The Adelphi Theatre: William Terriss Returns
Actor William Terriss was stabbed to death at the Adelphi Theatre's stage door in 1897. Ghost stories about him have attached to the theatre, Maiden Lane and nearby Covent Garden tube station ever since.
At about twenty past seven on the evening of 16 December 1897, the actor William Terriss reached the private door of the Adelphi Theatre in Maiden Lane, behind the Strand. He was due on stage in William Gillette’s Secret Service. As he unlocked the door, a man rushed across the lane from a doorway opposite and stabbed him with a butcher’s knife. Terriss died at the doorway shortly before eight. His killer was Richard Archer Prince, a struggling actor whom Terriss had once helped. The murder is one of the best-documented crimes of Victorian London. The ghost stories that grew from it are much harder to pin down.
The Victorian matinee idol
William Terriss was born William Charles James Lewin in St John’s Wood, London, on 20 February 1847. His father, George Herbert Lewin, was a barrister. Before he settled on the stage, the young Lewin tried the merchant navy, tea-planting in Bengal, engineering, sheep-farming in the Falkland Islands and horse-breeding in Kentucky. He took the stage name Terriss and became one of the most popular leading men in London.
His swashbuckling style earned him the nickname “Breezy Bill.” He made his name in melodrama and adventure plays, and the Adelphi, then the home of melodrama, suited him well. From late 1885 he often played opposite Jessie Millward, who became his leading lady and his lover. They starred together in The Harbour Lights and toured Britain and America. His daughter Ellaline Terriss also became a well-known actress.
The theatre
The Adelphi opened in 1806 as the Sans Pareil, built by the merchant John Scott for his daughter Jane, a performer and playwright. It took the name Adelphi in 1819. The building was remodelled in 1840 and rebuilt in 1858 and again in 1901. The present Art Deco theatre, the fourth on the site, opened on 3 December 1930 to designs by Ernest Schaufelberg. It is Grade II listed.
So the theatre where Terriss worked is not the building that stands today. The stage door in Maiden Lane, though, is still where the private entrance was.
Richard Archer Prince
Prince was born Richard Archer in Dundee in 1858. In London he found little acting work. He played non-speaking parts as a “super” and took labouring jobs. Terriss had helped him find work in the past. By 1897 Prince had come to blame Terriss for his failure. He told police he had acted for revenge.
The murder
The Bow Street Police Museum has reconstructed the night from the police and court records. The formal charge put the attack at about 7.20 p.m. Prince had waited in a doorway opposite the stage door. He struck Terriss in the back and then struck again. Accounts differ on the number of blows. Many retellings give three.
Prince did not get far. A small group of bystanders, among them a man named Henry Graves, held him until Constable John Bragg arrived. Prince handed over the bloodstained knife. Bragg took him to Bow Street police station, where Inspector George Wood booked him in at about 7.45 p.m. Doctors from Charing Cross Hospital came to the theatre, but Terriss was pronounced dead at the doorway just before eight.
Earlier versions of this page said Prince stood calmly holding the knife until police came. The museum’s account shows he was seized by bystanders first.
Jessie Millward reached Terriss as he lay dying. Popular accounts say his last words to her were “I will be back.” His daughter Ellaline remembered them as “I will come back.” Both versions come from family and friends after the fact, not from the court record.
Prince was tried at the Old Bailey on 13 January 1898 before Mr Justice Channell. Doctors and his own mother gave evidence that he was of unsound mind. The jury found him guilty but insane. He was detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure, later moved to Broadmoor, and died there in 1937. The actor Henry Irving is said to have remarked bitterly that because Terriss was an actor, his murderer would not hang.
The ghost at the theatre
The stories of a ghost at the Adelphi are mostly set from the 1920s onward. They come to us through ghost writers and tour guides rather than through dated press reports, so their details vary.
