2nd not 1st: Essex 1899-1914 (6th ed)

Daily Mirror 21 August 1926 In 1916 Wilmer was cited as co-respondent in a divorce petition brought by Leonard Unett Waler, and summonsed for non-payment of £51 15s 9d. By then he had become an actor and said he was paid £10 a week, out of which he had to find £5 5s expenses, but was ordered to pay £5 per month. In 1921 he married Phyllis Atkins or Dubois-Phillips and in 1923 they travelled to New York, but he seems to have returned alone. In the same year he was declared bankrupt and in 1928 a petition for bankruptcy was filed against him. In 1926 he was again cited as a co-respondent, this time in the divorce case of Colonel Ralph and Mrs Iris Sneyd. For a while he carried over these roles into his real life, which spiralled rapidly downhill. In 1927 it was alleged that he had spied against Britain and fled to France. After an operation on his left leg, he became addicted to heroin. He was also accused of spying on Britain and was said to have fled to France. This proved untrue but soon afterwards he did go to France to avoid a charge of unlawful possession of 300 tablets containing heroin. After ten months he returned and was arrested at Northampton railway station. ‘Fashionably dressed women thronged the public gallery of Maidenhead police court’ to see the case. Immaculately dressed and wearing a monocle, he entered the court carrying a large bundle of papers and pleaded for leniency. Defending himself, in a long speech he said that he had been led astray by ‘the devil disguised in the shape of a doctor’. He had been close to death but after a month in a nursing home under an eminent specialist believed ‘he had won the battle’. Inspector Prothero told the court that Wilmer had claimed to be an army major but was an impostor who held no honorary rank as an officer. ‘For the past four years he has done no honourable work. In 1928 he was adjudicated a bankrupt, and is still undischarged.’ Wilmer was imprisoned for six months. Two articles published shortly after the case painted differing portraits of Wilmer. In a piece entitled ‘Tragic Society Wasters’, John Bull attacked him as a ‘callous rogue of many roles’ who squandered his allowance and ‘turned to shady methods of replenishing his exchequer’. He was ‘the man behind the tragedy of a beautiful young woman who was found in a Mayfair apartment with a bullet wound in her chest’. By contrast, a woman known only as Alex told The People that she first knew him as ‘a normal, virile man who loved all kinds of sport’. After reading newspaper reports of his activities, she went to Monaco and found that ‘he was dying on his feet’. She persuaded him to come back to England and, although it cost her all her money, he was grateful and she did not regret it. There can be no doubt that, with the support of Alex and the specialist, Wilmer turned his life round and newspapers report no further misdemeanours. He appeared at the Shilling Theatre