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

* In the event, Madame Tussaud's did not put the Constance Kent waxwork on show until after Samuel Kent's death - perhaps out of respect for his feelings. According to the museum catalogues, it was displayed from 1873 to 1877.

* Six years later, in 1887, Arthur Conan Doyle created the first of his hugely successful Sherlock Holmes mysteries. Unlike Jack Whicher, Conan Doyle's fantasy detective is an amateur and a gentleman, and he is always right - 'the most perfect reasoning and observing machine the world has seen', says his sidekick Dr Watson in 'A Scandal in Bohemia'.

* Mary Amelia had married an orchard-keeper in Sydney in 1899, and given birth to Olive, her only child, the next year. Eveline, known as Lena, married a doctor in 1888 and had a son and a daughter. Florence never married, and spent her last years living with her niece Olive.

* Henry James's novella was published in 1898, the heyday of the Sherlock Holmes series. The Turn of the Screw runs the detective story backwards, unravelling all its comforts: it refuses to dissolve the mystery of the children's silence; it implicates the detective-narrator in the nameless crime; and it ends, rather than begins, with the death of a child.

* Whicher's unfolding analysis of the murder was laid out in three reports to Sir Richard Mayne, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner: the first is missing; Whicher wrote the second on 22 July; and he started the third just over a week later. The surviving reports are in the Metropolitan Police file on the Road Hill murder at the National Archives - MEPO 3/61.

* Thirty-two years later, in the Sherlock Holmes short story 'Silver Blaze' (1892), Arthur Conan Doyle referred to 'the curious incident of the dog in the night-time', the curious incident being that the dog did not bark when he encountered an intruder, and the solution to the riddle being that the intruder was known to the dog. But the Road Hill murder, being fact rather than fiction, had messier, more ambiguous clues: the dog did bark on the night of the murder, but not a lot.

* There are many possible causes for this condition, including tumours, hernias, the use of narcotics (such as opium), metabolic imbalance and kidney disease.

* The press reported that Samuel Kent was paid PS800 a year, a figure he did not correct; but the Home Office archives show that his salary was actually only PS350 in 1860. He may also have had a small private income. In The Book of House-hold Management (1861) Mrs Beeton calculated that an income of PS500 per annum was required to fund a three-servant house-hold (the average wage for a cook, according to the same book, was PS20, for a housemaid PS12 and for a nursemaid PS10).

* In his reports to Mayne, Whicher underlined those phrases and sentences that he wished to emphasise. His underlined words are rendered here as italics.

* The abbreviation 'sleuth' was first used as a synonym for 'detective' in the 1870s.

* The biblical text runs: 'And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper? And He said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground.'

* According to one implausible rumour, the Kents were illegitimate descendants of the royal family. Reporters occasionally remarked on Constance's resemblance to Queen Victoria.

* A defendant was not allowed to give evidence at his or her own trial until 1898.

* If Eugenia was lying, one wonders about the role played in her life by the family doctor, Mr Gay, to whom she was - at eleven - already betrothed. The surgeon referred to her as his 'little wife', and it was he who examined her body for signs of sexual molestation. Gay observed 'slight marks of violence', he said.

INDEX

Adams, John Couch, 142

Adelphi theatre, 84

Albert, Prince, 217

All the Year Round , xxii, 125, 159, 267

Alloway, John, 4, 9-10, 12, 18

Alresford, 265

Annual Register , 106

aquaria, 273-4

Arabia, 96

Arundel, Lord, 264

Ascot, 56

Asmodeus, 158

Australia, 53, 263, 265, 291

William Kent in, 283-9

Constance Kent in, 288-90

Avon, river, 44

Axbridge, 164

Baily, Mr and Mrs, 151-2

Balaklava, 73

Baldwin, Mary, 122

ballads, broadside, 69, 251-2

banknotes, 69

baobab trees, 286

Barnes, Constance Amelia, 288

Barry, Sir Charles, 162

Bath, 137, 164, 167, 182, 198, 203, 207

Constance and William Kent's flight, 91-3, 95, 107, 143, 300-1

Greyhound Hotel, 91-2

police, 207-8

Bath Chronicle , 110

accounts of Road Hill case, 27-8, 34, 37, 60-1, 95, 97, 102, 111-12, 127, 130, 143, 159

