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

(1953-74), edited by James Strachey, Alix Strachey and Alan Tyson. This essay concerned one of Freud's first patients, the eighteen-year-old 'Dora'.

CHAPTER 18

261

In October 1865 . . . behind Millbank's high walls.

Information on Millbank gaol from

The Criminal Prisons of London and Scenes of London Life

(1862) by Henry Mayhew and John Binny;

The Princess Casamassima

(1886) by Henry James; and the

Penny Illustrated Paper

of 14 October 1865.

262

In 1866 he married his landlady . . . sheep grazed on the green.

From Whicher's marriage certificate, on which he described himself as a bachelor, not a widower. Hippolyte Taine referred to sheep grazing outside Westminster Abbey in his

Notes on England

(1872).

263

Private inquiry agents . . . Ignatius Pollaky.

Pollaky had become a successful private detective with offices at 13 Paddington Green, near the railway station. In 18

66,

according to

The Times,

he broke a ring of white slave traders who were kidnapping young women in Hull and selling them in Germany. A song in Gilbert & Sullivan's comic opera

Patience,

which opened in London in 1881, praised 'the keen penetration of Paddington Pollaky'. He died in Brighton in 1918, aged ninety.

263

The work was well-paid . . . to divorce her.

From a report in

The Times

of 9 December 1858.

263

In his new role Whicher took part . . . the Tichborne Claimant.

Account of the case of the Tichborne Claimant from:

Famous Trials of the Century

(1899) by J.B. Atlay;

The Tichborne Tragedy: Being the Secret and Authentic History of the Extraordinary Facts and Circumstances Connected with the Claims, Personality, Identification, Conviction and Last Days of the Tichborne Claimant

(1913) by Maurice Edward Kenealy;

The Tichborne Claimant: A Victorian Mystery

(1957) by Douglas Woodruff;

The Man Who Lost Himself

(2003) by Robyn Annear; and reports in

The Times.

264

'It has weighed upon the public mind like an incubus.'

From

The Tichborne Romance

(1872) by A Barrister At Large (A. Steinmedz), quoted in

Victorian Sensation

(2003) by Michael Diamond.

266

'I

daresay you hear me frequently abused . . . Your Old Friend, Jack Whicher.'

Quoted in

Scotland Yard: Its History and Organisation 1829-1929

(1929) by George Dilnot.

267

Jack Whicher was still living . . . until death.

From census returns of 1861, 1871, 1881, marriage certificate of Sarah Whicher and James Holliwell, and Holliwell's citation for the Victoria Cross.

267

'It is a very curious story . . . the detective prime?'

Dickens quote from a letter to W.H. Wills - see

The Letters of Charles Dickens 1868-870

(2002), edited by Graham Storey, Margaret Brown and Kathleen Tillotson. Robert Louis Stevenson letter of 5 September 1868 quoted in

Wilkie Collins: The Critical Heritage

(1974), edited by Norman Page.

269

In 1927 T.S. Eliot compared . . . fallible.'

From an article in the

Times Literary Supplement

of 4 August 1927.

270

Henry James characterised . . . works of science.'

From 'Miss Braddon', unsigned review in

The Nation,

9 November 1865.

270

In May 1866 Samuel Kent renewed his plea . . . congestion of the lungs.

Papers on Samuel Kent's application to retire on full pay in HO 45/6970. In March the annual report of the factory inspector Robert Baker had referred to the great wrong done to Samuel in the years since Saville's death. An extract from Baker's account of his colleague's trials, including the 'threatened blindness' and subsequent paralysis of Mrs Kent, was published in

The Times

on 24 March 1866. According to her death certificate, Mary Kent died at Llangollen on 17 August 1866 - Samuel was present at her death.

270

That summer he was awarded . . . common and cruel.

See

The Times,

9 July 1866.

271

Through the winter of 1867.

Information about William Kent's life after 1865 from

Savant of the Australian Seas

(1997) by A.J. Harrison. An electronic second edition of this biography, completed in 2005, is available on the STORS website of the State Library of Tasmania - members.trump.net.au/ahvem/Fisheries/Identities/ Savant.html.

271

He gave the name 'retrospective prophecy' . . . a word as "back-teller"!' said Huxley.

From the essay 'On the Method of Zadig: Retrospective Prophecy as a Function of Science' (1880). In

Lady Audley's Secret

Mary Braddon described the detective's procedure as 'retrograde investigation'. The American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce developed his theory of 'abduction', or retrospective deduction, in about 1865. 'We must conquer the truth by guessing,' he wrote, 'or not at all.' For the idea of 'backward hypothesising', see:

The Sign of Three: Dupin, Holmes, Peirce

(1983), edited by Umberto Eco and Thomas A. Sebeok;

The Perfect Murder

(1989) by Peter Lehman; and

Forging the Missing Link: Interdisciplinary Stories

(1992) by Gillian Beer.

272

'Alone, perhaps, among detective-story writers . . . more essential and more strange.'

From

Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens

(1911) by G.K. Chesterton. Chesterton was adapting Job 19: 'For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth' (King James Version of the Bible).

Others have found the endings to detective stories disappointing: 'The solution to a mystery is always less impressive than the mystery itself,' wrote Jorge Luis Borges in the short story 'Ibn Hakkan-al-Bokhari, Dead in His Labyrinth' (1951). 'Mystery has something of the supernatural about it, and even of the divine; its solution, however, is always tainted by sleight of hand.'

273

He left his money . . . joint executors.

From Samuel Kent's will, dated 19 January 1872 and proved by William on 21 February that year.

273

In January 1872 Samuel Kent . . . of a stillborn boy.

Biography from

Savant of the Australian Seas

(1997, revised 2005) by A.J. Harrison;

Guidebook to the Manchester Aquarium

(1875) by William Kent;

A Manual of the Infusoria

(1880-82) by William Kent; death certificate and will of Samuel Kent; birth announcement in

The Times;

marriage certificates of William Kent; census of 1881.

275

In 1875 William's wife . . . obstruction of the bowel.

According to the death certificate, she died in Withington, Manchester, on 15 February.

275

Jack and Charlotte Whicher . . . fields of lavender.

Lavender Hill information from:

Directory for Battersea Rise and the Neighbourhoods of Clapham and Wandsworth Commons

(1878);

Directory for the Postal District of Wandsworth

(1880);

The Buildings of Clapham,

edited by Alyson Wilson (2000); and

Battersea Past,

edited by Patrick Loobey (2002).

276

In the summer of 1881 . . . went to his wife.

From Whicher's death certificate, will and probate in the Family Records Centre and the Court of Probate.