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THE MURDER OF WILLIAM TERRISS, 1897

Murderers often tend to play a part, to assume other names, achievements and emotions, to invent autobiographical details, to pose, pretend and lie. They would make, one imagines, good actors. On the other hand, only one actor in the UK is believed to have committed a murder. He was Richard Prince, whose ambitions were scorned, his affections spurned, and his whole existence mocked. He was more than neurotic and just a little mad, and his victim was an actor like, but much better than, himself.

His real name was Richard Millar Archer, though he also called himself William Archer and William Archer Flint. Short, dark, with a thin black moustache waxed at both ends, he was Scottish, having been born in 1858 on a farm on the Baldoran Estate just outside Dundee. His father was a ploughman. His mother, Margaret Archer, later attributed the fact that Richard was ‘soft in the head’ to the summer day when she left him as a baby out in a harvest field in the sun. He was educated in Dundee, and as a lad was employed in a minor capacity at the Dundee Theatre for two years. In 1875, when Richard was seventeen, the Archers came temporarily to London, and the fantasies of the stage-struck youth must have been set alight by the glamorous world of the gas-lit West End theatres, in which the idols of the stage – before films and television eclipsed their glory – declaimed and emoted to much effect and immense adulation. But before long, the Archers were back in bleak Dundee.

Little is known of Prince’s movements over the next twelve years. Presumably, like many young aspiring actors, he was more out of work than in, finding employment where and however he could. His native accent may have limited his chances on the London stage, although he probably modified and disguised it as best he could. What he was unable to alter was an increasingly theatrical manner, a slight squint and a villainous appearance that meant he was invariably cast as a ‘heavy’. However, in 1887 he was in London, employed as a ‘super’ or extra at the Adelphi Theatre in the Strand, appearing in The Union Jack. He stayed with the play on its provincial tour, and is also said to have toured in Alone in London and The Harbour Lights (in 1889). This was a revival of the play written by George R Sims and Henry Pettit that in December 1885 had established the Adelphi as the home of popular melodrama. It had also established the romantic association of its two stars, Jessie Millward and William Terriss, which was also played out in private: she was his mistress.

William Terriss (real name William Charles James Lewin) was one of the most popular actors at that time on the English stage. Popularly known as Breezy Bill, he was born in London on 20 February 1847, educated privately and also at Christ’s Hospital, and took up various occupations before he became a full-time actor. As a youth he joined the merchant navy for a few weeks (he liked the uniform), embarking as a cadet on a sailing ship at Gravesend and disembarking at Plymouth, having discovered a sailor’s life was not for him. He also tried his hand at silver-mining and horse-breeding in America and at sheep-farming in Australia and the Falkland Islands, where his daughter, Ellaline Terriss, a future Gaiety Girl and wife of Seymour Hicks, was born. Her mother was Isabel Lewis, who on holiday in Margate had been captivated by the athletic figure of young William Lewin sporting in the sea. They were married in 1868 when he was twenty-one. Before long the family left the Falklands and returned to England, and Terriss, who had dabbled in amateur theatricals, obtained his first notable professional engagement. In 1871, he was cast as Robin Hood in a Drury Lane extravaganza and appeared in Rebecca, which was based on Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe. The Observer critic, Clement Scott, noted of his performance: ‘It is really pleasant to find anyone determined to speak as ordinary people speak on the boards of the theatre, whereon strange tones and emphases prevail.’

Terriss’s face, figure and voice being his fortune, he soon became successful, establishing his reputation as an actor with Henry Irving’s company at the Lyceum Theatre. Aged thirty-one when he joined the company, Terriss gave several acclaimed performances: as a brother in The Corsican Brothers; as Squire Thornhill in Olivia, with Ellen Terry as Olivia and Irving as Dr Primrose; as Nemours in Louis XI; as the King in Henry VIII; and as Henry II, with Irving in the title role of Tennyson’s play, Becket, which was given a royal command performance in Windsor Castle in 1893 before Queen Victoria. In 1895, Irving was knighted, the first actor to be so honoured.

