History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

Wain and his sisters moved to 41 Brondesbury Road Kilburn in September 1916. He became known as ‘the man who drew cats’ and his pictures showed cats doing various human activities. Louis was born on 5 Aug 1860 in Clerkenwell. He was the eldest child and only son of William Wain, a textile designer and salesman. His French mother Felicia Boiteux, also designed carpets and church fabrics. He had five younger sisters. Louis was a sickly child, and it seems he was born with a cleft lip and was bullied at school which he only attended from the age of ten. But his genius for drawing was evident early on. After his sisters gave him a kitten for his twentieth birthday, he began to produce the cartoons. People thought Louis was ‘odd’. He played the piano in a very jerky peculiar way, and would tell people that he had written an opera which was in rehearsal for the London stage, but this only existed in his head. He also believed that he had harnessed electricity from the e...