In The Perfect Murder (1989) David Lehman observed that 'the detective novel took murder out of the ethical realm and put it into the realm of aesthetics. Murder in a murder mystery becomes a kind of poetic conceit, often quite a baroque one; the criminal is an artist, the detective an aesthete and critic, and the blundering policeman a philistine.' See also The Aesthetics of Murder: A Study in Romantic Literature and Contemporary Culture (1991) by Joel Black.
142 The nightdress was his missing link . . . evolved from apes. A nightdress that tied a respectable adolescent girl to murder, like the bones that would prove the connection between men and monkeys, was a terrible object, to be feared as much as sought. For the anxieties aroused by the idea of the missing link, see Forging the Missing Link: Interdisciplinary Stories (1992) by Gillian Beer. For negative evidence and the nineteenth-century endeavour to decipher fragments, see Victorian Detective Fiction and the Nature of Evidence: The Scientific Investigations of Poe, Dickens and Doyle (2003) by Lawrence Frank, and the same author's 'Reading the Gravel Page: Lyell, Darwin, and Conan Doyle' in Nineteenth-Century Literature, December 1989.
142 Dickens compared the detectives . . . new form of crime. From the second part of 'A Detective Police Party', House-hold Words, 10 August 1850. In the mid-nineteenth century the idea of detection imprinted itself on natural history, astronomy, journalism – any pursuit that could be construed as a quest for truth.
145 In Governess Life . . . destroying the peace of families'. For the sexual and social uncertainty provoked by the figure of the governess, see The Victorian Governess (1993) by Kathryn Hughes.
146 Forbes Benignus Winslow . . . their children'. In On Obscure Diseases of the Brain, and Disorders of the Mind (1860). An extract appears in Embodied Selves: An Anthology of Psychological Texts 1830–1890 (1998), edited by Jenny Bourne Taylor and Sally Shuttleworth.
146 The detective was another . . . sully a middle-class home. For the threats to middle-class privacy posed by servants and policemen, see Domestic Crime in the Victorian Novel (1989) by Anthea Trodd.
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157 During Whicher's inquiries . . . dreadful crime.' From the Frome Times, 18 July 1860.
158 The word 'detect' . . . fascination with the case. See Domestic Crime in the Victorian Novel (1989) by Anthea Trodd. In Alain-Rene Le Sage's Le Diable Boiteux (1707), still popular in Victorian England, Asmodeus perched on the steeple of a Spanish church and stretched out his hand to lift every roof in the city, revealing the secrets within. The Times in 1828 referred to the French detective Vidocq as 'an Asmodeus'. In Dombey and Son (1848), Dickens called for 'a good spirit who would take the house-tops off, with a more potent and benignant hand than the lame demon in the tale, and show a Christian people what dark shapes issue from amidst their homes'. In House-hold Words articles of 1850 Dickens referred to how the demon could 'untile and read' men's brains, as if bodies were buildings, and himself took 'Asmodeus-like peeps' into 'the internal life' of houses from the carriage of a train. Janin's reference to Asmodeus was in Paris; Or the Book of One Hundred and One (translated 1832).
158 'If every room . . . travelling exhibition.' From The Casebook of a Victorian Detective.
159 Mrs Kent gave birth . . . Acland Saville Kent. Acland was Mrs Kent's mother's maiden name; Francis, Saville's first name, had been her father's Christian name.
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161 Whicher reached Paddington . . . at number 40. Information about Whicher's links to Holywell Street from the census returns of 1851, 1861, 1871, 'Police Informations' of 20 January 1858 in MEPO 6/ 92, and the classified columns of The Times of 3 February 1858. 'The tricks of detective police officers' from The Female Detective (1864) by Andrew Forrester.
162 the 'Big Ben' clock . . . giving off a brilliant incandescence. From reports in the News of the World, 17 June 1860.
162 Dickens visited Millbank one warm day . . . as well as anyone in it.' From a letter to W.W.F. de Cerjat of 1 February 1861, published in The Letters of Charles Dickens 1859– 61 (1997), edited by Madeline House and Graham Storey.
162 The part of Millbank . . . rising off the river. Descriptions of Pimlico from 'Stanford's Library Map of London in 1862', The Criminal Prisons of London and Scenes of London Life (1862) by Henry Mayhew and John Binny, and The Three Clerks (1858) by Anthony Trollope.
163 The public entrance . . . to the south the river. Description of Scotland Yard from prints and maps in the Westminster local history library, and from Scotland Yard Past and Present: Experiences of Thirty-Seven Years (1893) by Timothy Cavanagh. In 1890 the Metropolitan Police headquarters moved to a building on the Thames Embankment, which was named New Scotland Yard, and in 1967 to an office block in Victoria Street, which was given the same name.
163 The letters, addressed to Mayne . . . throughout the month. Most of the letters from the public are in MEPO 3/61.
