Walking back through to the churchyard in Godmanchester we stopped to look at a gravestone with an unusual inscription. It tells the story of how Mary Ann Weems was murdered by her husband and the message reads:
As a warning
to the Young of both Sexes
This Stone is erected by public Subscription
over the remains of MARY ANN WEEMS
who at an early age became acquainted
with THOMAS WEEMS formerly of this Parish
this connection terminating in a compulsory
Marriage occasioned him soon to desert her
and wishing to be married to another Woman
he filled up the measure of his iniquity
by resolving to murder his Wife
which he barbarously perpetrated at Wendy
on their journey to London toward which place
he had induced her to go under the mask
of reconciliation May the 7th 1819.
He was taken within a few hours after
the crime was committed, tried and
subsequently executed at Cambridge
on the 7th of August in the same year.
Ere Crime you perpetrate survey this stone
Learn hence the God of Justice sleeps not on his Throne
But marks the Sinner with unerring eye
The Suffering Victim hears and makes the Guilty die.
The conversation quickly moved on to the ingredients in the ice lollies Bea and Emily were eating; wet wipes failed to remove the blue staining around their mouths. Perhaps what we should have been asking is "what are the two men in the background of this photo doing"? Unusual goings on indeed.
