The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder And The Undoing Of A Great Victorian Detective (46 page)

299
his confidential reports to Sir Richard Mayne. In MEPO 3/61.

AFTERWORD

303
Stapleton's explanation . . . cut into his neck.
Joshua Parsons, who was in charge of the post-mortem, disagreed with this interpretation of the cuts to Saville's finger. The incisions had not bled, he told the magistrates' court on 4 October 1860, which meant that they must have been made after death, probably by accident. In any case, he said, he thought the cuts were on the right hand, not the left. His reading of the body supported the theory that the child was suffocated, a finding that Stapleton was determined to disprove. The doctors' dispute returns Saville to the realm of riddle and debate. The image of the live child dims.

303
'The detective story . . . a happy ending.'
In a letter of 2 June 1949 to James Sandoe. From
The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Non-Fiction, 1909-1959
(2000), edited by Tom Hiney and Frank MacShane. Chandler argued in the same letter that a detective story and a love story could never be combined, because the detective story was 'incapable of love'.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Page 42: Metropolitan Police officers discover a body under the kitchen floor of Frederick and Maria Manning in Bermondsey, south London, 1844 (from
Mysteries of Police and Crime
by Arthur Griffiths)

Page 58: Floorplan of Road Hill House

Page 76: Map of the village of Road

Page 90: Map of area surrounding Road

Page 98: Inaccurate floor plan of Road Hill House, published in the
Bath Chronicle,
12 July 1860
(courtesy Daniel Brown/ Bath in Time/ Bath Central Library)

Page 160: Map of central London

Page 206: Lady Audley and an alienist, from a serialisation of Mary Elizabeth Braddon's
Lady Audley's Secret
in the
London Journal,
1863

Page 226: Constance Kent's confession, April 1865

Page 246: A postcard of Constance Kent, printed in 1865

Page 260: Female inmates of Millbank prison in the 1860s (from
Memorials of Millbank
by Arthur Griffiths)

Page 282: Map of Australia

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Further sources are detailed in the Notes

PRIMARY SOURCES

Metropolitan Police, Home Office and court files

ASSI 25/46/8

HO 45/6970

HO 144/20/49113

MEPO 2/23

MEPO 3/61

MEPO 3/53

MEPO 3/54

MEPO 4/2

MEPO 4/333

MEPO 7/7

MEPO 21/7

Newspapers

The Bath Chronicle

The Bristol Daily Post

The Daily Telegraph

The Frome Times

The Morning Post

The News of the World

The Observer

The Penny Illustrated Paper

The Somerset and Wilts Journal

The Times

The Trowbridge & North Wilts Advertiser

The Western Daily Press

Journals

All the Year Round

The Annual Register

Chambers's Edinburgh Journal

House-hold Words

The Law Times

Once a Week

Books and pamphlets

A Barrister-at-Law,
The Road Murder: Being a Complete Report and Analysis of the Various Examinations and Opinions of the Press on this Mysterious Tragedy,
London, 1860

'Anonyma' (W. Stephens Hayward),
Revelations of a Lady Detective,
London, 1864

Braddon, Mary Elizabeth,
Lady Audley's Secret,
London, 1862

Cavanagh, Timothy,
Scotland Yard Past and Present: Experiences of Thirty-Seven Years,
London, 1893

Coleridge, Ernest Hartley,
Life and Correspondence of John Duke, Lord Coleridge,
London, 1904

Collins, Wilkie,
The Woman in White,
London, 1860

Collins, Wilkie,
The Moonstone,
London, 1868

Davies, James,
The Case of Constance Kent, viewed in the Light of the Holy Catholic Church,
London, 1865

Dickens, Charles,
Bleak House,
London, 1853

Dickens, Charles,
The Mystery of Edwin Drood,
London, 1870

House, Madeline and Storey, Graham,
The Letters of Charles Dickens
1859-61, London, 1997

