After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Victorian Teen Who Murdered Her Baby Brother

Episode Date: July 22, 2024

In 1860 Britain was rocked by the brutal murder of 3-year-old Francis Kent inside his family home. Scotland Yard sent their finest but when a teenage sister, Constance Kent, was accused there was outcry. How could a well-mannered young lady be guilty of murder? It was a crime against class and gender to suggest such a thing. The detective was sent packing, but was he right all along?Anthony Delaney tells Maddy Pelling the story this week.Edited by Tomos Delargy, produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign here for up to 50% for 3 months using code AFTERDARK.You can take part in our listener survey here.After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast

It was the night of the 29th of June 1860, and Francis Savile Kent lay fast asleep following a day of tantrums, chaos and play. For such is the obdurate schedule of any three-year-old boy. Little Francis, or Savile as he was known, lived with his large, well-to-do family in the pretty English village of Road in Wiltshire. All was still that night, and the house ticked and turned as it might on any other night.

The world outside was kept at bay by the high walls and iron gates that separated the family from any potential intruders. The only unusual aspect of life at the Road Hill house that night was that at some point after midnight, the family dog barked. The following morning then, Elizabeth Gough, the family nursemaid, made her way to the nursery to rouse her second youngest charge, Savile, only to discover his cot was empty. Now later, Elizabeth would recall a specific and chilling detail of this scene,

the ghostly imprint of the toddler. As if he had been softly taken out, all nine members of the family and their three servants immediately sprang into action. They tore the house apart, looking under beds, searching the cellar, calling out across finely manicured lawns. But little Savile was nowhere to be found. Samuel Kent, Savile's father, sent word to the village.

His son was missing and he offered a sizable reward for anyone who could return the child to his family. Local men immediately began to search the village for the child, while others combed the grounds of the house. Soon, a series of shouts were heard coming from two men amongst the search party, Mr. Nutt and Mr. Benger. They had found something. They had seen a pool of blood leading to the staff privy. Inside, it appeared somebody had secreted a bloody blanket, but that wasn't all. The blanket was wrapped about the lifeless body of the missing little boy, not yet four years old.

The boy had sustained a cut across his throat, a stab wound to his chest, and bruising around his mouth. Benger carried Saville chest and bruising around his mouth. Benger carried Saville's body back to the house then. Saville, dressed in his nightgown, was lost now to a never-ending sleep. This is after dark. And this is the curious case of Constance Kent. Hello and welcome to After Dark. I am so excited to do this episode that I forgot what my name is. It's Maddie Pelling.

Oh yeah, that's the one. And you are Anthony Delaney. And today we're getting into a story that I think I first read in Kate Summerscale's book, The Suspicions of Mr. Witcher. I have to say, it is one that has genuinely, and I'm not just saying this for the sake of the part, it has genuinely stayed with me in my mind because it's a locked-door mystery. It's a tiny little confined world. It's a country house. It's the murder of a child, which is so grim, and it's a dark story, and we will get into some of this. But it's one that captured the imagination of people at that time and continues to capture people's imagination. So I'm very much looking forward to speaking about this one. We're in Britain in 1860.

Anthony, can you give us a little bit of context for the story before we begin? AC It is a time of relative peace, I say that acknowledging some of the frictions that exist in the 19th century. But in Britain in 1860, for instance, the Open Championship, which becomes known as the British Open, is played for the first time at Prestwick Golf Course in Ayrshire, Scotland. The event was won by Willie Park, Sr. if you should ever need that information in a pub quiz. In America at the same time, Abraham Lincoln is elected as the 16th President of the United States and the first Republican to hold that office. And this is also the time of Charles Dickens, and he has published one of my favorites. Well, it used to be one of my favorites. I don't think I have patience for it now. It's weird,

isn't it? But Great Expectations, anyways, what we're talking about, starts to become serialized in all the year round, his magazine. So, you know, it's a time of culture, it's a time of political intrigue, but also of politeness and the middle classes and the upper middle classes, which we're talking about here and when we're talking about the Kent household. Yeah, I mean, thinking about Charles Dickens that, you know, famously, the chronicler of the lower classes amongst others, but, you know, that's what we remember him for today. And I think, to me, the 1860s is almost peak Victoriana, you know, it's a time of affluence, on the one hand, and extreme poverty on the other. And you kind of have

these two very disparate worlds. And the story we're out in rural Wiltshire, I don't live too far from this village. I actually drive through it quite a lot. I don't think that you can see the house from the road. I never really paid that much attention having not realized that that was the house because in the years since this case happened, the house itself has been renamed. So the village is called Road, interestingly, Road R-O-D-E. The house was initially called Road Hill House, Road as in what you drive along. But now it's called something different. I think it's called Langham House. So it's slightly hidden away now, but it is really

not that far from me. And it's still today a really rural part of the world. It's a fairly affluent part of the world still, and it's a really picturesque, calm, beautiful place. And it's so difficult to imagine this incident happening in that setting in this moment in the 19th century when everything, if you are wealthy, white, living in the countryside, in a country house, in his comfortable life. The little boy in the story, Savile, has everything at his feet. His life ahead of him will be one of luxury and comfort, and of course it's taken from him. It feels like a really insidious moment in a decade of relative peace and privilege for people like him.

