Jack whicher

See more at IMDbPro. Episodes 4. Browse episodes. Top Top-rated. Trailer Photos Top cast Edit. Paul Longley Constable as Constable. More like this. Watch options. Storyline Edit. Add content advisory.

User reviews 5 Review. Top cast Edit. Ben Miles Dr. Stapleton as Dr. Peter Gordon Holcombe as Holcombe. Ruairi Conaghan Benger as Benger. James Hawes. Storyline Edit. Did you know Edit. Trivia Unlike the end of this movie, Jack Whicher never left the force. Though his reputation was tarnished by failing to close the case, over the years he built it back up, eventually reaching the rank of assistant superintendent, retiring in and passing away later that year.

Only this first movie is based on a real case: the rest are works of fiction. Connections Featured in Crime Connections: Episode 1. Francis Saville Kent had been attacked with a sharp blade, his throat slashed and torso cut, and then shoved down under the seat of the outdoor toilet. A fragment of newspaper from the Morning Star, which nobody in the house read , a blanket, and a piece of cloth worn inside a corset were found in the privy too. It was William Nutt, the village shoemaker, and Thomas Benger, a farmer, who had found Saville in the privy.

They carried his little body inside and laid it on a table in the kitchen, where the nursemaid and some rest of the family rushed to see.

The household kept the awful news from Mrs Kent until her husband returned, so he was the one to tell her what had happened to her missing son. This is the first moment in which this real life murder case begins to feel like a fictional whodunnit.

Mrs Kent had jumped to the same conclusion that the detectives would later confirm: that this was a murder that had its origins inside the house, not out. The convenient solution of a passing maniac was not going to be available here. The Kents would have to confront the much more uncomfortable notion that their three year old son had been killed not only by someone that he knew, but that this person was still within the household.

But how could they be so sure that the pool of suspects was limited like this? There is one of the windows on ground floor open, but only a very little bit open, not open enough to seem very suspicious and all the other windows and doors were locked until they were opened by people rushing out and looking for this kid.

She has a longstanding obsession with what really happened to at Road Hill House, wrote an entire thesis about its impact on golden age detective fiction while at university, and is now a successful crime writer in her own right. This is such a writerly mystery — from the tropes that were borrowed by the likes of Collins to a strange letter that added to the intrigue in the s. Who better to guide us through it that a writer of whodunnits? That is used in a Sherlock Holmes story. So we know that nobody came in from the outside.

Caroline : Samuel Kent, father of the victim and six other children still living in , was a factory inspector and seemingly very concerned about household security. His nightly routine before retiring to bed was to check that the house and grounds were secure from intrusion and to let the family dog loose in the garden.

One ground floor window of the house was slightly open, but the absence of footprints outside or any sign that the gate had been breached made it far more likely that somebody had used this window to get out , rather than in.

As the local police began questioning the members of the household in an attempt to work out how a three year old had been carried out of his bed and killed in the privy overnight without anyone hearing, they could already be fairly certain that they were dealing with a closed circle of suspects.

She said that she had been confused, and had thought that Mrs Kent — who was eight months pregnant — must have heard him fussing and taken him into bed with her in the early morning, and that she was reluctant to disturb her mistress before she woke up. The police, of course, were choosing to put a more sinister interpretation on these facts.

Over the next few days, the local police continued to investigate, paying particular attention to the fact that even though the murder would have produced a lot of blood, no bloody clothing had been found anywhere in the house.

Much later, during an inquiry, it was revealed that in the early days of the case the police had found what they called a bloody shift hidden in the boiler hole, and put it back in the hope that they would be able to catch its owner red handed returning to destroy it.

The officer standing observing it left his post for half an hour, though, and when he came back it was gone. The nursemaid, Elizabeth Gough, was detained for questioning but no offered no further revelations that explicitly confirmed her guilt. The case was becoming more and more confused as more parallel investigations began — as well as the local police, family friends were beginning to conduct their own inquiries — and all of this hunting for clues and constant interviewing of witnesses was obscuring, rather than revealing, helpful details.

Finally, two weeks after the murder, Scotland Yard was called in. Here again, Robin says, we encounter something very familiar from the detective fiction that was written after the Road Hill House case. Robin: One of my favorite things is that the detective who has sent down from London, Jack Whicher, really is one of the first British detectives.

And he is this very imposing figure. And then you look through the rest of detective fiction and there are so many sort of tall handsome with piercing blue eyes. They were digging around in secrets and they were often from a middle-class lower middle-class working class background coming into these houses or in this case, he came into this house of wealthy people and biggest uncovering all of their dirty laundry, literally and figuratively.

It also raised the question as to the Priest-Confessor status in the Law of England. However the case remained unsolved by the great detective, and at the July trial, Constance pleaded guilty. It appears she had confessed to the Anglo-Catholic Priest Rev. In effect explaining that Canon of simply meant that clergy must not ex mero motu on impulse reveal confidences voluntarily and without legal obligation. In any event Kent, charged with murder, escaped the noose owing to her age, served a sentence at Millbank Prison, and emigrated to Australia where she died at in The Chief Constable at the time was Capt.