The Messalina of the Suburbs; Edith Jessie Thompson (1893-1923) City of London Cemetery

 

“Three soldiers of the Coldstream Guards were walking in Montgomery street. Onegavean opinion in which all concurred. It was the woman, they said; he showed himself a man afterwards.”                                                                       James Joyce ‘Finnegans Wake’ 

 

At around midnight on Tuesday the 3rd October 1922, a married couple Percy and Edith Thompson were walking back to their house on Kensington Gardens from Ilford train station. They had spent the evening in London at the Criterion theatre watching a Ben Travers farce The Dippers. As the couple strolled home arm in arm they were followed by twenty-one-year merchant seaman Frederick Bywaters. In Belgrave Road, less than 200 hundred yards from their house, Bywaters pulled a twelve-inch knife from his coat, broke into a run and, catching up with the Thompsons, stabbed Percy twelve times in a short, frantic and fatal attack.  Most of Percy Thompson’s wounds were superficial but there were three severe neck wounds, one of which severed the carotid artery, sliced open the oesophagus and flooded his stomach with blood.  The scuffle was over in less than a minute. Frederick Bywaters immediately fled the scene leaving Percy Thompson to bleed to death in the arms of his hysterical wife.

Edith Thompson & Frederick Bywaters

Edith Graydon was born on the 25th December 1893, the eldest of 5 children, in Stamford Hill in North London. When she was 6 the family moved out their cramped accommodation to a house in Shakespeare Crescent in the new suburb of Manor Park in East London.  When Edith was eight, Frederick Bywaters was born round the corner in Rectory Road, E12.  The two families grew up together and Frederick became a great friend of one of Edith’s younger brothers. Of course, she would have paid no attention to a small boy 8 years her junior.  Edith left school at 15 and held a variety of jobs in shops and offices until, in 1911, she found work at the fashionable wholesale milliners Carlton & Prior in the Barbican, where she was to remain, a valued and trusted employee, until her death. She met the 19-year-old Percy Thompson a few months after leaving school, shortly before her sixteenth birthday.

Edith’s relationship with the stolid Percy was ambivalent almost from the start. They shared many mutual interests, in music and the theatre and in amateur dramatics but Edith was far livelier and more adventurous. Whilst Percy was a plodder at work and never received promotion, Edith quickly rose from a relatively menial sales job to assistant buyer, acquired passable French and went on sales trips to Paris. But she stuck with Percy, eventually losing her virginity to him on a holiday in Ilfracombe and thereby making it almost a certainty that she would have to marry him.  After a six-year long courtship (incredibly long for the time and quite probably a reflection of her uncertainty about a lifelong commitment to him) the couple finally married in 1916.  Shortly afterwards, with the ignominious threat of conscription hanging over him, Percy enlisted in the army. Within 4 months he had wrangled himself an honourable discharge with ‘suspected’ heart trouble (rumour had it that he had taken to smoking 50 cigarettes a day to induce cardiac palpitations).

Percy’s cowardice contrasted poorly with the much younger Frederick Bywaters eagerness to involve himself in the fight for King and country. By 1917, and still only fifteen he was still too young to enlist in the armed forces. Instead, he spent the spring and summer trying to volunteer for the merchant navy convoys that were being regularly torpedoed by German U boats. His mother blocked his first successful attempt to sign on by withholding parental permission.  Frederick simply lied about his age on his next attempt and in February 1918, after signing a disclaimer that he was accepting a position in the full knowledge of the dangers faced by shipping in war time, he set sail for India in the P & O troop carrier Nellore. For the next three months his mother had no idea where he was. His next voyage was to China. When the war ended Frederick decided to stick with the merchant navy. Following the death of his father from injuries sustained in a gas attack on the Somme, his mother had been forced to sell the house in Rectory Road and buy somewhere cheaper in South London. When Fredrick returned from a trip to China and Japan in early 1920 his family were settled in Upper Norwood. His ship was berthed in East Tilbury, and knowing that he was looking for temporary lodgings somewhere closer to Tilbury than Norwood the Graydon’s suggested he take a spare room at Shakespeare Crescent. It was here that he and Edith met again for the first time since Frederick had been a small boy. For the next seven weeks Frederick met regularly with the Thompson’s at Percy’s in-laws. The two men struck up friendship and Frederick began to take an interest in Edith’s younger sister Avis. After seven weeks he rejoined his ship on a voyage to Bombay and was away from the country for several months.

Frederick, Edith and Percy in the back garden in Ilford

In the summer of 1921 Frederick was back in the country and staying once again with the Graydon’s in Manor Park. The Thompson’s were planning a holiday on the isle of Wight and Edith had insisted on inviting her younger sister Avis. When Frederick showed up Percy fatefully suggested that he join them on the holiday as a foursome would be much more fun than Avis tagging along on her own. Percy was very aware that Avis was infatuated with the handsome young sailor and he seemed determined to play the matchmaker.  In fact, it was during this week on the Isle of Wight that Frederick and Edith first made their mutual interest in each other clear, at least to each other if not to Percy and Avis. The holiday was such a success that Percy invited Frederick to come and lodge with him and Edith at their new house in Kensington Gardens in Ilford.

Within a few days of moving into the Thompson’s home Frederick and Edith became lovers. On the 27th June, Frederick’s 19th birthday, they had the house to themselves as Edith had a day’s leave from her job. As soon as Percy left for work Edith made breakfast for the birthday boy and took it up to his bedroom where she inevitably ended up joining him in bed. Opportunities for sexual encounters would have been limited but the lovers took them whenever they could. Over the following weeks Percy became increasingly suspicious about the relationship between his wife and their young lodger. Freddy showed no desire to find himself a new berth on a ship and lost his former interest in passing boozy nights in local pubs with his host. Instead, he hung aimlessly around the house waiting to dance attendance on Edith when she returned home from work, helping her to set the table for meals, drying the dishes she had washed, and generally fetching and carrying for her. Edith was bright and cheerful with Freddy but irritable and impatient in her husband’s company. Most ominously she shunned his physical attentions. Percy began to grow sullen and resentful. Things came to a head on the August bank holiday. The three were sitting in the back garden, Edith sewing, Freddy reading a book, Percy the newspaper when Edith asks her husband to go into the house and get a pin for her. When he doesn’t jump up, Freddy does and disappears into the house. A furious argument breaks out between husband a wife. It lapses when Freddy reappears but starts again later inside the house. Freddy discretely steps outside to avoid being drawn into the squabble but as soon as he is gone Percy breaks into a tirade about Edith, her sister and her family in general. Goaded Edith screams back and Percy slaps her several times and pushes her backwards into a table. Hearing the fracas Freddy comes racing in back inside and steps between the Thompsons. Edith rushes upstairs but when Percy tries to follow Freddy stop-s him. There is no physical fight, Percy is a coward. He orders Freddy out of the house but Freddy refuses to go and tells Percy that if he ever touches his wife again, he will have him to deal with.  

