A Victorian fraudster and bigamist: Gentleman or criminal?

Date01 September 2019
Published date01 September 2019
DOI10.1177/1748895818771377
AuthorGuy N Woolnough
Subject MatterArticles
https://doi.org/10.1177/1748895818771377
Criminology & Criminal Justice
2019, Vol. 19(4) 439 –455
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1748895818771377
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A Victorian fraudster and
bigamist: Gentleman or
criminal?
Guy N Woolnough
Keele University, UK
Abstract
This article examines the case of a Victorian gentleman who operated at the tipping point
between respectable gentleman and habitual criminal. The case of Henry Wilshin allows an
exploration of ideas of class and respectability in Victorian England and the problematics of the
distinction between the gentleman and the convict: an analysis of Wilshin’s escapades places
the deconstruction of the ‘crimes of the law-abiding’ in a Victorian context. The issues remain
relevant today in debates concerning the banking industry. In the mid-19th century the expanding
commercial enterprise of industrial Britain presented opportunities that were grasped by the
unscrupulous, but the distinction between licit and illicit activity was far from clear. A gentleman
offender like Henry Wilshin challenged Victorian assumptions of respectability. This article
analyses Wilshin’s career in the context of Victorian ideas of middle-class respectability and the
operations of commerce. Neutralization theory will be advanced to reconcile the contradictions
in Wilshin’s life.
Keywords
Bigamy, gentleman, habitual criminal, neutralization theory, respectability, white-collar crime
In 1884 the Deputy Governor of Portland Prison dismissed Henry Wilshin with these
words: ‘He would appear to be rapidly approaching if he has not already arrived at the
point where the gentleman ends and the habitual criminal begins’ (The National Archives,
hereafter TNA, PCOM/3/697, 1868–1884). ‘Criminal’, like ‘gentleman’, is a socially
constructed category shaped and created by ‘particular and contingent interpretations of
reality’ (Wiener, 1990: 7). This article explores Henry Wilshin’s career, which tested the
Corresponding author:
Guy N Woolnough, School of Social Science and Public Policy, Keele University, UK.
Email: g.woolnough@keele.ac.uk
771377CRJ0010.1177/1748895818771377Criminology & Criminal JusticeWoolnough
research-article2018
Article
440 Criminology & Criminal Justice 19(4)
conventions of Victorian England where gentlefolk and habitual criminals were envis-
aged to be at the opposite ends of a spectrum of respectability (Locker, 2008). Wilshin
could be presented as a gentleman or as a criminal.
To assert that Wilshin was respectable is problematic, for he was convicted of serious
offences in 1868 and three more times subsequently. However, before his first conviction
in 1868 he escaped prosecution or was acquitted in court (thereby retaining his status as
a law-abiding respectable citizen) in cases of financial mal-practice that would surely
have invited penal sanction today. The narrative of this article shows that he considered
himself as respectable, and that he deployed some of Sykes and Matza’s (1957) ‘tech-
niques of neutralization’ in endeavouring to exonerate himself.1 The tipping point came
in 1868 when Wilshin was sentenced to five years for bigamy. Thereafter even his brother
Jason withdrew his support. Nonetheless, in 1883 when serving his fourth prison sen-
tence, Wilshin and his most loyal friend, R Goring, held firm to the idea that he was
respectable. Whether Wilshin considered himself law-abiding is impossible to say, but he
presented himself as a respectable gentleman right to the end of his career, and he was
accepted as such until 1868. This essay examines that tipping point, thereby testing the
Victorian ideas of respectability and criminality.
Weeks (1989: 38–40) wrote of the construction of a new respectable middle-class
masculinity in the mid-19th century. With interests and accomplishments in sport,
the military, travel, languages and education, Wilshin could have been taken as an
archetype. He was born into the middle classes, in 1843. His father, Daniel Wilshin,
was in 1861 a farmer of 680 acres employing 33 men and boys in Hayes, Middlesex.
Henry, aged 18, was described as a civil engineer and surveyor (Ancestry, 1861). He
also claimed to be a university man.2 At the age of 20, Henry bought a partnership in
a wine merchant’s business owned by Edward Partridge (TNA, C16.292, 1865). In
that same year, 1864, Daniel (his father) died leaving £1000 to Henry (London
Metropolitan Archives, hereafter LMA, ACC/538/2nd Dep/3699–3700, 1861–
1864).3 Blessed with a good family, an inheritance, a position in commerce and an
education, Wilshin was well placed to succeed like the great men admired by GM
Young (1960: 9–13) and Samuel Smiles (1859). He could aspire to ‘The summum
bonum for everyone [in Victorian England] not born into the aristocracy […] suc-
cess. To win the race of life […] to reach the top and hold a position in which you
gave the orders’ (Houghton, 1957: 191, emphasis in original). Wilshin looked and
lived like a young gentleman. For example, he went with his sometime colleague
John Joseph Brown on a shooting trip, and they visited Paris together (Morning Post,
19 September 1865: 7). He lived with one of his wives in Italy and met another while
touring the Rhine (TNA, J77/157; Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette, 1
May 1876: 4). Wilshin was an officer in the militia, sported a fine set of Dundreary
whiskers and had an excellent singing voice (London City Press, 22 April 1865: 2;
Marylebone Mercury, 23 May 1868: 3):
His manner and address […] [allowed him] to get into society, and, having some vocal ability,
joined a musical club called ‘The Black Lilies,’ composed of young men of good position, who
occasionally exhibit their accomplishments as nigger melodists for the amusement of their
friends, and sometimes in aid of charitable objects. (Newcastle Daily Journal, 23 May 1868: 3)

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