William Henry RIDER ¹

  General Notes:

William was born about 1854, the son of William and Mary Ann Rider, at Islington, Middlesex. He first married Letitia May Smith He was a Master Printer, and was one of the big London publishers. His publishing house continues to this day (albeit swallowed up in a merger).
He published a lot of books on the occult, and got Maude involved into that business. Maude wrote several books: "The Wine of Life" (1907), "The Door of Darkness" (1908), "This Day's Madness" (1909), "Wind Along the Waste" (1910 - made into the 1922 movie "Shattered Dreams"), "Shadow Shapes" (1911), "All Awry" (1911), "Nights and Days" (1912), "My Parisian Year" (1912, non-fiction), "The Sphinx and the Labyrinth" (1913), "Blind Understanding" (1915), and "Where I Made One" (1923)
She hung around with the Golden Dawn boys - Swinburne, MacGregor Mather, and so on, and became one of Aleister Crowley's girls, and the orgies, booze and drugs, and bizarre mumbo-jumbo that they all incanted while doped up, was slowly driving her insane.
After William's death she moved to 50 St Petersburgh Place, Notting Hill.

The Times, Tuesday, Sep 29, 1914 DEATHS
RIDER - On the 27th Inst., at the National Hospital for Diseases of the Heart, W. H. Rider, of Paris, son of the late William Rider, of Belsize Park-gardens. No flowers. Cremation at Golder's Green, Wednesday next, at 3:15.

William married Maude Gertrude Annesley WEBSTER-WEDDERBURN, daughter of Maj. George Gordon Gerard WEBSTER-WEDDERBURN and Caroline DIXON, 14 0ct 1902. (Maude Gertrude Annesley WEBSTER-WEDDERBURN was born on 11 Jan 1871 in Newccastle under Lyme, Staffordshire, England and died on 6 Nov 1930 in Camberwell House, Camberwell, Surrey, England.)