[ London Times ]
This newspaper, most correctly known simply as The Times, began publication in 1785 and continues to this day.
Beginning on July 3, 1860, The Times began carrying a series of articles and reports — some little more than brief news notes, while others were lengthy reports on official inquests — dealing with a shocking and mysterious murder. The paper referred to it under the repeated headline "The Road Child Murder," referring to the town of Rode (now "Road") where, in the early hours of June 30, a four-year-old boy was brutally murdered.
Yet one might just as well entitle this murder mystery "The Curious Incident of the Newfoundland in the Nightime." If you're a Sherlock Holmes fan, you may recall that in the story "The Adventure of Silver Blaze," a key piece of evidence that leads to the apprehension of the story's criminal is the fact a guard dog did NOT bark when someone snuck into the stable to steal the valuable racehorse "Silver Blaze" — for the good reason that the person who stole the horse was known to the dog. The dog's failure to sound an alarm was what Holmes referred to as "the curious incident of the dog in the night-time." (This phrase also served as the title of Mark Haddon's mystery novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, published in 2003 and later adapted for the stage.)
In this real-life murder, something very similar happens. Most of the suspicion fell on various members of the family, principally because there was not only no evidence whatsoever of anyone breaking into the house, which was known to have been secured for the night, but because the family Newfoundland, let loose in the yard at night to deter intruders, never barked that particular night, even though he was frequently known to alert the family to the presence of strangers. These two facts kept official focus on those who were in the house the night the boy was killed.
The principal suspect — there were two separate inquests into her possible involvement — was the family nursemaid, a 23-year-old woman named Elizabeth Gough, age 23, who looked after the family's two youngest childred and slept in the room with the murdered boy and his 2-year-old sister.
One of the facts of the case most puzzling to investigators was that the boy was murdered while sleeping in a household consisting of 12 people (9 family members and 3 servants), his body carried downstairs and out of the house, where it was dumped into the family privy, yet no one heard a thing. Nor, remember, did the dog bark.
What makes this real-life murder mystery similar to the Sherlock Holmes story is contained in this part of the statement given by the father of the murdered child as he was explaining that there was no indication the murder was committed by someone outside of the house. After detailing how he had locked all the doors and windows on the night his son was murdered, and how the next morning there was zero evidence that any of the doors or windows had been forced open, although one window was found to have been opened, he added this, as reported by The Times on October 1:
I had a full-grown Newfoundland dog on the premises. It was let loose at night. On the night of the murder it was turned loose about 10 o'clock. I have often heard it bark at the approach of strangers. I did not hear it at all on the night of the murder. The dog does not bark at the inmates of the house.
The gardener, who lives across the street from the house of the victim's family, confirms this account of the dog:
There was a Newfoundland dog turned loose in the yard at night. He is not so sharp as he used to be, but he occasionally makes a considerable noise. I have been awakened by his barking. I did not hear him on the night of the 29th of June. . . . The dog is not so sharp as he used to be; he is getting old.
Ultimately, the magistrates conducting the inquest (this was the second one, the first having also ended inconclusively) concluded that there was not sufficient evidence to send Elizabeth Gough to trial. Some suspected she may have had an accomplice, perhaps a lover whom she let into the house to help her with the crime, but the silence of the dog mitigated against that theory. Suspicion also had fallen upon one of the murdered child's older sisters, Constance, though again there was no evidence to directly connect her to the child's murder. A recently fired servant who had spoken negatively of the family was also suspected, but she was proven to have been in another town when the murder occurred. Suspicion also was directed at the boy's father, Samuel Kent. It was known he had begun an affair with the family's previous nanny while his first wife was dying, and upon her death he married that nanny, with whom he had several more children, including the boy who was murdered. Some even speculated that the child was killed because he had witnessed his father making love to the current nanny, though there was, again, no evidence for any of these suppositions.
This case attracted considerable attention in the press beginning with the first official inquiry into the matter in July of 1860, and the investigation continued for several months. The case became so well known it attracted the attention of various public and political figures, including the novelists Charles Dickens. Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and Wilkie Collins, who incorporated some elements of this mystery into some of their works. Readers of the newspapers even wrote in with advice and suggestions to the police on where to look for the murder weapon (never found) and other issues related to the case. Ultimately, however, the investigation fizzled out for lack of any solid evidence, and no charges were filed against anyone. The Kent family moved to another part of England to escape the notoriety.
But that didn't last long. Five years later one of the older Kent children, Constance, confessed to a priest that she had indeed killed her younger half-brother and wished to turn herself in to the police. He helped her do that, but neither he nor she ever offered any specifics about the case. Constance spent 20 years in prison for the crime, and after her release moved to Australia, where she became a nurse. She lived to be 100 years old, dying in 1944, and never offered any information about her murder of her half-brother.
This real-life Victorian murder mystery is examined in detail in The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, a 2008 study of the case by Kate Summerscale. She concludes that Constance may well have been only an accomplice in the murder, which she feels was primarily instigated by her brother, William (who had also been suspected in the case but again, for lack of evidence, had not been charged). Summerscale believe the murder of their half-brother was in retaliation for their father's diminished affection once he remarried; the half-brother they are believed to have murdered was said to be their father's favorite child.