Thomas Griffiths Wainewright

Thomas Griffiths Wainewright: The Painter, the Forger and the Deaths No Court Ever Tried

In the London of the early 1820s, Thomas Griffiths Wainewright was a critic people read and a dandy people noticed. He wrote for the *London Magazine* in the company of Charles Lamb, showed paintings at the Royal Academy and spent far more than he had. To cover the gap, he forged the signatures that released his own trust money from the Bank of England. Between 1828 and 1830 three of his relatives died, and the insurers of the youngest refused to pay. Rumour called him a poisoner. No court ever charged him with murder. In July 1837 he pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to a charge arising from the forgery and was transported to Van Diemen's Land for life. There, a convict and a hospital orderly, he drew portraits that Australian galleries now prize.

Raised in a Literary House

Wainewright was born in October 1794 at Richmond, Surrey. His mother, Ann, died at or soon after his birth, and his father, Thomas, a few years later. The boy was brought up by his grandfather, Ralph Griffiths, founding editor of the *Monthly Review*, which he had launched in 1749, and later by an uncle, George Edward Griffiths. He was educated at Greenwich Academy under the classical scholar Charles Burney.

Brush, Sword and Pen

At 19 he began studying painting under Thomas Phillips and John Linnell. In April 1814 he bought a commission in the 16th Regiment of Foot, and he gave it up about 13 months later. On 13 November 1817 he married Eliza Frances Ward.

From 1820 he wrote essays and art criticism for the *London Magazine* under a carnival of pen names: Janus Weathercock, Egomet Bonmot, Cornelius van Vinkbooms. He moved easily among the magazine's contributors, and Lamb, in an 1823 letter, called him "kind, light-hearted" and counted him among the journal's mainstays. From 1821 to 1825 he exhibited narrative paintings at the Royal Academy, strongly under the spell of Henry Fuseli.

A Fortune He Was Not Allowed to Touch

Wainewright had inherited about £5,000, but it was held in trust at the Bank of England: he could draw the income, not the capital. In 1822, and again about two years later, he forged the trustees' signatures on powers of attorney and took the capital itself. Forgery was then a capital crime.

Three Deaths, One Suspicion

In 1828 Wainewright and his wife moved into Linden House at Turnham Green, the home of his uncle, George Edward Griffiths. The uncle died within the year. In August 1830 his mother-in-law, Mrs Abercromby, died suddenly. That same year the life of her daughter Helen Abercromby, Eliza's half-sister, then about 20, was insured with several companies for some £16,000. Helen died on 21 December 1830.

Wainewright and his wife stood to gain from the deaths. Rumour said he had poisoned all three. That remains a suspicion, not a finding: he was never charged with, or tried for, any of the deaths. The Australian Dictionary of Biography notes that no known evidence shows the deaths were anything other than natural, and Canberra's National Portrait Gallery describes the poisonings as rumoured and never established. Others, including the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, judge that he probably did kill. The insurers refused to pay on Helen's policies, and by the end of 1835 the courts had found in their favour.

Six Years in France

In 1831 Wainewright left England for Boulogne, leaving his wife and young son behind. He stayed abroad for six years. Victorian accounts placed him for a time in a Paris prison; that episode has never been firmly documented.

Newgate, 1837

He came back to London in 1837 and was arrested in June on a Bank of England warrant. In Newgate the actor William Macready, touring the prison with Charles Dickens and John Forster, recognised him. In July 1837, at the Old Bailey, Wainewright pleaded guilty. The Bank did not press the charge that could have sent him to the gallows, and he was sentenced to transportation for life.

Convict at Hobart Town

He was held in the prison hulks at Portsmouth, sailed in the convict transport *Susan* on 29 July 1837 and reached Hobart Town on 21 November. His convict record described a pale, grey-eyed man of 43. He worked first on a road gang; within months poor health brought lighter duties, and he became a wardsman, or orderly, at the colonial hospital. From early 1842 he was admitted there as a patient.

