The Murder of Harriet Lane: Henry Wainwright’s Crime

Henry Wainwright always knew he was destined for fame, but in his youth, he had no idea he would end up attracting the wrong kind. Henry Wainwright was born on 13 October 1838 in Whitechapel, to Elizabeth and Henry Wainwright senior. He was the eldest of three sons, and his younger brothers were named William and Thomas. Their father was a successful tradesman who ran his own brush manufacturing business, which made them one of the more affluent families in London’s East End. Henry attended Stepney Grammar School, and later joined his father in the brush company alongside his brother William. Business was brisk, and they even secured a contract to supply brushes to the Metropolitan Police Force, boosting their reputation along with their bank balance, and they owned two factories at 84 and 215 Whitechapel Road.

Alongside his work, Henry read avidly, was a member of a book club, and joined a debating society. He even took elocution classes at the Beaumont Institute in Mile End, where he enjoyed reciting the works of famous authors like Charles Dickens. He was never happier than when he was entertaining audiences of bohemian artists, fops, and dandies at the Sheridan Club, reciting from Lord Tennyson’s, ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’, and Thomas Hood’s ‘The Dream of Eugene Aram’. Coincidentally, Hood’s ballad was based on the true story of a schoolteacher named Aram, who grappled with secret, homicidal impulses and was hanged in 1759 for the murder of shoemaker Daniel Clark in Knaresborough, Yorkshire. It was interesting that Thomas Wainwright should take such an interest in this particular work, knowing that he, too, had the propensity inside him for killing. This tendency lay dormant for years while Wainwright practiced his recitations, dreamed of being on stage, attended church, and even made regular charitable donations. On the surface, he was a perfect citizen. At the age of 25, he married a woman named Elizabeth and they moved into a spacious house near the brush factories on Whitechapel Road, which they filled with five children.

Wainwright meets Harriet Lane

When his father died, Henry inherited around £2,000 – worth over a quarter of a million today – and half the share of the family business, which he ran alongside his brother William, while Thomas found work as an ironmonger. But running a brush manufacturing firm was no longer exciting enough for Henry Wainwright. The glitz and glamour of the theatrical world drew him to the Pavilion Theatre, which he visited frequently. There, in 1871, 33-year-old Wainwright met 19-year-old Harriet Lane, a milliner’s apprentice turned actress, and the scene was set for a romantic performance that would culminate in a horror story.

Henry Wainwright kept Harriet Lane as his mistress, paying for her lodgings at Sidney Square, Mile End Road, and giving her £5 a week. Although Harriet lodged at Sidney Square under the false name ‘Mrs King’, she openly discussed her lifestyle with her parents, admitting to them that she enjoyed being ‘kept like a lady’. When Wainwright visited, he used the alias ‘Percy King’, and the pair went on to have two children; Beatrice, born in August 1872, and Miriam, born in 1873.

Financial Difficulties and Multiple Mistresses

By now, Henry Wainwright had seduced another mistress, ballet dancer Alice Day, and his finances were buckling under the strain of supporting his first family as well as Harriet Lane and two extra children, not to mention keeping another lover on the side. To make matters worse, he had developed a taste for billiards and gambling and was in debt to one bookmaker by £400. Even his business income couldn’t cover it, and he found himself skirting dangerously close to bankruptcy. His father had been the one to manage the practicalities of the brush manufacturing company when he was alive, and Henry had embarrassingly little idea of how to run the business. The Metropolitan Police commissioners cancelled their contract, and Henry’s brother William cut ties with the failing enterprise after discovering the full extent of the financial troubles, setting up a company on his own in another part of London. Henry and his first family downsized and moved to a smaller home, but he soon realised that he needed to take more drastic action to curb his escalating expenses.

Another man might simply have ended his relationship with his mistresses and settled down to a monogamous life to preserve his marriage and his bank balance, but not Henry Wainwright. Harriet Lane was becoming a problem in more ways than just financially – she was beginning to cause drunken, jealous scenes about his habit of pursuing other women, and he felt that simply cutting off her money and evicting her from her lodgings wouldn’t be enough. He needed a more permanent solution.

