The Murder of German Watchmaker Lorenz Beha

When artisan watch and clockmaker Lorenz Beha left his birthplace of Baden, in the region which would later become unified Germany, he was full of hope for the opportunities that awaited him in England. Around 1840, he went into business at 77 Norfolk Street, King’s Lynn, in the county of Norfolk, in the East of England, with a fellow German named Sebastian Hermann, but they went their separate ways in 1846. The following year, when Lorenz Beha was 36, he arrived in the bustling market city of Norwich, among its narrow, cobbled streets and evocative medieval buildings, some of which still survive today. The spire of Norwich Cathedral towered above the city, and the River Wensum wound through it, supporting trade and transport. Norwich was beginning to industrialise, yet it still retained the old-world charm of the England he had been told about as a young man in Germany. Lorenz would spend the next six years building his life and business before meeting a brutal and untimely death.

Lorenz Beha’s Early Life

Born in 1811, little is recorded about Lorenz Beha’s early life, but it’s likely he learned the watch and clockmaking trade from his father or as an apprentice to a local master tradesman. He was almost certainly related to Johann Beha, a respected Black Forest clock maker. His decision to travel to England may have been driven by economic hardship in his homeland; Germany didn’t exist yet, and was a patchwork of states with different currencies, taxes, and regulations. Regions like Baden struggled with rural overpopulation and limited job opportunities, while watchmaking in England was a rapidly advancing craft, and the country was at the heart of an Industrial Revolution which attracted many skilled foreign tradesmen in search of a better life.

Beha’s Move to Norwich

Soon after moving to Norwich, Beha established a shop at St Stephen’s Plain in Norwich, assisted by his nephew Matthias Beha and Matthias’s cousin Dominic Lickert, who had emigrated with him and lodged at the shop. Unmarried, Lorenz devoted most of his time and energy to his business. He was described as a quiet, honest, and hardworking man, and each timepiece he created was proudly engraved with the name ‘Beha & Co.’

Lorenz Beha regularly travelled on foot to neighbouring towns and villages across Norfolk to sell watches and jewellery, as well as collecting and delivering items for repair, leaving the shop in the care of Matthias and Dominic. Much of the surrounding area was agricultural, characterised by the region’s wide, open skies, uninterrupted horizons, and flat, fertile land ideal for farming. He would walk as far as 30 miles west to picturesque rural villages like Beetley and Castle Acre, or to the small market town of Swaffham, and sometimes east towards the Broads. Some customers paid in instalments, so Beha made monthly rounds to collect payments while seeking new clients, displaying a selection of watches which he carried in a jewellery box, wrapped inside a carpet bag slung from a stick across his shoulder. Occasionally, passing tradespeople in horses and carts offered him a welcome lift to break up his journey. As a lone man on the highways and byways, Beha was vulnerable to thieves, but he refused to carry a gun and insisted that he would rely on providence for protection.

Murder at Tittleshall Common

On Monday 14 November 1853, Lorenz Beha, now 42, set out northwest towards Fakenham, carrying an umbrella and his carpet bag slung over his shoulder on a stick, as was his habit. Four days later, on Friday 18 November, still on his rounds, he passed between the villages of Wellingham and Tittleshall, about two miles apart. At some point during his visit, he received two £5 notes in change, one of which was distinctive, having previously been torn and joined back together with a piece of paper. At around 12:30 p.m., Beha was seen walking along the country road opposite Tittleshall Common, and was greeted by local butcher William Webster, who passed him on the road. The butcher also noticed a labourer named William Thompson nearby.

About an hour later, a traveller on the country road noticed a large quantity of blood near the edge of the common but thought little of it. At 3:00 p.m., another passerby, John Robertson, also spotted the blood and stopped to look. It appeared that someone had tried to cover it with dirt. On closer inspection, he saw a trail of blood leading to a gap in the hedge, along with marks suggesting that something had been dragged in that direction. Robertson entered the woodland to investigate. Around the same time, a carriage approached carrying two sons of the Reverend Digby of Tittleshall, the Reverend’s wife, and a Miss Sheppard. They, too, noticed the blood, stopped, and hurried back to the village to inform the police.

