The Sun.
London, England, 1860-10-05 00:00:00

HIE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 5, 1860

person whose previous antecedents were known to
be respectable, he asked whether it was intended to
charge the prisoner as principal, accomplice, or
accessory after the fact 9
Mr. Saunders was not instructed to make any
special application, as to the form of commitment,
supposing the magistrates to come to the conclusion
that such a step should be taken, as the chairman
was quite aware that in the event of a committal
the prosecutor was not bound to prefer his bill be-
fore the grand jury on that particular charge.
Mr. Ribton then proceeded to address the magis-
trates for the prisoner. He could not, he said, enter
upon a discussion of the facts which had been
proved in evidence without returning his thanks
to the Bench for the great kindness and courtesy
he had experienced during the course of this inves-
tigation, for the untiring patience with which their
minds had been directed to the various statements
which had been laid before them, and for the spirit
of fairness and impartiality which had characterised
their conduct at every stage of the inquiry. He
entertained the most perfect confidence that the
same spirit and love of justice which had animated
the Bench heretofore would prevail with them to
the end, and that when they came to consider what
their decision ought to be, acting as they did in the
face of the country, they would take care that it was
such a decision as would be conformable to truth, and
in strict accordance with the principles of jus-
tice. Mr. Saunders had said in his opening speech
that the tragedy enacted at Road had sent a thrill
of horror through every home in the country.
Unquestionably, this dreadful crime, if wilful
crime it was, stood out alone in the annals of atro-
city. To murder a poor innocent, unoffending, and
unprotected child under such circumstances, was
indeed a crime which it would be impossible to de-
scribe in fitting language. It was a crime which
might be said to

" blue the eye of day,
" And cast a deeper shade upon the dusky brow of night."
But he was afraid that one fact was painfully pro-
minent in this protracted inquiry—viz., that they
were not now any, nearer the truth than they were
immediately after the perpetration of the dreadful
act at Road. The exertions of the prosecutors—
conducted in a manner to which he would pre-
sently allude—had, unfortunately for them, unfor-
tunately for the public, unfortunately for the inte-
rests of truth, been turned into a wrong channel.
The bench, however, had not now to consider by
what fiend in human shape the frightful deed was
perpetrated. The question before them was, had
any evidence been adduced which would warrant
them in sending the accused for trial? He wonld
at the outset direct their attention to one or two
points which, though discussed by Mr. Saunders in
his opening speech, had really no immediate bearing
upon the present case. The first had reference to the
time at which the murder was committed. He sub-
mitted that whether it was committed early in the
night or towards the approach of morning had
nothing to do with the prisoner at the bar. The
question of time could no more affect her than it
could any other person who might be charged with
the crime. So with respect to the wound inflicted
after death. Whether it was inflicted after death,
or whether the child was alive and breathing, had
nothing to do with the prisoner. It was a specu-
lation foreign to the present inquiry. Mr. Saunders
had made a great deal of the Newfoundland dog,
and of the fact that it was not heard barking on the
night of the murder. It appeared, however, that
that circumstance was of no importance whatever
as regarded either the prisoner or anybody e'se,
whether an inmate of the house or a stranger; be-
cause the evidence bad proved beyond question that
the dog was enclosed in a yard, and that any per-
son might have passed from the drawing-room
window, or even from the front door if the drawing-
room window were a "blind," without being seen
by the dog at all. Mr. Saunders had indulged in
various ingenious speculations. He had said, in the
first place, that nobody could have broken into the
house. That was the only part of the case with re-
spect to which there was any thing approximating
to satisfactory proof. But Mr. Saunders had also
dwelt upon the improbability, if not the absolute
impossibility, of anybody having been secreted in
the house. In the attempt to prove that proposition
he had entirely failed. There were unoccupied rooms
in the house, and in the unoccupied bedrooms especi-
ally, anybody might have been secreted during even
the whole of the day on which the murder was com-
mitted. It was a curious fact that Superintendent
Wolfe, when he examined the house, was not shown
into any of the unoccupied bedrooms. He was shown
into the lumber room and another room, and he had
told the Court that he did not think anybody could
have been concealed in:either but so careless was
the manner in which he took his observations of
those rooms that he was unable to say whether in
one or the other there was a cupboard or not. His
evidence might be passed over es utterly valueless,
even if the rooms he examined were the only un-
occupied apartments of the house ; but it had been
proved beyond doubt that there were unoccupied
bedrooms, and that anybody might have been con-
cealed in one of them without being seen by any
of the inmates. Such being the case, was it not
possible, was it not even within the range of pro-
bability, that the murder was committed by a
stranger ? Mr. Kent had himself stated that a dis-
charged servant left his house vowing vengeance
upon the children. The matter with respect to that
particular servant had been to some extent cleared
up; but Mr. Kent held an office entailing upon
him the discharge of duties which might have the
effect of rendering him unpopular among many
persons ; and, at all events, the expressions used by
the prisoner, " Oh ! ma'am, it is revenge," and " Oh !
