The burial register of Halstead contains an entry for the burial on 30 October 1848 of the body of an unknown woman found murdered near Broke and supposed to be about 43 years old.
The area of Broke has altered a great deal; the former London- Hastings road took a different course to the modern A21. Broke Farm and Broke Lodge (which remains today) formed land to the side of an isolated stretch of the Highway. The body was found in a field at Broke Farm police recovered some items from nearby hedges.
The body had been mutilated and police flyers about the murder provided little information for the Coroner's inquest held at the Cock Inn. However as reported in the Daily Chronicle two brothers John and Thomas Chapman attended in the belief that their sister was depicted in the police flyer. The Chapman brothers had not seen each other for some years one residing in Southborough Tunbridge Wells the other in London. Their sister had married and was Mrs Sarah Freeman but had been estranged for several years from her husband who was a contractor on railway construction. Although John and Thomas Chapman hesitated to identify her body Thomas recognised her small plaid shawl. Two other women who responded to the police appeal identified the shawl and another item thrown into a hedge as belonging to Mrs Sarah Freeman who had been living in Maidstone with another man but had left him. These two witnesses described an argument with an Irish women in which blows were exchanged.
Sarah Freeman was also recognised to have stayed at the Cock Inn at Halstead in recent months.
It appears that the Coroner released the body for burial in the absence of positive indentification by her brothers or any other witness. No one was ever identified as the murderer who mutilated her body.
The burial took place in the old churchyard at the ruined Halstead Place church site (demolished 1880) and it is no longer possible to determine whether the burial was marked in any way.
Spare a thought for the murder victim lost somewhere in the old site.
My transcript of the Halstead Burial register is available at Kent online Parish Clerks Halstead page.
© Henry Mantell Downe and Farnborough Online Parish Clerk 2013-2020
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