The relationship between Edith and Freddy is now more or less out in the open as far as Percy is concerned. When Percy continues to insist Freddy moves out, in the end he has to comply. With no income he is also forced to go back to sea. While Freddy is away Edith begins the correspondence with him that would eventually get her hanged. The couple’s clandestine relationship continues whenever Freddy is in the country but when he is away Edith writes to him in candid detail of her daily life. She writes of her visits to the theatre, her flutter on the Derby, and a dinner with a mysterious man from Ilford called Mel, who has realised that Edith is having a sexual relationship with Freddy and therefore thinks it is worthwhile chancing his arm while the sailor is away. She writes of Percy’s sexual advances, her refusal to succumb to them and her husbands plaintive whine “Why aren’t you happy with me? We used to be happy.” She holds Percy’s advances off until 5th December; two days later Edith is putting an abortifacient into her porridge in case the encounter leads to a pregnancy. Percy picks up the wrong bowl and eats the drugged porridge himself. This semi farcical episode provides the germ for a series of recurrent fantasies in which Edith imagines drugging Percy’s tea or mixing ground glass into his porridge. She shares the details of her periods with Freddy, and tells him about is either a miscarriage or a self-administered abortion. The letters have the virtue of honesty, it was this quality of course which so shocked the judge and jury at her trial. What sort of woman would openly discuss her sexual feelings and her periods with a man? It was this unseemly candour which led to Edith, the Ilford milliner, being compared to Messalina, the whorish wife of the emperor Claudius who famously challenged Scylla, Rome’s premier prostitute, to a contest to see who could satisfy most men in a single night.

During the following year Freddy tries to get Edith away from Percy, even going to see him after the husband spots his wife and her ‘sailor boy’ at Ilford Station together. In the row that follows Percy tells Edith that if Bywaters were a man he would his permission to take out his wife. Edith relays this to Freddy who calls at Kensington Gardens to have things out man to man with Percy. He tells Percy that he doesn’t need anyone’s permission to take Edith and suggests that the couple come to an amicable agreement, a separation or a divorce. The humiliated Percy salvages what little dignity he can by digging in his heels and telling Freddy “Well I have got her and will keep her.” The argument between the two men does on for the best part of two hours but Percy refuses to budge although he finally agrees not to hit his wife anymore. All three parties no doubt grew increasingly frustrated until a desperate Freddy decides that there is only one way to resolve the situation; Percy must die. At the couple’s trial Freddy insisted that he had acted alone and that Edith had nothing to do with the murder of her husband. But from those letters the prosecution built a case that Edith, who was 29 and 7 years older than the 21-year-old Freddy, had manipulated, sexually and emotionally, the infatuated younger man. Her letters proved how shameless she was, they proved how she plotted to poison her husband or to kill him with ground glass and when that failed, how she insinuated to the hapless Freddy that he should kill Percy for her, so that they could finally be together. The evidence against Edith was scanty to say the least and one would hope that no modern jury would convict her on the basis of it.    

Justice was much swifter in the 1920’s than it is today. By the 6th December 1922 Frederick Bywaters and Edith Thompson were both on trial for murder at the Old Bailey.  On the 9th January 1923, little more than 3 months after the murder Bywaters was executed at Pentonville Prison and Thompson at Holloway.  The trial and execution generated a remarkable amount of public interest. People queued from midnight in an unusually cold winter to ensure a place in the public gallery at the court and the newspapers devoted dozens of pages of close print to the affair. The leader writer of The Times was at a loss to understand the attention given to a ‘simple and sordid case’ by the British public in ‘a trial which presented really no features of romance and which provided none of the horrors that appeal to a morbid mind.’ He went on to concede that there were elements of the crime passionnel, ‘but that extenuating term has never received a welcome in this country.’   No welcome from the legal establishment perhaps but from the British public it was another matter. Within a matter of days of the verdict prurience had turned to pity and public opinion swung firmly behind the condemned couple (though it was Bywaters that initially attracted the lion’s share of sympathy).  The Daily Sketch ran a campaign to save the pair from the hangman. On the day following the launch of the campaign the newspaper received 10,000 letters of support in the first post and a long queue to sign a petition had formed by midmorning from the lobby of its offices, out into the street and then 500 yards along the pavements. The magistrate who had committed Bywaters to trial wrote to the Home Office pleading for the boy’s life. He was followed by dozens of other worthies as the campaign gathered pace. Eventually the Daily Sketch collected over a million signatures in support of a reprieve, the largest ever petition in support of a condemned prisoner. 

The 82-year-old Thomas Hardy, who had read Edith Thompson’s correspondence and was struck by her looks, produced the distinctly unsympathetic poem ‘On the Portrait of a Woman about to be Hanged’ when he learned that she was to be executed.   In Paris James Joyce followed the case closely in the British newspapers and interpolated several passages from them into his notes for Finnegans Wake.  In the years that followed the case continued to exert a fascination that has never gone away. A score of novels, influenced to some degree by the case, appeared over the next 20 years including Dorothy L. Sayers ‘The Documents In The Case,’ E.M. Delafield’s ‘The Messalina Of The Suburbs’ and F. Tennyson Jesse’s ‘A Pin To See The Peepshow.’  The case was covered in the Notable British Trials series, Alfred Hitchcock later toyed with the idea of basing a film on it and by the time George Orwell came to write ‘The Decline of the English Murder’ for the Tribune in 1946 he could cite it as a classic example of the great British murder perpetrated, it seemed, purely for the delectation of the readers of the News of the World.  Following the Second World War, Orwell notwithstanding, Thompson and Bywaters seem to largely disappear from public consciousness (though the poet Kathleen Raine who was 13 at the time of the trial and living in Ilford, could declare in her 1974 autobiography that ‘Edith Thompson c’est moi’). Curiosity about domestic murders was gradually being replaced by an obsession with the phenomenon of serial killers. In the last thirty years however there has been a revival of interest beginning with the publication of Rene Weis’s account of the affair, ‘Criminal Justice’ in 1988. PD James’ discussed the case at length in 1994’s ‘The Murder Room’, the same year that Shelagh Stephenson’s radio play ‘Darling Peidi’ was broadcast. Since then Jill Dawson published the well-received novel ‘fred & edie’, and a feature film ‘Another Life’ dramatising the events that led up to the murder was released in 2001. There have been further books, notably by Laura Thompson and Edith’s letters have also been published in full. 

