65 | The Murder of Harriet Lane (Victorian True Crime)

In Victorian London, Henry Wainwright, a once-respected businessman, leads a double life of deception, infidelity, and mounting debt. When his mistress, Harriet Lane, becomes an inconvenient burden, he devises a gruesome solution.

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Music:
Epidemic Sound - Exile
Epidemic Sound - Terra Firma
Epidemic Sound - Eternal Moment

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

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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
thirteenth of October eighteen thirty eight in Whitechapel to Elizabeth
and Henry Wainwright Senior. He was the eldest of three sons,

(00:23):
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

(00:46):
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 eighty four and two one five
Whitechapel Road. Alongside his work, Henry read avidly was a

(01:10):
member of a book club and joined a debating society.
He even took elocution classes at the Beaumont Institute in
Mile End, where 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

(01:31):
the Sheridan Club, reciting from Lord Tennyson's Charge of the
Light Brigade and Thomas Hoods The Dream of Eugene Aram. Coincidentally,
Hood's ballad was based on the true story of a
school teacher named Aarm who grappled with secret homicidal impulses
and was hanged in seventeen fifty nine for the murder

(01:53):
of shoemaker Daniel Clark in Naresborough, Yorkshire. It was interesting
that Henry Wainwright should enjoy this particular work, knowing that
he too had the propensity inside him for killing. This
tendency lay dormant for years while Wainwright practices recitations, dreamed

(02:15):
of being on stage, attended church and even made regular
charitable donations. On the surface, he was a perfect citizen.
At the age of twenty five, he married a woman
named Elizabeth, and they moved into a spacious house near
the Brush Factories on Whitechapel Road, which they filled with

(02:38):
five children. When his father died, Henry inherited around two
thousand pounds worth over a quarter of a million today,
and half the share of the family business, which she
ran alongside his brother William. While Thomas found work as
an ironmonger, but running a brush manufacturing firm was no

(03:02):
longer exciting enough for Henry Wainwright. The glitz and glamour
of the theatrical world drew him to the Pavilion Theater,
which he visited frequently. There in eighteen seventy one, thirty
three year old Wainwright met nineteen year old Harriet Lane,
a milliner's apprentice turned actress, and the scene was set

(03:26):
for a romantic performance that would culminate in her horror story.
Henry Wainwright kept Harriet Lane as his mistress, paying for
her lodgings at Sydney Square, Mile End Road and giving
her five pounds a week. Although Harriet lodged at Sydney

(03:46):
Square under the force name missus King, she openly discussed
her lifestyle with her parents, admitting to them that she
enjoyed being kept like a lady. When Wainwright visit, he
used the alias Percy King, and the pair went on
to have two children. Beatrice, born in August eighteen seventy

(04:08):
two and Miriam born in eighteen seventy three. 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.

(04:33):
To make matters worse, he had developed a taste for
billiards and gambling and was in debt to one bookmaker
by four hundred pounds. 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

(04:53):
the brush manufacturing company when he was alive, and Henry
had embarrassingly little idea of how to run the business.
The Metropolitan Police Commissioners canceled 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

(05:16):
on his own in another part of London. Henry and
his first family downsized and moved to a smaller home,
but he soon realized 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

(05:38):
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

(05:59):
off her money and evicting her from her lodgings wouldn't
be enough. He needed a more permanent solution. In September
eighteen seventy four, Wainwright told Harriet he was moving her
into premises in Whitechapel Road in order to be closer

(06:20):
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

(06:42):
children he had fathered with Harriet were taken in by
a friend named Missus Wilmore, whom Wainwright paid twenty five
shillings a week for their upkeep. Shortly afterwards, Harriet's family
received an abrupt letter from a man calling himself E
free Air, which read, Harriet is under my protection. I

(07:06):
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

(07:28):
brother Thomas, who must have shared his siblings interest in
the theater, as he willingly donned a disguise and impersonated
Harriet's fictitious new suitor. A few weeks later, Missus Wilmore
received a further missive which ran from E fre Air
to Missus Wilmore, we are just off to Dover. We

