manner conceivable. The executioner had been cautioned to make no mistake this time, and he carried out his instructions with barbarous fidelity. He heated his irons twice to burn each of Prynn's checks, and cut one of his ears so close as to cut off a
part of the cheek. All of the defendants' ears were cut so close as to sever arteries, and the surgeon had considerable difficulty in stopping the flow of blood. The offending books were publicly burned at the same time.
OLD WORLD TRIALS. VII. •REG. v. CONSTANCE KENT. IN the case of Constance Kent are raised some curious points as to criminal respon sibility, and also as to the medico-legal value of confession as an evidence of guilt.1 On the morning of 30th June, 1860, Francis Saville Kent, a little boy four years of age, was found murdered in an outhouse on his father's premises, Roadhill House, Wiltshire. The throat was cut to the bone, and the chest had been wounded to the heart. The corpse was wrapped in a blanket belonging to the bed on which the child had slept the night before. A piece of flannel, such as women sometimes wear as a chest protector, was lying under the body; and a portion of a newspaper, which had evidently been used for wiping a bloody knife, lay beside it. No other indicia of guilt were discovered, and even the owner of the piece of flannel could not be traced. The household consisted of twelve per sons, of whom only the names of Mr. and Mrs. Kent, the nurse, Elizabeth Gough, and Constance Kent, a daughter of Mr. Kent by his first wife, are material to the present story. The murdered boy, a younger child, and the nurse, Elizabeth Gough, slept in the nursery, each in a separate bed. Early on the morning of the 30th, Gough awoke and 1An interesting article on this question by Dr. William A. Hammond, will be found in the papers of the New York Medico-Legal Society, 1st ser., p. 318.
found the little boy's bed empty, but suppos ing that Mrs. Kent had taken him to her own room, gave herself no uneasiness on the subject, and fell asleep again. When the family came down stairs to breakfast it was found that the child was missing, and soon afterward the body was discovered in the plight we have described. All the doors and windows of the house had been securely locked and closed the night before; but the housemaid, on com ing down in the morning, had found the drawing-room door and window open. There were, however, no blood stains in the house or garden, and no marks of any struggle, nor had any noises been heard by any member of the family. Mr. Kent, Mrs. Kent, Gough, and Con stance, who was then about sixteen years of age, were in turn the objects of popular and police suspicion; and certain expres sions of dislike towards the murdered child, which the young lady had on several occa-sions been heard to utter, together with the disappearance of the nightdress she had been wearing on the night before the mur der, led to her arrest. But she bore herself in this trying ordeal in a natural and appar ently innocent manner, and was soon dis charged. She then went to school for two years, and afterwards entered St. Mary's College, Brighton, a semi-conventual order