Following her execution Edith was buried in an unmarked grave within the grounds of Holloway Prison. Her parents expressed a wish for her to be buried with them but this was not possible for an executed prisoner. In 1971 the prison was redeveloped and the 5 bodies of executed women (including Rith Ellis) were exhumed. Ruth Ellis was buried elsewhere but the families of the other four executed women were not informed. Edith and the three other women were moved in secret and reinterred at Brookwood Cemetery.  Since 2000 Edith’s family and the author Rene Weiss campaigned to have her body moved from Brookwood to her parent’s grave in the City of London cemetery. On Tuesday 20th November 2018 Edith was exhumed from Brookwood and taken by private ambulance to an undertakers in Kingston. On the 22nd her body was brought to the City of London cemetery where a memorial service was held in the Anglican Chapel before Edith was reburied in her parent’s grave.

Death from a Broken Heart; Baron Farkas Kemény. (1797–1852) Kensal Green Cemetery

 

'Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle,

Should let itself be snuff'd out by an article.

                                                                                   Lord Byron. Don Juan, XI, st. 60

Byron’s sardonic couplet on the death of Keats was prompted by Leigh Hunt’s claim that a critical review of ‘Endymion’, in the Quarterly Review, was responsible for the poet’s death. Byron may have found it ludicrous that wounded amour-propre could prove fatal but far more robust temperaments than the author of an ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ have succumbed to assaults on their self-esteem. Take the Baron Farkas Kemény, a man of mature years, a man of the world, battle hardened and stoical in the face of adversity, who had lost his fortune and his place in society fighting for the liberation his country and now lived in exile, in poverty, in London. Kemény, who had once, at the battle for Piski Bridge, held off a superior force of 15,000 Imperial Austrian troops with a ragtail regiment of 1100 irregular soldiers and 100 Hussars, and who had, more than once, saved the life of his commanding officer, General Józef Bem, was dealt his fatal blow by an article in the Daily News casting aspersions upon his honour and financial integrity. The offending article, an open letter written by a supposed friend of Hungary, the lawyer and political theorist Joshua Toulmin Smith, questioned what Kemény had done with £520, raised by charity and provided to him for the relief of fellow Hungarian refugees. Reading the piece at his lodgings in Foley Place, Fitzrovia, the Baron had collapsed into the arms of his secretary, begging him to call for assistance. By the time help was summoned, he was already dead. At the inquest the coroner Thomas Wakely said that he had never seen “a clearer case in which a poor creature had died of a broken heart”, his life it seems, like Keats’, also snuffed out by an article. 

The Hungarian patriot is buried at Kensal Green where I had stumbled across his grave whilst exploring an out of the way area of the cemetery. The headstone was odd, a red granite upright that looked modern but had the epitaph;

To the Memory
of
Baron W. Kemény
Colonel in the Hungarian army
1848 and 1849.
He lived a Patriot, died an Exile
in 1852, aged 56.
Erected by his friends
LLMRZ

If, as the inscription claimed, the headstone was erected by his friends then it had to be at least 150 years old. But that didn’t seem right, it was too modern looking. The anomaly made the Baron and his headstone stick in my memory, so that when I received an enquiry about the location of the grave from a cemetery pilgrim in Romania earlier this year, I still remembered Kemény and where in the cemetery he was. My pilgrim was from the Szeklerland, an area of Transylvania that has, dictated by the whims of history, been ruled alternatively by Hungary and Romania for the last 100 years and is still predominantly populated by ethnic Hungarians. She is a highly successful business woman and, she said, a distant descendant of the Baron. She was planning to come to England to visit his final resting place. As I couldn’t be there on the planned day of the visit I provided maps and verbal instructions on how to find the grave but the area is overgrown and the headstone cunningly hidden in a clearing amongst trees and shrubs and not really visible from the paths. On the day the maps helped locate the general area but the grave itself proved to be frustratingly elusive. At the point where the pilgrim’s party were about to give up a saviour appeared in the form of one of the General Cemetery Company’s ground staff.

“Are you looking for a Hungarian hero?” he asked them, apparently telepathic, and when they said yes, showed them the way to the Baron’s headstone, talking non-stop on the way about the cemetery and history, speaking so rapidly they barely understood a word.  Nevertheless they were extremely grateful. The cemetery pilgrim especially; “I have done this big trip to London, just because I've been feeling for a while that I have to do it,” she told me, “I have done it for the peace of my soul.” Some peoples need to connect with the past, to seek out the dead, to stand on the patch of earth where their body was buried 200 years ago, is so strong that they will travel hundred, even thousands of miles to do it, often at great inconvenience to themselves. And in many cases the end of the journey is nothing remarkable, an overgrown graveyard, a modest memorial, an illegible inscription, marking the place where the deceased were lowered into the earth all those years ago. I have done it myself; I jumped at the chance to visit Geneva a couple of years ago when the only thing that interested me in the city of clocks and conventions was the grave of Jorge Luis Borges and I left my dying father’s bedside on a snow bound winters morning to go to the grave of Ian Curtis.

The Battle of Piski by Wilhelm Hahn

 

Baron Farkas Kemény was born in 1797 in Transylvania (then still part of the Hapsburg Empire), the descendant of an old Hungarian noble family who had originally been granted their titles and estates by the legendary Magyar ruler Árpád in the late 9th century.  His family had been prominent in the Hungarian struggles against the Turks and after completing his education at the Protestant High-school in Great Enyad, the Baron followed family tradition by joining the army, becoming an officer in the 8th regiment of Kienmoyer Hussars, and taking part in the Napoleonic Wars. In his Sketches in Remembrance of the Hungarian Struggle for Independence published in 1853, J. Constantin  Kastner says that although the Baron was “in the Austrian service, he was nevertheless a true Hungarian in heart; and upon advancing in years, his conviction grew stronger and stronger, that the Austrian army was nothing but a machine in the hands of an arbitrary power, only employed to crush constitutional life and liberty”. In 1825 he resigned from military service and retired for a while to his estates in the Transylvanian countryside. Nine years later he came out of retirement to enter into politics; in 1834 he was returned as a radical deputy to the Transylvania Diet. He was a supporter of the reforms made in April 1848 when Hungary became the third country in Europe to implement democratic parliamentary elections (after revolutionary France in 1791 and conservative Belgium in 1831). Filled with nationalistic zeal the Transylvanian Diet voted in May to reunite their territory with Hungary; when the Austrian Emperor (and King of Hungary) Franz Joseph I revoked the April reforms the Transylvanians sided with Hungary in the revolutionary war that broke out and Baron Kemény immediately enlisted on the side of the rebels. 