Several years before this, in October 1882, Jessie Millward, then aged twenty-one, had appeared as Hero in the Lyceum’s production of Much Ado about Nothing; Terriss was Claudio. It was three years after this, in December 1885, that they made a name for themselves as a romantic team in The Harbour Lights, in which Terriss played Lieutenant David Kingsley and Jessie Millward the lovely Lina. One critic said of Terriss’s performance: ‘He does not act, he is the frank, handsome sailor whose joyous laugh, bright eye and sturdy ringing voice bring life and hope to the darkest hour. The fine presence, boyish, handsome face and free, fearless gestures suit the role to perfection.’

From then on, Terriss and Jessie Millward often appeared in the same productions, touring Britain and America. In London in the 1890s he used to dally with her in her flat off Oxford Circus, while his wife (they were both Catholics) kept up appearances and the family home in Bedford Park, West London.

It was in September 1894 that Terriss and Jessie Millward – he called her ‘Sis’ and she referred to him as ‘my comrade’ – embarked on the series of popular successes at the Adelphi that affirmed their national reputation, appearing in plays such as The Fatal Card, The Girl I Left Behind Me, One of the Best, Boys Together, and Black-eyed Susan. He invariably played gallant sailors or soldiers. In One of the Best (1895) he was court-martialled and falsely convicted of espionage. As the drums rolled, the marks of his rank, his collar and cuffs, were torn from his uniform, his face the while depicting the agony he suffered. But when his medals were seized he cried out: ‘Stay! You may take my name, my honour, my life! But you cannot take my Victoria Cross!’

Capitalising on his manly mien and personality, Breezy Bill, now approaching fifty and wearing pince-nez in private, strode nightly about the stage, declaring his love for Queen, country and innocent womanhood, foiling the foe at every turn. The audience loved him. Admired and acclaimed, living up to his motto Carpe Diem, blessed with a wife, three children and a loving mistress, with good business sense and membership of the better London clubs, he seemed unassailably successful, without a care or enemy in the world.

The year 1897 marked Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. Terriss had turned fifty, though was said to be younger, and Jessie Millward was thirty-six. Richard Prince, who gave his age as thirty-two, was now thirty-nine and in a dangerous, desperate plight. Nothing is known about how Prince became acquainted with Terriss. It may have been during the run of The Union Jack in 1888. Perhaps Terriss gave the younger actor a walk-on job; it was not unusual for struggling actors to be encouraged or patronised by an established star. Perhaps there was some ground for the uncharitable rumours that were later circulated about some sexual association. What is known is that during the run of The Harbour Lights, Terriss caused Prince to be sacked after the swarthy Scot had made an offensive remark about him. Later on Terriss, out of generosity it is said, sent, or caused to be sent, small sums of money to Prince when he was out of work via the Actors’ Benevolent Fund, and he apparently used his influence to get the younger man on the provincial tours in which Prince occasionally appeared.

But the managers of these touring companies found him increasingly unemployable. One of them, Ralph Croydon, a theatre manager in Newcastle, hired Prince towards the end of October 1897, at 25s a week, but soon sacked him, because in rehearsal he was ‘absolutely incapable … absurdly dramatic’ and unable to remember the lines of quite a small part. ‘Ah!’ exclaimed Prince on hearing of his dismissal, ‘I have two enemies now!’ He informed the manager that the other was Terriss – ‘the dirty dog’. ‘You’re mad!’ said Mr Croydon. ‘Yes!’ said Prince. ‘And the world will ring with my madness!’ Another manager received a letter from Prince that said: ‘You hell-hound! You Judas! You have got me out of my engagement by blackmailing me to get on yourself! You cur! I am not a woman, you hound! How dare you blackmail a Highlander!’

