The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale
An Investigation into the Murder at Road Hill House
The science of criminal detection was still in its infancy when Jack Whicher was dispatched to Road Hill House to solve the murder of Saville Kent but Whicher’s subsequent investigation quickly caught the public’s imagination and inspired a generation of authors such as Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle.
In The Suspicions of Mr Whicher Kate Summerscale deftly chronicles the murder of young Saville Kent itself as well as Whicher’s ultimately frustrated investigation and the eventual unmasking of the killer.
The Murder at Road Hill House
At some point during the night of 29th June 1860, three-year-old Saville Kent disappeared from the bedroom that he shared with his nursemaid at the Kent family home, Road Hill House, in Somerset.
The following day, the boy’s body was found in the vault of an outhouse in the grounds of the property. He was still dressed in his nightshirt and the body was wrapped in a blanket. The wounds that the boy had suffered were severe, he had been stabbed in the chest and hands and his throat had been slashed so deeply that he had nearly been decapitated.
Local police were quick to arrest the nursemaid for the crime but she was soon released due to lack of evidence. As the investigation into the case stalled, Scotland Yard detective Jack Whicher was called down from London to help. Whicher soon came to suspect the boy’s half-sister, Constance, of the crime. Constance was arrested but was released without trial. The Kent family moved away from Somerset and Constance was sent to a convent in France.
Five years after the crime, Constance confessed her guilt to a priest and was prosecuted and found guilty of the murder. Constance was initially sentenced to death but this was commuted to life in prison due to her youth at the time of the crime and eventual confession.
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher is a meticulously researched and highly engaging into a crime that is as shocking and disturbing today as it was during Whicher’s time. Kate Summerscale has a real flair for presenting the facts of the case in a compelling but by no means sensational fashion and for constantly knitting the crime into its Victorian social and moral setting so that it is possible to understand the intrigue and hysteria that followed every step of Whicher’s investigation.
Given that the enduring fame of the case and that fact that the killer’s identity is really common knowledge, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher could easily have been lacking in suspence but, instead, Summerscale has succeeded in building the tension throughout her narrative by drawing details out as slowly and deliberately as they were originally discovered. Given the rich level of historical and social detail found throughout the book, even those familiar with all the facets of the case will find something in The Suspicions of Mr Whicher to interest them.
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher is an astounding achievement and quite possibly the best example currently available of historical true crime scholarship.
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale
ISBN 978-0747596486, Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2009, £7.99, pp 400
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher
|
What do you think about this article?
More in Reading & Literature
Latest Articles