Kent, Constance

On the night of June 29-30, 1860, Francis Savill Kent, a boy of almost four years old, disappeared from his home, Road Hill House, in the village of Rhode (at that time was written as “Road”) in Wiltshire. His body was found in the basement of a toilet outside the mansion. The corpse of a child, dressed in a nightgown and wrapped in a blanket, had stab wounds on his chest and arms, and his throat was cut so deep that his body was almost decapitated. The boy's nanny, Elizabeth, was originally arrested.

Elizabeth was released when Inspector Jack Witcher from Scotland Yard raised suspicions of the boy's 16-year-old half-sister, Constance. She was arrested on July 16, but was released without trial due to public protests against a detective belonging to the “working class” accusing the young lady from the “high society”.

After the investigation ended, the Kent family moved to Wrexham, north of Wales, and sent Constance to complete their education in Dinan, France ^[2] .

A criminal investigation into the murder of Constance Kent was initiated five years later, in 1865. The reason for the initiation of the case was the fact that Constance confessed to the Anglican-Catholic priest, Rev. Arthur Wagner, and expressed her decision to hand him over to justice. The priest helped her to put this decision into practice and submitted this statement to the court, testifying about him. But at the same time, he preceded his testimony with a statement that he would have to withhold any additional information about the crime on the grounds that it was received under the seal of the “ secret of confession ” (English Seal of the Confessional ). However, he was nevertheless slightly interrogated by the magistrates - on the question of whether the perpetrator of the crime did not deny her guilt ^[3] .

In a confession, Constance allegedly said that she waited for family members and servants to fall asleep, then went down to the living room and opened the shutters and windows, after which she took the child from his room, wrapping him in the blanket she had pulled out, lying on the bed between the bedspread and the sheet (with in this, both items remained almost unremarkable), left the house and killed the child in the toilet house with a razor stolen from her father. During all these manipulations, the child was in her arms. She needed to hide matches in the toilet in advance so that the toilet was lit during the murder. The killing, therefore, was not spontaneous, but a bit of revenge, even with the assumption that Constance at some point in time could be in a mentally insane state ^[4] .

At that time, there was a lot of speculation that the recognition of Constance Kent was false. Many suggested that her father, Samuel Savill (or Saville) Kent ^[5] , a well-known adulterer who had an affair with the baby's nanny, killed the child in a fit of rage after interrupted intercourse ^[6] . This was consistent with information about Kent Sr., who looked after the family's nanny, Mary Drew Pratt, after his first wife, Mary Ann Kent, nee Winduce (Constance's mother), died and subsequently married her (she was Francis's mother). Many were suspicious of Kent from the start, including writer Charles Dickens. ^[7]

In her 2008 book, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House ^[2], writer Kate Summerskale, however, concludes that if Constancy Kent’s confession was really false and intended only to protect another person from prison, she did she is not for her father, but for her brother, William Savill Kent, with whom she had a very close relationship, which became even closer due to the fact that their father, Samuel Savill Kent, transferred most of his fatherly attention from children from his first marriage to Mary Ann Windus on children from her second wife, M When Drew Pratt. William Savill Kent was indeed one of the suspects during the investigation, but he was never charged. Summerscale claims that if Savill Kent did not bear full responsibility for the death of Francis Savill Kent, he was at least an accomplice to Constance Kent.

Constance Kent never refused her recognition - including after the deaths of her father and brother. She also continued to remain silent about the motives for the murder. In all of her stories, she emphasized and insisted that she had no hatred or jealousy for her murdered half-brother. As a result of her research, Summerscale concluded that the assassination of Francis Saville Kent, regardless of whether it was committed only by Constance Kent, only by William Saville Kent or both of them, was not an act of revenge on Samuel Saville Kent for passing his paternal attention to children from a second marriage, of which Francis Saville Kent was considered to be the most beloved ^[2] .

At a jury trial, Constance Kent pleaded guilty, and her confession was accepted, so Wagner was no longer called to court. The position that Wagner took in relation to the judges caused considerable public discussion in the press. Significant public indignation arose due to the fact that, in fact, the court recognized it admissible that Wagner has the right to hide from the state any evidence on the grounds to which he referred. The outrage, apparently, was largely directed against the assumption that "sacramental recognition" is recognized by the Church of England ^[3] .

