Murder & the Modern Conscience

A Case Study of Two Murders, the Trials, and the Question of Moral Responsibility

by James Hitchcock

Early one summer morning in 1860 an English nurse woke to discover that her charge, the infant Francis Savill Kent, was missing from his crib. An increasingly frantic search of the spacious grounds of Road Hill House finally revealed the boy’s body in an unused outhouse. His throat was cut, but apparently he had died by suffocation.

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James Hitchcock is Professor emeritus of History at St. Louis University in St. Louis. He and his late wife Helen have four daughters. His most recent book is the two-volume work, The Supreme Court and Religion in American Life (Princeton University Press, 2004). He is a senior editor of Touchstone.

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