The Baron fought under General Józef Bem who had been entrusted by the Hungarian leader, Lajos Kossuth, with the defence of Transylvania. The Baron’s most glorious exploit was the defence of the Bridge at Piski to help cover the retreat of the main army after a defeat at Viz-Akna. Bem told his colonel "the bridge of Piski is Transylvania herself; if the bridge is lost, Transylvania is lost!" Facing Austrians of 15,000 the Baron, with 1,100 irregular foot soldiers, 100 hussars, and just 7 guns, fought for 36 hours without moving his position. He then ordered a charge of bayonets and, astounded at seeing the Austrians retreat, sent two companies of infantry to try and outflank them. The panicking Austrians abandoned their ammunition wagons and then raised the white flag. Assuming the enemy was ready to surrender the Baron rode out to them and ordered them to lay down their arms. The Austrians demanded to know to whom they were talking and the Baron told them "I am General Bem!" Instead of surrendering the Austrian troops surrounded the Baron and were about to take him prisoner. The baron had other ideas however, he unsheathed his sword and cut a way through the ranks of Imperial soldiers and succeeded in making it back to his own lines, where he gave the order to renew the assault on the Austrians. The Baron and his irregulars held the bridge until General Bem arrived with reinforcements.   

The battle of Piski by Theodor Breitwieser

As well as compiling the Sketches, J. Constantin  Kastner also commissioned the artist Wilhelm Hahn to produce a drawing of the defence of the bridge at Piski and Day & Son, ‘lithographers to the  Queen’ to print it. Kastner was personally acquainted with Kemény and so we can assume that the diminutive Colonel standing on top of one of the bridge piers urging on his men, is a reasonable likeness of the Baron. As well as his relatively short stature we are also struck by the Baron’s age, he is clearly a man well into his fifties. Bushy eyebrowed with a walrus moustache, his eyes are bagged with exhaustion yet he holds out his unsheathed sabre and points his men forward. He also ignores the grenade exploding at his feet.  His troops are the epitome of burgher solidity; if it weren’t for the bandolier style straps of their rucksacks, the water bottles and rifles, they would look like they had just finished off a day in the office of the Town Hall or the bank.  Day & Son must have had other Hungarian connections  because in 1861 they printed a run of bank notes for Kossuth who was still living in exile but trying to establish a Hungarian currency. The Imperial Government of Austria took both Kossuth and Day & Son to court accused of levying financial war upon the emperor. The lithographers were ordered to surrender the notes to the bank of England, where they were burnt.    

Following the ultimate failure of the 1848-49 War of Independence the Baron went into exile, first in Paris and then in London, where Kossuth left him in charge of the Hungarian refugees after his triumphant visit to England in October and November 1851. As soon as Kossuth had gone the Baron found himself drawn into a row about money raised by the Hungarian committee. When the baron told the committee that many refugees were still in want the lawyer and writer Joshua Toulmin Smith, who was a member of the committee, was sceptical.  Dudley Coutts Stuart, an MP and the son of the Marquess of Bute, who was the President of the Committee, would not entertain Toulmin Smith’s doubts and so the lawyer placed them before the public in the form of an open letter to the Daily News which named Kemeny and could be read as implying that he had been completely honest. Coutts Stuart responded on behalf of the committee and gave the Baron his full backing as well as refuting Toulmin Smith’s allegations. But the war of words rumbled on, with further letters in the newspapers. On Monday the 5th January the Baron was steeling himself to read the latest salvo from Toulmin Smith when he suffered a fatal heart attack. He was wisely reported by the newspapers as being 63 years old at the time of death but according to his headstone he was only 56.  The Sun (London) of Friday 09 January gave a full account of the inquest into the Baron’s death;

DEATH OF AN HUNGARIAN REFUGEE.

Yesterday an inquest held before Mr. T. Wakley, M.P., and a respectable jury, at the Yorkshire Grey Tavern, Foley -place, Marylebone, on view of the body of the Baron Farkas Kemeny, aged 63, formerly a colonel in the Hungarian service, whose death occurred under the awful and melancholy circumstances subjoined. The deceased, who had distinguished himself as a soldier, had fought under General Bem, and once, while defending the bridge of Piske, in Transylvania, with 2,000 men and seven guns, is said to have defeated 14,000 Austrians and 30 guns.

Mr. John Prohatzki, proprietor of the Hungarian fur depot, No. 12, Foley place, stated that the deceased Baron had for about twelve months occupied apartments in his house, in the general enjoyment of good health and spirits. Between ten and eleven o'clock on Monday morning last deceased returned Lome from posting a letter, and joining witness in his countinghouse, conversed with him, but not in his usual manner, there seeming to be something on his mind. Shortly afterwards deceased's secretary entered the passage, and deceased followed him up stairs, but scarcely had five minutes elapsed before the secretary came running to witness saying, "The baron has fainted." Witness returned with him, and found the deceased lying on the drawing-room floor insensible. Having procured some water to bathe his face and temples, he sent his wife for Mr. Geldard, a surgeon in the neighbourhood, who immediately atter his arrival pronounced him to be dead. The deceased had lately appeared very dull.

Sigismund Vekey stated that he was secretary to the late baron, who had latterly been much excited by letters appearing in the public newspapers, which he considered personal to himself, and injurious to the Hungarian cause, signed "Toulmin Smith." On Sunday afternoon last he went to Highgate, with the baron's knowledge and approval, to see Mr. Smith, and point out the mischief of such communications, when that gentleman said that he should pursue the theme, but not so much against the baron as against the Hungarians, and on his return to town in the evening he visited the deceased, and repeated the conversation. On Monday morning about ten o'clock he went to the deceased's, and on first seeing him saw that he was more excited than he had ever before noticed. The baron quickly asked him if any articles appeared against him in that day's papers, to which he replied, "Yes, but no so strongly;" and the deceased, who stood before him, rejoined, "Read it." Having the Daily News with him, in which a letter from Mr. Smith was inserted as an advertisement, and addressed to the editor, he commenced reading, but had not proceeded far before the deceased fell forward on his (witness's) breast, and from thence on the floor, exclaiming, "Oh, call for assistance." Being greatly alarmed, he immediately fetched the list witness, by whom what further transpired has been explained.

Mr. John Geldard, surgeon, No. 34, Great Portland street, said that he was called to attend the deceased, who seemed in a fainting state. He endeavoured to administer some stimulants, when deceased gasped once and expired. He had since made a post mortem examination of the body, and found the brain sound, but slightly congested. There was no effusion in the membranes or ventricles, and no disease whatever existed. The lungs were healthy, and there was no extravasation or effusion of the pleura. In the pericardium he found 1 ½ oz. of coagulated blood, which had escaped from the heart through a rupture in that organ, both ventricles and the valves of which, however, were in a perfectly healthy state. Death had resulted from the rupture of the heart.

The CORONER remarked that to him there never appeared a clearer case in which a poor creature had died of a broken heart than that, and which verdict, had he been one of the jury, he should have felt bound to return. The deceased was anxiously listening to what was being read to him by his secretary, fearing and expecting what might be presently said applying to himself, his heart all the time beating violently, and making powerful efforts to get through its bonds, till at length it swelled and burst. He wished Mr. Smith had been present, although he could not be blamed for deceased's death, for thank God, the press of England was free, and he hoped never to see it otherwise; yet, although persons could write what they thought proper, they were liable if they violated the law. The jury, after some consultation, having unanimously expressed an opinion that the primary cause of deceased's death was a broken heart, returned the following verdict:—" That the deceased died from the mortal effects of a rupture of the heart, and the jurors further say that the said rupture was caused by the sudden emotion of his mind by the reading of part of a letter which appeared in the Daily News of the 5th inst.

