown burial ground I found on my jogging trip. The suitcase with the rest of the body still sails on the seven seas. And her head was laid in an unmarked grave closer to where she lived. Now they knew who she was.
London along the Thames is still my favorite run. But it will never be the same again.
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