Murder of the Black Museum - The Dark Secrets Behind A Hundred Years of the Most Notorious Crimes in England. Gordon Honeycombe

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!’