CHAPTERS 16 & 17
The account in the next two chapters of the events of 18 65 is drawn mainly from the Daily Telegraph, The Times, the Salisbury and Winchester Journal, the Observer, the Western Daily Press, the Somerset and Wilts Journal, the Penny Illustrated Paper, the News of the World and the Bath Chronicle, and from the files MEPO 3/ 61, HO 144/20/49113 and ASSI 25/46/8. Additional sources are listed below.
CHAPTER 16
227 On Tuesday, 25 April 1865 . . . Covent Garden. Weather conditions from reports on the Spring Derby at Epsom, seventeen miles from London, which fell on 25 April that year. After the coldest March since 1845, the Derby was the hottest in years, according to The Times, the temperatures higher than the July average.
227 The Bow Street office . . . discoloured walls. The Builder of April 1860 reported that conditions in the court were bad in winter, abominable in summer. Magistrates had been trying to secure new premises since the 1840s. Details of courtroom from Oliver Twist (1838) by Charles Dickens and Survey of London Volume 36 (1970), general editor F.H.W. Sheppard.
229 Wagner was a well-known figure. . . danger to the English Church. See Wagner of Brighton: The Centenary Book of St Paul's Church, Brighton (1949) by H. Hamilton Maughan and Aubrey Beardsley: A Biography (1999) by Matthew Sturgis.
231 In the course of this examination . . . summoned from Scotland Yard. Dolly Williamson had married since his return from Road, and now had a daughter, Emma, aged two. Durkin had been in charge of a notorious case of July 18 61 that inspired one of the essays in William Makepeace Thackeray's Roundabout Papers. A money-lender in Northumberland Street, off the Strand, had opened fire on a new client, Major William Murray of the 10th Hussars, a veteran of the Crimea. Murray fought back and eventually killed his assailant by smashing him over the head with a bottle. It emerged that the money-lender's rage sprang from a secret obsession with Murray's wife.
'After this,' wrote Thackeray, 'what is the use of being squeamish about the probabilities and possibilities in the writing of fiction? . . . After this, what is not possible? It is possible Hungerford Market is mined, and will explode some day.' The eruption of irrational violence could arouse excitement, wonder, even awe – the safety of the world was suddenly blown apart and anything at all could follow. The Northumberland Street crime, which also features in The Moonstone, is one of the cases explored in Deadly Encounters: Two Victorian Sensations (1986) by Richard D. Altick.
232 (John Foley had died . . . aged sixty-nine). His death certificate states that he died of a hydrothorax at St George's Terrace, Trowbridge, on 5 September 1864.
233 'angel in the house'. The term is from a poem published by Coventry Patmore in 1854, which describes the self-sacrificial purity and devotion of his wife, Emily.
233 'Constance Kent, it is said . . . other agency than their own.' In The Times, 26 April 1865. The Bath Express was similarly cynical about women's instincts. It argued on 29 April that this crime had a 'finesse of cruelty' of which only a woman was capable. The Saturday Review said it hoped that Constance was a 'psychological monster' rather than the embodiment of female adolescence. For attitudes to female killers, see Twisting in the Wind: The Murderess and the English Press (1998) by Judith Knelman.
235 Detective-Inspector Tanner . . . a week at a time. Tanner retired from the force due to ill-health in 1869 and opened a hotel in Winchester. He died in 1873, aged forty-two. See Dreadful Deeds and Awful Murders: Scotland Yard's First Detectives (1990) by Joan Lock.
241 The Reverend James Davies . . . very wicked young woman.' From The Case of Constance Kent, viewed in the Light of the Holy Catholic Church (1865) by James Davies and The Case of Constance Kent, viewed in the Light of the Confessional (1865) by Edwin Paxton Hood.
242 James Redding Ware reprinted his pamphlet . . . death of her brother.' From The Road Murder: Analysis of this Persistent Mystery, Published in 1862, Now Reprinted, with Further Remarks (1865) by J.R. Ware. The 1862 pamphlet was also published as a short story in Andrew Forrester's The Female Detective (1864) – 'Forrester' was a pseudonym, probably an allusion to a family firm of private inquiry agents based in the City of London.
243 From her cell . . . undeceived on this point.' Rodway passed the statement on to the press, and it appeared in several newspapers that summer.
244 Children, he wrote elsewhere . . . the figure of the child. See Embodied Selves: An Anthology of Psychological Texts 1830–1890 (1998), edited by Jenny Bourne Taylor and Sally Shuttleworth. 'The moral lesson to be learned is the existence of evil passions in the breasts of even young children,' said the Medical Times and Gazette on 22 July 1865 – quoted in Victorian Murderesses: A True History of Thirteen Respectable French and English Women Accused of Unspeakable Crimes (1977) by Mary S. Hartman.
244 Later, Bucknill told the Home Secretary . . . her father and brother. From a letter of 30 August 1865 in HO 1144/20/49113.
244 Rodway explained Constance's rationale . . . urged on her behalf.' From a letter in HO 1144/20/49113.
CHAPTER 17
