1902, he gave another remarkable performance as André Marex in ‘Heard at the Telephone,’ and also on the same evening as Raymond de Gourgiran in ‘Cæsar's Wife.’ At Drury Lane on 14 July 1903, he played Antonio in the ‘all star’ cast of ‘The Merchant of Venice’ at a performance in aid of the Actors' Benevolent Fund; and in the following year he went to America, playing in ‘Drink’ and ‘The Two Orphans.’
On his return to London he was at the Savoy Theatre with Mrs. Brown-Potter, on 6 Dec. 1904, as Canio in a dramatic version of ‘I Pagliacci.’ At the New Theatre on 2 May 1905, he gave a powerful performance of the part of Kleschna in ‘Leah Kleschna,’ and at His Majesty's Theatre on 1 Sept. 1906 he appeared as Leontes in Tree's revival of ‘The Winter's Tale,’ with Ellen Terry as Hermione. This was his last appearance on the regular stage in England. In 1907 he returned to America, and played at the leading ‘vaudeville’ theatres in ‘At the Telephone,’ ‘Devil Montague,’ and a condensed version of ‘Drink.’ He committed suicide by hanging, whilst insane, at the Hotel Seymour, West 45th Street, New York, on 11 Feb. 1909, and was buried at Woodlawn cemetery, New York, on 13 Feb. 1909.
Warner was an effective actor in melodramatic parts which admitted of great nervous tension, but his high-strung nerves often found vent in a violence which proved alarming to his colleagues on the stage, and impaired his artistic control of voice and gesture. In old comedy he checked his emotional impulses with good results, and proved himself a sound and sympathetic interpreter. In private life he was of warm-hearted, generous, and buoyant temperament. He married in 1872, at Hampstead, Frances Elizabeth Hards, who was unconnected with the theatre. Of his two surviving children, both the son, H(enry) B(yron) Warner, and the daughter, Grace, are well known on the stage. The latter married a promising actor, Franklin McLeay, a Canadian by birth, who died prematurely in 1900 at the age of thirty-three.
[Personal recollections; private correspondence; Dramatic List, 1879; Clement Scott's Theatre, April 1881, Feb. 1891 (with portrait); Drama of Yesterday and To-day, 1899; Green Room Book, 1909; The Times, Daily Telegraph, and Era, 13 Feb. 1909 (with portrait).]
WATERHOUSE, ALFRED (1830–1905), architect, born in Liverpool on 19 July 1830, was eldest son of Alfred Waterhouse of Whiteknights, Reading, and previously of Liverpool, by his wife Mary, daughter of Paul Bevan. Both parents belonged to the Society of Friends. Educated at Grove House school, Tottenham, Waterhouse inclined, when his schooldays were over, to the career of a painter. He was articled, however, to Richard Lane, architect, of Manchester, with whom he served his time ; and after completing his studies in France, Italy, and Germany, started in practice on his own account in Manchester in 1853. There he stopped till 1865, and in those twelve years succeeded in laying the foundations of a large practice in the north. Removal to London brought him a great increase of work in the south, but his connection with Liverpool and Manchester remained unbroken to the end. In Manchester came his first opportunity, when in 1859 he won the competition for the assize courts, a building the planning of which offered him the sort of problem with which he was well qualified to deal. A clear thinker, he was capable of much useful innovation. The public entrance to the courts was made independent of the official part of the building : a new feature which no future designer could afford to ignore. With the power to grasp the principles by which a building might be made most suitable for its purpose went in Waterhouse the ability to see almost intuitively yet accurately the inherent possibilities of a site, and the proper disposition of the building to be placed on it. After the Manchester assize courts there followed the more important commission of the Manchester town hall, this being also won in competition. The town hall, which was opened in 1877, is a well-planned building of a fine and picturesque massing placed on an irregular triangle. With such difficulties of site, Waterhouse found himself called upon to deal somewhat frequently, and did so with invariable success. The town hall shows to best advantage that individual type of Gothic which in Waterhouse's own work, and in that of many who followed in his footsteps, came to be generally associated with public and quasi-public buildings. Waterhouse was committed to the picturesque rather than the formal type of architectural design. A few of his buildings, such as the City and Guilds Institute in Exhibition Road (1881), were laid out on lines more severe and with real appreciation of the demands of formal treatment, but they were insignificant in number and probably dictated by special circumstances.