The Murder of Harriet Lane

In September 1874, Wainwright told Harriet he was moving her into premises in Whitechapel Road, in order to be closer to him while he was working. Instead, he took her to his factory, shot her in the head and slit her throat before burying her under the floorboards in the workshop. To explain her sudden disappearance, he told her friends and family she had gone off with another man. The two children he had fathered with Harriet were taken in by a friend named Mrs Wilmore, whom Wainwright paid 25 shillings a week for their upkeep. Shortly afterwards, Harriet’s family received an abrupt letter from a man calling himself E. Friere, which read, ‘Harriet is under my protection. I intend to marry her in three weeks if she gives up all her friends, but if ever she communicates with any of them, that moment we part.’ Henry Wainwright claimed that he, too, had received such a letter. To ensure the ruse was believed, he enlisted the help of his brother Thomas, who must have shared his sibling’s interest in the theatre, as he willingly donned a disguise and impersonated Harriet’s fictitious new suitor. A few weeks later, Mrs Wilmore received a further missive which ran, ‘From E. Friere to Mrs Wilmore, we are just off to Dover. We have had a jolly spree. Harriet is alright.’ Although Harriet’s friends and family were suspicious, they were reluctant to involve the police as they were ashamed of her behaviour and didn’t want to cause a scandal, so it was some time before the deception was discovered.

That winter, Wainwright’s dwindling business suffered another blow. A fire broke out at the 84 Whitechapel Road warehouse, but the insurance company suspected deliberate arson and refused to pay out. Wainwright was ruined. A solicitor named Mr Behrend took over the lease of 215 Whitechapel Road and let it to a tenant, but as the summer of 1875 started heating up, the tenant complained about a noxious smell emanating from the back of the workshop, and moved out in disgust. Behrend advertised the property for sale and Wainwright realised he had to take action in case the next owner was more persistent in seeking the source of the odour.

Concealing the Crime

Henry, now aged 36, once again called on the help of his younger brother. Thomas shared Henry’s lack of business acumen, and his ironmonger’s shop had just failed, but he still had the keys to his premises in the old Hen & Chickens public house building at 54 Borough High Street. The building boasted deep cellars and the pair planned to move the body there, where it would lay undisturbed. Henry slipped into his old vacant warehouse, lifted the floorboards and retrieved the remains of Harriet Lane. He had proved just as inept at covering up murder as he had at business, having attempted to dispose of her body using chloride of lime—a disinfectant and preservative—rather than quicklime, which he may have mistakenly believed would hasten decomposition. As there was more of her left than he had hoped, he knew that carrying her in one piece would attract attention, so he used a chopper to dismember the body, placing the parts into two large parcels wrapped in cloth and secured with rope, ready for transportation to the Hen & Chickens public house.

The Discovery of Harriet Lane’s Remains

Wainwright asked one of his former employees, Alfred Stokes, to assist him in removing the parcels from the warehouse and transporting them to Borough High Street, tempting him with the offer of £5. This was a significant sum of money, and Alfred was suspicious of such generosity and couldn’t help wondering what was inside the packages that was so important. Henry Wainwright lifted one package while Stokes hefted the other and they lugged the parcels along the road for a few minutes until they realised that they were too heavy to carry for any distance. Henry went off to hail a cab, and while he was gone, Stokes took the opportunity to satisfy his curiosity and peeked inside the parcel. His inquisitiveness was rewarded with a horrific shock: inside was a severed human hand and several other decomposing body parts.

The cab arrived seconds later, and Wainwright jumped in with the parcels, thanking Stokes for his help. As the horses trotted away, Stokes ran after the cab and called out to two passing policemen for assistance, but they assumed he was drunk and simply ignored his pleas. A few streets away, Wainwright spotted Alice Day walking along the road, and bold as brass, stopped the cab and invited her to ride with him. He smoked a cigar to mask the appalling smell during the grotesquely farcical journey, as he rode with both his mistresses at once; once of them alive, and one of them dead.

Wainwright’s Arrest

Meanwhile, Alfred Stokes had found another policeman and convinced him to investigate. They followed the cab, catching up with it after it slowed down to pick up Alice, and, after confirming their contents, the officer took possession of the offending parcels. Henry Wainwright offered him a £50 bribe to look the other way, but the incorruptible police officer refused, even when Wainwright increased the offer to £200. He was arrested on 11 September 1875, exactly one year after Harriet’s murder. His lover, Alice Day, was also taken into custody, but it was quickly established that she was an unwitting passenger on the grisly carriage ride, and she was soon released.

