slights or insults with violence and Whaley, though still a minor, certainly considered himself a gentleman. Even so, to attack a priest was nothing if not reckless and the local magistrate arrested him and threw him into prison without even the formality of a trial. Luckily the Archbishop of Auch, who was friendly with Wray, intervened on his behalf and he was released. It afterwards transpired that the ‘abbé’ was no such thing. ‘This fellow only wore the dress of a Priest, and had never been ordained.’ (W, 17)
While this meant that Whaley would not be prosecuted for attacking a priest,15 it did not signal an end to his troubles. If it was shown that he had abducted a female he would face the full rigours of French law. Whaley managed to get the young woman away from Auch and to Montpellier, where she gave birth to a daughter. The child died not long afterwards and as soon as the unfortunate mother had recovered Whaley had her committed to the care of a religious order.16 Although she had joined willingly with him in their liaison, its outcome had destroyed her life as she knew it. For eighteenth-century females such experiences were not uncommon. The law offered women a degree of protection, but in general men used them as they saw fit and few gave much thought to female suffering. Whaley probably regarded the fate of his erstwhile lover as unfortunate but not much more than that. And while he no doubt regretted his daughter’s death, she was only the first of several children he would father out of wedlock. He was living in a man’s world and fast becoming an adept player in it.
Whaley had now been in France for around a year. In that time he had lurched fecklessly from mishap to misadventure but had come off relatively unscathed. He had survived a dangerous accident and a spell in prison and his debts, while significant, were not prohibitive.17 He had also managed to escape any lasting consequences from his ill-fated liaison. His letters home carefully avoided any mention of this affair but in one, probably written early in 1784, he hinted at it. Describing himself as ‘a quarrelsome dog’ (a possible reference to his thrashing of the ‘abbé’) he mentioned that he had ‘been such a wild fellow of late that I have neither heard nor wrote to any one’. He knew that the time was approaching for him to leave Auch. His sister Sophia and her husband Robert Ward, formerly MP for Wicklow, had moved to France after Ward failed to get returned in the election of 1783. Having already met them in Aix, Whaley decided to join them in Lyons, where they had relocated.18 It was there that his luck finally ran out.
***
Accompanied by Wray, who seems to have offered little in the way of guidance during the pregnancy crisis, Whaley set out for Lyons in May 1784. Unimpressed by the city’s attractions, he decided to make his own entertainment and footed the bill for ‘sumptuous entertainments’ for all and sundry. ‘Magnificent balls and suppers to the ladies, extravagant and expensive dinners to the gentlemen, succeeded each other in quick rotation.’ (W, 19) Lavish displays of this kind were bound to attract hangers-on and opportunists and before long Whaley took up with ‘a set of wild young men’ among whom were two Irish gentlemen.19 He was no doubt glad to make the acquaintance of these fellow countrymen and he enjoyed their company so much that before long they were inseparable.
Not long afterwards he received an anonymous note warning him that the men were a pair of swindlers who planned to make him ‘the dupe of their execrable trade’. (W, 20) Recognising this as sincere and valuable advice, Wray begged Whaley to ditch his new friends – to no avail. This was the extent of the bearleader’s guidance and when Whaley accepted an invitation to dine with the Irishmen, Wray inexplicably failed to accompany him to the soiree. On arrival Whaley found that ‘a handsome company of female beauties’ were present and with their encouragement he drank so much wine ‘that before the dessert was introduced the glasses seemed to dance before me. Nothing would then satisfy them but we must drink champagne out of pint rummers, which soon completed the business.’ Getting a gambler drunk was and is among the oldest tricks in the book and with Whaley now ‘in a proper state for them to begin their operations’ his ‘friends’ proposed that they gamble. Within a short time they had extracted no less than £14,800 from him, ‘exclusive of my ready money, carriage, jewels, etc. I know not why they even stopped here; for I was in such a state that they might have stript me of my whole fortune.’ (W, 21)
Still just 18 years old, Whaley had been efficiently and remorselessly defrauded by two of the most predatory sharpers he ever had the misfortune to encounter. He immediately drew up a bill instructing his banker in Dublin to pay the amount, but even in his drunken state he must have known it would be returned protested, which it was in due course. With his allowance and any monies he had obtained from Faulkner long since spent, there seemed to be little hope of his raising the huge sum needed to pay his ‘friends’. But soon an opportunity to do so seemed to present itself, in the form of a mad scheme to abduct a wealthy young heiress.
3
WILD SCHEMES
Even as he reeled from the worst gambling loss he had ever suffered, Whaley somehow got his hands on a sum of money: two thousand louis d’ors (around £2,000), possibly advanced by Faulkner, to whom he may have written and given a hint of what had happened. If so, he swore him to secrecy. Under no circumstances were his mother and stepfather to be told and indeed they would not find out for several more weeks. Whaley used some of the £2,000 to clear his less significant debts: the lavish parties he had thrown in Lyons had not paid for themselves. The remainder fell well short of what he owed the Irishmen, but they were not deterred and proposed that he go to London ‘where, upon my fortune being made known, I should find no difficulty in getting my bills discounted to any amount I thought proper’. (W, 22) If he would do this, they promised, they would halve the amount of the debt. There was just one catch: one of them, John Ryan,1 would accompany him.
Wray advised against the London trip but Whaley dismissed the older man’s protestations and agreed to the plan.2 Wray had not been much of a bearleader. Having given Whaley little in the way of guidance in Auch and the spa resorts of the Pyrenees, he had failed to protect him from being monumentally defrauded in Lyons. Admittedly, Whaley had not been the easiest pupil. Headstrong and impulsive, he had refused to listen to sensible advice or be swayed in his resolutions, however foolish. But by allowing him to go unaccompanied to London, Wray was exposing him to whatever further machinations the swindlers might choose to employ. With Ryan in tow, Whaley set out for Paris. He spent long enough in the city to have a fling with ‘an intriguante … whose business it was to entrap young men by such artifices, in which the courtezans are much more expert … than they are in London’. The lady knew her business well, and after Whaley had spent ‘a most delicious time’ in her company she informed him that she needed a large sum to settle a gambling debt. Ignoring his own precarious financial situation he handed her £500.3 To be fleeced twice in such a short space of time looked like carelessness, and the episode would take its toll on more than just his purse. Following this latest debacle he and Ryan continued on to London, arriving there around the middle of May 1784.
This was to be Whaley’s first extended stay in the British capital. Home to some 700,000 people, it was a massive city by the standards of the time and as notorious for its poverty and squalor as it was famous for its wealth and elegance. With money still in his pocket (though he was going through it fast), Whaley avoided the squalor and stayed in the West End, home to luminaries like the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Devonshire. He checked into the Royal Hotel on St James’s Street4 while Ryan, determined to keep his prey within arm’s reach, took lodgings just up the road on Albemarle Street. Somehow, Whaley had to raise the money needed to get the sharper off his back. Almost certainly his first recourse was Leslie Grove, an Irish merchant-turned-banker based at 4 Crosby Square in Bishopsgate.5 Grove was friendly with Wray and had managed finances for Whaley’s family in the past, but getting the required sum out of him proved more difficult than anticipated. Although the banker would have been well aware that the young man stood to inherit a large fortune, he either could or would not advance the money: probably he did not want to do so without first conferring with Whaley’s relatives.
His attempts to get hold of
