Mr Wainewright’s taste for soldiering obviously did not extend to actual fighting. He only stayed with them for just over a year, selling his commission in May 1815, just before the regiment was sent to Ostend where they arrived too late for the Battle of Waterloo. He left after a few months and in April 1814 purchased a commission as Ensign in the 16th Foot. He received a good education at the school in Greenwich run by Charles Burney, a noted classicist, brother of the well known Fanny Burney, Madame D’Arbley and a distant relative of Wainewright.Īt the age of 19, in l813, he was apprenticed to Thomas Phillips, the portrait painter. His son was brought up by his grandfather and then his uncle George Griffiths. Thomas’ father did not long survive his wife, he was dead, by 1803. Griffiths was a self-made man, a bookseller, founder of the successful Monthly Review, a literary magazine, and publisher of the even more successful Fanny Hill, that classic of pornography. His father was also Thomas, probably a solicitor, from a long line of legal gentlemen, and his mother was Ann Griffiths, only daughter of Ralph Griffiths, the owner of Linden House. Wainewright’s later convict record says that he was baptised in Richmond, which could be the case since there is no record of his baptism in Chiswick.

His mother died aged 21 at his birth or soon after he was born, and was buried in Chiswick Churchyard on 11 October. Wainewright was born on 4 October 1794, probably in Linden House, the house of his grandfather, where his parents were living. He was an art critic, an artist and an author and his career was certainly interesting even if he was not a murderer. Wainewright lived for a large part of his life in Linden House, a large house on the south side of Chiswick High Road, the site of which is now covered by Linden Gardens.

However, although he ended his days in Tasmania deported there for forgery, he was never formally accused of murder in his lifetime and recently discovered evidence makes such an accusation much less likely.

Several biographers have claimed that he poisoned three of his relatives, an uncle, his mother-in-law and a sister-in-law. Brentford and Chiswick Local History Journal No 7, 1998Ĭhiswick has had many famous residents and some who were considered infamous, the most notable of the latter being Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, ‘poisoner and art critic’, as he has been called.

Suburban Gentleman by John Lindsey