The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder And The Undoing Of A Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale Page B
Authors: Kate Summerscale
Tags: Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective, Espionage, History, Biography & Autobiography, Literary Criticism, England, True Crime, London, Biography, Europe, Murder, Great Britain, Detectives, Murder - General, Murder - England - Wiltshire - History - 19th century, Mystery & Detective Fiction, Case studies, History: World, Wiltshire, Law Enforcement, Whicher; Jonathan, 19th century, Europe - Great Britain - General, Detectives - England - London, Expeditions & Discoveries
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this that gives the Englishman that proud feeling of personal independence, which is stereotyped in the phrase, "Every man's house is his castle." ' The American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson observed that domesticity was the 'taproot' that enabled the British to 'branch wide and high. The motive and end of their trade and empire is to guard the independence and privacy of their homes.'
The Morning Post of 10 July 1860 held that 'in spite of all these proverbial sanctities, a crime has just been committed which for mystery, complication of probabilities, and hideous wickedness, is without parallel in our criminal records . . . the security of families, and the sacredness of English house-holds demand that this matter should never be allowed to rest till the last shadow in its dark mystery shall have been chased away by the light of unquestionable truth'. The horror of this case was that the corruption lay inside the 'domestic sanctum', that the bolts, locks and fastenings of the house were hopelessly redundant. 'The secret lies with someone who was within . . . the house-hold collectively must be responsible for this mysterious and dreadful event. Not one of them ought to be at large till the whole mystery is cleared up . . . one (or more) of the family is guilty.' The Morning Post article was reprinted in The Times the next day, and in newspapers throughout the country over the rest of the week. 'Let the best detective talent in the country be engaged,' demanded the Somerset and Wilts Journal .
On Thursday a Wiltshire magistrate renewed his plea to the Home Secretary to send a detective to Road, and this time the request was granted. On Saturday, 14 July, Sir George Cornewall Lewis, Lord Palmerston's Home Secretary, instructed Sir Richard Mayne, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, to dispatch 'an intelligent officer' to Wiltshire as soon as possible. 'Inspector Whicher to go,' Mayne scribbled on the back of the Home Office directive.
The same day Detective-Inspector Jonathan Whicher received his orders to head for Road.
CHAPTER FOUR
A MAN OF MYSTERY
1 October 1814- 15 July 1860
It was still light as Whicher's train rolled towards west Wiltshire on that Sunday in 1860. Usually by July the pastures were broken up with blocks of yellow - tawny wheat or bright gold corn - but this year the summer had come so late that the crops were green as grass.
At 6.20 p.m. the train pulled into Trowbridge - a forest of factory towers and chimneys - and Whicher stepped out onto the railway station's narrow platform. The first building he came to as he left the ticket hall was John Foley's police station on Stallard Street, a two-storey structure dating from 1854, when the local force was founded. This was where Elizabeth Gough was being detained, of her own volition, until her examination was resumed the next day.
Trowbridge had made money from cloth for centuries. The coming of the railway in 1848 had brought even more prosperity - now, with a population of eleven thousand, it was the biggest factory town in the south of England. Wool mills and dyeing houses spread out to the left and right of the station - about twenty of them, powered by more than thirty steam engines. These were the factories that Samuel Kent inspected. On a Sunday evening they lay idle, but in the morning the machines would start to pound and whirr, and the air would thicken with smoke, soot, the smells of urine (collected in tubs from public houses and used to scour wool) and of the vegetable dyes streaming into the river Biss.
Whicher hired a porter to carry his luggage to the Woolpack Inn, Market Place, half a mile from the station. The pair crossed the bridge over the Biss - a small, slow tributary of the Avon - and walked to the town centre. They passed the houses of the Parade, a terrace built by rich Georgian clothiers, and the side streets crammed with weavers' cottages. Trade had been poor that year. Many sheep had died over the harsh winter, so
The Morning Post of 10 July 1860 held that 'in spite of all these proverbial sanctities, a crime has just been committed which for mystery, complication of probabilities, and hideous wickedness, is without parallel in our criminal records . . . the security of families, and the sacredness of English house-holds demand that this matter should never be allowed to rest till the last shadow in its dark mystery shall have been chased away by the light of unquestionable truth'. The horror of this case was that the corruption lay inside the 'domestic sanctum', that the bolts, locks and fastenings of the house were hopelessly redundant. 'The secret lies with someone who was within . . . the house-hold collectively must be responsible for this mysterious and dreadful event. Not one of them ought to be at large till the whole mystery is cleared up . . . one (or more) of the family is guilty.' The Morning Post article was reprinted in The Times the next day, and in newspapers throughout the country over the rest of the week. 'Let the best detective talent in the country be engaged,' demanded the Somerset and Wilts Journal .
On Thursday a Wiltshire magistrate renewed his plea to the Home Secretary to send a detective to Road, and this time the request was granted. On Saturday, 14 July, Sir George Cornewall Lewis, Lord Palmerston's Home Secretary, instructed Sir Richard Mayne, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, to dispatch 'an intelligent officer' to Wiltshire as soon as possible. 'Inspector Whicher to go,' Mayne scribbled on the back of the Home Office directive.
The same day Detective-Inspector Jonathan Whicher received his orders to head for Road.
CHAPTER FOUR
A MAN OF MYSTERY
1 October 1814- 15 July 1860
It was still light as Whicher's train rolled towards west Wiltshire on that Sunday in 1860. Usually by July the pastures were broken up with blocks of yellow - tawny wheat or bright gold corn - but this year the summer had come so late that the crops were green as grass.
At 6.20 p.m. the train pulled into Trowbridge - a forest of factory towers and chimneys - and Whicher stepped out onto the railway station's narrow platform. The first building he came to as he left the ticket hall was John Foley's police station on Stallard Street, a two-storey structure dating from 1854, when the local force was founded. This was where Elizabeth Gough was being detained, of her own volition, until her examination was resumed the next day.
Trowbridge had made money from cloth for centuries. The coming of the railway in 1848 had brought even more prosperity - now, with a population of eleven thousand, it was the biggest factory town in the south of England. Wool mills and dyeing houses spread out to the left and right of the station - about twenty of them, powered by more than thirty steam engines. These were the factories that Samuel Kent inspected. On a Sunday evening they lay idle, but in the morning the machines would start to pound and whirr, and the air would thicken with smoke, soot, the smells of urine (collected in tubs from public houses and used to scour wool) and of the vegetable dyes streaming into the river Biss.
Whicher hired a porter to carry his luggage to the Woolpack Inn, Market Place, half a mile from the station. The pair crossed the bridge over the Biss - a small, slow tributary of the Avon - and walked to the town centre. They passed the houses of the Parade, a terrace built by rich Georgian clothiers, and the side streets crammed with weavers' cottages. Trade had been poor that year. Many sheep had died over the harsh winter, so
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