IN the churchyard at Llangollen you will find the graves of Samuel Saville Kent and his wife Mary.
The couple, originally from Wiltshire, had moved to the Denbighshire town in 1865, Mr Kent having taken a job as a factory inspector.
But it was not employment that had prompted this move to North Wales, but rather a scandal that began with a murder, five years earlier in the village of Road in southern England.
It is a story that caused public hysteria in the 19th century and one that continues to fascinate through Kate Summerscale’s 2008 bestseller, ‘The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House’.
This year is the 150th anniversary of the crime that shocked Victorian society and, to mark the occasion, staff at the Denbighshire records office in Ruthin have put together an exhibition based on the incident and the Kent family’s move to the region.
Among the exhibits is a copy of an original article published in the Carnarvon and Denbigh Herald, July 14, 1860, under the headline ‘Mysterious and Horrible Murder of a Child’.
It reads: “During the night of the 29th a child was foully murdered at Road, near Frome in Somersetshire, under circumstances of the most mysterious character, both as to the motive which prompted and the means taken by the murderer.
“The child was the son of Mr S. S. Kent... who resides in a handsome house, enclosed by its own grounds, near the entrance to the village.
“The victim was a boy three years and ten months old...”
That night the household had apparently gone to sleep as usual but, in the morning, all was not as it should be.
According to the report in The Herald: “At five o’clock the next morning the nurse awoke and, on getting up to dress, looked into the cot occupied by the deceased but saw that he was gone from it. The impression of the child’s body still remained on the bed and pillow but the under blanket was gone, and the coverlid carefully folded down.
“Mr and Mrs Kent were applied to by the nurse to know if they had removed the child into their bed but they had seen nothing of it since the previous night. Further search was made and the drawing room door, window and shutter – all of which had been fastened on the inside the previous night – were found a little opened.
“The hue and cry of the child being lost soon reached the village and some of the villagers came to the house and made a search.”
It continues in grisly fashion: “After a time, the body of the poor child was discovered in his night clothes and wrapped in his blanket, half down the water-closet, with its little throat cut to the very spine and a fearful gash in the left side as if inflicted with a sharp-pointed dagger or knife.”
The crime made headlines around the country, with the fact it involved a well-to-do family in such a sleepy part of the country only added to the mystery.
London-based detective Jonathan Whicher was called in to investigate and quickly suspected one of Mr Kent’s children from his first marriage, a teenager named Constance.
Despite an inquest in which Constance was the accused, it could not be proved and Whicher was berated in the press.
However, five years later Constance confessed to the crime and was jailed for 20 years.
The scandal raged on, forcing the family to leave their Wiltshire home for another, at Tower in Llangollen.
Jane Brunning, senior archivist at the records office in Ruthin, has put together the new exhibition.
She said: “I read the book (by Kate Summerscale) last year and when I got to the end I realised there were connections with Llangollen and Ruthin so I decided to look into it.
“Because it was such a huge national story – probably one of the first cases the public really took an interest in because of newspapers being more widely available – everyone had their ideas, including Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, both of whom were totally wrong.
“Jonathan Whicher was one of the earliest detectives and, from very early on, he thought that it was Constance. There was widespread condemnations of Whicher for suggesting that the daughter of a middle class family could have committed such a crime and it almost ruined him. Of course, he was completely vindicated when she confessed five years later.
“After that, the scandal was such that the family couldn’t stay in Wiltshire so they moved to Llangollen and then, when his wife died, Samuel moved to Rhewl, near Ruthin.
“The story would have been known to people around here – I found several long articles relating to the case in the Carnarvon and Denbigh Herald which was one of the only newspapers covering this area back then – but I don’t know how people around here would have felt about them. Unfortunately there are no records of that.”
Mary Kent died in 1866 and Samuel Saville Kent died in 1872.
Constance served her sentence and then emigrated to Australia where she trained as a nurse. She lived to be 100.
The story of the murder is far more complex than can be discussed here – for example, the confession of Constance is not necessarily as straightforward as it seems.
Kate Summerscale’s book following Whicher’s attempts to solve the mystery is published by Bloomsbury.
Visit www.mrwhicher.com for more details.