If you enjoy Victorian mysteries, you are sure to enjoy this true accounting of a murder in the small Wiltshire town of Road Hill. Kate Summerscale has meticulously delved into what caused a sensation and public outcry in all of England in 1860. She uses original sources and accounts of the characters involved in the horrific and brutal murder of a three year old boy, Saville Kent.
The Kents were an upper middle class family living in the manufacturing town of Road. Their home was rather grand, and they were not particularly liked by the townsfolk, many of whom worked at the mill in which Samuel Kent was a sales representative. One night in the summer of 1860, young Saville was taken from his nursery crib and brutally murdered, and his body was dumped in the servants' privy. As was often the case in these days, the local authorities, further muddied the mystery, by not taking care to investigate carefully. Eventually Jonathan Whicher was called in from Scotland Yard. London "Bobbies" not many years before, had come into existence; and it was only in the mid-1850s that detectives were added to the force. Whicher was the best of the best. His fame in solving difficult cases was an inspiration for Dickens in "The Mystery of Edmund Drood," as well as Wilkie Collins' "The Moonstone." Some even said he was the forerunner of the fictional Sherlock Holmes.
How Whicher solved this case, and his eventual fall from grace, form the basis of the book. Just as the press today forms public opinion, in the summer of 1860 and through some years following, most people in England had an opinion of who the murder was.
Kate Summerscale does an excellent job of creating the mood and background of the villagers and the Kent family, which had its own dark secrets; these eventually come out as events unfold.
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