The best-known story dates from 1928. An actress usually named only as June, and identified by some writers as June Tripp, was resting in the dressing room that had once been Jessie Millward’s. She said her couch began to shake and something gripped her arms. It stopped when she heard two taps from the direction of the stage door. Terriss was said to have tapped twice with his cane when he passed Millward’s room. In some versions a green light glowed in the room during the episode. She reported bruises afterwards. The researcher Harry Price is said to have persuaded her to sit for a séance in the dressing room, but nothing came of it.
The same year, a man walking in Maiden Lane is said to have met a figure in grey, old-fashioned clothes who vanished. He later picked out Terriss from a photograph. He is not named in any account we found.
The theatre’s green light comes up again in 1962. Two workmen in the auditorium are said to have seen a body-shaped green glow cross the stage, and an electrician reported a man in a grey suit crossing the auditorium while seats tipped down. Actors have also described tapping in the dressing rooms. We found these stories in popular histories, not in sources from the time.
Earlier versions of this page described hundreds of sightings at the stage door, a scent of Terriss’s cologne, and staff who refuse to work on 16 December. We could not find a source for any of this. We have removed it.
Jessie Millward
Jessie Millward lived until 1932. Earlier versions of this page said her ghost is often seen at the Adelphi beside Terriss. We found no account of such a sighting in any source, so we have removed that section. Her real place in the story is as the last person Terriss spoke to.
Covent Garden Underground station
Covent Garden station on the Piccadilly line opened in 1907, ten years after the murder. Local tradition holds that it stands where a bakery Terriss often visited once stood.
The main story dates from November 1955. Just after midnight, the station foreman Jack Hayden saw a tall man in a grey suit and white gloves, carrying a cane, walk towards the exit and vanish. He said he saw the figure again a few days later. Soon after, Hayden heard screams from a young colleague, Victor Locker, who said he had seen a tall ghost. Both men were later shown pictures of Terriss and said he was the man they had seen. Locker asked for a transfer to another station.
Newspapers reported the haunting at the time. One account says a London Underground foreman and spiritualist named Eric Davey claimed to make contact with the ghost. Earlier versions of this page said London Underground officially acknowledged the haunting and called in a spiritualist after workers refused their shifts. We found no source for an official statement or a walkout.
Later sightings are reported up to 1972. A 2005 Channel 5 documentary said the ghost had been seen many times at the station but less often in recent years. The 2008 History Channel programme Ghosts on the Underground mentioned a recent sighting.
How to read the case
The murder of William Terriss is fully documented. There are police records, an Old Bailey trial and wide press coverage. That is more than most haunted sites can claim. The ghost stories, though, have a different footing.
The 1928 dressing-room story and the 1955 station story have named or partly named witnesses. Both were told decades before they reached the ghost books we can read today, and the details shift between tellings. The identification of the station ghost rested on two men being shown photographs of Terriss after they had heard the story. Skeptics point out that a well-known murder, a famous face and a dark, near-empty station after midnight make good conditions for suggestion.
Believers point to the fact that the reports cluster around places Terriss knew, and that the 1955 witnesses were ordinary staff with nothing to gain.
The theatre’s management has not published any record of sightings. The haunting is part of West End lore and is often told on ghost walks. We class it as unverified.
The theatre today
The Adelphi remains a working West End theatre on the Strand. The stage door in Maiden Lane can be seen from the street. Covent Garden station is a short walk away on Long Acre.
Sources
- Bow Street Police Museum, “Murder at the Adelphi” - time of the attack, the arrest by PC Bragg, the 13 January 1898 trial, Prince’s background
- Wikipedia, William Terriss - birth, early careers, nickname, Prince’s verdict and Broadmoor, the documentaries
- Wikipedia, Adelphi Theatre - founding in 1806, rebuilding dates, the 1930 building and Grade II listing
- Philipp Röttgers, “William Terriss, the ghost of a murdered actor”, London beyond time and place, 23 May 2020 - the 1928, 1955, 1962 and 1972 sighting stories
- Jack the Ripper Tour, “The Ghost of William Terriss” - Ellaline Terriss’s version of the last words, June Tripp and Harry Price, Eric Davey