The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder And The Undoing Of A Great Victorian Detective (40 page)

52
In
Tom Fox . . .
higher intelligence'.
This collection of short stories - sold for
Is.6d
. - was published in April 1860 and went into a second edition that summer.

53
ln
1851
Whicher
. . .
fleeing the bank with their loot.
Bank robbery reports from
The Times
and the
News of the World,
June and July 1851.

53
'The credit for skill . . . Dickens and the like.
Also that year, Charley Field was criticised for the underhand manner in which he caught two men who had tried to blow up the railway tracks at Cheddington, Buckinghamshire. He disguised himself as a match-seller, according to the
Bedford Times,
took rooms in the town and made himself at home in the local pubs, where he would joshingly introduce himself as a 'timber merchant', until he got the information he sought. See
Dickens and Crime
(1962) by Philip Collins.

53
Like Whicher . . . little finger'.
Literary detectives were inconspicuous and quiet. Carter of the Yard in Mary Elizabeth Braddon's novel
Henry Dunbar
(1864) looks like something between 'a shabby-genteel half-pay captain and an unlucky stockbroker'. The police detective in Thomas Hardy's
Desperate Remedies
(1871) is 'commonplace in all except his eyes'. The narrator of John Bennett's
Tom Fox
(1860) says, 'I always made use of my eyes and ears, and said little - a precept every Detective should lay to heart.' The detective in Braddon's
The Trail of the Serpent
(1860) is mute.

54
In 1850 Charley Field . . . a lovely idea!'
From 'Three "Detective" Anecdotes' in
House-hold Words,
14 September 1850.

55
The artistry of crime . . . the analytical detective.
The 'Newgate novels' of the 1820s to 1840s were melodramas about fearless criminals such as Dick Turpin and Jack Sheppard. For the ascendancy of the detective hero, see, for example,
Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel - a History
(1972) by Julian Symons;
Bloodhounds of Heaven: The Detective in English Fiction from Godwin to Doyle
(1976) by Ian Ousby;
Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science
(1999) by Ronald Thomas; and
The Pursuit of Crime: Art and Ideology in Detective Fiction
(1981) by Dennis Porter. The shift of focus was described by Michel Foucault in
Discipline and Punish
(1975): 'we have moved from the exposition of the facts or the confession to the slow process of discovery; from the execution to the investigation; from the physical confrontation to the intellectual struggle between criminal and investigator'.

55
Whicher, who was said . . . charge of the department.
From MEPO 4/333, the register of joiners, and MEPO 21/7, a record of police pensioners.

55
In 1858 Whicher caught the valet . . . Essex cornfield.
From reports in
The Times,
30 June and 6 & 12 July 1858. Investigation into the murder of PC Clark from Metropolitan Police file MEPO 3/53.

55
In 1859
. . .
sued Bonwell for misconduct.
The Bonwell case inspired an extraordinary editorial in the
Daily Telegraph
of 10 October 1859: 'This London is an amalgam of worlds within worlds and the occurrences of every day convince us that there is not one of these worlds but has its special mysteries and its generic crimes . . . It has been said . . . that Hampstead sewers shelter a monstrous breed of black swine, which have propagated and run wild among the slimy feculence, and whose ferocious snouts will one day up-root Highgate archway, while they make Holloway intolerable with their grunting.' Quoted in
Black Swine in the Sewers of Hampstead: Beneath the Surface of Victorian Sensationalism
by Thomas Boyle (1988). See also reports in
The Times
of 19 September to 16 December 1859.

55
A couple of months before he was despatched . . . rings fall to the floor.
From reports in
The Times
of 25 April, 4 & 7 May, 12 June 1860.

56
He was 'an excellent officer . . . take on any case'.
From
A Life's Reminiscences of Scotland Yard
(1890) by Andrew Lansdowne.

56
If Whicher was certain . . . a man to me.'
From 'A Detective Police Party',
House-hold Words,
27 July 1850.

56
He was not above . . . left cheek.
From
Scotland Yard Past and Present: Experiences of Thirty-Seven Years
(1893) by Timothy Cavanagh.

CHAPTERS 5 to 14

The main sources for these chapters are: the Metropolitan Police file MEPO 3/61, which includes Whicher's reports on the murder, Whicher and Williamson's expenses claims, letters from the public and notes from the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police;
The Great Crime of 1860
(1861) by J.W. Stapleton; and newspapers including the
Somerset and Wilts Journal,
the
Bath Chronicle,
the
Bath Express,
the
Bristol Daily Post,
the
Frome Times,
the
Trow-bridge and North Wilts Advertiser,
the
Devizes Advertiser,
the
Daily Telegraph
and
The Times.
Other sources are given in the notes below.

CHAPTER 5

59
It was another dry day . . . sailed overhead.
Details of birds from
Natural History of a Part of the County of Wilts
(1843) by W.G. Maton;
A History of British Birds
(1885) by Thomas Bewick;
The Birds of Wiltshire
(19 81), edited by John Buxton. Weather here and subsequently from local newspapers and from
Agricultural Records 22O-1968 (1969)
by John Stratton.

59
In this part of England . . . suffocate it in mud.
From
The Dialect of the West of England
(1825, revised 1869) by James Jennings, and
Dialect in Wiltshire
(1987) by Malcolm Jones and Patrick Dillon.

60
There were at least four pubs . . . impossible to unravel.
Occupations and businesses from the census returns of 18 61. Information on mills from
Warp and Weft: The Story of the Somerset and Wiltshire Woollen Industry
by Kenneth Rogers (1986),
Wool and Water
by Kenneth G. Ponting (1975) and exhibits in the Frome and Trowbridge local history museums.

