The Suspicions of Mr Whicher

[The Wednesday]

This is a book, currently on Radio 4's book of the week, regarding the murder at Road Hill House circa 1860. Mr Whicher was the forerunner of Abberline re detectives.

The Wednesday

[Mayerling]

The Remarkable Jonathan Whicher

Hi T.W.

Chief Inspector Whicher was a remarkable detective in that period. He was a friend of Charles Dickens, and Dickens based Chief Inspector Bucket on him
and Chief Inspector Fields in the novel BLEAK HOUSE. Whicher's work on the
Road Mystery led to suspicion centering on the oldest daughter in the household, Constance Kent, as the murderer of her brother Francis. The investigation got nowhere due to interference by the local constaburlary and by various interested parties protecting Samuel Savile Kent's privacy. Whicher, in disgust, resigned and became a private detective. That was in 1860. In 1865 Constance Kent confessed to the murder, and was sentenced to life imprisonment (she was released in the 1880s, went to joint another brother in Australia, lived into her centennial year, and got a telegram of congradulations from King George VI upon reaching that age). The confession officially ended the case, and vindicated Whicher's investigation. However there remain doubts as to Constance's confession - she may have been protecting her father (he may have killed Francis, who may have seen Mr. Kent having sex with the family servant). We just don't know at this point.

Whicher's other literary friend, Wilkie Collins, used elements of Whicher's investigation at Road in the investigation by Scotland Yard Inspector Sergeant Cuff into the stealing of THE MOONSTONE from the home of Rachel Verrinder in that novel.

Whicher's second greatest coup was a few later. In 1871 the Ticheborne family hired Whicher to get the goods on Thomas Castro, who was claiming to be Roger Tichborne (the "Claimant"). Whicher followed Castro around London, and found that he was most likely not Roger Tichborne, but one Arthur Orton of Wapping. Whicher's evidence helped convict Castro/Orton
of perjury in 1875.

Best wishes,

Jeff

[Suzi]

Hey Jeff! Thanks for that!!!

Was listening to it every morning...beautifully done and it made me want to know a bit more and fill out some of the details.... you've done that!!
Thanks

Suzi x

[Gideon Fell]

Of more interest to Ripper enthusiasts is the fact that Inspector Whicher's sergeant on the Constance Kent investigation was Adolphus Williamson who was the detective leading the CID at the time of the Whitechapel murders.

[Mayerling]

Book review of THE SUSPICIONS OF MR. WHICHER

The New York Times Book Review this weekend included a review of the book . It is THE SUSPICIONS OF MR. WHICHER: A SHOCKING MURDER AND THE UNDOING OF A GREAT VICTORIAN DETECTIVE, by Kate Summerscale,
illustrated, 360 pages, Walker & Company, $24.95. The review (on page 19) is by Marilyn Stasio and is a whole page of the section.

Jeff.

[Bob Hinton]

Book

I believe this book has just won a very prestigious literary prize, as well as oodles of cash, something very rare for a non fiction book.

[Suzi]

Hi Bob-

I heard this read on Radio 4 and have since read it. It has just won a highly prestigious non fiction award- can't remember what it was called.Part of it's success I feel lies in the way it's written-like a fast moving,gripping crime page turner.A one off!- get hold of a copy!

Suzi x

[Mayerling]

Sui or Bob - was it possibly the Booker prize, which is the prize given (I believe) to the best first book an author writes?

There is an earlier study of Constance Kent and the Road Murder. Yseult Bridges wrote it in the 1960s (about the time of the centennial of the case).
I think the title was SAINT...WITH RED HANDS.

Best wishes,

Jeff

[Stewart P Evans]

Facts

Sui or Bob - was it possibly the Booker prize, which is the prize given (I believe) to the best first book an author writes?
There is an earlier study of Constance Kent and the Road Murder. Yseult Bridges wrote it in the 1960s (about the time of the centennial of the case).
I think the title was SAINT...WITH RED HANDS.
Best wishes,
Jeff

Just to straighten out a few facts I should like to add the following.

The prize awarded to Kate Summerscale was the £30,000 BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize (at the Royal Festival Hall on 15 July 2008), the richest prize in non-fiction. She beat the favourite for the prize which was The World Is What It Is: The Authorised Biography of V.S. Naipaul by Patrick French. Kate Summerscale is a former literary editor of the Daily Telegraph and author of a previous book The Queen of Whale Cay (the story of 'Joe' Carstairs, the fastest woman on water), which won the Somerset Maugham Award and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Biography award.

I possess just about everything that has ever been published on the Road Hill House case of 1860 and it was a great cause celebre which has been much written about and dissected in the past, so much so that I was truly amazed at how this new book has been reviewed as if it is something new that no one really knew the facts about. It is patently obvious to anyone reading the contemporary reports that the actual offenders were Constance Kent and her brother William.

For many years the standard works on the case have been Saint With Red Hands (Jarrolds 1954) by Yseult Bridges (The Tragedy of Road-hill House in the USA), The Case of Constance Kent by John Rhode (Geoffrey Bles, 1928) with an associated essay in The Anatomy of Murder in 1936, and the classic meticulous and thorough work Cruelly Murdered by Bernard Taylor, London, Souvenir Press, 1979. There have also been many essays on the case by criminological writers such as William Roughead, J. B. Atlay, Mary S. Hartman and F. Tennyson Jesse, to name a few.

I hope that this helps to put things into the correct context.

[Suzi]

Thanks Stewart- That's great

Suzi

[Phryne Fisher]

Cheers chaps. I bought that book a couple of weeks ago. Looking forward to reading it more than ever, now.

[Phryne Fisher]

Nearly finished this now. What a fascinating case.

Poor old Jack Whicher: I see the press hasn't (or should that be 'haven't'? ) changed in the last 140-odd years. And as for the local coppers doing their best to undermine Whicher's investigation! What the ****?

[Graham]

Hand on my heart, I'd never heard of this case until I saw it here. So I got the book and am about 2/3 the way through. It's a good read, written in a nice style, and to a certain extent reminds me a bit of the Charles Bravo Case 10 years later - that is, someone in the victim's own house did the deed, but it could never be proven by detective work. It also bears out my oft-stated conviction that, pre-forensic science, confession seemed to be about the only sure way of nailing a murderer.

One weird little fact - Mr Wagner, to whom I understand Constance confessed, was curate-in-perpetuity of St Paul's Church, Brighton. My brother was curate at that church from 1965 to 1969. He certainly never mentioned Constance Kent or the Road Hill Case, so I presume he didn't know about the connection.

Interesting case.

Cheers,

Graham

[sdreid]

Didn't Ms. Kent reportedly live until something like 1946 under an assumed name?

[Mayerling]

Hi Stan

Constant left prison in 1885 and went to join her brother William (a distinguished scientist and teacher) in Australia. She actually had a career in nursing (!). She lived until 1944, dying a number of months after her 100th
birthday - and after receiving a congradulatory telegram from King George VI upon reaching that milestone (monarchs were/are supposed to send such telegrams in the Commonwealth countries - but it is unlikely he realized whom he was sending it to). She may be the only one time sentenced murderess or murderer who got such a telegram of congradulations.

Check the "Wikepedia" article on Constance. I added a few details, like the one about the play/film "The Chalk Garden".

Jeff