Jack Whicher

In 1860, he was involved in investigating the Constance Kent murder case, which was the subject of Kate Summerscale's 2008 book The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, as well as the film of the same name.

[2] Charles Dickens, who met him, described him as "shorter and thicker-set" than his fellow officers, marked with smallpox scars and possessed of "a reserved and thoughtful air, as if he were engaged in deep arithmetical calculations".

[2] William Henry Wills, Dickens's deputy editor at Household Words magazine, saw Whicher involved in police work in 1850 and described him as a "man of mystery".

In May 1851 Whicher was accused of entrapment when he and Inspector Lund saw John Tyler, a convict who had been transported to Australia as a criminal and had recently returned, in Trafalgar Square.

Whicher and Lund watched Tyler meet William Cauty, another known criminal, and sit with him on a bench in The Mall opposite the London and Westminster Bank in St James's Square.

[6]: 53 In 1854 Whicher was involved in the capture of the valet who stole ten pictures including the 'Virgin and Child' by Leonardo da Vinci (then valued at £4,000) from the home of the Earl of Suffolk near Malmesbury.

In 1859 he investigated when the Reverend James Bonwell, the married rector of St Philip the Apostle in Stepney and his lover Miss Lizzie Yorath, a clergyman's daughter, were charged with murdering their illegitimate son.

[9][10] In early 1860 Whicher caught Emily Lawrence and James Pearce, who had stolen £12,000 worth of jewellery from jewellers' shops in Paris by examining valuable items on trays and then palming them.

[6]: 55 Detective Inspector Jack Whicher's fame had spread, and he was at the height of his powers when in July 1860 he was sent by Scotland Yard to assist the local police in the small village of Rode (then in Wiltshire) in investigating the murder of 3-year-old Francis Saville Kent.

Francis Saville Kent had been taken from his nursemaid Elizabeth Gough's bedroom during the night of Friday 29 June 1860 and his body was found the next morning dumped in an outside privy used by the servants in the garden of his family's house.

Local Police Superintendent Foley believed that the nursemaid, Elizabeth Gough, who had responsibility for Francis Kent, who slept in her room, was involved in the murder.

[1] Whicher concentrated his investigation on the missing nightgown belonging to 16-year-old Constance Kent, the murdered child's older half-sister from their father's first marriage; there was also circumstantial evidence against her.

[13] The substance of the confession was that she had waited until the family and servants were asleep, had gone down to the drawing-room and opened the shutters and window, had then taken the child from his room wrapped in a blanket that she had taken from between sheet and counterpane in his cot (leaving both these undisturbed or readjusted), left the house and killed him in the privy with a razor stolen from her father.

He had become a private detective by early 1867 and in that role was involved in the Tichborne case, discovering that the Claimant Arthur Orton had immediately visited his family in Wapping on his return to London in 1866.