Edgar Wallace: Crime Writer – Part 1, Born to an Actress

As mentioned in my introduction of a few days ago, in a writing career spanning thirty-five years Edgar Wallace wrote a hit song, a great deal of very bad Kipling inspired poetry, 175 best-selling novels (usually back to back) 24 hit plays, 11 non-fiction titles, thousands of newspaper and magazine articles, plus a large contribution to the screenplay of King Kong, which, along with smoking sixty cigarettes a day, killed him off at the age of fifty-seven.

Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace was born in London on April Fools Day 1875 (the same year as that other great pulp fiction author, Edgar Rice Burroughs) to actress Marie Richards, who was known by her fellow thespians as Polly Richards.

In 1875, being a single mother (Polly already had a young daughter), who was also pregnant, was in an unenviable position. Hard choices had to be made.

In late 1874 Polly had joined the Greenwich Theatre in London on the understanding she would be available for a nationwide tour starting in April 1875. Being pregnant didn’t help of course, but as a resourceful actress Polly was able to hide her condition before going into labour just ten days before the tour started in Huddersfield.

Less than forty-eight hours after the birth Polly registered the baby, using the absent father’s Christian names of Richard Horatio Edgar, but substituting the father’s surname of Marriott, with that of Wallace; she listed the father’s occupation as “comedian”.

A few days later, and for a fee, Polly placed her son into the hands of Billingsgate fish porter George Freeman and his family. She then headed north to Huddersfield, making the opening night with just hours to spare.

Sometime later, discovering Polly was an actress (which for many in those days meant prostitute) George Freeman and his wife became somewhat aggrieved at the way Polly had, as they now saw it, abandoned her son. As a result George and his wife now adopted the boy as their own.

In truth it was George’s eight year old daughter, Clara, who really adopted the boy and brought him up, for she was the one who fed him, dressed him, and when he was old enough, took him to infant school every day; and stood between the boy and her father when the fish porter became violent.

And it was she who bought Dick, as he was now called, the so called penny dreadful adventure comics, comics he had to keep hidden from his adopted parents.

It was also Clara who led the boy on adventures along the River Thames into the murky streets of East London, where they pretended to witness the most foul of crimes.

As Margaret Lane, in her 1939 biography of Wallace writes ‘…it was to Clara that Dick ran when his fellow school children, with the sharp-nosed malice of their kind, got wind of his history and shouted “Bastid” after him…’

Dick Wallace (he never called himself Freeman) didn’t enjoy his school days, and with Clara now married, and at the age of twelve, he gave up formal education and headed out into the world. It’s what you did in 1887 London.

Read the full feature over at Helium.