So let's take a journey inside that house that's not so far from you then. Let's go back to 1860 and look at the occupants of that house, just as we would in a criminal lineup, I suppose, when we're looking at suspects in this particular case. So let's start with the head of the household. We have Mr. Samuel Saville Kent, and he is 59 at this point in 1860. And he is the inspector of factories for the Home Office. So he has a government job, relatively well paid, very much the patriarch, and very much part of patriarchal society, and feeds into those traditional elements of

Victoriana. As the inspector of factories as well, of course, he is sort of bridging those two worlds. He goes home to his very comfortable Wiltshire slash Somerset pile, but presumably is coming into contact with the poorest and least privileged in society as the inspector of factories, which is kind of interesting here, I think. Anyway, who's next? So next we have Mary Kent, and Mary is Samuel's wife. She is that bit younger, she's 40 years of age, and she is the mother of three of his children,

we'll come to that in just a second, and she is heavily pregnant at this moment in time, in 1860, with her fourth child. So, head of the household, Samuel Kent, and his second wife, Mary. We then have a set of four children who are from Samuel Kent's first marriage. Those four children are Mary Ann Alice Kent, who was 29 at this time, Elizabeth Kent, who was 28, Constance Kent, who was 16, and William Savill Kent, who is 14. So Mary Anne, Elizabeth, Constance, and William are all from Samuel's first marriage. Are you keeping up? This is a complicated family structure. LWIPE I am keeping up, but I will say Mary Anne and Elizabeth, respectively 29 and 28, quite old to be still

living at home. Yeah, they are. And they're there in the household on that this night. These are the people who are present as well. So it's not a case that they're linked to it by family. They're actually there that night. But not Mary Kent's children. These are the children from the first marriage, and we will come to that in a moment. Then we have three further children, Mary Amelia Kent, who's five, Francis Savile Kent, who we met in the opening, who was three, and Evelyn Kent, who is one. Now these are Samuel and Mary's children. So that's the family.

That's the family unit that we have, a blended family, not particularly unusual. There's quite a few of them for this period of time in this particular class bracket. Nonetheless, a blended family is not totally unheard of. It's not an unusual setup. What we also have there are three live-in staff in the household. So we have the family and three live-in staff. Those three live-in staff are Elizabeth Goth. She's 22 and she cares for the younger

three children. So she's the nursemaid. We have Sarah Cox, who's 22, she's a housemaid. And we have 23-year-old Sarah Kerslake, who's the cook. So the staff who are living in are Elizabeth, 22, Sarah Cox, who's the housemaid, 22, and Sarah Kerslake, who's the cook 23. So this, Maddie, as you can probably see, is a very busy household. Yes, it's surprisingly full household, given the number of children, actually. And the other thing that's striking me is, and I don't know if this is necessarily relevant to solving the case, but you know, I'm picking up the clues already. There are a lot of women in their 20s in this household, which is just sort of interesting, you know, We've got Mary Anne and Elizabeth, the two eldest daughters from

the previous marriage, 29, 28. And then we've got the nursemaid Elizabeth, 22. Sarah Cox, the housemaid, also 22. And then a 23 year old cook, Sarah. Just interesting to me. We think of, I suppose, the image of the country house that we have is maybe sort of slightly older servants. I'm thinking of sort of the Downton Abbey effect with elderly butlers and old cooks and ancient patriarch living there, commanding everyone. And actually, this is a house that's full of youth, right down to the youngest child. It is and it's probably worth keeping in people's minds that this isn't as grand as Downton. So while we are definitely very much at the upper end of the middle classes here, this is not the elite, this is not the land of gentry, this is not the aristocracy. So that might account for the fact

that the staff are a little bit younger, because it means they're going to be a little bit cheaper to employ. And another point that you said there is that the house seems quite full. And it is particularly full because usually they would be two people down. Constance, who was 16, and William, who was 14, would usually be at boarding schools, but they're currently home for the summer holidays. So the house is actually a little bit fuller than it usually would be. And there's something very, you know, the iconic hot summer in a country house, we see it again and again in literature, it's in the go between it's in atonement, it's in Brides Had We Visited, you know, all of these, it's a moment, isn't it? It's a vibe, it's in salt burn, you know, and it's a moment that seems associated in art, at least with sort of reflection looking inwards on oneself, on one's family, and also something slightly sinister about it. And I love that even though it's a real story, it has that

element, that setting that we are all very familiar with in our own cultural moment. moment. And we've kind of invented those moments for ourselves, I suppose, haven't we? So we can infer those feelings, those summer intensity, that real golden hue almost onto this story, which makes what happens, as we know in the very beginning, all the more tragic. But let's go back to that night then. And let's talk about the way and the order in which events unfold. Because we have these details, because obviously there is an investigation that happens in this house. So on the 29th of June, 1860 at 8pm, after a very normal day in the house, the nursemaid Elizabeth Goff puts Savile Kent, the three year old boy, into bed in his nursery at 8 o'clock. into bed in his nursery at eight o'clock. So Savile's gone to bed by eight. Come 10 p.m., we know the only person still up and about

in that house is Mr. Kent. At 11.30 p.m., he wanders the house and he checks all the doors and the windows, checking that they're locked and bolted before he goes to bed. I think that's an interesting detail. I wonder if he did that every night, or if that was especially remembered or concocted for the purposes of what we know unfolds next.