Hood, Edwin Paxton,
The Case of Constance Kent, viewed in the Light of the Confessional,
London, 1865

Forrester, Andrew,
The Female Detective,
London, 1864

Griffiths, Arthur,
Secrets of the Prison House,
London, 1894

Griffiths, Arthur,
Mysteries of Police & Crime,
London, 1899

Griffiths, Arthur,
Fifty Years of Public Service,
London, 1904

Hotten, John Camden,
The Slang Dictionary; or, The Vulgar Words, Street Phrases, and 'Fast' Expressions of High and Low Society, etc,
London, 1864

Huish, Robert,
The Progress of Crime; or, The Authentic Memoirs of Maria Manning,
London, 1849

James, Henry,
The Turn of the Screw,
London, 1898

Kenealy, Maurice Edward,
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,
London, 1913

Kent, William,
Guidebook to the Manchester Aquarium,
Manchester, 1875

Kent, William,
A Manual of the Infusoria: Including a Description of All Known Flagellate, Ciliate and Tentaculiferous Protozoa, British and Foreign, and an Account of the Organisation and Affinities of the Sponges,
London,
1880-82

Lansdowne, Andrew,
A Life's Reminiscences of Scotland Yard,
London, 1890

Mayhew, Henry,
London Labour and the London Poor,
London, 1861

Mayhew, Henry, and Binny, John,
The Criminal Prisons of London and Scenes of London Life,
London, 1862

McLevy, James,
The Casebook of a Victorian Detective,
ed. George Scott-Moncreiff, Edinburgh, 1975, a selection from
Curiosities of Crime in Edinburgh
and
The Sliding Scale of Life,
Edinburgh, 1861

Poe, Edgar Allan, 'The Man of the Crowd' (1840), 'The Murders in the rue Morgue' (1841), 'The Mystery of Marie Roget' (1842), 'The Tell-tale Heart' (1843), reprinted in
Complete Stories and Poems,
New York, 1966

Saville-Kent, William,
The Great Barrier Reef,
London, 1893

Saville-Kent, William,
The Naturalist in Australia,
London, 1897

Stapleton, Joseph Whitaker,
The Great Crime of 1860: Being a Summary of the Facts Relating to the Murder Committed at Road; a Critical Review of its Social and Scientific Aspects; and an Authorised Account of the Family; With an Appendix, Containing the Evidence Taken at the Various Inquiries,
London, 1861

Ware, James Redding,
The Road Murder: Analysis of this Persistent Mystery, Published in 1862, Now Reprinted, with Further Remarks,
London, 1865

'Waters' (William Russell),
Recollections of a Detective Police-Officer,
London, 1856

'Waters' (William Russell), ed,
Experiences of a Real Detective
by Inspector 'F', London, 1862

SECONDARY SOURCES

Altick, Richard D.,
Victorian Studies in Scarlet,
New York, 1970

Deadly Encounters: Two Victorian Sensations,
Philadelphia, 1986

The Anatomy of Murder: Famous Crimes Critically Considered by Members of the Detection Club,
London, 1936

Atlay, J.B.,
Famous Trials of the Century,
London, 1899

Beer, Gillian,
Forging the Missing Link: Interdisciplinary Stories,
Cambridge, 1992

Boyle, Thomas,
Black Swine in the Sewers of Hampstead: Beneath the Surface of Victorian Sensationalism,
New York, 1988

Bridges, Yseult,
Saint - with Red Hands?: The Chronicle of a Great Crime,
London, 1954

Browne, Douglas G.,
The Rise of Scotland Yard: A History of the Metropolitan Police,
London, 1956

Chesney, Kellow,
The Victorian Underworld,
London, 1970

Cobb, Belton,
Critical Years at the Yard: The Career of Frederick Williamson of the Detective Department and the CID,
London, 1956

Cobb, Belton,
The First Detectives and the Early Career of Richard Mayne, Commissioner of Police,
London, 1957

