William Desmond Taylor - Early Life

Early Life

He was born William Cunningham Deane-Tanner into the Anglo-Irish gentry on 26 April 1872, in Carlow, Ireland. He was one of four children of a retired British Army officer, Major Kearns Deane-Tanner of the Carlow Rifles, and his wife, Jane. His siblings were Denis, Nell, and Daisy. The Home Rule MP Charles Kerins Deane Tanner was his father's youngest brother. He sailed for America in 1890, when he was 18 years old.

He briefly pursued a career on the New York City stage before marrying Ethel May Hamilton. The Episcopalian ceremony took place on 7 December 1901, at the Little Church Around the Corner; they divorced in 1912. Although she appeared as a member of the Florodora sextet as Ethel May Harrison, she was the daughter of a wealthy Wall Street broker who provided him with funding to set up the English Antiques Shop, through which he could support a family. The Tanners were well known in New York society until he abruptly vanished on 23 October 1908 at the age of 36, following an affair with a married woman, deserting his wife and daughter, Ethel Daisy. Tanner (Taylor) had suffered "mental lapses" before, and the family thought at first that he had wandered off during an episode of aphasia. Deane-Tanner's brother, Denis, a former lieutenant in the British Army and a manager of a New York antiques business, disappeared in 1912, abandoning his wife and two children.