|
In
the 148 years since the morning of 30th June 1860 when the tiny body
of three year old Francis Savill Kent was found stuffed down an
unused privy in the grounds of the family home, the Kent family and
more especially Constance Kent, have rarely been able to escape some
writer's pen . The scale of the published material is overwhelming.
There are at least fifteen substantive works, innumerable newspaper
articles, several novels and thousands of websites. Wilkie Collins
used elements of what became known as the Road Murder in The
Moonstone (1868) and it is thought Constance Kent prompted the
character of Helen Landless in Charles Dicken’s last novel The
Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870). In 1947 Mary Hayley Bell, the wife
of actor John Mills, presented her play Angel based on
Constance Kent and the Road Murder, at the Strand Theatre, London. It
closed rather dismally after a few performances. Constance Kent’s
story also inspired Norah Loft’s Charlotte (1972) and James Friel’s
Taking the Veil (1989), and over the many decades since there
have been innumerable articles and books and latterly television
programs based on her life and the crime.
Perhaps it is not surprising that novelists,
researchers, journalists, true-crime writers, artists, academics,
lawyers and many others become interested, indeed obsessed, with this
case. Ann Jones writes of a similar history of obsession with the case
of Lizzie Borden where playwrights, opera, ballet and television have
portrayed that brutal murder in any number of ways. I,
too, have been working on the life and times of Constance Kent and the
Road Murder for many years. I have been
surprised too when individuals I hardly know tell me that Constance Kent
and her story is a passion of theirs. This year I hope
to get it into print and finally put my interest and my substantial
research and writing, to rest.
My book is based on detailed research in
England and Australia. It interrogates previous work on the crime
with reference to Constance Kent's childhood, the police investigation
and various trials, her 20 years in prison and her life in Australia.
No other writer has looked at every aspect of Constance Kent's life.
No other writer has completed detailed research on her life in prison
or her subsequent long, successful and eventful life in Australia. The
book should be available late this year.
|
|