Mr Skinner, the bigamous detective

One Victorian detective managed to live a double life for years - having successfully learned the investigators' skill of adopting different identities...

Londoner William Thomas Skinner was a man of many faces. He had various jobs during the years, but in the early 1890s was working as a private detective. His ability to adopt different disguises was useful in his personal life too: he was able to maintain two wives and families alongside each other for several years. He kept one family in St Pancras, north of the river, and the other in Wandsworth, south of the river. His lies were exposed in 1894, after he tried to marry the second woman bigamously (having had an affair with her for pretty much all of his first marriage). A spell in prison and a divorce followed - but then the second woman, who had fathered two of his three children, and who said he had treated her well, agreed to marry him again: legally this time.

William Thomas Skinner was born in Pimlico in 1854, the son of two servants, John and Ellen Skinner. Not much is known about William's father - although his grandfather, Joseph, was a millwright. More is known about his mother, who was born Ellen Bowler in Staffordshire; she moved to London with her family when she was young and lived in Marylebone with her mother and siblings. She initially worked as a waistcoat maker, like her mother, before, with a sister, getting a job locally with the Terrey family, where she worked as a kitchenmaid up until her marriage.

Private detective William Skinner was the child of two servants

William's father is absent from the family home in 1861 and 1871, and by the latter year, William too was absent - I can't find him on this census. I do know that in 1877, William, by this point working as an engine driver, married Mary Ann Blissett at St Pancras. Mary Ann was pregnant at the time, and their daughter Edith Catherine Ellen was born a few months later. Her second middle name was after her grandmother, who died the following year.

By 1881, William his wife Mary Ann and their daughter Ellen were living at 8 Greenland Grove in St Pancras, where William was working as a furniture fixer. The three seemed to be living in domestic harmony in north London. By the mid 1880s, however, William was living a second, secret, life.

On 21 October 1888, William Thomas Skinner - using his real name, and listed as a private detective - married Ellen Elizabeth Garrett at St John's Church in Isleworth. Both claimed to be single; in fact, Ellen was a widow, and William was currently married. Their first son, Francis Alec, was born in Wandsworth six months later. But the 1891 census showed William back home in St Pancras, living with Mary Ann and Edith, and now working as a private detective. He was still maintaining his double life: both living with his family in St Pancras, while simultaneously living in Wandsworth with Ellen and their son. This second family would be joined in 1893 by another son, Leonard Thomas Skinner.

Frederick G Bourne, listed as the victim of Skinner’s crime in 1894

William might have continued to live this double life, only, in early 1894, he stole a sewing machine from Frederick Gilbert Bourne - president of the Singer sewing machine company. While this offence was being investigated, police realised that he had not one, but two wives. He was duly charged at the Old Bailey not only with theft, but also with bigamy, having married Ellen Garrett while Mary Ann Skinner was still alive. Ellen appeared in court to state that she was happily married: William "had treated me and my children well, and I recommend him to mercy." William pleaded guilty and was sentenced to nine months in Wandsworth Prison; two months later, his horrified wife Mary Ann filed for divorce. This took 17 months to go through: the final decree was issued in December 1895, and in early 1896, William Skinner married Ellen Garrett for the second time, this time in Stepney, and this time, legally.

The Old Bailey Online project has the record of William Skinner’s conviction

Mary Ann Skinner, left without her husband's income, had to moved back in with her widowed father - ironically, a retired police officer. Her daughter Edith also moved in, finding work as a blouse maker. William gave up his detective business, instead working as an insurance agent and living in Camberwell with his second family. He died, aged 56, in 1910, leaving his two families living separately. Ellen and her children moved to Clapham, while Mary Ann and Edith moved to Leytonstone, living with Mary Ann's older sister Harriet. There is no evidence that they had any communication with each other - their sole link was the private detective who managed to keep two families apart for several years. The two wives of William Skinner died a year apart: Mary Ann in 1939 and Ellen in 1940.