Toulmin Smith's fatal letter to the Daily News

The Baron was buried in Kensal Green on Sunday the 11th January in a grave paid for by Dudley Coutts Stuart. This account of the funeral is from the Morning Advertiser of Monday 12 January 1852;

FUNERAL OF THE GALLANT COLONEL BARON KEMENY,

At three o’clock yesterday the mortal remains of the brave, chivalrous, and generous Baron Kemeny, President of the Hungarians, were deposited in their last resting place, Kensall-green Cemetery. Lord Dudley Stuart, M.P., Count L. Vay, General Vettes De Doggensfisk-Vickovits (late Minister of Hungary), Colonel Count Paul Esterhazy, Colonel Gaal, Captains Nicoll, Kinizky and Nagg, Merrini (late President of the Roman Republic), Professor Newman, and Messrs. Nicholay, John Wilson, Willow, &c., joined the funeral cortege, which left deceased’s residence at one o’clock, in the following order: —Mutes, the hearse, drawn by four horses, containing the coffin, on which were placed deceased’s sword and cocked bat; two mourning carriages, in which were Hungarian officers and their female relatives. Lord Dudley Stuart’s carriage, and another private carriage. Hungarian refugees two and two, each wearing crape weeper on the arm. Italians, Poles, Germans, French, and English, in similar order, the Notting-hill Reform Association, and other similar associations, bringing up the rear. At the cemetery the funeral service was solemnly performed by the chaplain, and upon the coffin being lowered into the grave Dr. Roney delivered an eloquent and soul-stirring oration, in which he touched upon the late Hungarian straggle, and vividly described the prominent part which the illustrious deceased took in that struggle. The orator stated that the baron boasted of a long line of noble ancestry celebrated for their chivalry, gallantry, and patriotism. His grandfather had been Regent of Hungary, and the baron having entered the army very early distinguished himself in the wars against Napoleon, during 1813, and the two successive years. Subsequently and during the Hungarian struggle he repeatedly displayed on the field of battle his consummate skill and tact as commanding officer, but on no occasion more gloriously than when with 3,000 men and 7 cannons he took and defended the bridge of Piske against 14,000 Austrians, and a park of artillery of 30 guns. But he was no less distinguished for his benevolence and generosity than he was for his gallantry, as was proved from the fact of his having died penniless through his liberality to his compatriots in exile. At the close of the address deceased’s friends took a last look the coffin, and slowly and mournfully retired.

“Few and short were the prayers we said,
And we spoke not word of sorrow.
But we steadfastly gazed on the face of the dead.
And we bitterly thought of the morrow.” 

Toulmin Smith did not attend the funeral or probably ever mention the Baron’s name again. The headstone that stands on the grave is a replacement that was put up in 2001, by who I am not sure. The inscription is a copy of the original epitaph including the statement that it was erected by the Baron’s friends LLMRZ. These friends were Mrs. Lendvay-Latkoczy, the actress wife of Martin Lendvay a celebrated Hungarian actor, Jácint János Rónay, a Hungarian bishop and writer, and János Czetz, a Hungarian general who later lived in Argentina and formed the first national military academy there.  Meyer and  Zahnsdorf were London businessmen of Hungarian origin, Meyer was a furrier and  Zahnsdorf a jeweller.

The Headhunter in the the Haymarket; Horatio Gordon Robley (1840-1930) Streatham Park Cemetery

The Wellcome Collection has a heavily annotated copy of this (in)famous photograph of Major General Horatio Gordon Robley seated before his collection of 33 mokomokai, Māori preserved heads. Its provenance is Stevens Auction Rooms formerly of 38 King Street, Covent Garden. One note says that this is a “1895 photograph”; this copy was presumably given by Robley to Henry Stevens the auctioneer when he attempted to sell Robley’s mokomokai collection in the 1900’s. It was probably Stevens, or one of his staff, who made the notes on the backing sheet, jotting down details from Robley’s verbal description of his collection, to be used as sales patter during the auction. “Note the 15th 14th head has its portrait in oils {Collection Donne”; the painting of this particular head, probably done by Robley himself, he was a talented artist, must have been in the collection of Thomas Edward Donne (1860–1945) one time Trade and Immigration Commissioner at the New Zealand High Commission in London, an acquaintance of Robley's and a well known collector of Māori antiquities. “This collection increased to 35 specimens,” Steven's notes but only 33 are shown in the photo, “offered to N.Z.d for years. Visited by Maoris over for coronations of King Edward and King George, also Victoria's Jubilee.” Robley had indeed offered his collection to the Government of New Zealand for the sum of £1,100 but his overtures fell on deaf ears, the colonial government wanted nothing to do with preserved Māori heads and in 1907 the collection eventually went, in toto, to the American Museum of Natural History for £1,250.  At the bottom left of the photo, beneath the two smallest heads, another note reads “child and boy preserved by friends”. In the Oxford D.N.B. article on the Steven’s family Michael Cooper says that "the most gruesome offerings,” at the auction house, “were shrunken human heads, sold by Stevens on several occasions, the most remarkable being, in 1902, the collection of thirty-three tattooed Maori heads, the property of General Robley, who, it is said, decorated his bedroom wall with these relics and 'when unable to sleep at night would rise and comb his Maoris' hair, and felt himself soothed'”.  Robley was not averse to exploiting the shock value of his collection of heads to startle his contemporaries but even he might have balked at the unsettling image of the insomniac rising in the small hours to soothe himself by combing the locks of decapitated corpses. Surely there is no truth in this?  

Robley in his early twenties, in full dress uniform

Robley was born in Funchal on the Portuguese island of Madeira in 1840. His father was a retired infantry captain in the Madras army of the East India Company. His mother, the daughter of English residents of the island, was an accomplished artist to have a book of her drawings and watercolours of Madeiran flora published in London. Robley inherited his father’s military bent and his mother’s artistic one; at the age of 18 his parents put up £450 for their son to purchase the rank of Ensign in the 68th (Durham) Regiment of Foot (Light Infantry). After training in Ireland he was sent to Burma to join his regiment. It was that he first demonstrated an interest in other cultures; he learned Burmese, took to sketching daily life in the countryside and allowed Buddhist monks to tattoo a red Buddha on his right arm.  In 1861, after a period of leave in England, he was posted to India where he took command of the guard assigned to watch over the last Mughal Emperor of India, Bahadur Shah Zafar, held in captivity in Rangoon until his death in 1862. Robley produced a watercolour sketch of the Emperor in his last days, sitting cross legged on a bed made of rough timber, looking rather down at heel and smoking a hookah.  In 1863 his regiment was sent to New Zealand to help quell the Māori rebellions against British rule. Robley bought a Māori vocabulary and other books about the native New Zealanders and apparently found an irresistible fascination in the culture of the people he was there to fight. He sketched and painted during the entire period of his posting in North Island. He was particularly drawn to Māori tattoo designs and produced dozens of detailed paintings from the dead and wounded on the battlefield and of prisoners of war. He also began a relationship with a Māori woman, Herete Mauao, with whom he had a son, Hamiora Tu Ropere.