That's such an interesting question, isn't it? Because you and I are particularly obsessed with this. I think one of the first conversations we had when we were thinking about After Dark as a podcast was the shutting down of the house at night. That was something we really wanted to look at. And the locking up. And this is something that you see throughout time, but certainly at the end of the 17th century into the 19th century, this ritualistic locking of the house, closing the shutters, and whose responsibility it is to do that in the house is so interesting. And it surprises me here that it's Kent and not, say, a footman or another male member of the staff. And I think that tells us something about the house is grand enough to have servants,

but it's not that grand. That's number one. And I agree with you entirely. The other point to bear in mind there, which will become apparent in a moment, is I wonder if he did do it, though, simply because, as you were saying, other people within that household had that task to undertake as part of their duties. I wonder if retrospectively Mr Kent was placing himself in that position of, you know, I'm authoritative, I have control over my house, but actually one of my children is missing, but I did everything I should have done. Look, I know we're speculating. And here's why. Oh, by the way, at 1am, that's when the dog barks approximately.

That's just an incidental piece of detail. We can come back to that, but it's, we don't know if it's important, but that's when it's recorded as. But here's my doubt about whether or not Mr. Kent actually closed down the house like he says he did, because at 6am, Sarah Kerslake, the cook, and Sarah Cox, the housemaid, they open the house back up. So listen, it's not conclusive, but certainly opening and closing down the house belongs to household staff. So it's just interesting to see that they're definitely opening it up.

Yes, that is very interesting. And it kind of gives weight to your theory that maybe Mr. Kent wasn't the one to close down the house at night. He'd probably, I mean, this is entirely speculation, but I sort of imagined him having his third whiskey and staggering off the stairs. Now the dog bark is going to be incredibly important. So let's just pause on that a moment. Dogs in country houses often kept for protection, let loose in the house or even in the grounds at night. Do we know if this dog was inside or outside the house? This dog was outside, absolutely a security dog. You're bang on with that. That was, it was a form of, of security for the household. And the reason as well, why I'm asking about the inside or outside question for

the dog is who would have heard that? And if a dog barked outside a protection dog, were there certain members of the house who are more wired, I suppose, to hear that as an alert and to be awoken by that than others? For example, would one of the eldest daughters have been alarmed by that? Or would they have slept through it thinking that's someone else's problem? Also, side note, I recently went camping and someone walked very quietly past our tent at about 1am, very innocently to go to the loo. But one of my dogs also did not like it. And she was lying next to my head.

And she barked so loudly that my entire soul not only left my body, it left the tent and the campsite. And I honestly thought in that moment I was dying. So dog barks, camping loud. left the tent and the campsite. And I honestly thought in that moment I was dying. Dog barks can be loud. I'm going camping soon. No, I don't want to go camping and this is not helping. Also, your dogs are so tiny, they are not going to save you in an emergency. No, they think they can, but no. It's funny you should say that about who noticed the dog, because the dog was noticed by quite a few people in the household. So many people, in fact, that

it wasn't the investigators didn't deem it necessary to record the individuals who had seen it. The kind of the implication is the household heard this. Okay. Generic dog bark. Got it. Yes. Now just take a step back for a second to the 6am opening up of the house again.

When Sarah Kerslake, the cook and Sarah Cox, the housemaid go downstairs, they notice that the door to the drawing room has already been unlocked, and that the middle slash window was partly open. But they did not think this was suspicious, they just assumed somebody had been up. And it also gives you an indication of the casual nature of the house. If that was in a much bigger house, that would be suspicious because things were run. Yeah, everyone would have their assigned roles, right? Exactly. Exactly.

I suppose also, if Mr. Kent had locked up and gone to bed, maybe, you know, 22 year old cook and housemaid Sarah and Sarah, the Sarahs, maybe they didn't want to say, excuse me, sir, you forgot to lock the door, and you've left a window open. It's not very secure. They're not going to say that to their employer. So they probably saw that and thought, he had four whiskeys, not three, and he'd forgotten to do it. counted in the narrative that Elizabeth Goff, the nursemaid, had gone to Saville's bedroom door and that she went through the nursery door to find the cot empty. Something happened between then and her raising the alarm that is also indicative of this tone within the household, and that was she assumed that Saville was missing because his mother had gotten up in the middle of the night and brought him into her bed with him. So Elizabeth, the nursemaid, did not raise the alarm at 7am when she saw the cot was empty because she assumed Saville was in with his mother. It wasn't until 7.30pm when she would have

expected everyone to be up because Saville would usually have been up. So if he had been with his mother, there's no way she would still be in bed, essentially, that Elizabeth becomes suspicious. She then goes to the bedroom of Mrs. Mary Kent, who is the wife in the house, and knocks on the door, asks if she has Savile with her. And it's then at 730 am, that they realize that little Saval is missing. LR. And this is the scene that we heard at the beginning where this frantic search happens. For anyone who's lost sight of a child for even a second, it can be so anxiety-inducing.

