Thomas Griffiths Wainewright

Thomas Griffiths Wainewright (* October 1794 in Chiswick, England, † 1852 in Hobart, Australia ) was an English journalist, painter, art critic, and murderer.

Life

Thomas Griffiths Wainewright was of a distant relative, Dr. Charles Burney, educated. He initially served as an engineer officer in the Guards, then as a horn player in the Yeoman volunteers. From 1819 he wrote for various magazines ( The Literary Pocket -Book, Blackwoods Magazine and The Foreign Quarterly Review ). Probably he is also the author of various cartoons and reviews that appeared in The London Magazine under the name Janus Weathercock, Egomet quip and Mr. Vinkbooms 1820-1823.

He was a friend of Charles Lamb, who appreciated his literary work, and in a letter to Bernard Barton draws the picture of a friendly, light-hearted Wainewright. He did also as an artist out by illustrated poems by William Chamberlayne. From 1821 to 1825 various graphs were exhibited by him at the Royal Academy of Arts, including A Romance from Undine, Paris in the Chamber of Helen and The Milkmaid 's Song.

Through his lavish lifestyle came his finances into trouble. In 1830 he graduated at various agencies from his sister Helen Abercrombie life insurance of a total of 18,000 pounds. When she died on 20 December of the same year, the insurance companies refused to pay on the grounds of false information. Later it turned out that he had already in 1829 his uncle Thomas Griffiths poisoned with strychnine, to come into possession of Linden House, where he had spent his childhood. In August 1830 he had poisoned his mother with the same poison.

Due to the refusal of the insurance he got into financial difficulties and was temporarily arrested for his debts. He then retired to the France of the July Revolution to strict from there a lawsuit against the insurance and return to payment of the premiums. At Boulogne he persuaded a friend from Norfolk Shire to be insured for 3,000 pounds and poisoned him. Since he was not the beneficiary of this fact, is to assume that he wanted to take revenge in this manner to the insurance company.

Wainewright was arrested because there was a considerable amount of strychnine in his possession. After six months in custody, he was released. His lawsuit against the insurance was in 1836 for him unfavorably. When he secretly returned to London in June 1837, he was discovered and on charges of fraudulent transfer of portfolio, which he had committed 13 years previously arrested. He was (now Tasmania ) sentenced to life in deportation to Van Diemen Land. There he devoted himself to continue painting. He should have tried more poisonings in two cases. He died in 1852 in Hobart at a stroke.

Work

1880 his works were under the title Essays and Criticisms published 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 route) and Edward Bulwer- Lytton 's novel of Lucretia. His person as an artist and poisoner has several authors, including Oscar Wilde ( in Pen, Pencil and Poison ( ger Pen, brush and poison ) published in Fortnightly Review, January 1889 ) and AG Allen ( in Twelve Bad Men edited by Thomas Seccombe 1894 ).