it is jealousy," might have been, and no doubt were,
suggested by the violent and threatening language
attributed by Mr. Kent himself to at least one per-
son. It might be said that nobody would have
concealed himself or herself in the house and taken
revenge on Mr. Kent by the murder of his child.
But it did not necessarily follow that murder was
contemplated in the first instance. Perhaps all
that was intended was to take away the child. That
ke was not indulging in an altogether improbable
hypothesis was clearfrom the manner in which the
child was removed. If murder had been contem-
plated from the first, why was the child wrapped
up in a blanket ? Anything, even the piece of
flannel which was found in the watercloset, would
have sufficed if put into the mouth to stifle a cry,
so as to enable the person, whoever he or she might
be, to remove the child without killing it ; but the
fact that the child was wrapped up in a blanket
seemed to warrant the supposition that if a stranger
were secreted in the house—a probability which
was not excluded by the evidence—he might have
intended simply to steal the child, and thus to
wreak his vengeance upon Mr. Kent. Supposing
that, when the child was removed from the house,
it was found that the stifling process had been
carried too far, how did the remaining facts
accord with his speculation that the deed was
done by a stranger ? The throat was cut, a stab
was given in the side, and the body was thrown
down a watercloset. It was unquestionably
put there for secrecy ; but an inmate of the house
must have known that, owing to the construction
of the water closet, the body could not pass the
splash-board. Besides, if the murder had been com-
mitted by one of the inmates, some traces of blood
must have been discovered ; for, although the evi-
dence of the surgeon went to show that the blood
did not spurt out of the wounds, yet blood was found
on the floor of the water-closet, and nobody could
have handled the child without having his clothes
in some degree stained with blood. But there was
no evidence of anything of the sort. The crime,
again, must have been perpetrated with some instru-
ment. Mr. Saunders hail, strangely enough, pro-
duced no one to tell the magistrates that all the
knives were safe ; but there was an entire absence,
as far as stains of blood and :an instrument were
concerned, of anything to connect anybody-in the
house with the murder. How did the culprit get
which
yawaythe? s
phl
ret s
hwo
ana
des r
wa,
irnt ehms
to
hamre keo at
ofbh le etr fnea
mc
many
athatatensy i
oot
nl
eae
rsos
ffi;ai
eot
ren
sds,
and others, that she saw the marks of twop feet upon
the carpet in the drawing-room. Those marks were
aa themnl sdoao
sba sshe
apt-
vov
iie
nnd
gt
nbb
gey e
ni
ml r
the
ee Ka
directionpe pn
at
r, ewn thl
yoo
bfhad
ae
idl
wee sdi cn
shoesr
di
ob Nevd
pniodrar
loi
ebls
nails—were
suppose
u.
eoplrnicl)
oomswwea
odtcri
cal
namat
any
yythostech
euof
ioortoyst wo rai
prisoner;its.
hkh sot
eht
shei7e
but
fieit. ?wi
he
dlaotdfwwdti
tals
hes.