Meanwhile, Robertson discovered the source of the blood. In a ditch in the woodland lay the body of a man, with multiple deep wounds to his head and face. Next to the body was a carpet bag and a jewellery box, now separated from the stick that had carried them, as well as an umbrella. The man’s trouser pockets had been turned inside out, suggesting robbery. A bloodstained axe was found nearby. The bag was empty, and there was no money on the victim’s body.

Police constables arrived shortly afterwards. Though the Metropolitan Police in London had been founded 18 years before in 1829 by Sir Robert Peel, other boroughs were only encouraged to establish police forces from 1835 onward. In rural areas like Norfolk, police forces remained optional until 1856, so law enforcement was often managed by parish constables, usually part-time, informal officers with limited training. When they arrived on the scene at Tittleshall Common, the constables were able to quickly identify the victim as watchmaker Lorenz Beha. He was well known locally, and Friday was his usual day to visit the area once a month.

Beha’s body was transported to the nearby Griffin Inn in a handcart, where the local surgeon arrived soon afterwards to conduct the postmortem. The details were grisly. Beha’s head had been nearly severed by a powerful blow to the back of the neck with an axe. There were several deep cuts across his face, and his right eye had been driven into its socket to a depth of nearly an inch.

William Thompson Comes Under Suspicion

News of the murder quickly spread through the village, and a woman entered the butcher’s shop and loudly announced that Mr Beha had been found murdered. One of the customers, a well-dressed young man wearing a new suit, was reaching into a canvas purse and taking out some money to pay for his pork chops. When he heard the news, he began to visibly tremble. The butcher, William Webster, recognised the man as 21-year-old labourer William Thompson – the same man he passed on the street a couple of hours earlier, around the same time he had greeted the travelling watchmaker. After Thompson left with his pork chops, Webster closed the shop and ran to the local constable’s home to report the strange behaviour.

The police spoke to William Thompson’s employer, who revealed that the night before the murder, Thompson had told him he felt unwell and wouldn’t be able to work in the woods the following day. The woods where Thompson worked as a labourer and ditch digger bordered the area where Beha’s body was found. The employer also confirmed that the bloody axe found at the scene closely resembled the one Thompson used in his work. Another witness came forward, stating that around noon on the day of the murder, he saw Thompson walking towards the spot where the body was later discovered, carrying an axe. At 1:30 p.m., Thompson was seen again by another man, James Roper, this time walking hastily and without an axe. James Roper knew William Thompson and stopped to ask him the time, recalling that Thompson had pulled a handsome pocket watch from his waistcoat to answer him.

That evening, local constables visited William Thompson’s home at 111 High Street, Tittleshall, where he lived with his 63-year-old father David, a retired woodsman, and 53-year-old mother Clarissa. On a shelf in William’s room sat a silver watch, while hidden under the roof of an outhouse in the garden was a canvas purse containing two more silver watches engraved with the initials L. Beha, two sovereigns, four half sovereigns, 20 shillings, and two £5 notes. One of the notes had been mended with a piece of paper and was identified by one of Beha’s customers as money given to the watchmaker earlier that day. A bloodstained shirt and trousers belonging to William were also found in the house. The axe he used for his work in the woods was missing, and he was unable to tell police where it was.

Arrest

He was arrested on suspicion of murder, and it was reported that as he was handcuffed, he said, ‘I must own I am guilty. But it is hard to die so young as 21. Though I know I must die some time or other.’ Thompson later denied making the statement and insisted he would plead innocent. His story was that he had passed a stranger on the road between Tittleshall and Wellingham, then saw the deceased walking a few yards behind. Thompson claimed he lost sight of the watchmaker but soon came upon blood on the road and followed it to a gap in the hedge. There, he saw the victim lying in a ditch, with the strange man standing over the body with an axe, his clothes covered in blood. The mysterious assailant warned Thompson in a strong Norfolk dialect, ‘Dussant you tell anyones what you see.’ Thompson tried to run, but the attacker chased him and a struggle ensued, transferring blood onto Thompson’s clothes in the process. The stranger threatened to kill the young labourer if he told anyone, then forced him to take the purse and watches. Police were sceptical, especially after discovering a sales ledger proving that Thompson had bought a watch from Beha on his last round, for £6 5s in instalments, worth around £1,000 today. Had he been unable to afford this luxury and killed the watchmaker to avoid paying his debt?

