William's wife Mary Gossop Vining (1795/6–1868) was an actress, known particularly in the roles of Helen Macgregor in Rob Roy and Meg Merrilies in Guy Mannering.
After serving as clerk in a bank six years, towards the end of which he played with an histrionic club at St James's Theatre, he first appeared professionally in December 1845 in Newmarket, as Hamlet.
He played Charles Surface in Sheridan's The School for Scandal; was in February 1856 the original Frank Lauriston in Stay at Home, an adaptation by Slingsby Lawrence (G. H. Lewes) of Un Mari qui se dérange; and in March 1857 the original Charles in Daddy Hardacre, by Palgrave Simpson, an adaptation of La Fille de l'Avare.
[1] During 1862 he was manager of St James's Theatre after the departure of Alfred Wigan;[2] in January of that year he played the hero of Self-made, his own adaptation of Le Chevalier de St Georges, and in March Mr Union in Friends or Foes, adapted by Horace Wigan from Nos Intimes by Victorien Sardou.
In quick succession he was one of the Antipholuses in a revival of The Comedy of Errors by the Brothers Webb; Philip II, an original part in Oxenford's Monastery of St Just; and Badger the detective – his most popular creation – in Boucicault's The Streets of London in August.
harangued against the brutal realism of some of the scenes,[1] writing "... we ourselves denounced the introduction of so complex a question as prison discipline into a melodrama, especially backed up as it is by such dismal and revolting representations of horrors...." (Morning Advertiser, 5 October 1865).
[3] In July 1867 he played an original part in The Huguenot Captain by Watts Phillips, of which Adelaide Neilson was the heroine, and in August 1868 a second in Boucicault's After Dark.
[2] After his retirement from management Vining played, at the Olympic in October 1871, Count Fosco in the first production of Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, which was a great success.