covering by whom the marks were made ? If they
had not, was it because they had not been actuated
by a general desire to arrive at the truth, and be-
cause their exertions had been directed towards the
attainment of one object, viz., to prove the guilt of
one particular person ? Footmarks were also found
on the tall grass outside. The assistant gardener,
Alloway, had explained that they were made
by himself the night before; but if a stranger
was leaving the house after having cut the
throat of the child in the water-closet, would
not those marks of feet in the tall grass at
once suggest to him a mode of taking his depar.
ture without leaving a trace behind ? There must
have been a heavy fall of dew on the night of the
murder, for it was the middle of summer, and yet as
far as he knew no marks of dew were found on the
boots or shoes of the inmates, if, indeed, they were
examined. Mr. Saunders had stated in his opening
speech that the drawing-room window could not
have been put in the state in which it was found
except by some person who returned into the house ;
but he had utterly failed to prove his assertion. The
prosecutor had never thought it worth while to
make the experiment, It had been left to Kerslake
and Cox, the cook and housemaid, to make the ex-
periment for themselves, which they didon theseconi
morning of the present inquiry, when they found

that it was perfectly easy from the outside to put the
window in the condition in which'it was discovered
on the morning after the murder. He did not mean
to assert that the crime was perpetrated by a stranger,
but he had thought it his duty to show that the
hypothesis of this being an accidental murder, the
original intention going no further than the stealing
of the child, and of its having been perpetrated by
a stranger, and not by any of the inmates of the
house, was not inconsistent with the facts which
had been proved in evidence. Another speculation
in which Mr. Saunders had indulged was that the
murder must have been done by more than one
person. There was no reasonable proof of that.
Surely it was possible for a strong and active man
or woman to take a child of four years of age from
a cot, and, having first stifled its cries, to take it
away without being heard. But Mr. Saunders,
having laid down the proposition that the murder
could not have been done by one person, had very
illogically jumped to the conclusion that of the two
persons engaged in the act the prisoner must have
been one, whoever the other might have been. In
the dark ages, when judges were corrupt, when
witnesses were perjured, when oppression in every
shape found its way into our criminal courts, Ole
characters and lives of accused parties were not al-
lowed, in theory at all events, to be reasoned away
after such an ingenious fashion. Coke, alluding to
high treason, said, the guilt of a person was not to
be proved by reasoning, or by inferences, or by
flashes of wit, but by plain, clear, and satisfactory
testimony ; yet Mr. Saunders had ventured to ask
the bench to take ingenious speculations for proof,
• but—

" Such reasoning falls like an inverted cone,
Wanting the proper base 1,0 rest upon."
The learned gentleman proceeded to direct attention
to the facts cf the case. He referred to the charge
which had been made against Miss Constance Kent,
and expressed his opinion that the magistrates
wisely and justly discharged that young lady from
custody, although the evidence against her was con-
siderably stronger than that against the poor girl
now at the bar. That prosecution having failed, it
was then. he said, that directions came down from.
the Home office, that the Attorney-General was con-
sulted, and that Mr. Slack was imported intor,the
case and commenced those inquiries at Road and
elsewhere which; he believed, would be reprobated
and denounced by everybody capable of forming an
opinion on the subject as alike alien to the spirit of
English law and subversive of every known princi-
ple of English justice. There was a time when
accused parties were placed upon the rack and sub-
jected to every species of torture. There had even
been cares of persons tortured to death in order that
some confession might be extorted from them. What
was the difference between the investigation con-
ducted by Mr. Slack and the inquiry of a Grand
Inquisitor surrounded by his familiars' with the rack
in the next room, except that instead of physical
torture it was a species of mental torture which he
applied to every witness called before him ? How
had the prisoner at the bar been treated ? While
Mr. Kent and his family had from first to last en-
joyed the assistance of an attorney, who during the
examinations conducted by Mr. Slack not only put
questions, but interposed to prevent other questions
being put—white Mr. Slack had listened to the state-
ments of every inmate of the house, collating and
comparing them with one another, and drawing in-
ferences rrom them simply and in combination—the
poor girl at the bar was not examined at all. She
was at home with her father, the police knew where to
find her, but she wasr ever called upon to give her ac-
count of the transaction. In her absence, by means of
statements collected from other parties interrogated
by Mr. Slack the conclusion was finally reached
that a warrant should be issued for her apprehen-
sion upon the charge of murder. 'When it was
known to the bench, as it now was, that the oo'y
evidence against her consisted of some contradic-
tory statements made by the poor girl herself, he
fearlessly asked whether it wo-ald not have been
fairer and in more strict accordance with every rule
of law as well as every principle of justice if Mr.