Collins, Philip,
Dickens and Crime,
London, 1962

Dilnot, George,
Scotland Yard: Its History and Organisation 1829-1929,
London, 1929

Emsley, Clive,
The English Police: A Political and Social History
, London, 1991

Frank, Lawrence,
Victorian Detective Fiction and the Nature of Evidence: The Scientific Investigations of Poe, Dickens and Doyle,
New York, 2003

Harrison, A.J.,
Savant of the Australian Seas,
Hobart, 1997

Hartman, Mary S.,
Victorian Murderesses,
New York, 1977

Hughes, Kathryn,
The Victorian Governess,
London, 1993

Kayman, Martin A.,
From Bow Street to Baker Street: Mystery, Detection and Narrative,
Basingstoke, 1992

Knelman, Judith,
Twisting in the Wind: The Murderess and the English Press,
Toronto, 1998

Lehman, David,
The Perfect Murder: A Study in Detection,
New York, 1989

Lock, Joan,
Dreadful Deeds and Awful Murders: Scotland Yard's First Detectives 1829-1878,
Somerset, 1990

Maughan, Herbert Hamilton,
Wagner of Brighton: The Centenary Book of St Paul's Church, Brighton,
Loughlinstown, 1949

Miller, D.A.,
The Novel and the Police,
Berkeley, 1988

Miller, Wilbur R.,
Cops and Bobbies: Police Authority in New York and London, 1830-1870,
Chicago, 1999

Ousby, Ian,
Bloodhounds of Heaven: The Detective in English Fiction from Godwin to Doyle,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1976

Porter, Dennis,
The Pursuit of Crime: Art and Ideology in Detective Fiction,
New Haven, 1981

Rhode, John,
The Case of Constance Kent,
London, 1928

Rogers, Kenneth,
The Book of Trowbridge,
Buckingham, 1984

Roughead, William,
The Rebel Earl and Other Studies,
Edinburgh, 1926

Shpayer-Makov, Haia,
The Making of a Policeman: A Social History of a Labour Force in Metropolitan London, 1829-1914,
Aldershot, 2002

Symons, Julian,
Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel - a History,
London, 1972

Taylor, Bernard,
Cruelly Murdered: Constance Kent and the Killing at Road Hill House,
London, 1979, revised 1989

Taylor, Jenny Bourne,
In the Secret Theatre of Home: Wilkie Collins, Sensation Narrative, and Nineteenth-Century Psychology,
London, 1988

Taylor, Jenny Bourne and Shuttleworth, Sally, eds,
Embodied Selves: An Anthology of Psychological Texts 1830-1890,
Oxford, 1998

Thomas, Ronald,
Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science, Cambridge, 1999

Trodd, Anthea,
Domestic Crime in the Victorian Novel,
Basingstoke, 1989

Wohl, A.,
The Victorian Family: Structures and Stresses,
London, 1978

Woodruff, John Douglas,
The Tichborne Claimant: A Victorian Mystery,
London, 1957

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am very grateful to Bernard Taylor for directing me to his archive of papers on the Road Hill murder and for allowing me to use the images he gathered - he has been exceptionally generous. Thanks also to Stewart Evans, the custodian of the archive, for his guidance and hospitality, and to Cynthia Yates for being such a welcoming and informative hostess at Langham (formerly Road Hill) House. For help on specific queries, thanks to Joseph Wisdom at St Paul's Cathedral, Susanna Lamb at Madame Tussaud's, Eleri Lynn at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Katherine White at Trowbridge Museum and Anthony J. Harrison in Australia. Thank you to Leslie Robinson for the maps. More generally, I am indebted to the staff of the National Archives, the Family Records Centre, Battersea Library, Southwark Local History Library, Trowbridge Museum, Frome Museum, the London Library, the British Library, the London Metropolitan Archives and the Metropolitan Police Historical Collection.