Abject but useless apologies would follow such outbursts, which were also heard in theatre dressing rooms, where Prince was known as Mad Archer. He wearied company members with diatribes about the management and other actors, who he claimed had impeded or prevented his advancement. Prince was just as rabid with his pen, sending effusive messages of congratulation and condolence to politicians and royal persons whenever the occasion, birthday or bereavement, arose. He also wrote poems and plays, one of which, Countess Otto, he sent to an up-and-coming young actor, Fred Terry. It was written in longhand in exercise books. Terry made no immediate acknowledgement or return of the script and soon received the following postcard – ‘Sir, please return play Countess Otto at once. If you are hard up for money will send it. Terriss, the Pope, and Scotland Yard. I will answer in a week – Richard A Prince.’

Despite the consolation of Sunday services in Westminster Abbey, which he often attended, Prince’s professional and private life must have been miserable. When ‘resting’, he was employed in an ironworks in Dundee, where the workmen ‘used to torment him because he was soft’. He was ‘very strange in his ways’, according to a foreman, ‘and very jealous’. Once in 1895, when his wretchedness or sense of drama got the better of him, Prince jumped in the Regent’s Canal. His vanity probably kept him from killing himself. ‘I am a member of the handsomest family in Scotland!’ he is said to have exclaimed.

But in November 1897, after being sacked by the Newcastle manager, his poverty was extreme. Existing on handouts from the Actors’ Benevolent Fund, which had been prompted by a letter from Terriss, Prince lived in a bed-sit near Victoria Station, in Buckingham Palace Road. The rent was 4s a week, which a sympathetic landlady, Mrs Darby, reduced to 3s. He had no luggage or possessions; his clothes, apart from those he wore, had been pawned. He fed on bread and milk. On 9 December he received what was to be his last payment (10s) from the Benevolent Fund.

On Monday, 13 December, he tried to get a complimentary seat for a show at the Vaudeville Theatre by showing his card at the box office. It read: ‘Richard Archer Prince, Adelphi Theatre’. Asked if he was employed there, he replied: ‘No, I’m not. But I was. I suppose I should have written “Late Adelphi Theatre”. But other people don’t, so why should I?’ No ticket was given him, and he became so abusive that he had to be removed from the theatre foyer. He said he would go to the Adelphi a few yards away and tell Mr Gatti how he had been treated. Mr Gatti owned both the Vaudeville and the Adelphi. Prince failed to see him, but at the stage door of the Adelphi he inquired as to when Mr Terriss arrived at the theatre and when he left.

That night or the next, Miss Millward heard raised voices in Terriss’s dressing room; Prince was there. She asked Terriss later if anything was the matter; he was dismissive and said: ‘This man’s becoming a nuisance.’ On Wednesday, she again visited his dressing room, haunted by a feeling of impending ill – she had had a dreadful dream in which Terriss, dying, fell into her arms in some barren room. She asked for some remembrance of him. Amused, he gave her his watch and chain, with her picture in the lid. Another member of the Adelphi company who had a prophetic dream of death was Terriss’s understudy, Mr Lane. Meanwhile the show went on. It was called Secret Service. Written by William Gillette, it was a four-act drama set during the American Civil War.

In another part of London, Mrs Darby asked her poor Scottish lodger when he would be able to pay his overdue rent. He told her she would be paid when he received a certain letter; he would then be ‘one way or the other’. Mrs Darby asked him what he meant. Prince replied: ‘That is best known to God and man.’

That certain letter arrived on the morning of Thursday, 16 December. It informed him that the Benevolent Fund had terminated his grant. Penniless, starving and poorly clad under his slouch hat and cloak, he set off on foot towards the West End for the last time. In the Strand he happened to meet his step-sister and asked her for some money. She said she would rather see him dead in the gutter than give him anything. If she had, he said later, he would never have bent his steps towards the Adelphi Theatre. He waited outside its warmth and glamour with a crazy resolve to kill.

