Читать книгу The Fatal Cup: Thomas Griffiths Wainewright and the strange deaths of his relations - John Price Williams - Страница 16

Dickens as “a mean-spirited tyrant” - had developed a dislike of the young orphan who roamed the corridors of Linden House. He is named in the will twice as Thomas Wainewright; his second Christian name – Griffiths – which came from his grandfather himself, is omitted. It seems almost as though the old man were trying to disown him. It would have irked him mightily if he had known that one day the lad would inherit the lot.

It has been suggested that the young Wainewright might already have been showing a childish cunning which turned his grandfather against him. But of this, of course, there is no proof.

The bequest that did come to the boy was £5,000 invested at the Bank of England in Navy five per cent annuities – his greed and reckless spending when he plundered the inheritance years later was to cause his downfall. The settlement was in the name of three trustees: his uncle, Robert Wainewright; Edward Smith Foss a relative on his mother's side, and Foss's, son, also Edward, whom Wainewright regarded as a cousin. Under the terms of the will, Wainewright could not touch the capital at any time; all he could draw on was the dividends of £250 a year (£23,500). What is more, the capital would never come to him. The trusteeship would continue for his descendants. But that annual income, guaranteed by the Bank of England was enough to keep him in some style - the wage of a labourer in England, with no guarantee of employment was not much more than £20 a year.

The restriction in the will was to set Wainewright on the road to crime. For what could be more galling for the debt-ridden profligate he was to become, than to have a considerable sum of money just out

THE FATAL CUP

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