and suspicion of Samuel Kent, 169-70

criticisms of Whicher, 174, 179

Bath Express , 93, 110, 116, 149, 169, 182

Battersea, 275

Baudelaire, Charles, 296

Baxter, Richard, 294

Baynton House, 73-4, 290, 293

Beckington, 4-5, 9, 19, 77-9, 137, 182, 236

Manor House school, 78, 143

Methodist chapel, 210

Beethoven, Ludwig van, 296

Beeton, Mrs Isabella, 74n, 296

Belgravia, 120

Benger, Thomas, 15-17, 22, 24, 29, 128, 237

Bennett, John, 52

Bennett, Thomas, 279

Bentham, Jeremy, 216

Berkshire, 82, 190

Bermondsey, 69, 105

Bethlehem asylum, 80

Bird, J.J., 137

Biss, river, 44

Blackall, Dr, 72

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine , 123

Blandford, 166

Bloemfontein, Bishop of, 280

Bloomsbury, 48-9

Bonwell, Rev. James, 55, 133, 181

Booth, John Wilkes, 253-4

Bow Street magistrates' court, 227-8, 234, 241, 254

Bowyer, Sir George, 173-4

Braddon, Mary Elizabeth, Lady Audley's Secret , 217-18, 222, 225, 238, 243

Aurora Floyd, 222

Bradford-upon-Avon, 193, 198

Brighton, 227, 229, 241, 254, 258, 288

St Mary's Home (Hospital), 224, 227, 229, 241, 298

Aquarium, 273-4

Brisbane, 284, 289

Bristol, 91-2, 123, 125, 201

Clifton, 148

Bristol Daily Post , 27, 95, 112, 119, 143, 183, 185, 193-4, 198

Bristol Mercury , 195

British Museum, 48, 271, 273

Bronte, Charlotte, 82, 96

Jane Eyre, 72, 102

Brown, Hannah, 69

Brunei, Isambard Kingdom, xix

Buckingham Palace, 49

Buckinghamshire, 180

Bucknill, Charles, 244-5, 252, 256, 258

Burlington House, 286

Burne-Jones, Edward, 229

Burns, Robert, 176

Butcher, Chief Superintendent, 278

Buxted, 288

Cain and Abel, 112

Calne, 191

Camberwell, 44-5, 69, 171, 267, 278

Cambridge Zoological Museum, 271

cameras, see photography

Canada, 288

Carlyle, Thomas, 105

Cams, Dr, 38

Cavanagh, Timothy, 121, 163, 211

Cenci, Beatrice, 176

Chambers's Edinburgh Journal , 51-2

Chandler, Raymond, 304

Charbury, 123

Charlie, Bonnie Prince, 293

Cheshire, 164

Chesterton, G.K., 272

children: criminal, 121-3

illegitimate, 136

and murder, 233, 244

Chile, 263

Chippenham, xix, xxiii, 180, 188, 232

Church of England, 181, 224, 229, 239, 241-2

Civil Service Gazette , 29

Clapton, 71

Clark, Henry, 137, 148-51, 153, 158, 220, 234

Cockburn, John, 262

Coleridge, John Duke, 248-50, 253, 266

Collins, Wilkie, 125, 190, 270

The Moonstone , xi, 75, 77-8, 87, 138, 168, 267-9, 301

The Woman in White , xxii, 41, 68, 81, 102, 105, 138, 159, 182

'The Diary of Anne Rodway', 70

'Mad Monkton', 80

No Name , 225

Armadale , 263

Colne, river, 252n

Conan Doyle, Arthur, 66n, 269, 276n, 30n

constables, 12

Convent de la Sagesse, 211