Slack had examined her in the same way as the
other servants, and given her an opportunity of
explaining what was now said to be inconsistent
and coAtradictoty in her testimony ? It looked as
if there were a preconceived determination to do
something or other by means of which somebody
not upon the spot should somehow or other be made
a victim. The police had been baffled in one in-
quiry. Mr. Slack was called in. Public indigna-
tion was aroused by the thought that an atrocious
crime could have been perpetrated and no clue dis-
covered to the perpetrator. Was he wrong in sup-
posing that an inquiry was instituted, not for the
purpose of eliciting the truth, but for the purpose
of collecting evidence against a particular person ?
He very much mistook the tribunal which he had
the honour of ttddresing if they would corsent to
allow themselves to be made the instruments of this
terrible injustice. He believed they would tell
the prosecutors that before they could ask them
to commit the prisoner for trial they must prove
two things—first, that they had conducted the
preliminary inquiry fairly; and, secondly, that
there was really some substantial evidence against
the accused. The present was no ordinary case.
A committal would not only condemn his client
to an unjust imprisonment, but would cast a stigma
upon her for ever. What were the facts which
had been proved against her ? There were
only three points which had the slightest bearing
upon the case, and they were all well known before
they were put into the crucible of Mr. Slack and
came out with a different stamp. These three points
were the statements made by the prisoner about
the blanket, the piece of flannel found underneath
the body, and the kneeling up in the bed on the
morning of the murder. As to the first point, the
learned counsel contended that the alleged contra-
dictions were known to the prosecution long before
she left her situation at Road. But if this were not
so, would the Bench attach any great importance
to any slight discrepancies in statements made by
the prisoner or any other inmate of the house on
that melancholy morning ? Surely not. Why had
she never been asked to give an explanation of these
discrepancies—if discrepancies they were—and why
had not her explanation been allowed to find its
way into that mysterious writing case of Mr. Slack,
which probably might contain the materials for
some future charge against some other person ?
With regard to the piece of flannel, the learned
counsel commented severely on the evidence of the
woman Dallimore, who, he said, if she had not com-
mitted perjury, had shown such an indifference to
truth as to render her evidence utterly worthless.
Yet this was the woman who was introduced at the
close of the prosecution to strengthen the weak
parts of the case. After the intimation which had
fallen from the bench as to this piece of flannel, he
would say very little more on the point, except to
regret that a woman who had manifested such reck-
less indifference to the fate of the poor girl at the
bar and to the interests of justice had been called
as a witness in the case. 'What did the conversa-
tions which this woman to-day had been called
upon to detail imply? Absolutely nothing OS
indicating the prisoner's guilt. The witness was
contradicted in the particulars she gave by her
own husband, and her testimony was entirely
unworthy of credence. With regard to the
first point, the statement of the prisoner as
to her first missing the child from the cot by kneel-
ing up in her bed, he would not believe that any
importance would he attached to the experiments
which had been made behind the back of the pri-
soner, in order to manufacture evidence against her.
Would it not have been fair to ask her to show in
what position she was when she first missed the
child ? Why fasten her to the expression that she
knelt in the 'bed, and then employ Sergeant Wolfe
and Mrs. Dallimore to make experiments to show
that it was impossible her statement could be true?
If the intention had really been to ascertain the
truth, why was not the same measure of justice
meted out to the prisoner which was afforded to the
other inmates of the house, and why had this poor
girl alone been denied the opportunity of demon-
strating the position from which she said she had
missed the child ? These were the only three points
in the evidence which had been adduced on which
he thought it necessary to offer any observations.