Matters related to the case were discussed in both houses of the British Parliament. In the House of Lords, Lord Westbury, Lord Chancellor, in response to the words of the Marquis of Westmet, stated that ^[3] :

... There can be no doubt that in the event of a lawsuit or a criminal case, the clergyman of the Church of England does not have such privileges as not to answer the question that is asked of him for the purpose of justice, on the grounds that his answer would have made public that he recognized in confession. He will be forced to answer such a question, and the law of England will not even extend the privilege of refusing to testify to Roman Catholic priests dealing with a person of their own faith.

He said that it seems that a request will be made regarding Wagner to punish him for contempt of court. But even if this happened, then no process on this subject took place ^[3] .

On the same occasion, Lord Chelmsford, the previous Lord Chancellor, stated that the law made it clear that Wagner did not have any privilege to conceal the facts that became known to him as a result of the confession. Lord Westmeath said that there were two recent (at that time) cases, one of which was the case of a priest in Scotland who, having refused to give evidence under the same pretext, was imprisoned. Regarding this incident, Lord Westmeath stated that, in response to demands for the release of the priest, sent to the Minister of the Interior, Sir George Gray, the latter stated that if he had to pass a sentence without allowing the incomplete testimony of the Catholic priest and without guarantees from his On the other hand, that he would not act in the same way in the next similar case, he (the Minister of the Interior) would authorize the granting of such privileges to priests of any religion, which, as they told him, they could not claim. The second case was the so-called process “R. against Hay "of 1860 ^[3] .

Lord Westbury’s statement in the House of Lords provoked a protest from Henry Phillpots, the then bishop of Exeter, who wrote him a letter that strongly supported Wagner’s position. The bishop claimed that canon law on this matter was adopted without contradiction or opposition from any existing courts, which was confirmed in the Book of General Prayers for services for visiting patients and, thus, was authorized by the Uniformity Act. Phillpotts was supported by Edward Lowe Badley ^[8] , who wrote a pamphlet on privileges for priests who received confession crime information ^[9] . From the bishop’s response to Lord Westbury’s response to his first letter, it is clear that Lord Westbury expressed the opinion that the 113th canon of 1603 simply means that “the priest should not act ex mero motu” (lat. “At will”) and must voluntarily and without legal obligations disclose what he was told in confession. ” He also, apparently, expressed the opinion that the public at that time was not ready to accept any change in the rule on the mandatory disclosure of such facts as evidence ^[3] .

Constance Kent was sentenced to death, commuted to life imprisonment due to her young age at the time the crime was committed and the fact of her confession. She spent twenty years in prison in several prisons, including Millbank Prison, and was released in 1885, at the age of 41. During her time in prisons, she created mosaics for a number of churches, including work for the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral ^[2] . In Neuralin Kyle's book A Greater Guilt, the author deals with the question of the occupation of Constance in custody, and characterizes them as a "mosaic myth" ^[10] .

Kent emigrated to Australia in early 1886 and settled with her brother William in Tasmania, where he worked as an adviser to the colony government in the field of fisheries. She changed her name to Ruth Emily Kay and was trained as a nurse ^[6] at Alfred Hospital, Prahran, Melbourne, and then was appointed as a senior nurse for the female infirmary at Coastal Hospital, Little Bay, in Sydney. She worked for more than a decade at the Parramatta Girls 'Industrial School, from 1898 to 1909, lived in the uptown city of New South Wales Mittagong for a year, and then was hired as the head nurse at Pierce Memorial Nurses' Home in West Maitland , working there since 1911, until she retired in 1932 ^[10] . Constance Kent died on April 10, 1944 at the age of 100 in a private hospital in the suburbs of Sydney Strathfield. The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reported (April 11, 1944) that it was cremated in the nearby Rookwood Cemetery.

• 1862: Elements of the case were used by Mary Elizabeth Braddon in Lady Audley's Secret (1862) ^[2] .
• 1868: Elements of the case were used by William Wilkie Collins in the novel Moonstone (1868) ^[6] .
• 1870: Charles Dickens depicted the flight of Helena Lendley in “The Secret of Edwin Drude” (1870) based on Kent’s early life ^[6] .
• 1945: The film, “Deep in the Night,” UK, has, among its five separate stories, a story entitled “Christmas Eve” with Sally Ann House. This is a story based on the case of Constance Kent; Christmas Eve had an original script based on an original story based on a script by Angus McFaul. While playing hide and seek in an old house, Howes hears a baby crying and heads for the bedroom, where he meets a little boy named Francis Kent, whose sister Constance is angry with him. Howes comforts the baby and then leaves him when he sleeps. Then she finds other people from her group and finds out that Francis was killed by Constance more than eighty years ago.

• Confession in Christianity

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