Robley's watercolour sketch of Bahadur Shah Zafar

In 1866 his regiment was sent back to England where he remained for the next 14 years. He purchased the rank of Captain in 1870 and a year later was transferred to the 91st Regiment (Princess Louise's Argyllshire Highlanders). In the 1880’s he served in South Africa and Ceylon, was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and in 1887, he retired with the honorary rank of Major General. It was now that he began to devote himself in earnest to collecting and studying mokomokai. Robley came late to the collecting scene – it had been at his height in the 1820’s and 30’s before the Sydney Act, passed in 1831, prohibited the exportation of heads from Australasia and effectively put an end to the worst excesses as described in an article on Robley’s collection published in The Graphic in 1896;  

It was natural enough that a head upon which so much skill had been expended [in tattooing] was deemed too precious a work of art to be buried. So arose the practice of Mokomokai. When a man with a good head was killed or died his head was cut off and baked in an oven. When done to a turn, it was put away in cloths to be on produced on festive occasions by his relatives. In the case of an enemy, the body was eaten and the head was, after being baked, mounted on a pole as a kind of trophy. Presently white men began to trade with the Maoris, and then a brisk traffic began in these dried heads, which were worth some £40 or £50 in the market. The natives received in exchange guns and powder. Very soon the demand for fine heads became so large that no man with well tattooed features was safe, and Moko naturally became unpopular. So keen indeed, became the trade in heads that chiefs used to have their best. looking slaves tattooed, carry them on board a ship, and offer to sell any one of them. The illustration which we publish this week of the sale of a living head represents no imaginary scene, but one that really occurred some 70 years ago. A Maori chief, on finding that the dried head of a native which he had brought on board a ship for sale, was objected to by the intending purchaser as a poor sample of Mokomokai, allowed the force of the argument, but, being desirous of doing business, pointed to a number of his slaves, whom he had brought with him, and said "Choose which of these heads you like best. When you come back, I will take care to have it dried and ready for your acceptance.” The traffic in heads was suppressed in 1831 by law, and the art of Moko is rapidly dying out.

"Bargaining for a head, on the shore, the chief running up the price" – sketch by H. G. Robley

Robley’s first head was bought to rescue it from being used as an advertisement; he later wrote that when he was “passing one day along the Brompton Road, I espied from the top of an omnibus on which I was travelling a phrenologist re-arranging his window, & in the window was a Māori head placed there to such base use as an advertisement to the cranium part of the human frame for the purpose of attracting attention to his doctrine.” Robley got off the bus at the first stop and managed to convince the phrenologist, Stackpool Edward O'Dell, to sell him the head. He later described the trade in Māori heads as “gruesome”, “replete with abominations” and said that it was “repulsive to [Māori] instincts and which they only adopted as a desperate measure to preserve their tribes from annihilation.” But his abhorrence at the trade did not stop him building up what was an extremely large collection, much larger than those owned by many museums as Robley was quick to point out to the press. The Westminster Gazette reported in 1900 that “Major-General G. H. Robley, the famous head-hunter” had, at that point, “a grand total of twenty-six heads in the collection. The British Museum has four similar heads; the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, six; the Museum, Berlin, two; the Museum, Vienna, one; the Museum, Rome, one; Smithsonian Institute, Washington, U.S.A., one; and the Museums of New Zealand, four…” He was not shy of publicity of drawing attention to himself or his collection. In his memoirs he describes what happened after a successful bid at an auction for “a head from the private collection of the late Dr. Paterson Bridge of Allan — as soon as it became mine, to the astonishment of the saleroom bidders, I hongied, explaining the rubbing of noses was the correct greeting.” On another occasion he took a head out to dinner with him; “I remember when Seddon gave a cold meat banquet at the Holborn [restaurant] and I took a head with me – many of the young men were astonished at my lecture on it.” A visitor to his flat in St Alban’s Place, in the Haymarket, later wrote that “on my first visit to London in 1905 I called on Major General Robley and found him taking his ease at full length on a couch; around the somewhat small room were displayed 38 … preserved head with tattooed faces — they were on tables, sideboards, mantle-piece —everywhere. The possessor of them was smiling proudly at the gruesome display…” Despite this clowning Robley wanted to be taken very seriously; he published two books on Māori culture, ‘Moko or Maori Tattooing’ in 1896 and ‘Pounamu: Notes on New Zealand Greenstone’ in 1915. In August 1902 he wrote to the Evening standard about a visit to his collection from the Māoris who were attending Edward VII’s coronation;    

The Maori Coronation Contingent who have left for Aldershot, and who return to New Zealand on September 6, came to see my collection, in which were the valued preserved heads of Chiefs fallen long ago in native battles (33), and were gratified with the care bestowed on their guarding. It was an honour in old times to preserve the heads. It was their opinion that these valued relics should be returned to New Zealand, rather than run the risk of being scattered. The Museums of that country happen to be very poor in specimens, having only four, and, in fact, New Zealand has been depleted of its historic relics by the agents and friends of the world’s Museums, leaving but little comparatively.

Head and shoulders portrait of Te Kuka. July, 1864 by Robley

Robley’s collection was acquired by the American Museum of Natural History in 1907. The decision to sell was prompted by his increasingly poor health and the debts he had accumulated whilst building up the collection. Unmarried and with his family living abroad the 67-year-old Robley had to consider how he was going to take care of himself in his final years. These were spent in a nursing home in the Peckham Road in Camberwell where he died at the age of 90 on the 29th of October 1930. Although he was not forgotten, many newspapers ran his obituary in the days following his death, he had no close family in England and seemingly no financial resources. He was buried in a common grave in Streatham Park Cemetery and no memorial was ever raised to his memory. The American Museum of Natural History held on to his collection of mokomakai until 2014 when they were returned to New Zealand as part of the largest repatriation of ancestral remains ever carried out. In New Zealand, Robley’s Māori descendants were ambivalent about their ancestor; his great granddaughter Googie Tapsell is in her 80’s and told Radio New Zealand that her Uncle Hepata “hated his grandfather, didn’t want to know about him… hated him.” When he was given a copy of Robley’s book on Mioko “he stomped on that book … he said ‘I don’t want to know about him’.” Her own mother, Robley's granddaughter, kept up a connection to him through letters to London; “Mum loved him. He wanted to bring her to England for her education … But she wouldn’t go. Didn’t want to leave New Zealand.” In 2017 Tim Walker, a senior curator at Te Papa, the National Museum of New Zealand, tried to raise funds and obtain permission to erect a headstone over Robley’s grave in Streatham Park but his efforts seem to have come to nothing and the grave remains unmarked.