Will Terriss spent the early part of that Thursday afternoon playing poker with Fred Terry in the Green Room Club. At four o’clock, he and a friend, Harry Greaves, a surveyor, dined in Jessie Millward’s flat in Princes Street, Hanover Square. The two men settled down to play chess after their meal, and at about seven o’clock Jessie Millward left them to finish their game while she went on ahead. ‘I must get down to the theatre,’ she said. ‘I hate being rushed.’ They followed soon afterwards, riding in a hansom cab to Maiden Lane, the narrow street that runs behind the Adelphi and the Vaudeville. They got out at the street-corner and walked the short distance towards the rear of the Adelphi. Its stage door was then in Bull Inn Court.

There was another entrance, a pass door, which also served as the royal box entrance. This was in Maiden Lane. It now serves as an exit door of the present theatre, being marked, then and now, by the royal crest above the door; the present stage door is right beside it. Terriss used this pass door to avoid his fans, and Greaves accompanied him to the theatre, probably in case a particular person should prove again to be a nuisance. The door was kept locked. In the dank, gas-lit street Terriss fumbled in a pocket for his key.

As he inserted it in the lock and opened the door, a dark figure that had been lurking near Rule’s Restaurant rushed across the street and with great force stuck a kitchen knife in Terriss’s back. Another blow slashed Terriss’s side as he turned. A third thrust penetrated his chest.

The attack was carried out in silence. Jessie Millward, in her dressing room above the door, heard Terriss arrive and the door open – and then nothing. Suddenly apprehensive, she ran down the stairs with her maid, Lottie, and saw Terriss leaning against the wall by the open door. ‘Here are my keys, Lottie,’ he said, quite calmly. ‘Catch that man.’ The maid ran outside. ‘Sis,’ he whispered, gazing at Jessie. ‘Sis, I am stabbed.’ Although she tried to support him he collapsed, and they both fell on the bare boards of the hall at the foot of the stairs. ‘Mr Terriss has met with an accident!’ she cried. ‘Send for a doctor!’ She held him in her arms as shocked company members crowded around. Doctors from the nearby Charing Cross Hospital soon arrived, as well as the police.

Out in Maiden Lane, Prince, who made no resistance, had been seized by Greaves and Lottie and was now handcuffed and in the charge of a uniformed constable. The knife was found in his pocket. He was reported to have said after the murder: ‘I did it for revenge. He had kept me out of employment for ten years, and I had either to die in the street or kill him.’ He was taken past Covent Garden to Bow Street police station, where five pawn tickets were found on him but no money. Meanwhile, Terriss still lay on the floor of the little hall, supported by Jessie Millward, whose control was such she did not, or could not cry. Nothing could be done for him; he was dying and barely conscious. Once or twice he murmured: ‘Sis … Sis …’ Five or six minutes before the curtain was due to rise, he died.

The audience were already aware that something was amiss, as no orchestra had appeared, the footlights were not lit, and the sound of agitated voices could be heard behind the curtain. A minute or so before 8 pm the curtains parted and the shadowy figure of the assistant stage manager, Mr Budd, appeared. Lifting a hand for silence, he announced: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I am deeply grieved and pained to announce to you that our beloved friend, Mr Terriss, has met with a serious, nay terrible, accident, which will make the performance of Secret Service this evening quite impossible. I will ask you to be good enough to pass into the street as quietly as possible, and it is hardly necessary for me to add that your money will be returned on application at the pay boxes.’ Those who went to the stage door to inquire what had happened soon learned that William Terriss had been stabbed to death. Word quickly spread; crowds gathered, and within an hour special editions of the evening papers were on the streets with the news.

At Bow Street police station Prince was charged with murder, and having admitted the charge said: ‘Can you give me something to eat?’