(07:52):
have had a jolly spree, Harriet. He's all right. Although
Harriott's friends and family were suspicious, they were reluctant to
involve the police as they were ashamed of her behavior
and didn't want to cause a scandal. So it was
some time before the deception was discovered, and that winter

(08:19):
Wainwright's dwindling business suffered another blow a fire broke out
at the eighty four Whitechapel Road warehouse, but the insurance
company suspected deliberate arson and refused to pay out. Wainwright
was ruined. Her solicitor, named mister Barrand, took over the

(08:40):
lease of two to one five Whitechapel Road and led
it to a tenant, But as the summer of eighteen
seventy five started heating up, the tenant complained about a
noxious smell emanating from the back of the workshop and
moved out in disgust. Berrand advertised a property for sale,
and Wayne realized he had to take action in case

(09:02):
the next owner was more persistent in seeking the source
of the odor. Henry, now aged thirty six, once again
called on the help of his younger brother Thomas. Shared
Henry's lack of business acumen and his ironmonger shop had
just failed, but he still had the keys to his

(09:24):
premises in the old hen and Chickens public house building
at fifty four 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

(09:46):
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 she may have mistakenly
believed would hasten decomposition. As there was more of a

(10:10):
left than he had hoped, he knew that carrying her
in one piece would attract attention, so he used to
chop her to dismember the body, placing the parts into
two large parcels, wrapped in cloth and secured with rope,
ready for transportation to the hen and Chickens public House.
Wainwright asked one of his former employees, Alfred Stokes, to

(10:34):
assist him in removing the parcels from the warehouse and
transporting them to Burrow High Street, tempting him with the
offer of five pounds. 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 were so important.

(10:57):
Henry Wainwright lifted one package whilst Stokes hefted the other,
and they lugged the parcels along the road for a
few minutes until they realized that they were too heavy
to carry for any distance. Henry went off to haler cab,
and while he was gone, Stokes took the opportunity to
satisfy his curiosity and peeked inside the parcel. His inquisitiveness

(11:22):
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,

(11:45):
Stokes ran after the cab and called out a two
passing policeman 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 boulders Brass
stopped the cab and invited her to ride with him.

(12:07):
He smoked a cigar to mask the appalling smell during
the grotesquely fascical journey as he rode with both his
mistresses at once, one of them alive and one of
them dead. Meanwhile, Alfred Stokes had found another policeman and
convinced him to investigate. They followed the cab, catching up

(12:30):
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 fifty pound
bribe to look the other way, but the incorruptible police
officer refused, even when Wainwright increased the offer to two
hundred pounds. He was arrested on eleventh September eighteen seventy five,

(12:56):
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 grizzly carriage ride,
and she was soon released. The police examined Wainwright's business

(13:18):
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

(13:40):
hair belonging to the deceased. It was an open and shutcase,
and Henry Wainwright was found guilty of murder and sentenced
to death. While awaiting execution, Wainwright spent hours scribbling in
his cell right an autobiography of his life and his

(14:02):
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 escorter to
the exercise yard. The autobiography would come as a terrible
shock to his wife and friends, who all firmly believed

(14:24):
in his innocence. On Tuesday, twenty first of December eighteen
seventy five, a crowd numbering almost one thousand gathered outside
Newgate Prison as early as seven am, the oblique winter
morning still wreathed in darkness. The practice of public hangings

(14:47):
had been abolished seven years earlier, in eighteen sixty eight,
but onlooker 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

(15:09):
around two hundred 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.

(15:34):
At two minutes before eight 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 gray haired chaplain
emerged from the condemned cell, closely followed by Henry Wainwright,

(15:55):
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 rope depending on each convict's physical characteristics,

(16:17):
so Wainwright could be more or less assured of a
quick end, as a 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

(16:37):
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
theater 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.

(17:02):
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 ten pound fee for the execution, which

(17:23):
he received in addition to his salary of twenty pounds
a year, as well as being allowed to keep the
prisoner's clothes. Wainwright's body was smeared with lime 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

(17:49):
Waltham Holy Cross Cemetery in Wofam. Mabbe 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. Bullet's retrieve

(18:09):
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 artifacts are not available for

(18:30):
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. Thank you for listening

(18:51):
to this episode of Prassire's Murder Map. If you'd like
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(19:15):
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