Jack whicher kent

The nursemaid, Elizabeth Gough, was detained for questioning but no offered no further revelations that explicitly confirmed her guilt. The case was becoming more and more confused as more parallel investigations began — as well as the local police, family friends were beginning to conduct their own inquiries — and all of this hunting for clues and constant interviewing of witnesses was obscuring, rather than revealing, helpful details.

Finally, two weeks after the murder, Scotland Yard was called in. Here again, Robin says, we encounter something very familiar from the detective fiction that was written after the Road Hill House case.

Robin: One of my favorite things is that the detective who has sent down from London, Jack Whicher, really is one of the first British detectives. And he is this very imposing figure. And then you look through the rest of detective fiction and there are so many sort of tall handsome with piercing blue eyes. They were digging around in secrets and they were often from a middle-class lower middle-class working class background coming into these houses or in this case, he came into this house of wealthy people and biggest uncovering all of their dirty laundry, literally and figuratively.

Caroline: The Detective Branch at Scotland Yard had been founded in and Whicher was one of the original eight officers recruited to it. He is a proto detective both in the sense that he was helping to create the role a detective would play in mid 19th century society, and because many of the fictional detectives that quickly appeared on the page drew on his character and cases.

Both Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins wrote journalistic articles about the new detective branch, and both also created detective characters in their fiction soon after. And as Robin says, being a detective was not an especially respectable profession.

Interviewing servants about their employers, for instance, was very frowned upon. At the same time, the public loved the idea that a detective could reveal the hidden truth of everyday life and find significance in seemingly unimportant details. Letters poured into Scotland Yard offering theories about the Road Hill House murder, and Whicher had to go through them all.

The Kents were a well to do family living in a large house with many servants. Whicher was the son of a gardener from Camberwell in London, and had worked as a labourer before joining the Metropolitan Police as a constable.

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I think any Shedunnit listeners who love solving things will love this game. This episode is also sponsored by Girlfried Collective. They produce sustainable, ethically made activewear for everyone. It all comes in functional fabrics, colors, and styles for any activity. And their sizing is inclusive, ranging from extra extra small to 6XL. Detective fever gripped the public in the wake of the murder at Road Hill House.

The flames were fanned by the involvement of Scotland Yard, the violence with which Saville Kent had been attacked, the vast number of newspapers in existence at the time that could run sensational reports about it, and a general prurient curiosity about what had been going on inside this middle class home.

This last aspect manifested itself in an obsession with the physicality of Road Hill House, which in turn had an impact on the detective fiction that followed. Five days later, the plans were published in the paper and became an indelibe part of the way the public consumed this case. Think about all the times you have opened a new murder mystery, turned the first few pages, and examined the map of the country house where the story is set. The map of Road Hill House made such an impression on Robin that it helped her solve the problem of not being able to get out to look at potential settings for her new book during Covid.

Robin: It was just so funny. And then I was like, what case do I know really well? Caroline: What case indeed? Murder at Road Hill was quite good but it just wasn't as morally challenging as Beyond the Pale.

All in all, it's a great series. I hope they make more! Marta Jun 3, Details Edit. Release date April 25, United Kingdom. United Kingdom. Wallingford, Oxfordshire, England, UK. Technical specs Edit. Runtime 1 hour 35 minutes. Dolby Digital.

Related news. The case is a classic illustration of how early investigations were directed heavily by magistrates, of the influence which well-to-do people could exert over local police officers, and of the importance of immediately searching and questioning the whole household at the scene of a crime, regardless of social status.

Later, Constance Kent admitted her crime after a conversation with the Mother Superior at the religious establishment at Brighton where she lived, and went to Bow Street court where she made a confession of carrying out the crime. She pleaded Guilty and was sentenced to death, but later reprieved by Queen Victoria.

By the time of her confession, Whicher had been retired from the Police Service because of ill health, and some of the newspapers which were so critical of him at the time, published editorials vindicating his original judgement. Back Home Encyclopedia Contact us. See your GP! The baby is taken from the bedroom. Constance Kent in later years. Nurse Gough arrested for second time. With Mother Superior.

She'd had no fewer than ten children, growing increasingly mad as the pregnancies mounted. Samuel Kent was understandably concerned about the care for his children - and so, at the birth of his ninth child, a daughter called Constance in , Kent had hired a governess. She was Mary Drewe Pratt, a short, attractive, self-assured young woman. Barely four years later, in , one of Samuel Kent's bosses urged him to move house to escape the increasing gossip about his living arrangements.

The man with a deranged wife and an increasingly favoured governess is a triangle that has astonishing parallels with Charlotte Bronte's novel Jane Eyre, published the year before. The Kent family moved twice in the next four years, and on May 5, , the first Mrs Kent died at the age of just 44, from 'an obstruction of the bowel'. Fifteen months later, Kent married the governess, who bore him three further children - among them, the unfortunate Saville.

Mary was eight months pregnant with a fourth child when Saville was murdered. This was the background Inspector Whicher painstakingly pieced together as he took charge of the murder case. As he did so, further dark secrets about the Kents began to emerge. A witness came forward, insisting that while the first Mrs Kent was still alive, Samuel Kent had taken the family governess, Miss Pratt, as his lover. Some of the villagers described Kent as an arrogant, bad-tempered man, who was either rude or lascivious to his servants.

Indeed, more than staff had passed through his house. Nevertheless, Whicher dismissed Samuel Kent as a suspect. He also dismissed William Nutt, one of the two men that discovered Saville's body, whom some locals had claimed was the nursemaid Elizabeth Gough's lover.

Whicher was also convinced of her innocence. To the surprise and consternation of the local population, Whicher suspected Samuel Kent's year-old daughter Constance. He asked magistrates to remand her in custody for a week while he continued his investigation. In a five-page letter to the Commissioner at Scotland Yard, Whicher explained the reasons for his suspicions - citing Constance's physical strength, the fact that she slept alone in her own room, and that she had used the privy as a hiding place before.

Constance was certainly strong enough - both physically and psychologically - to have killed her stepbrother, as 'she appears to possess a very strong mind', Whicher concluded.

But to the detective's despair, the Wiltshire magistrates disagreed, and Constance Kent was released from custody and returned to Road Hill House. Three years later, she moved to Brighton, where she asked for admission to St Mary's home, a house for 'religious ladies', where she was to remain for the next two years.

Could this have been a sign of her sense of guilt? Just four years later - in - Inspector Whicher retired from the Metropolitan Police, apparently without catching the killer of Saville Kent, although he did tell a friend 'we will only know the truth when Constance Kent confesses'. And there lies the final sting in this tale of brutal murder and family secrets. On Tuesday, April 25, , Constance Kent - by then aged 21 - walked into London's Bow Street Magistrates' court, accompanied by a priest and confessed to the killing of her stepbrother.

She insisted that she'd acted 'quite alone' and 'not out of jealousy', although she later explained to a friend that she had done it out of hatred for her step-mother, who had usurped her own mother, Mary Ann, in the Kent household. Constance Kent was convicted of the murder and sentenced to death by hanging, only to be reprieved by Queen Victoria.

She went on to serve 20 years in prison before finally being released in July , at the age of