The three burials of Captain Elton; Erle Godfrey Elton (1869-1899) Kensal Green Cemetery

How many times was Captain Erle Godfrey Elton of the Black Watch buried? Some sources say he was buried on the battlefield of Magersfontein in South Africa where he died on 11th December 1899. And then he was supposed to have been disinterred and reburied in the West End Cemetery in Kimberley. Later still his body was brought to England and laid to rest in an impressive mausoleum on Central Avenue in Kensal Green Cemetery. If you peer through the glassless windows of the mausoleum you can still see his coffin sitting in front of a marble angel. Cemetery records say that this happened in June 1907. But the burial records also say that he was interred in the cemetery in February 1900 in plot 22564, just a couple of months after he had died nearly 6000 miles away. On the same page of the register a clerk has added another entry for ‘Elton grave in reserve 37929’; this is the plot of which on the mausoleum stands. Records show that 25 other people were also buried in plot 22564 between 1871 and 1905! It clearly wasn’t a common grave so 22564 must be a loculi in one the Catacombs at the cemetery that was used to hold coffins before they were placed elsewhere. Four burial plots in the space of two months and three burials? I can’t access any original sources for the South African side of this story but in the 10 or 11 weeks available there scarcely seems to have been enough time to bury Erle in Magersfontein, dig him up and rebury him in Kimberley, dig him up again, rebox him in a lead lined coffin and send him to England by ship ( though the journey only took a couple of weeks it seems, even in 1900) and then bury him again in Kensal Green. But perhaps it is true; I don’t suppose soldiers on the battlefield waited to find out what the families wishes were or what were the armies plans, before burying their fallen comrades. I imagine it was not uncommon for the army to then remove buried soldiers from battlefield graves if they had a cemetery close by they could use to give them a more formal interment. And by the time that had happened Captain Elton’s family had probably requested that his body be repatriated.     

Erle Godfrey Elton was born in June 1869 and was the son of Colonel Frederick Coulthurst Elton of the Royal Artillery and Olivia Georgiana Elton (nee Power). He was educated at Wellington College, and was a Gentleman Cadet at the Royal Military College in Sandhurst. He came from a long line of Army men; his father had fought in the Crimean War and was present at the siege of Sebastopol and had won an Order of the Bath, been mentioned in dispatches and been awarded a Turkish Order of Medjidie, 3rd Class for his part in the battle of Tel-El-Kebir in Egypt. His grandfather was a Captain in the 40th Foot and married an Admirals daughter and his great grandfather was a Lieutenant in the 11th Foot and was taken prisoner and held at Forte de Scaope, Ostend, for two years. After Sandhurst Erle joined his own regiment, the Black Watch, in August 1888, was promoted to Lieutenant two years later, in August 1890 and became a Captain in July 1898. He saw no active service until October 1899 when his battalion embarked for South Africa and the Boer War. They arrived at the Cape on 13th November, his regiment forming part of the Highland Brigade under Major General Wauchope and were part of the Kimberley Relief Force. They were initially employed in the De Aar-Naauwpoort district, joining their brigade on the Modder River shortly before the action at Magersfontein. Ironically, Elton was to die because the army insisted on using the standard British tactic against an entrenched position that had been used successfully at the battle in which his father had so distinguished himself and won so many honours, Tel-El-Kebir. This was an approach march at night in close order to maintain cohesion, followed by deployment into open order within a few hundred yards of the objective and a frontal attack with the bayonet at first light. At the ridge of Magersfontein, with rough scrub, steep slopes and an enemy that was fully aware of British tactics and positions this was a disaster. The Black Watch alone lost 93 men, including not just Erlea but the brigade commander Major General Wauchope, and had 210 wounded as the Boer army massacred them.

Erle's father, Colonel Frederick Coulthurst Elton

 The inscription over the Mausoleum door reads:

In loving memory of Erle, Captain Royal Highlanders (Black Watch). The good and beloved son of Colonel and Mrs Elton who gave up his life for Queen and Country at the battle of Magersfontein 11th December 1899.

This resting place is dedicated to him by those who are heartbroken at his loss. Be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee a crown of life.

Although only one coffin can be seen inside the mausoleum four further burials took place; I suspect that there is also a vault beneath, possibly accessed from outside the mausoleum itself. Erle’s father was buried here in December 1919 and his mother in May 1929. Two further female family members were also buried here as late as 1956 and 1969.  

The Campo Santo of East London; St Patrick's Catholic Cemetery, Leyton

At 43 acres St Patrick’s Catholic Cemetery is relatively big by London standards, bigger than Abney Park, bigger than Brompton, bigger than West Norwood, and, rather surprisingly, bigger than both sides of Highgate combined. It doesn’t feel it, mainly because of the lack of landscaping, I think. You can see clear from one end of the cemetery to the other with barely a tree in the way to break up the view. Stand in the middle and religious statues surround you on all sides, apparently stretching out to infinity, countless Christs exposing bleeding hearts, myriad mothers of God as Madonna nursing the Christ child, or as mater dolorosa cradling him crucified or standing alone, her heart pierced by seven swords; however she is portrayed she is always suffering. And there are the saints, proliferating like reflections in a house of mirrors; the Pauls, the Benedicts, the Francis’, the Christophers, the Michaels (the dragon killers are always St Michael, most definitely not the far too English St George), the Anthonys, the Cecilias, the Thereses and the Trofimenas (actually, there is only one of them…) 

St Patrick’s has a sister cemetery in West London, St Mary’s in Kensal Green. As you would expect St Mary’s has a better class of clientele than her sister in the East End. There are better monuments, more mausoleums and a more catholic selection of Catholics than the Irish, Italians and Poles who make up the majority of the burials at St Patrick’s. Both cemeteries stand by railway lines but the tube at St Mary’s is much more obtrusive; you can stand amongst the graves and watch Central line trains pulling in and out of Leyton Station. Both are still very much working cemeteries; Catholics don’t much go in for cremations and to meet persistent demand for new graves both cemeteries resort to banking over old graves. But that is good news for the invalided priests of the Dioceses of Westminster, Arundel & Brighton, Brentwood, Portsmouth and Southwark who are the recipients of the revenue from the cemetery, as a sign tells you by the entrance. 

I am rather fond of St Patrick’s and have covered it before here and here. The most famous burial is that of ripper victim Mary Jane Kelly; we will come onto her in a minute. Also buried here are various relatives of Alfred Hitchcock, who was born locally, above the family grocery business at 517 Leytonstone High Road, Timothy Evans, who was wrongly hanged for one of the murders at 10 Rillington Place, and actor Stephen Lewis who played Blakey in the 70’s comedy series ‘On The Buses’.  I have already written about the four nuns who drowned in the Wreck of the Deutschland and, my favourite story from St Patrick’s, Vital Douat, the man who buried himself (for an insurance scam). 