Matthias Beha received a letter the next day informing him of his uncle’s violent death. He travelled to Tittleshall and identified the recovered watches as Lorenz’s. The inquest was held at the Griffin Inn, where the coroner’s jury returned a verdict of wilful murder against William Thompson, who was committed to stand trial.

Trial and Execution of William Thompson

The trial took place at Norwich Assizes in March 1854. The evidence was clear, and the jury delivered a guilty verdict within minutes. Thompson showed little emotion as he heard the evidence and the sentence of death that was passed upon him. Afterwards, he made a full confession, admitting that he didn’t have the funds to pay the next instalment he owed the watchmaker. He knew Beha’s routine, so he told his employer he was unwell, took the day off, and waited. When Beha arrived, Thompson struck him multiple times with the axe, then robbed him.

On Saturday 8 April 1854, William Thompson was executed at Norwich Castle before an audience of over a thousand. A plaster death mask was taken of his face prior to burial in the Castle grounds; a rare and dubious honour typically reserved for the most notorious criminals or for medical study at a time when phrenologists believed the shape of a person’s skull could predict criminal tendencies.  Thompson’s death mask survives today and is held by the Norwich Castle Museum, though it is no longer on public display.

Legacy of Lorenz Beha

Lorenz Beha was buried at Our Lady of the Annunciation Roman Catholic Church in King’s Lynn. His nephew Matthias, alongside Dominic Lickert, continued the watchmaking business, engraving every piece with the name Beha, Lickert & Co. A longcase clock made by Lorenz in his early years in England,  when he worked with Sebastian Hermann in King’s Lynn, was acquired by the Lynn museum, where it remains on display.

The Griffin Inn at Tittleshall, where the postmortem and inquest were held, was sold the year after the murder and renamed the Ostrich & Horseshoe. In the early 1980s, it became a sports and social club, closed in 1995, and was converted into a private home.

In March 2025, the BBC reported that two pocket watches, one made by Lorenz Beha and the other by Matthias Beha and Dominic Lickert after his death, were sold at auction for £190. Auction director Elizabeth Talbot highlighted Beha’s mastery of his craft and remarked, ‘It’s not about the money; it’s about the light it sheds on East Anglian history’.

It’s worth noting that the BBC article and other modern sources such as Wikipedia state Lorenz Beha’s age as 28 at the time of his death. However, my research, confirmed by census records and newspapers from the time, revealed he was actually 42. The BBC report also claimed, ‘There was nothing in the records that suggest the two men knew each other’, implying the murder was opportunistic. This contradicts the historical evidence I uncovered, which clearly shows Beha was well known locally, and Thompson had purchased a watch from him and owned a significant sum.

Though the details have mostly been forgotten, with inaccuracies creeping in over the years, it’s a small consolation that some of Lorenz Beha’s craftsmanship still exists today, so his skill, at least, can be remembered.

Researched and written by Prash Ganendran. Published on 15 October 2025.
© Prash Ganendran. All Rights Reserved.

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Sources

A Brief History of Tittleshall People, compiled by Robert Box
UK Census Record 1851
Ancestry.co.uk
Morning Advertiser, 25 November 1853
Norfolk News, 26 November 1853
Norfolk Chronicle, 26 November 1853
Worcester Journal, 26 November 1853
Norwich Mercury, 25 March 1854
Evening Mail, 27 March 1854
London Evening Standard, 10 April 1854
BBC News:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gmr362p53o
Lynn Museum:
https://www.lynnmuseum.norfolk.gov.uk
Norwich Castle Museum:
https://www.norwichcastle.norfolk.gov.uk