Portraits From Captivity

In Hobart he went back to drawing. Working mainly in pencil and watercolour, he made small, finely handled portraits of the colony's officials, doctors and their families: the sisters Jane and Lucy Cutmear, daughters of a gatekeeper (about 1842); the hospital matron, Eleanor Fitzgerald; the lieutenant-governor, Sir John Franklin (about 1840); and himself. Canberra's National Portrait Gallery counts 56 sitters between his arrival and his death. His work is held today by the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of South Australia and the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.

In 1844 he petitioned Lieutenant-Governor Sir John Eardley-Wilmot for a ticket of leave, with hospital staff vouching for him. By 1845 he had a measure of freedom, lodgings of his own and paid commissions. A conditional pardon was granted on 14 November 1846. Soon afterwards he suffered a stroke. He died at St Mary's Hospital, Hobart, on 17 August 1847, aged 52.

The Afterlife of a Legend

Fiction claimed him while he was still alive. Edward Bulwer-Lytton drew on his case for *Lucretia* (1846). Charles Dickens, who had seen him in Newgate, modelled the insurance poisoner Julius Slinkton of *Hunted Down* (1859) on him. In 1889 Oscar Wilde made him the hero of *Pen, Pencil and Poison*, an essay that treats the suspicions as fact and the man as an artist of crime. "There is no essential incongruity between crime and culture," Wilde wrote. More than a century later the poet Andrew Motion published *Wainewright the Poisoner* (2000), a fictional confession with notes on the evidence. Galleries have since reclaimed the artist: Canberra's National Portrait Gallery staged *Elegance in Exile* in 2012, and the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery mounted *Paradise Lost*, devoted to his art.

On Screen and in Print

• Lucretia, or The Children of Night (1846), novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, which drew on his case.
• Hunted Down (1859), short story by Charles Dickens, first published in the *New York Ledger*; the villain, Julius Slinkton, is modelled on Wainewright.
• Pen, Pencil and Poison (1889), essay by Oscar Wilde in the *Fortnightly Review*, revised for *Intentions* (1891).
• The Poisoner (1961), episode of NBC's *Thriller*, directed by Herschel Daugherty; Murray Matheson plays a fictionalised version named Thomas Edward Griffith.
• Wainewright the Poisoner (2000), by Andrew Motion, published by Faber and Faber; a fictional confession with notes on the sources.

Why Thomas Griffiths Wainewright Is Called a Genius

Because the talent was real, and it outlasted everything he did to waste it. The critic whom Lamb's circle valued became, as a convict, one of the most accomplished portraitists of colonial Australia, and his small Hobart drawings still hold their place in national collections. That is why he appears on Geniuses.club. It is not a tribute. The proven record is fraud: he took money held in trust and forged the names of the people charged with guarding it. Beyond that lies a darker question no court ever answered, about the deaths of George Edward Griffiths, Mrs Abercromby and Helen Abercromby, a young woman of about 20. They were people, not plot devices for Wilde's paradoxes. Wainewright's gift explains the portraits. It explains nothing about the theft, and it excuses none of it.

Achievements

• Transported for life as a convict, he became one of the most accomplished portraitists of colonial Australia, drawing Hobart sitters from hospital staff to Lieutenant-Governor Sir John Franklin.
• In July 1837 he pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to a charge arising from a Bank of England forgery and was transported for life; he was never tried for murder.
• Wrote essays and art criticism for the London Magazine from 1820 as 'Janus Weathercock', 'Egomet Bonmot' and 'Cornelius van Vinkbooms'.
• Exhibited narrative paintings at the Royal Academy from 1821 to 1825.
• Trained under the painters Thomas Phillips and John Linnell.
• Drew portraits of 56 known sitters in Van Diemen's Land, now held by the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of South Australia and the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.
• Suspected, but never charged or tried, in the deaths of his uncle, mother-in-law and sister-in-law between 1828 and 1830.
• Inspired Bulwer-Lytton's Lucretia (1846), Dickens's Hunted Down (1859) and Oscar Wilde's essay Pen, Pencil and Poison (1889).