On Thursday evening, 1 May 1894, Wells had been at his younger brother’s house on Tabor Road, Hammersmith. Josiah Richard Wells later recalled that his brother left the house at about 10.45 pm, and was walking his sisters home safely to their home in Winchmore Street, Putney. Miss Alice Ada and Miss Jane Wells thus accompanied their brother. He did not plan to walk the entire way with them, but would see them past the lonely stretch on Barnes Common. He left them at the Lodge, near Rock Lane on the west side of the common. The time was about 11.20 pm. Ada saw him begin his return trip and that was the last time she saw him alive. What happened next is unclear, but what is certain is that Wells was attacked.

Perhaps we should pause for a moment to consider a contemporary assessment of the Common on which the tragedy was about to occur:

Barnes Common is a rather lonely spot, and does not bear the best of reputations. The roads converge near the spot where the body was found, but the nearest house is that of the Common keeper. The common is a pleasant enough place during the day time, and just now is in the fresh green of early spring time. Many who live in Hammersmith enjoy a walk amongst the gorse and undergrowth, but at night time most respectable people avoid the spot for the simple reason that it is then the resort of loose characters of both sexes. It would not be at all surprising for anyone to be stopped and robbed there, although murder is a length to which the footpad does not usually go.

The attack cannot have happened much after his sisters last saw him, because just after 11.30 pm, William Robertson Patterson, a merchant of Putney Common, was on the scene. Patterson had taken a cab from Hammersmith Bridge, to his home, but had decided to alight before he arrived there, because he thought it would be a quicker journey if he cut across the footpath rather than taking the cab on the longer way round on the road. He walked along the footpath to Rock’s Lane and then heard cries for help. This was from a place only 130 yards from where the common keeper’s cottage was located and 200 yards from Crofts Lane. It was here where he found the dying Wells. Wells was probably taken by surprise because he was a tall and muscular man, as one would imagine a butcher would need to be, and he had a stick with him. He may well have been surprised, because of the dark night, visibility was at a premium. Patterson asked the man to get up, but he could not do so, nor could he speak. He was, however, still breathing. He then thought he saw something or someone moving in the direction of Putney, but he could not be sure whether he had or not, ‘because it would be difficult to tell a man from a tree at that distance’.