The police examined Wainwright’s business premises and found traces of blood, a chopper wrapped in paper, a shovel, a hammer, a knife, and an axe. On the axe were traces of human flesh and lime. Beneath the floorboards was an open grave measuring five feet long, two feet deep, and two feet wide, containing strands of hair belonging to the deceased. It was an open-and-shut case, and Henry Wainwright was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death.

While awaiting execution, Wainwright spent hours scribbling in his cell, writing an autobiography of his life and his role in the murder, which he planned to give to his wife. To hide it from the wardens, he rolled up the manuscript and tucked it under his pillow, taking it with him each day when he was escorted to the exercise yard. The autobiography would come as a terrible shock to his wife and friends, who all firmly believed in his innocence.

The Execution of Henry Wainwright

On Tuesday 21 December 1875, a crowd numbering almost 1,000 gathered outside Newgate Prison as early as 7:00 a.m., the bleak winter morning still wreathed in darkness. The practice of public hangings had been abolished seven years earlier in 1868, but onlookers still fought for standing space outside to be among the first to witness the raising of the black flag which would indicate that the ultimate penalty had been carried out.

Despite the prohibition of public hangings, it was reported that around 200 people were permitted to enter the prison and stand in the execution yard, presumably journalists, doctors, police officers or other observers who were entitled to be present.

The execution yard, surrounded on all sides by the prison’s grim, imposing walls, was dimly lit by the glow of oil lamps. At two minutes before 8:00 a.m. the dismal clang of a bell was accompanied by a cry of ‘All hats off.’ As the clock chimed the hour, every head was uncovered out of respect as the grey-haired chaplain emerged from the condemned cell, closely followed by Henry Wainwright, his hands pinioned behind his back. Behind Wainwright was the prison governor, executioner William Marwood, and several other prison officials. Marwood had been responsible for introducing the long drop method, calculating the length of the rope depending on each convict’s weight, so Wainwright could be more or less assured of a quick end, as the new technique ensured that the prisoner’s neck would be broken instantly, provided the calculations had been carried out correctly, reducing the chances of being slowly strangled to death.

Marwood escorted his prisoner to the assigned spot on the wooden scaffold, where Wainwright raised his eyes heavenwards, as if drinking in one final look at the sky. He had once dreamed of treading the boards of a theatre stage, but instead, he would end his life with his feet on the wooden planks of a gallows. He glanced quietly around at the spectators and closed his eyes. Marwood placed the white cap over his head, secured the noose around his neck, and pushed the lever. There was an all-pervading silence for a few moments, then cheers could be heard from outside as the black flag was hoisted. Marwood pocketed his £10 fee for the execution which he received in addition to his salary of £20 a year, as well as being allowed to keep the prisoner’s clothes. Wainwright’s body was smeared with quicklime to hasten decomposition; ironically something he had unsuccessfully tried himself on his victim’s remains, and he was buried in a deep pit on the prison grounds. Harriet Lane was given a proper burial at Waltham Holy Cross Cemetery in Waltham Abbey.

Henry Wainwright’s brother, Thomas, served seven years in prison for accessory to murder, although some believed it was he who had been the real killer, and that Henry had taken the blame.

Bullets retrieved from Harriet Lane’s skull, the chopper used to dismember her body, and even the cigar Wainwright was smoking when he was arrested, are all kept at New Scotland Yard’s Crime Museum. Given his love of performing, Wainwright might have been disappointed to know that the museum’s artefacts are not available for public viewing, and are accessible only by those involved in law enforcement and as a teaching collection for police recruits. He may not have achieved the fame and success he sought, but nevertheless, his infamy lives on.

Related Case

The murder of Annie Pritchard bears notable similarities to this case, involving a married man who killed his mistress after she became pregnant with his child.

Sources

The Penny Illustrated Paper 25 September 1875
Illustrated Police News – Saturday 23 October 1875
Illustrated Police News – Saturday 27 November 1875
Bondeson, Jan; “Victorian Murders”, 2017, Amberley Publishing
Rowland, David, “Executioners from 1850 to 1964”, 2014, https://www.oldpolicecellsmuseum.org.uk/content/history/local-historians-history/david-rowland/executioners/part_2

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