So you can imagine the palpable fear in this moment of the absolute panic. And of course, when they do find the body of Saval, he is tragically dead. CB This is the start of the intensity and the speculation that unfolds over the coming, actually, weeks, months and years, realistically. But in that moment, the local constable and the priest is sent for, as is the local doctor. And the doctor comes and estimates that the time of death was about 3am. This is the only real time that the dog bark becomes significant because the dog was heard barking, we think around 1am remember, so that's a two hour gap there. Does that link in any way to this? We don't know, they didn't know at the time, but the doctor estimates that the time of death was

approximately 3am. Although I would say obviously, we're talking about 1860 here, science is not what it was now. So those precise timings are obviously far more of an estimate than they would be exact. So we have a body now, and we have a household that has supposedly been locked in on itself with the dog patrolling outside. Of course, that may not have been the case. The door is unlocked when the servants come down. The slash window is partially open. Is this a case that someone has come into the house and taken Savile? Is this someone from within the house who's committed the crime? And am I right in thinking that the police being called is the next step to try and establish this?

Yes. Yes, absolutely. By 10am, Superintendent John Foley had arrived at Rodehill House. He inspected everything in the grounds, the house, spoke to the individuals. It was his thinking that it had to have been somebody within the Kent family or the Kent household that was involved in this murder. So this is Superintendent John Foley. He is the local superintendent and he suspects someone in the family or the household. He says, he's quoted as saying, this is after the fact. From the manner in which the child was taken away and murdered, the deed was done by some intimate of the house." Now, I can think of the first person you would naturally suspect in this situation, the person potentially responsible for the child more than any other,

am I right in thinking? The nursemaid's going to get it in the neck initially. Yes, July 10th, Elizabeth Goth, the nursemaid is arrested on suspicion of the murder of Savile Kent. Mrs. Kent, however, absolutely does not believe that Elizabeth could be guilty. She holds no truck with this, even in the face of her son having been murdered. She does not think that Elizabeth Goth, the nursemaidmaid is guilty and I think that's really telling we know it's telling because there is no evidence found against golf and she is later released there isn't even a trial she they just have to let her go because they have no reason to keep her. Interesting as well thinking about the Victorian obsession really with. really, with good mothers and women who are motherly and a mother's instinct and all of that. And I wonder how much that plays into Elizabeth getting released in that Mrs. Kent, Mrs. Mary Kent, is willing to endorse her and show her support to Elizabeth as a carer of children, and specifically a carer of her own children. I wonder if that is coming

into play at all in this moment. my inferences that Mr. Kent also thought that she was innocent, by the way. And I'll tell you why a little bit later on down the story. But either way, she's released and there's just nothing. There's nothing to link her to this. Also, I think, you know, just logically thinking Elizabeth Goff had gone to the room at 7am, thought that Savile was with his mother and it wasn't until she checked with his mother that the alarm was raised. So surely she would have raised the alarm at 7am had she known what the situation was, you know? Yeah, those aren't necessarily the actions of a guilty person, unless she thought it through really, really, really carefully, which is a potential option. Yeah.

So Elizabeth is released without charge. But of course, there is still a mystery and there's still a body and there's still a crime that needs to be solved. So what happens next? Have you ever wondered if the hanging gardens of Babylon were actually real? Or what made Alexander so great? Join me, Tristan Hughes, twice a week every week on the Ancients from History hit, where I'm joined by leading academics, bestselling authors and world-class archaeologists to shine a light on some of ancient history's most fascinating questions, like who built Stonehenge and why? What are the Dead Sea Scrobs and why

are they so valuable? And were the Spartan Warriors really as formidable as the history books say? Join me, Tristan Hughes, twice a week, every week on the Ancients from History hit, wherever you get your podcasts. So because this story has now made national press, there is some pressure on local authorities to solve this case, to know what's going on in this rural Wiltshire idyll, I suppose. in this rural Wiltshire idyll, I suppose. And so a very famous detective, Detective Jonathan Jack Witcher, is sent from London and he arrives in road on July the 14th. And from there, this story just takes on a whole new dimension. And I think it's Witcher's involvement that ensures that this story becomes the thing of legend, as well as this incredibly difficult history.

Jonathan Jack Witcher was 46 years old when he took on the Road Hill House case. By then, his hard work and natural talent had seen him solve multiple high profile crimes in London, and so his reputation preceded him. He was referred to in some circles as the Prince of Detectives. Charles Dickens had noted that Witcher possessed a reserved and thoughtful air. Witcher was of average height, with mousy brown hair, blue eyes, and poxmarked skin. Very quickly after his arrival, Witcher's attention turned to sixteen-year-old Constance Kent, the half-sister of the murdered boy.