He might express the hope that the magistrates
were not going to commit the prisoner for trial, not
because they believedthere was evidence enough to '
warrant them in doing so, but because it was a kind
of tentative process to which they were invited by
the prosecution, in the hope that something else
might turn up. He could not suppose that whether
the prosecution was or was not, encouraged by the
law officers of the Crown, they would allow them-
selves to be made the instruments of such a dirty
proceeding—a proceeding which could not fail to
be detrimental to the cause of truth, and subversive
at once of every rule of law and every principle of
justice, natural as well as legal. God forbid that
he should attempt to cast suspicion upon any in-
dividual, but he could not help saying that if Mr.
Kent were to be placed at the bar the evi-
dence against him would be far stronger
than that which had been produced against
this poor girl. There could be no doubt, at all
events, that the testimony adduced when
Miss Constance Kent was charged was more com-
plete than anything which had been laid before the
bench on the p-esent occasion, and, as the magis-
trates had most justly refused to commit that young
lady, so he hoped they would not hesitate to adopt
the same course with respect to his unfortunate
client.
The magistrates then withdrew to deliberate in
private, and were absent for about half an hour.
On their return
The Chairmen said,—sufficient,?en established for
committing the young person at the ,
vtar to gaol for
prima facie case has %; do not think that a

a period of some months, and thus cast a certain
stigma upon the character of one who has previously
borne an unblemished reputation, and whose con-
duct, as far as it has come before us in this matter,
with the exception of one or two facts to which I
need not allude at length, is without reproach.
Considering how much curiosity has been exhibited
relative to this theadful affair—the anxiety naturally '
evinced by everybody connected with the family,
the officious inquiries of those who are merely curi-
ous, and the official investigations of the authorities
—it is remarkable that we should see no appear-
ance, even if we could suppose her to be guilty,
either•of a sullen reserve on the one hand, or of an
affected frankness on the other. When so many
persons have expressed opinions as to the mode in
which this murder was done and the motives which
suggested it, I am not surprised that the young per-
son at the bar should have followed the general ex-
ample and framed a hypothesis of her own. Ido
not say that there is no material evidence before us
which may hereafter, perhaps with additions, be in
some way or other acted upon. Therefore, the
decision of the magistrates is that, although they
will rot commit her for t' they will bind ber
to appear if she should be warted a3ain.
Sureties to a moderate amount will be i?quircd.
Some observations have been made by Mr. Rib-
ton, perhaps not unnaturally, reflecting strongly
upon the mode in which Mr. Slack has conducted
his inquiries. We think it our duty to say that,
judging from what has come before us, we do rot
think anything like misconduct can be attributed
to that gentleman.
The decision of the magistrates was received
with some cheering from the part occupied by the
publ;c.
Mr. Ribton—As far as Mr. Slack personally is
concerned, I did rot mean to say tnything offer-
slve to him, because I have ro doubt he discharged
the painful duty intrusted to him with ab:lity and
discretion. My remarks applied to the inquiry
itself.

Mr. Dunn denied having put questions to any of
the persons examired by Mr. Slack. He had sim-
ply suggested, on one or two occasions, tbat such
and such a piece of information could be got from a
particular witress. •
The Chairman said that, when he considered the
refusal to allow a plan of the house to be taken
and the locking up of theipolicemen in the kitchen,
he found it impossible to say that Mr. Kent had
been well advised.
Mr. Edlin remarked that he was instructed by
Mr. Dunn, on the part of Mr. Kent, to afford every
facility to the magistrates and the police in the
prosecution of their inquiries. The police, indeed,
bad had the run of the house for weeks. When the
plan was spoken of, Mr. Kent had ro information
as to the parties against whom it was intended to
proceed, and for anything he knew the urjust pro-
secution of his daughter, which had been con-
demned by high legal authority, might have beau
followed by some other proceeding equally ground-
less.

The prisoner was then discharged, a verbal bond
being taken from a relative to produce her, if re-
quired, under a penalty of £lOO.