Murders at Stanfield Hall

On the evening of 28 November 1848, Isaac Jermy and his son, also named Isaac Jermy, were shot and killed at Stanfield Hall, their family mansion near Wymondham, close to Norwich. The elder Jermy was shot on the porch of the house and his son in the hallway. Two other people present, the younger Jermy's wife and the household's servant, Elizabeth Chestney, were also shot but survived their wounds.

The perpetrator was James Bloomfield Rush, who had been the Jermys' tenant farmer for nearly a decade. Rush had mortgaged and remortgaged his farm repeatedly, ostensibly to fund improvements, but the farm's output had not improved and the debts remained unpaid. As the deadline to settle these mortgages approached, Rush faced foreclosure and eviction, an outcome that would also have affected his children and his pregnant mistress, Emily Sandford, who worked as governess to his family.

The Jermy family had an existing dispute with relatives over the title to the Stanfield Hall estate. Isaac Jermy, the elder victim, held the position of Recorder of Norwich and had strong legal connections, making it unlikely that rival claimants could successfully take the property from him through legal means. Rush's plan was to kill both Jermys, the household servant, and the younger Jermy's pregnant wife while disguised, in order to place suspicion on the rival claimants to the estate rather than on himself.

Rush intended for Emily Sandford to provide him with an alibi, stating that he had been at his farm during the period when the killings occurred. He wore a false wig and whiskers to disguise himself but did not sufficiently conceal his body, allowing the wounded Mrs. Jermy and the servant Elizabeth Chestney, both of whom survived, to later identify him. Sandford ultimately refused to support the alibi Rush had planned for her.

At trial in 1849, evidence relating to forgeries connected to the case was given by Alfred Smee, who had created the Bank of England's official "Bank Black" ink used to detect forged documents. Rush defended himself at trial and was convicted of the killings. He was hanged at Norwich Castle on 21 April 1849 and buried within the castle grounds.

The case attracted significant public attention in Victorian Britain and was commemorated in various forms of popular media, including Staffordshire Potteries figurines of Rush, Sandford, and the case's key locations, and a life-size waxwork of Rush displayed in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussauds in London from 1849 until 1971. It later inspired a novel by Joseph Shearing and the 1948 film Blanche Fury.