Witcher established that Constance had been raised mostly by her stepmother, because she had in fact previously been her governess. Rumour had it that the affair between Mr. Kent and Mary Pratt, as she had, in fact, previously been her governess. Rumour had it that the affair between Mr. Kent and Mary Pratt, as she had been at the time, had actually began when the first Mrs. Kent was still alive. Either way, when the first Mrs. Kent died at the age of 44, when Constance was just eight years old,

Constance's father married her governess. Constance, it appears, had been very unhappy with this new arrangement. She had run away when she was thirteen, taking her brother William, also from Kent's first marriage, with her. Constance went so far as to disguise herself in boy's clothing and cut off her hair to conceal her true identity, though she was soon discovered at Bath and returned home. Witcher was certain that the murderer was a family member and Constance, he felt, possessed the intelligence

to orchestrate and conceal the murder. Further, one of Constance's nightgowns was nowhere to be found. It had been noticed missing shortly after the murder. Witcher was certain that if he could locate that nightgown, it would link Constance directly to the dead body of her half-brother. Witcher was further convinced that Savile had died at Constance's hand because when she had run away three years earlier, she had tried to conceal the hair she had cut

from her head in the exact same privy wherein Savile's body had been found. In light of his suspicions, Jack Witcher arrested Constance Kent at Roadhill House on Friday, July 20th. Upon being taken up, Constance cried, I am innocent, I am innocent. The teenager was placed in custody at De Vizas Wiltshire, whilst Witcher searched for definitive proof of her involvement in the murder. He must, he knew, locate the missing nightgown.

This is quite a development. I assumed that this blended Kent family, the internal politics of it, Kent family, the internal politics of it was going to come into play and it absolutely has here. It seems to me that Witcher does quite quickly grasp onto this idea, this motivation, and I think it would be not inaccurate for him to assume that teenage girls with a stepmother and certainly one who'd been a governess to them before, that there would be some resentment there. Is it enough for them to commit murder? And murder, don't forget of their own half sibling, and an infant at that? I don't know. Well, I mean, it certainly is a question. And we shall get into

that question in just a moment. But so much happens in that time period that I think it's worth just kind of recapping it for a second. So Witcher arrives on the 14th of July 1860 and very quickly he starts to suspect Constance, the 16-year-old, from the first marriage. Now the reason he suspects Constance is because Constance has been unhappy with the arrangement of her father's new marriage, or relatively new marriage, to Mary Kent. Mary Kent had been her governess. So Mary Kent had looked after these children when they were younger and now her father has married her. So that's unusual in the first place. Then there's these three younger children who have come into the picture, one of whom is a boy, of course. So what does that do to Constance's beloved brother, William?

So now there's this potential new heir in there as well, Savile. And we are left in a situation where we know for a fact that Constance is unhappy. It's not just saying she may be unhappy because she runs away. She does that thing that so many teenagers do. So at 13, she goes and she takes her brother with her. And Witcher, to me, is not just saying, oh, there's a weird dynamic in this family because it's a blended family and there's some tensions there. No, he's going, this girl has gone so far in the past as to cut off all her hair, dress as a boy, take her younger brother and leave with the plan in mind to leave England, by the way. She's going to the coast to get on a boat and she gets to Bath. She gets quite a decent

distance. Because of that runaway attempt, he has grounds for suspicion. But then couple that with the fact that she hid that hair and her clothing in that privy where Savile's body was also found. I think he's justified. Do you or do you not? Do you think he's not justified? LX Look, it's not looking great for her. I will say that. But what teenage girl hasn't wanted to curl her hair off and run away? Like, you know. Wanted to, but didn't. The fact that she at 13 went through with that shows, and he was really keen on Constance's intellect and her intelligence and her drive and her introspection.

He thought her personality type, which of course is potentially problematic in its own execution, but he thought that her personality lent itself to somebody who could commit this crime and that nobody else really in the families did. I will say that the hiding the things in the privy in the past is not great. It's not looking good for her. So there's this crucial piece of information that's missing though. The nightgown. We know that one of her nightgowns is missing. Witcher feels that that is the clue that is going to nail this case, and that is going to tell us that Constance really did do it. But he hasn't got it. What happens now? He hasn't got it. And so as a result, things fall apart really quickly.

In the same way as they did for Elizabeth Gough, the nursemaid, when she was arrested, there is just no evidence. So by the 27th of July, the inquiry into Savile's murder begins, Witcher has not found the nightgown, as you said, Maddy. And so as a result, Constance cannot be held. And Herbarister claims as much at the time. Herbarister, I feel, I mean, obviously he has a job to do, but I feel as if his words, which I'll share with you in just a moment, are really indicative of the fact that he thought that this was outrageous. So he says, "'There was not a tittle of evidence against her' Constance he's talking about here.

And yet this young lady had been dragged like a common felon to the Vizier's jail. No motive has been established which would induce the prisoner to stain her hands and the blood of the poor child. A more unjust, a more improper, a more improbable case was never brought before any court of justice in any place." Those are really strong words and we have to remember as well that this is a young lady being the operative word here. This is the daughter of the inspector for factories for the home office. You know, we've talked about the inspector for factories for the home office. We've talked about the house not being the grandest house. It's still a very fine country house. These are not people in the middle or working classes. And in comes, okay, a famous detective, but a

detective from those lower orders who's used to dealing with the lower orders. He's come from London. He's come from this grimy, hard, tough city where he's made his name for himself, and he walks into this polite, refined house, albeit with a brutal murder and a dead child in it, and he makes these accusations. And again, I think there's something here about the Victorian ideals of femininity coming into play, and it couldn't possibly have been a charming young woman who is refined and respectable. Okay, she's had some troubles in the past. But that class tension, the gender tension there is absolutely at the fore. And of course, of course