Mary Jane Kelly, or Marie Jeanette Kelly as she is described on her headstone, the last iconic victim of Jack the Ripper was buried at St Patricks Roman Catholic Cemetery on Monday 19th November 1888. The Belfast Telegraph carried an account of the funeral published on the same day;

FUNERAL OF MARIE KELLY. The funeral of Marie Jeannette Kelly the victim of the late Spitalfields murderer took place today at Leytonstone Cemetery, Essex, in the presence of a large number of people. An hour before the remains left the Shoreditch mortuary many hundreds of onlookers assembled in the vicinity and watched while the final arrangements were bring made. The coffin was placed upon an open hearse drawn by two horses, and was followed by two mourning carriages containing the man Joseph Barnett, who had lived with the deceased, and several of the unfortunate woman & associates, who gave evidence at the inquest. The coffin bore the following inscription 'Marie Jeannette Kelly, died November 9th 1888 aged 25 years’, and on it were placed two crosses, and a cross made of heartsease and white flowers.  The whole of the funeral expenses were borne by Mr. Wilton, sexton of St. Leonard’s Church, Shoreditch, who for many years has shown practical sympathy for the poorer classes.

In 2015 retired colorectal surgeon Wynne Weston-Davies published ‘The Real Mary Kelly’, a book which argued that the murder victim’s true identity was his great aunt Elizabeth Weston-Davies, who he believes was hiding in Whitechapel to escape her abusive husband. Weston-Davies claims his great aunt’s husband, Francis Spurzheim Craig, is Jack the Ripper and that he murdered the other victims in order to lay a false trail before he killed his wife! Ripperology is full of farfetched theories and despite the book’s publishers managing to wrangle articles in the Daily Mail and Express, no one took this one particularly seriously until the grande dame of the Whitechapel Murders, Patricia Cornwell, got herself involved. In a surprise move in 2017 Cornwell commissioned the University of Leicester team who had identified Richard III, to carry out a feasibility study on running DNA tests on Marie Jeanette Kelly’s mortal remains. The newspapers went crazy! Was DNA going to crack the ultimate cold case and would science finally put an end to over a century of pointless speculation about the identity of Whitechapel Jack? The answer was no. After taking Ms Cornwell’s money and carrying out a field study at St Patrick’s the University of Leicester forensics team came to the conclusion that there was no realistic chance of identifying Mary Kelly’s remains in its common grave. The exact burial location was impossible to determine (Kelly’s headstone is in the ‘approximate’ spot but the siting always involved quite a bit of guesswork), which meant possibly digging up several hundred bodies before the correct one could be identified. Wynne Weston-Davies’ theory remains a theory and Kelly remains undisturbed in her final resting place.   

The woman in white; Caroline Graves ( c. 1830-1895) Kensal Green Cemetery

 

As a young man Collins probably had his romantic experiences those "intimacies" to which the Dictionary of National Biography rather ambiguously refers. But when he was thirty-five and seemingly a confirmed bachelor, he formed an attachment with a married woman ten years his junior, which greatly influenced his life and about which he remained steadfastly and discreetly silent to all but his closest friends. It began with a queerly dramatic encounter. One summer evening in 1859 Wilkie and his brother Charles were accompanying Millais, the artist, back to his house in Gower Street after he had dined with them at Hanover Terrace, Regent's Park, when suddenly they were startled by a shriek from a near-by house and the appearance of in Millais's words "a young and very beautiful woman" dressed in white arid obviously terrified. She darted off and Wilkie, his curiosity and chivalrous instincts aroused, followed her into the darkness and his companions saw him no more that night. On his return next day he was rather quiet about the episode, but it seemed that he had caught up with the lady in distress and extracted from her a woeful tale of imprisonment and maltreatment by a villain in a Regent's Park villa, and of final desperate escape. While it was obvious that the fair fugitive and her plight had impressed Collins, his friends could not have guessed that he would fall head over heels in love with her. Yet this is what happened.

Britannia and Eve - Friday 01 February 1952

It was the son of the artist Millais who was responsible for perpetuating, in print at least, this heavily romanticised version of the first meeting between Wilkie Collins and Caroline Graves. No doubt the painter had been repeating the story in drawing rooms and salons for years, in front of audiences of sceptical listeners who took it with the pinch of salt it deserves. But by including the fantastic episode in his biography of his father, ‘The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais’, John Guille Millais lent it that spurious credibility which print can create for even the silliest rumours. Creating a mysterious backstory for the lower-class girl from Gloucestershire would have suited Caroline who was doing her best to do exactly the same. Caroline was not her real name (she had been christened Elizabeth), she lied about her age, she said her father was a gentleman called Courteney, and claimed her first husband, George Robert Graves, was a man of independent means. In reality she was the daughter of a carpenter called John Compton, had married the penniless Graves when she was 18 and moving to Bath and then Clerkenwell with him and his mother. George Graves died when Caroline was just 22 and left her in straitened circumstances with a young baby to look after. How Caroline managed to scrape a living over the next four years we do not know but in 1856 the 26-year-old Caroline met Wilkie Collins in circumstances no doubt much less melodramatic than those claimed by Millais all those years later.

Although she is not mentioned on the headstone, Wilkie Collins is buried with his mistress Caroline Graves. Although the pair lived together for the best part of thirty years, Wilkie always refused to marry her. Even worse after a decade of living ‘in sin’ with Caroline, Wilkie started another relationship with a younger woman called Martha Rudd with whom he went on to have three children.  This caused a rift in his relationship with Caroline and she left Wilkie to marry a plumber called Joseph Clow. The wedding took place on the 29th October 1868 at St Marylebone Church.  The witnesses were Caroline’s daughter Elizabeth and Francis Carr Beard, a doctor and close friend and medical advisor to both Wilkie and his best friend Charles Dickens (and also buried at Kensal Green). Wilkie was also present at the ceremony! The marriage did not last; within two years Caroline was back living with Wilkie who now had to maintain two separate households for the two women in his life. When he died in 1889 Wilkie left clear instructions about the disposal of his remains; a plot was to be bought at Kensal Green and a plain stone cross erected over the grave. No scarves, hatbands or feathers were to be worn and the cost of the funeral was not to exceed £25. He also wrote the inscription on the gravestone. The funeral was not well attended, Wilkies unusual domestic arrangements were simply too scandalous for most of his friends and acquaintances to contemplate attending. Caroline attended the funeral but Martha did not, she had to content herself with sending a wreath of white flowers. When Caroline died in 1895 she was buried with Wilkie;  Martha took over looking after the grave.