Thomas Griffiths Wainewright
Thomas Griffiths Wainewright (born October 1794 in Chiswick , England , † 1847 in Hobart , Australia ) was an English journalist , painter , art critic and murderer .
Life
Thomas Griffiths Wainewright was orphaned at an early age, growing up with his grandfather Ralph Griffiths, a newspaper publisher. He died in 1803, leaving his grandson with a fortune of around £ 5,000 that was held in trust. He was born to a distant relative, Dr. Charles Burney, educated. He initially served as a technical officer in the Guard , then as a bugler with the Yeoman volunteers.
Wainewright married Eliza Frances Ward at the age of 23. From 1819 he wrote for various magazines ( The Literary Pocket-Book , Blackwoods Magazine and The Foreign Quarterly Review ). He is also likely the author of various caricatures and reviews that appeared in The London Magazine between 1820 and 1823 under the names Janus Weathercock , Egomet Bonmot and Mr. Vinkbooms .
He was friends with Charles Lamb , who valued his literary work and in a letter to Bernard Barton paints the picture of a friendly, carefree Wainewright. He also excelled as an artist, illustrating poems by William Chamberlayne . From 1821 to 1825 various prints by him were exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts , including A Romance from Undine , Paris in the Chamber of Helen and The Milkmaid's Song .
Because of his lavish lifestyle, his finances got into trouble. In 1822 he began copying the signatures of his trustees. With the forged power of attorney he went to the bank and had half of the fortune paid out; he repeated this procedure a year later. In 1830 he took out life insurance for a total of £ 18,000 on his sister-in-law Helen Abercrombie with various agencies . When she died on December 21 of the same year, the insurance companies refused to pay on the grounds that false information was given. It was later claimed that as early as 1829 he poisoned his uncle Thomas Griffiths with strychnine to gain possession of Linden House, where he had spent his childhood. In August 1830 he is said to have poisoned his mother-in-law with the same poison. There is no evidence of this. In the Wainewright trial against the insurance companies, the suspicion of murder was explicitly excluded, especially since an autopsy of Helen Abercomby (brain and stomach) had shown no signs of poisoning.
The refusal of the insurance companies caused him financial difficulties and was temporarily arrested for his debts. He then retired to the France of the July Revolution back to strict thence a lawsuit against the insurance and return to payment of the premiums. In Boulogne he persuaded a friend from Norfolkshire to take out insurance for £ 3,000 and poisoned him. Since he was not the beneficiary of this act, it can be assumed that he wanted to take revenge on the insurance company in this way.
Wainewright's trial against the insurance companies ended unfavorably for him in 1836. When he secretly returned to London in June 1837 , he was discovered and arrested on charges of a fraudulent portfolio transfer - forging signatures on his fiduciary assets over 13 years ago. He was sentenced to life deportation to Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania ). There he served his sentence as a chain convict, then as a nurse in the prison hospital. Later he continued to paint. He died of a stroke in Hobart in 1847 .
plant
In 1880 his works were published under the title Essays and Criticisms with a description of his life by William Carew Hazlitt , the grandson of William Hazlitt . The story of his crimes inspired Charles Dickens to his story Hunted Down ( Attached to the track ) and Edward Bulwer-Lytton for his novel Lucretia on. The artist and poisoner Wainewright has encouraged other authors to write books about his life story; notably Oscar Wilde (in Pen, Pencil and Poison (dt. Pen, brush and poison ), appeared in Fortnightly Review, January 1889) and AG Allen (in Twelve Bad Men, edited by Thomas Seccombe , 1894).
Web links
Work edition: * [1]
Individual evidence
- ^ Süddeutsche Zeitung: Dandy without scruples. Retrieved August 15, 2020 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wainewright, Thomas Griffiths |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Weathercock, Janus; Bonmet, Egomet; Van Vinkvooms |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | English journalist, painter, art critic and murderer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 1794 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Chiswick , England |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1847 |
| Place of death | Hobart , Australia |