it's something that the barrister picks up on and uses to his advantage. Of course it is. And there must have been so much pressure on Witcher as well at this point he's been brought in from London because he's famous, because people think he can resolve the case and there's press interest. And one thing that I do know about this case is how much people wrote into him. You know, people who were reading about the case in the newspapers started writing into him, oh, have you thought about this clue? You haven't considered this? Oh, you've missed this. It's obviously this, you idiot, you know, and he must have been so overwhelmed by the public pressure by the pressure inside the house by the pressure within his profession. This is a really difficult case for him to crack at the best of times with limited resources, limited clues, limited evidence. And there's all this external

conversation going on that's just dragging him through the mud at the same time. I just want to pick up on something you said there about Witcher dealing with some of the working class members of society and some of the people even beyond the working class who are on the very, very margins of society in his usual work in the criminal world. Witcher himself is from a working class background, so he is coming into this house, as you rightly say, where this awful thing has happened, but has the appearance of politeness and Victorian properness, I suppose. Which does an awful lot to me about Victoriana, to begin with anyway, the difference between what's being seen and what's actually going on behind the scenes. But he doesn't have this nightgown. This all rests on the nightgown. He doesn't find it. And she's released.

And he is then sent very quickly packing back to London. And his reputation is in tatters. After everything, all it took was one case. After everything he had done, this really did ruin him for a while. But you know what the real heartbreaking thing about this is, and this really frustrated me when I was researching this and reminding myself

about the details of this case, that the nightgown had actually been found really early on in this case by Superintendent Foley, the local investigator who came first. It was discovered, but it had been destroyed because it was covered in blood. And Foley thought the blood was menstrual blood, so out of embarrassment or shame or whatever. I mean, and there were other theories that we might be able to come up with in relation to that, but it had been, it just had been hidden away and never shared with Witcher. But it did exist. It had been seen by the local authorities. LR. Again, these ideals of femininity that these ladies are to be protected and looked

up to and idealized in terms of motherhood, in terms of respectability, but we must also hide the realities of their bodies and possibly their crimes as well. But that's, I mean, that is… It occurs to me that absolutely what you're saying still stands, regardless of what happened here. But if, for instance, there was this, and I hate to be this person, but slight conspiracy amongst some of these people, for instance potentially Mr Kent and Superintendent Foley who go get rid of that nightgown, that could be a problem. You know, so that they very much acknowledge the fact that this is dangerous for whatever reason,

in terms of proof of the murder and conspire to get rid of it. I don't know. Again, that's total inference, but it's there. This has taken such a turn. We're into a conspiracy theory. But actually, I mean, sure, we don't know how Kent felt about this daughter from his first marriage, who'd obviously caused some problems, but presumably he loved her. She was living in his household. That's a question we need to think about, I suppose. Even if Kent had a good relationship with his second wife and obviously would be devastated by the death of his son, would he still want to protect his daughter? I think that is a possibility. It's something that we have to consider that if she did do it, that he

might have conspired with a sure, a local superintendent who would have been under his control, I mean, just in terms of social hierarchy. If you're a policeman called to the house of someone important, you're probably going to do what they say in this period, and in many other periods, frankly. As you say, it's a theory, but it's one that we can't utterly dismiss, I think. You know what I mean? It doesn't mean that that's what happened. Let's caveat that.

But it's certainly a thing that that may have occurred. I do know that once Witcher is gone and this all passes relatively quickly, it's kind of strange because by 1861, the Kent family leave road. Now you can understand that to a certain extent, you know, wanting to leave that horror behind them. Constance goes to a finishing school. Hold on. So she's not accused of murder.

So even though it comes out that had gown in blood, what? The night gown element, it was so early on that it didn't feel to contemporaries that it was hidden because this will know we addressed it. We've done it. That's been that's so it wasn't a case that somebody went whoops. Sorry, I destroyed that. It was like, no, no, no, we investigated it. It had blood, but it was meant for blood. You don't need to think about the nightgown again. By the way, it did exist. It was fine. So this wasn't a revelatory piece of information to them. This was just a oh, yeah, yeah, no, we took that off ages ago. It's fine. You don't need to worry about it. You know?

So if she did do it, she gets away with it. And she goes off to finishing school to learn to be a polite young lady, having potentially cut her brother's throat and popped him in the privy. Wow. And then goes then goes to a convent in France. I don't know, you could read it as the fact that she sequestered, but she thrives in that environment. She really loves it. It's somewhere where she feels she belongs. She really subscribes to the ethos of the convent and the structure and the intellectual rigor, because don't forget that convents could very much be for women particularly in the 1860s, could be somewhere where they could learn and discover and debate

relatively openly. To me that feels like that's the punishment that her family meet out for her, that if they maybe did think that she'd done it, that they realized she has to be removed from society, and whether or not she enjoys it, to me that sort of says that they believed maybe that she did do it and that she needed to be kept away from other people. I agree. I agree. I think in an 18th century context where or not even just the 18th century, it's just that's what we're more familiar with. Where do you send your troublesome daughter to confident France? That's, you know, very standard also 17th century. That was the thing. So it's not like, you know, you sent her away. So it's an all it's a quasi imprisonment. But you know, that might have been it. That might have been the end of this whole thing. Constance would have gone to a convent, the Kent family would have gotten on with their lives elsewhere.

