Read Barbaric Murders - Child victims, lady-killers and bodies in boxes (Infamous Murderers) for Free Online Page B

Constance had told them how much she resented her stepmother’s attitude, that her parents favoured the two youngest children and treated the children of the first Mrs Kent as servants. William, she had said, was made to use the back stairs, like a servant, and was always compared unfavourably with the baby. Constance and William had always stuck together.
    Overall there was insufficient evidence, but Whicher was sure she was guilty and she was not acquitted. Instead she was discharged into her father’s care.
    Samuel Saville Kent had married Mary Anne Windus in 1830, when he was 28 and she 21. They were both from middle class commercial families and to begin with they lived in London. Samuel Kent became ill and the doctor’s advice was to move to the coast for better air, so they moved to Sidmouth, where Kent took a job as a factory inspector at £800 a year. A son, Edward, was born in 1835, but the four children born between 1837 and 1841 all died in infancy. Mrs Kent was herself not constitutionally strong, and she had already shown symptoms of consumption when she was pregnant with Edward. She then started to show signs of mental instability. She took the children out and got lost. She also had a knife hidden under her bed.
    The doctor advised Samuel Kent to hire a housekeeper, to keep a close eye on his wife. In 1844, Mrs Kent gave birth for the ninth time in fourteen years – this time to Constance. Under the care of the new housekeeper, Miss Pratt, Mrs Kent gained strength and then gave birth to William. By this time Mary Kent was completely insane and, in typical Victorian style, Samuel Kent shut his wife away without any treatment and pretended everything was normal. Then, in 1853, while Miss Pratt was away visiting relatives, Mary Kent developed a bowel problem and quickly died.
    The children were used to Miss Pratt, who had been with the family for a decade, but they were nevertheless shocked when their father announced that he and Miss Pratt were to be married. Edward was so disgusted that when he returned home from school he had a blazing row with his father about the marriage, left the house and went to sea.
    Then Samuel Kent and his new wife moved to Somerset, but the problems simmered away. Constance was as angry and resentful as Edward. She became hyper-sensitive to what were probably never intended to be slights. She became sullen, sulky, often rude. The jeering of the Road village children probably made matters worse, and she became paranoid. The second Mrs Kent seems to have been a very patient woman, but she must have found Constance very hard to deal with. In the end Constance just became a nuisance and Mr and Mrs Kent decided she should go away to school in London, which she also resented deeply. When she returned from school on holiday, it was to find that Mrs Kent had had another baby. This was the unfortunate Saville, and the Kents doted on him.
    In 1854, the news came that Edward had been lost at sea. Mr Kent was distraught. Then, eventually, a letter came from Edward to say that other officers had died, but that he had survived. In 1858 he died of yellow fever. Only William was left, and he too was sent away to school. They were reunited in the holidays, and at the end of one of them, rather than be separated again they decided to run away. Constance disguised herself as a boy and they walked to Bristol. They tried to get a room in a hotel, but they were turned over to the police. Forced to explain herself to her father, Constance said that she wanted to leave England and was not sorry.
    Mr Kent decided to try a new school nearer to home, and her behaviour there was better, though she was still just as churlish at home. After the murder of Saville, Samuel Kent sent her to a French convent, probably to get her away from the village children and the English press. Constance stayed there for two years – and it was her kindness to children that was remarked on. It seems that she became deeply