Constance Kent

Constance Emilie Kent, later Ruth Emilie Kaye, (6 February 1844 - 10 April 1944) was an English woman who confessed, under unreliable circumstances, to a notorious infant murder, that took place when she was sixteen years old. The Constance Kent case in 1865 raised a seried of questions about priest-penitent privilege in the UK.

The Crime
In June, 1860, 4 year-old Francis Savile Kent disappeared from his home, Rode House at Rode, in Wiltshire. Eventually, his body was found in the vault of a disused outhouse on the property. The child, still dressed in his nightshirt and wrapped in a blanket, bore knife wounds with the throat slashed so deeply as to be almost decapitated. Although the nursemaid was initially arrested and quickly released, suspicion fell on his 16 year-old half-sister, Constance. She was arrested on July 16, but released without trial. The family moved, sending Constance to a convent in France.

Committal
In 1865 Constance Kent was prosecuted for the murder five years previously. She made a statement confessing her guilt to a Church of England clergyman, the Rev. Arthur Wagner, and she expressed to him her resolution to give herself up to justice. He assisted her in carrying out this resolution and he gave evidence of this statement before the magistrates. But he prefaced his evidence by a declaration that he must withhold any further information on the ground that it had been received under the seal of "sacramental confession" (see: Seal of the Confessional). He was but slightly pressed by the magistrates, the fact of the matter being that the prisoner was not defending the charge. There was much speculation at the time that Constance Kent's confession was false. Many supposed that her father, a known adulterer, was having an affair with the toddler's nursemaid, and in a fit of rage, murdered the child after coitus interruptus. Constance Kent's "confession" was thought to have been coerced by her father. If this is the case, then Constance Kent's loyalty was fierce. She never recanted her confession, even after her father's death.

Press excitement
At the Assizes, Constance Kent pleaded guilty and her plea was accepted so that Mr. Wagner was not again called. The position which Mr. Wagner assumed before the magistrates caused much public debate in the press. There was considerable expression of public indignation that it should have been suggested that Mr. Wagner could have any right as against the state to withhold evidence on the ground which he had put forward. The indignation seems to have been largely directed against the assumption that sacramental confession was known to the Church of England.

Parliamentary comment
Questions were asked in both Houses of Parliament. In the House of Lords, Richard Bethell, 1st Baron Westbury, Lord Chancellor, in reply to George Thomas John Nugent, 1st Marquess of Westmeath, stated that :

He stated that it appeared that an order for committal for contempt of court had in fact been made against Mr. Wagner. If that is so, it was not enforced.

On the same occasion Frederic Thesiger, 1st Baron Chelmsford, a previous Lord Chancellor, stated that the law was clear that Mr. Wagner had no privilege at all to withhold facts which came under his knowledge in confession. Lord Westmeath said that there had been two recent cases, one being the case of a priest in Scotland, who, on refusing to give evidence, had been committed to prison. As to this case Lord Westmeath stated that, upon an application for the priest's release being made to the Home Secretary, Sir George Grey, 2nd Baronet, the latter had replied that if he were to remit the sentence without an admission of error on the part of the Catholic priest and without an assurance on his part that he would not again in a similar case adopt the same course, he (the Home Secretary) would be giving a sanction to the assumption of a privilege by ministers of every denomination which, he was advised, they could not claim. The second case was R v. Hay.

Lord Westbury's statement in the House of Lords drew a protest from Henry Phillpotts, the then Bishop of Exeter, who wrote him a letter strongly maintaining the privilege which had been claimed by Mr. Wagner. The bishop argued that the canon law on the subject had been accepted without gainsaying or opposition from any temporal court, that it had been confirmed by the Book of Common Prayer in the service for the visitation of the sick, and, thus, sanctioned by the Act of Uniformity. Phillpotts was supported by Edward Lowth Badeley who wrote a pamphlet on the question of priest-penitent privilege. From the bishop's reply to Lord Westbury's answer to his letter it is apparent that Lord Westbury had expressed the opinion that the 113th canon of 1603 simply meant that the "clergyman must not mero motu and voluntarily and without legal obligation reveal what is communicated to him in confession". He appears, also, to have expressed an opinion that the public was not at the time in a temper to bear any alteration of the rule compelling the disclosure of such evidence.

Sentence
Constance Kent was sentenced to death, but this was commuted to life in prison owing to her youth at the time and her confession. She served twenty years and was released in 1885 at the age of 41. She emigrated to Tasmania, Australia, where she lived with her brother William Saville-Kent who, for reasons unknown, had hyphenated his last name. Constance changed her name to Ruth Emilie Kaye and had a long career as a nurse before being appointed Matron of the Prince Henry Hospital. She was later offered a post at the Parramatta Industrial School for Girls.

Constance Kent died on April 10, 1944, after living a long and eventful life. Having lived to see her 100th birthday, she may very well be the only convicted murdered to receive the traditional congratulatory birthday telegram from the reigning monarch.

A "Jack the Ripper" suspect?
Wagner, in The Science of Sherlock Holmes, mentions the Kent case as an example of how forensic evidence may be bungled. She concluded with speculation that Constance, having committed one murder with a knife and having assisted midwives in the convent, and was released only three years before the Jack the Ripper murders in 1888.

Cultural references

 * Elements of the case were used by Wilkie Collins in The Moonstone (1868);
 * Charles Dickens based the flight of Helena Landless in The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870) on Kent's early life;
 * James Friel's novel Taking the Veil (1989) is inspired by Kent's life.