had one of the most, I think, chilling, dramatic turns not happened in 1865. On the 25th of April, 1865, Constance Kent, now aged 21, presented herself at London's famous Bow Street magistrate's court. In her hand, she clutched a letter written by herself. It read simply, I Constance Emily Kent, alone and unaided, on the night of the 29th of June 1860, murdered at Road Hill House Wiltshire, one Francis Savile Kent. Before the deed, none knew my intention, nor after of my guilt, no one assisted me in the crime, nor in my evasion of discovery. Following this confession, Constance Kent was tried, convicted of murder and sentenced to death. However, Miss Kent was granted a reprieve by none other than Queen Victoria.

Instead, the now convicted murderer served 20 years behind bars and was eventually released in July 1885. She was 41 years old. In a desperate attempt to leave her past behind, the former convict emigrated to Australia and assumed a new identity. In Australia, Constance worked as a nurse, spending some time in a facility for young offenders. She died, aged 100, in 1944. I didn't know this part of the story. That's... Oh, did you not? I really didn't.

This is the most chilling bit for me, I think. I don't know why I just find this... I find this quite chilling. So she turns up at the magistrate's office and hands in this written confession. To me, that says that the time she spent in the convent is not only a sort of enforced imprisonment without the label of prison on it and therefore is respectable and not too embarrassing for her family, but that she spends that time maybe soul-searching and dealing with the guilt that she has and the crime that she presumably, by her own admission, has committed and that it weighs on her until she has to do something about it. But then she goes on to live a whole other life that of course, let's not forget, little Savile doesn't get this life,

and his murderer, if she was his murderer, and we have to, I guess, take her at face value here, dies age 100. It's wild. So wild that not everybody believed she was guilty despite the fact that she confesses, despite the fact that she goes to trial, and despite the fact that she's convicted. And just to delve into that doubt ever so slightly, let's just look at some of the wording that you read out in her confession letter. She says in the first line that she alone and unaided. And then she goes on to say, none knew of my intention, nor after of my guilt. No one assisted me in the crime, nor in my evasion of discovery. Now I think the Lady Duspert has too much.

It's weird wording, isn't it? It's like I and I alone did this. Don't look over there, look at me. Just keep looking at me. Keep looking at me. Now I will say, we could maybe look at her as someone who is maybe a bit of a narcissist, that she has this tendency of self-centered drama. She's run away, she cut her hair off. Is this just another sort of maybe not a cry for help, but a manifestation of that? And we're absolutely not psychologists, so this is entirely speculation, but you know, that she's been out of the limelight. She had this taste of drama as a teenager and then in the case itself, you know, the accusations made against her, the barrister defending her, she was the focus of newspaper

accounts and she had to go to the convent and step out of that light. Is this her just simply wanting to step back into the light? Is it that she truly cannot bear the guilt anymore? Is it that she's worried someone else will go down for it and she's trying to protect them? Is she just mentally unwell? Or had she just done it and this is just time to admit to it? Something about it, I don't quite, it's not the truth. It's not the whole truth of the case. ALICE Well, I actually agree with you. Let's look at some of the other contemporary theories. And then to kind of round up, we can postulate what we think ourselves and see if we agree.

So one of the other theories, a lot of people, as I said, didn't believe that she was guilty. And here are some of the theories that circulated at the time. One of the other theories was that Mr. Kent was sleeping with the 22 year old nursemaid Elizabeth Gough. Now, why was that so widely spread simply because- He had form. He had form, exactly that. He had had an affair with his previous nursemaid who turned out to be the second Mrs. Kent. So the theory was that Mr. Kent and Elizabeth Goff had been in some amorous entanglement and that they had been discovered by the three-year-old boy Savile and in a fit of rage he had killed his son. Now, I'm not buying that one.

I feel like that's far too melodramatic for me. I wouldn't be surprised if he had had other sexual relationships with servants. The murdering his son in a fit of rage, no. I'm not buying it. No, I mean, we weren't there. We don't know, but it's just, you know, that's our opinions. We don't, it doesn't seem that that adds up. Right, here's another one. See what you see what you think about this. Mr. Kent always maintained

that it was an outsider, somebody from the village who resented the family and their position in the village. And he thought somebody had let themselves in and done this. I mean, in some ways, it's a more, it's slightly more exciting story because it casts the net wider. However, to me, that just seems like the most classist thing to say. Kent is, as we say, the inspector for factories. He's coming into contact with people in the lower classes and very much aware of his own station as being far above that. And not only that, but he has an idea of authority over people in the lower classes. And I just wonder, there's just rings of classism. I don't buy it. It would raise so many more questions, and it would be a completely different case if that had happened. But no, I don't buy that one.

Next. No, I don't either. And I also think if you are a conspiracy minded that feeds into the idea that he is still trying to protect everybody inside his household by deflecting beyond it. And as you say, bringing that class element in, he's likely to be believed in the context of this time or anytime potentially. So I agree with everything you said. The local police and journalists that were in the local area never really got rid of the suspicions of Elizabeth Gough, the nursemaid. I think that links back to what we said in the first other theory, which was this kind of affair. Was she jealous?