61
Samuel Kent was disliked . . . three or four shillings a week.
From a report in the
Frome Times
of 17 October 1860. Joseph Stapleton did not accept that Samuel was unpopular - he claimed that his colleague's 'urbanity and concessory spirit' had done much to popularise 'an obnoxious law'. Elsewhere in his book, though, he said Samuel was victimised by those to whom he was 'personally obnoxious by his faithful discharge of official duty'.

61
the Temperance Hall.
This was a building erected by the subscription of villagers who were opposed to alcohol, particularly the sale of beer on the Sabbath and the custom of children fetching beer for their parents. The
Somerset and Wilts Journal
reported that many had assembled in the hall on the Wednesday before the murder, while the rain pelted down outside, to belt out Temperance tunes; they were accompanied by the twenty-two members of the Road Fife and Drum Band, with Charles Happerfield, the postmaster, on piano.

62
A cloth merchant . . . finest houses in the area.
Information on Ledyard from
A History of the County of Wiltshire: Volume 8
(1965), edited by Elizabeth Crittall.

64
Affluent mid-Victorians . . . in their own quarters.
In
The Gentleman's House: Or How to Plan English Residences from the Parsonage to the Palace
(1864) Robert Kerr advised: 'The family constitute one community; the servants another. Whatever may be their mutual regard and confidence as dwellers under the same roof, each class is entitled to shut its door upon the other, and be alone.' Quoted in
A Man's Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England
(1999) by John Tosh.

66
Whicher was familiar . . . the wrong way.
In 'The Modern Science of Thief-taking' by W.H. Wills,
House-hold Words,
13 July 1850.

68
The writers of the mid-nineteenth century . . . cut off.
From
Mary Barton
(1848) by Elizabeth Gaskell;
The Female Detective
(1864) by Andrew Forrester; and 'The Modern Science of Thief-taking',
House-hold Words,
13 July 1850.

68
One case that turned on such evidence . . . Greenacre was hanged in May 1837.
For Greenacre's capture, see
Dreadful Deeds and Awful Murders: Scotland Yard's First Detectives
(1990) by Joan Lock.

69
In 1849 the London detectives . . . railway-station locker.
For the Mannings' murder of Patrick O'Connor, see
The Bermondsey Horror
(1981) by Albert Borowitz and MEPO 3/54, the police file on the case.

69
The detectives . . . steamships.
During the investigation - on 1 September 1849 - the
Illustrated London News
drew consolation from the fact that 'detection is sure to dog the footsteps of crime - that the guilty wretch, flying on the wings of steam at thirty miles an hour, is tracked by a swifter messenger - and that the lightning itself, by the wondrous agency of the electric telegraph, conveys to the remotest parts of the kingdom an account of his crime, a description of his person'.

69
Whicher checked the hotels . . . against the killers.
Details of Whicher's role in the investigation from MEPO 3/54 and
Dreadful Deeds and Awful Murders: Scotland Yard's First Detectives
(1990) by Joan Lock.

69
two and a half million copies.
Figure from
Victorian Studies in Scarlet
(1970) by Richard D. Altick.

69
A series of woodcuts . . . dashing action heroes.
In
The Progress of Crime; Or, The Authentic Memoirs of Maria Manning
(1849) by Robert Huish.

70
He awarded Whicher . . . PS15. From MEPO 3/54.

70
The next year . . . the detective had found.
From 'The Modern Science of Thief-taking',
House-hold Words,
13 July 1850.

71
In east London in
1829 . . .
her next two children, Saville and Eveline.
As well as
The Great Crime of 1860
(1861) by J.W. Stapleton, this account of the Kent family's past draws on certificates of birth, marriage and death, and documents in the Home Office file HO 45/6970.

CHAPTER 6

79
Joshua Parsons was born . . . hardy perennials.
Information about Parsons from census returns of 1861 and 1871 and from 'Dr Joshua Parsons (1814-92) of Beckington, Somerset, General Practitioner' by N. Spence Galbraith, in
Somerset Archaeology and Natural History,
issue 140 (1997).

80
physicians who specialised . . . perfect little devils from birth'.
From 'Moral Insanity', in the
Journal of Mental Science,
27 July 1881. In
The Borderlands of Insanity
(1875) Andrew Wynter wrote: 'It is agreed by all alienist physicians, that girls are far more likely to inherit insanity from their mothers than from the other parent . . . The tendency of the mother to transmit her mental disease is . . . in all cases stronger than the father's; some physicians have, indeed, insisted that it is twice as strong.' For writings by Savage and Wynter see
Embodied Selves: An Anthology of Psychological Texts 1830-1890
(1998), edited by Jenny Bourne Taylor and Sally Shuttleworth.

81
an almost naked woman stabbing the boy in the privy.
The idea that the killer had been naked was to recur - the
Western Daily Press
of 4 August 1860 pointed out that near the kitchen door, 'two taps of water could have been made use of to wash away any marks, if the person was nude'.

82
Objects could regain their innocence only when the killer was caught.
For an account of the way that objects are infused with significance during a detective investigation, and returned to banality afterwards, see
The Novel and the Police
(1988) by D.A. Miller.

82
the original country-house murder mystery.
The horrible circumstances in which Saville's body was found also played a part in establishing the conventions of this form. The corpse in a detective novel, wrote W.H. Auden in his essay 'The Guilty Vicarage: Notes on the Detective Story, by an Addict' (1948), 'must shock not only because it is a corpse but also because, even for a corpse, it is shockingly out of place, as when a dog makes a mess on a drawingroom carpet'. The classic country-house murder is an assault on propriety, an aggressive exposure of base needs and desires.