103 'In both we are concerned . . . detective devices.' From Psycho-Analysis and the Establishment of the Facts in Legal Proceedings (1906) by Sigmund Freud.
104 Smith was a Glasgow architect's daughter . . . hot chocolate. See The Trial of Madeleine Smith (1905), edited by A. Duncan Smith. Henry James quoted in 'To Meet Miss Madeleine Smith' in Mainly Murder (1937) by William Roughead.
105 a kind of heroine. In Latter-day Pamphlets (1850) by Thomas Carlyle.
106 The dizzying expansion . . . by 1860. Figures on newspaper readership from Black Swine in the Sewers of Hampstead (1988) by Thomas Boyle. The expansion of the press was fuelled by the repeal of the stamp tax in 1855, which ushered in the first penny newspapers the next year, and the repeal of the duty on paper in 1860.
106 The tailor had educated himself . . . do the same. Whereas Dr Kahn's anatomical museum was open only to gentlemen, according to advertisements in The Times, literate members of both sexes could read the newspapers.
107 In answer to their questions . . . William to go with me.' From notes taken by the lawyer Peter Edlin, who was present at the interview, and passed on to the author Cecil Street, who published The Case of Constance Kent (1928) under the pen name John Rhode. These and other papers about the case are in an archive assembled by Bernard Taylor, the author of Cruelly Murdered: Constance Kent and the Killing at Road Hill House (1979, revised 1989).
107 As the week wore on. . . body was found. A partly accurate version of the rumour was reported in the Somerset and Wilts Journal of 21 July 1860.
107 In the evening of Saturday, 30 June . . . wicks needed trimming. From testimony given by Samuel Kent, Foley, Urch and Heritage in the magistrates' court in October and November 1860.
109 'Every Englishman . . . closed to the world.' In Notes on England (1872).
109 Privacy had become . . . or a tea. For discussions of middle-class domestic life in Victorian England see, for instance, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780–1850 (1987) by Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, The Spectacle of Intimacy: A Public Life for the Victorian Family (2000) by Karen Chase and Michael Levenson, and The Victorian Family: Structures and Stresses (1978), edited by A. Wohl. In an essay in this anthology, Elaine Showalter writes that secrecy was 'the fundamental and enabling condition of middle-class life . . . The essential unknowability of each individual, and society's collaboration in the maintenance of a facade behind which lurked innumerable mysteries, were the themes which preoccupied many mid-century novelists.'
In 1935 the German philosopher Walter Benjamin connected this new privacy to the birth of detective fiction: 'For the private citizen the space in which he lives enters for the first time into contrast with the one of daily work . . . the traces of the inhabitant impress themselves upon the interieur and from them is born the detective story, which goes after these traces.' Quoted (and translated) by Stefano Tani in The Doomed Detective: The Contribution of the Detective Novel to Postmodern American and Italian Fiction (1984).
110 A murder like this could reveal. . . middle-class house. In an article about the popularity of detective stories, Bertolt Brecht wrote: 'We gain our knowledge of life in a catastrophic form. History is written after catastrophes . . . The death has taken place. What had been brewing beforehand? What had happened? Why has a situation arisen? All this can now perhaps be deduced.' Published in 1976 in Brecht's collected works and quoted in Delightful Murder: A Social History of the Crime Story (1984) by Ernest Mandel.
110 A month before the murder . . . oftener, a family'. Notes on Nursing quoted in the Devizes and Wiltshire Gazette of 31 May 1860.
113 In the evening . . . were still green. Information on weather and crops from the Trowbridge and North Wilts Advertiser of 21 July 1860, and the agricultural report for July in the Devizes and Wiltshire Gazette of 2 August 1860.
CHAPTER 9
115 The chairman of the magistrates . . . the services of a detective. Information about magistrates from The Book of Trowbridge (1984) by Kenneth Rogers and the census of 1861.
116 Shortly before three o'clock . . . no further remark to me,' said Whicher. From Whicher's testimony to the magistrates later that day.
120 'It's no use . . . given way. From 'A Detective Police Party', House-hold Words, 27 July 1850.
120 Dolly was a clever, energetic man . . . the first police-station library. From the census of 1841 and Critical Years at the Yard: The Career of Frederick Williamson of the Detective Department and the CID (1956) by Belton Cobb.
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