Was she trying to deprive Mrs. Kent, the second Mrs. Kent, of her beloved son? I don't buy it. It still feels too melodramatic for me. LR. See, I'm not sure. I'm not sure because as I understand it, a nursemaid, especially of a young child, what's Savile when he dies? Three? Four years old? Three. CB. Just short of four, yeah. LR. Presumably her room, the room that she would sleep in, Elizabeth Gough, would be near to the nursery. CB. It was, yeah. LR. And I don't have a three-year-old, but I imagine there's a lot of waking up in the night

and having to look after the child and check on them, and they are disturbing your sleep and waking up at different intervals. Especially if there's a dog barking outside, which we know happened. There are these noises that are interrupting possibly a three-year-old's sleep, would she not have noticed if someone in the household had come into the room, into the nursery, taken the child, even if she's in the next room along, would she not have heard that? The door opening in a silent house in 1860, there's no traffic sound outside, there's no radios playing, there's no TV on, no one's listening to a podcast, it's dark and silent, there might be someone who's lit a candle if they're not lighting a candle moving through this house intending to commit a crime. They're moving really slowly in the dark, are they

stubbing their toe on something, are they slipping on the stairs, they're fumbling around the door latch, they're trying to find the baby in the dark. The child, Did he wake up when he was picked up by whoever killed him? He's presumably not killed in the nursery because they don't find any blood there. It's all in the privy. Surely, Elizabeth, she was either in on it, or in a very, very deep sleep and therefore possibly not brilliant at her job. That's a great point. I hadn't ever considered the sound, the noise element that Elizabeth should have been reactive, you know, somewhat reactive to and the stumbling around and the, yeah, that's, that's, that's, that's actually, Because she doesn't, she doesn't go into the nursery until what is it, 7am. You're telling me

this three year old is perfectly trained to just stay there until 7am every day. Oh, I luckily for me, I don't know enough about three year olds and their sleeping habits because I get to get my eight hours. Yeah, right. And tell us what wrong I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I ascribe to the next theory. And this is a 2008 theory from you've probably heard of the book, The Suspicions of Mr. Witcher by Kate Summerscale. If you haven't, it's really worth reading.

It's really fantastic. Great. Yeah, yeah. It's so, so good. But Kate's theory is that Constance and her younger brother William were somehow involved in this. So Constance was guilty, but so was her brother. And that explains the note where, and bearing in mind that she had run away with the brother when they were younger, and that maybe she had enlisted him to help with this as well. I kind of feel like that might be likely. You raise a really good theory with Elizabeth Goff, the nursemaid, why didn't you hear anything? But it wouldn't explain why Constance walks into Bow Street Magistrates Court and hands a note saying, I did it. Whereas if it's William or if it's somebody else within the family, including Constance, then that would explain why she'd be willing to give

herself up. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And more hoping to protect someone else. A brother would make sense, although she killed her other brother. So I don't know how great she is at brotherly relations. But, and I suppose suppose as well Constance and William, because William is the youngest child of the first marriage, isn't he? Constance and William are the youngest two of those four. And I suppose at that age they would have been the two that experienced that crossover period of the governess becoming the stepmother in a way that the eldest two daughters who were in their late twenties wouldn't have experienced and were probably already away at school at that point.

So I can see that there would be resentment there. I'm buying it. I think that's a potential theory. AC And potentially more than resentment in that William until Savile arrives is the sole male heir. Now, as a second son, Saval's not necessarily entitled to very much. That said, Saval is the first son of the current marriage. And sometimes, depending on what the family dynamic was, that son could have been preferred over the firstborn son, especially if it wasn't the son of the current wife. That is complicated sentence. But you know what I'm trying to say,

that there's a world in which Savile could have ousted William. But whoever has seen to this has made sure that that's not even a possibility. That's a very good point. Write in and tell us your theories. I want to know what this one, this one's twisty and turny, I think. It is. And I think there are so many compelling versions of what happened as well. There's not one version that I'm like, yes, obviously

it was that one. It's so difficult to imagine anyone committing a crime like this, and especially a family member, it's so hard to get your head around. But obviously something was very wrong in that household. And there were tensions and resentments that had not been addressed and eventually bubbled over. Whoever did the actual crime. That was fantastic. Let's do it. Let's say Constance Kent, guilty or not guilty, Maddie Pelling. I think I'm going to say guilty. The weight of evidence against her is too strong. What about you?

I agree. I think guilty. My only question is, but guilty alone or guilty with an accomplice or with somebody else who was involved in covering it up or whatever it was. I think she was guilty, but I think we're missing something. I think there may have been an accomplice, possibly William, but I think if Constance did it, it was her brainchild. She's the mastermind behind it. She did the throat cutting, she did the hiding of the body. It was her. I agree. Well, thank you for listening to this gruesome and intriguing episode. If you have enjoyed

this Victorian murder story, then let us know. You can write in and tell us about it. And tell us if you want to hear any particular topics, Victorian or otherwise, in future episodes. You can leave us a review, a five-star review, please, wherever you get your podcasts. And you can get in touch at afterdark at historyhit.com. you