THE story by Lewis Cowen last week of the assistance that the Gazette and Herald has been able to give HTV film makers on the case of Constance Kent convicted in 1865 on her confessing to the murder of her three-year-old stepbrother at Rode five years earlier made fascinating reading.

In 1954 the biographer to late Mrs Yseult Bridges sought in her book Saint With Red Hands? The Chronicle of a Great Crime, to pin the dirty deed on their bad-tempered father.

Following her confession Constance was committed by Trowbridge Magistrates for trial for murder, and after ten weeks in Devizes Gaol she pleaded guilty at the Salisbury Assize and was sentenced to death. She was not however hanged, as you report. Her sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life.

In July 1885, on the instigation of the Rev A D Wagner, to whom she had originally confessed, she was released into a community convent at Buxted, 20 miles from Brighton. Later, she emigrated to Canada where she worked in nursing.

JOHN LEECH

Devizes