The following morning Bow Street court, opposite the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, was crammed with theatre-goers, actors and actresses, who greeted Prince’s appearance in the dock with loud sounds of disapprobation. But the villain of the piece was suitably unmoved and smiled disdainfully. Indeed, he clearly relished his leading role in front of a full house, nodding, grimacing, smiling, stroking his moustache, twirling the ends, as he listened to the witnesses. Reporters described him as ‘Mephistophelian’. The audience’s loathing increased as the hearing proceeded, and when he was committed for trial – when he bowed and smiled – a torrent of shouts and yells accompanied his exit.

The funeral of William Terriss took place at 1 pm on 21 December, a bitterly cold and windy day. The funeral procession was half a mile long and took an hour to make the journey from the Terriss family home in Bedford Park to Brompton Cemetery; many thousands of people lined the route. Sir Henry Irving was the most celebrated of the mourners; he had been asked by the Queen to convey her condolences to Terriss’s family. He also personally conveyed Jessie Millward to the funeral service; she had hardly slept or eaten since Terriss’s death. Mrs Terriss did not attend the service, the family being represented by Terriss’s two sons – his daughter, Ellaline, had just lost her first baby and was very ill in Eastbourne. It is said that ten thousand people gathered at the cemetery.

The Adelphi Theatre remained closed for over a week, reopening on Monday, 27 December, with Mr Herbert Waring in place of Terriss and May Whitty taking over Jessie Millward’s role. For many months the stage door in Bull Inn Court became a place of pilgrimage for morbid and mistaken sensation-seekers and fans.

Richard Prince was tried at the Old Bailey on 13 January 1898 before Mr Justice Channell. The prosecutor was Mr CF Gill, assisted by Mr Horace Avory; Mr WH Sands represented the accused, who was swathed in an Inverness cape. The gas-lit courtroom was packed.

At the start Prince pleaded ‘Guilty with provocation’ and was advised to change this plea. He said: ‘I am guilty, but I have to ask a favour. I believe the law of England allows me a Queen’s counsel. I have a counsel, but I should like a Queen’s counsel to watch the case on my behalf. I have no friend, and my mother cannot help me with a penny for my defence.’ His request was refused, and he eventually accepted Mr Sands’s advice and changed his plea to ‘Not guilty’.

Prince again behaved with much theatricality, but the audience was this time more subdued. The defence was insanity, and his family and several Scottish neighbours and associates were produced to vouch for his strangeness. Two doctors spoke of his ‘insane delusions’ and said he was ‘of unsound mind’. When his mother gave evidence, Prince was much amused and often laughed, loudly translating her Dundonian accent for the benefit of judge and jury. She said: ‘He was born mad, and he grew up wi’ passions that pit him wrang in his mind.’

The trial lasted one day. The jury retired at 6.35 pm and after a thirty-minute deliberation found the accused ‘Guilty, but according to the medical evidence not responsible for his actions.’ The judge consigned Prince to the criminal lunatic asylum at Broadmoor, to the prisoner’s evident relief. He embarked on an oration of thanks, which was interrupted by the judge. Prince was removed from the court.

In Broadmoor he was apparently happy, a leading light in the entertainments of the inmates. He conducted the prison orchestra, and declaimed Shakespeare in a garden courtyard, hanging his cloak on a tree. But was he really insane? Irving thought otherwise, and is reported to have said: ‘They will find some excuse to get him off – mad, or something. Terriss was an actor.’

Secret Service ended its run at the Adelphi on 20 January, a week after the trial. The enterprising Gatti management transferred another play from Islington to the Adelphi. Preceded by a farce, BB, it opened at 8.30 pm on 21 January. The play was a drama about the assassination, by knife, of Jean Marat, and was called Charlotte Corday.

Some months before this, Terriss’s wife, it is said, had happened to be reading the reviews of Charlotte Corday and had told her husband that she thought the part of Marat would suit him very well. ‘Ah, no,’ he replied. ‘Horrible! I couldn’t bear that scene with the knife!’