Kate Summerscale - The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher - A Shocking Murder And The Undoing Of A Great Victorian Detective

(1984).

110

A murder like this could reveal. . . middle-class house.

In an article about the popularity of detective stories, Bertolt Brecht wrote: 'We gain our knowledge of life in a catastrophic form. History is written

after

catastrophes . . . The death has taken place. What had been brewing beforehand? What had happened? Why has a situation arisen? All this can now perhaps be deduced.' Published in 1976 in Brecht's collected works and quoted in

Delightful Murder: A Social History of the Crime Story

(1984) by Ernest Mandel.

110

A month before the murder . . . oftener, a family'. Notes on Nursing

quoted in the

Devizes and Wiltshire Gazette

of 31 May 1860.

113

In the evening . . . were still green.

Information on weather and crops from the

Trowbridge and North Wilts Advertiser

of 21 July 1860, and the agricultural report for July in the

Devizes and Wiltshire Gazette

of 2 August 1860.

CHAPTER 9

115

The chairman of the magistrates . . . the services of a detective.

Information about magistrates from

The Book of Trowbridge

(1984) by Kenneth Rogers and the census of 1861.

116

Shortly before three o'clock . . . no further remark to me,' said Whicher.

From Whicher's testimony to the magistrates later that day.

120

'It's no use . . . given way.

From 'A Detective Police Party',

House-hold Words,

27 July 1850.

120

Dolly was a clever, energetic man . . . the first police-station library.

From the census of 1841 and

Critical Years at the Yard: The Career of Frederick Williamson of the Detective Department and the CID

(1956) by Belton Cobb.

120

Dolly shared lodgings . . . sixteen other single policemen.

From the census of 1861.

121

One of these, Tim Cavanagh . . . a rabbit from a near neighbour.'

From

Scotland Yard Past and Present

(1893) by Timothy Cavanagh.

122

His colleague Stephen Thornton . . . some of the passengers.

From

The Times,

18 November 1837.

122

In 1859 an eleven-year-old girl . . . depraved imagination'.

From the

Annual Register

of 1860.

123

On Saturday morning . . . schoolfriends.

From expenses claims in MEPO 3/61, the census of 1841 and the census of 1861.

124

'She has spoken to me . . . deceased child.'

From Louisa Hatherill's testimony at the Wiltshire magistrates' court, 27 July 1860.

125

While Constance was in gaol . . . taken into custody.

This rumour was reported in the

Bristol Daily Post

of 24 July 1860.

126

Whicher was careful . . . other policemen.

Fifteen years earlier, in March 1845, Mayne had reprimanded Whicher and his fellow Detective-Sergeant Henry Smith for showing a want of respect to senior officers that was 'most indiscreet and legally unjustifiable'. As it was the first time that any detectives 'had improperly come into collision' with their uniformed colleagues, Mayne let the pair off with a caution, but he warned that any future offence would be dealt with severely. From MEPO 7/7, police orders and notices from the office of the Commissioner, cited in

The Rise of Scotland Yard: A History of the Metropolitan Police

(1956) by Douglas G. Browne.

129

As for her supposed lover . . . or the Neighbourhood'.

In a note by Whicher on a letter from Sir John Eardley Wilmot on 16 August 1860, in MEPO 3/61.

129

the fullest version . . . fishing in the river.

Reported in the

Somerset and Wilts Journal,

13 October 1860.

129

In the county court the previous month . . . rival dairy farmer.

From the

Frome Times,

20 June 1860.

CHAPTER 10

134

A man in North Leverton . . . She fainted.

Account of the Sarah Drake case from reports in

The Times,

8 December 1849 to 10 January 1850.

136

In the spring of 1860 . . .the name of her employer.

Reported in the

News of the World,

3 June 1860.

137

Alienists detailed . . . cold cunning.

Monomania was a condition identified by the French physician Jean-Etienne Dominique Esquirol in 1808. See

Embodied Selves: An Anthology of Psychological Texts 1830-1890

(1998), edited by Jenny Bourne Taylor and Sally Shuttleworth.

137

The Times

. . . the key to the asylum?'

On 22 July 1853.

137

It was even suggested . . . puerperal mania.

Stapleton reported this rumour in his book of 1861.

137

Perhaps the killer had a double consciousness.

For double consciousness and crime, see

Unconscious Crime: Mental Absence and Criminal Responsibility in Victorian London

(2003) by Joel Peter Eigen.

138

'Experience has shown . . . seemingly irrelevant.'

In 'The Mystery of Marie Roget' (1842) by Edgar Allan Poe.

138

'I

made a private inquiry . . . as a trifle yet.'

Arthur Conan Doyle's private detective Sherlock Holmes adopted the same techniques: 'You know my method. It is based on the observation of trifles'; 'there is nothing so important as trifles' - from 'The Man with the Twisted Lip' (1891).

138

He asked Sarah Cox . . . within the hour.

From Whicher's reports in MEPO 3/61 and Cox's testimony at the Wiltshire magistrates' court on 27 July 1860.

139

'When I am deeply perplexed . . . work out my problems. 'From Diary of an Ex-Detective

(1859), 'edited' by Charles Martel (in fact written by the New Bond Street bookseller Thomas Delf). In a similar passage in Waters'

Experiences of a Real Detective

(1862) the narrator mulls over a case as if assembling a jigsaw or a collage: 'I lay down on a sofa and had a good think; put together, now this way, now that way, the different items, scraps, and hints, furnished me, in order to ascertain how they held together, and what, as a whole, they seemed to be like.'

141

As Mr Bucket says . . . point of view.'

A detective's greatest weapon, said Dickens, was his ingenuity. 'For ever on the watch, with their wits stretched to the utmost, these officers have . . . to set themselves against every novelty of trickery and dexterity that the combined imaginations of all the lawless rascals in England can devise, and to keep pace with every such invention that comes out.' From the second part of 'A Detective Police Party',

House-hold Words,

10 August 1850.

In

The Perfect Murder

(1989) David Lehman observed that 'the detective novel took murder out of the ethical realm and put it into the realm of aesthetics. Murder in a murder mystery becomes a kind of poetic conceit, often quite a baroque one; the criminal is an artist, the detective an aesthete and critic, and the blundering policeman a philistine.' See also

The Aesthetics of Murder: A Study in Romantic Literature and Contemporary Culture

(1991) by Joel Black.

142

The nightdress was his missing link . . . evolved from apes.

A nightdress that tied a respectable adolescent girl to murder, like the bones that would prove the connection between men and monkeys, was a terrible object, to be feared as much as sought. For the anxieties aroused by the idea of the missing link, see