A Victorian Murder: Scotland Yard’s Jonathan Whicher Comes to The Rescue in Rode, Wiltshire

Samuel had had a ‘fruitful’ life.  He had married his first wife Mary Ann who, between 1829 and 1845 had borne ten children, one of whom was Constance, born in 1844.  Following the untimely death of Mary Ann in 1852 Samuel had eventually married Mary Drew Pratt who had been the Kents’ governess.  Mary the Second it seemed followed the Kent family tradition and had borne several children.  The victim, Francis was one of these and had been born in 1856.

Francis shared a bedroom with his nursemaid, Elizabeth Gough who awoke at 5.00 am and discovered that Francis wasn’t in his bed.  Elizabeth, not unnaturally, thought that he’d sneaked out of the room and gone to his mother, so it wasn’t discovered until 7.15 that this wasn’t the case.  By 8.00 a full scale search was under way and Samuel had offered a £10 reward in his close locality to whoever found the boy.  In the meantime, he had driven off to Trowbridge Police Station to report the missing child to one Superintendent Foley rather than relying on the local police to pass on a message.

Less than an hour after the search began two local men, William Nutt and Thomas Benger popped their head round the door of an outside ‘privy’ which was well screened amongst some shrubbery and found there were signs of blood on the floor.  Having lifted the lid they discovered (amongst the usual ‘unsavoury items’ found in one’s water closet!) what looked like a blanket.  Benger, obviously having the stronger stomach reached into the dark hole and dragged out the blanket which was found to be covered in blood.  He then delved deeper and about two feet down discovered the bloodied body of four year old Francis. 

As Benger lifted the tiny body out, the head dropped backwards exposing a clean cut through the boy’s throat.  The boy had also been stabbed through the chest.  Nutt, Benger’s search buddy, later described how the head fell back to such an extent that it looked as if it might fall off but the boy’s eyes were shut and, on the whole, he looked quite peaceful.

Superintendent Foley who initially undertook the investigation had difficulty in finding a motive or in fact any forensic evidence to point him to the murderer.  There was no sign of blood in the house, but the drawing room window had been found open despite the servants claiming they had closed it the night before.  Initially suspicion centred around the nursemaid, Elizabeth Gough.  It seemed she was the last person to have seen Francis alive and, bearing in mind she shared a room with Francis, it seemed strange that she hadn’t seen or heard anything.