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Kensington Avenue Schools, Manor Park, as Edith knew it.

KENSINGTON AVENUE SCHOOLS LOGBOOK

On 13 December 2021 a transcript of the LOGBOOK of Edith Thompson’s school was added to the site under SOURCES.

It covers the 1904-1909 period of the school, when both Edith and Avis Graydon were scholars there. It features scanned copies of the three entries mentioning the Graydon girls by name. It also shows a photograph (boys’ section) of one of the classrooms the way it looked at the time, and an Edwardian photo of the school and its playground. Edith Thompson’s School Logbook

FURTHER NEW PHOTOS: Recent additions to the site (under IMAGES and in the relevant text under THE STORY) concern photographs of the Manchester Hotel at the top of Aldersgate Street (opposite Aldersgate / Barbican tube station) frequented by Edith and other buyers. It is mentioned in her letters. The jury who tried her in December 1922 were put up in this hotel.

Other new photos on the site include several previously unpublished ones of Shanklin; of 16 Derby Road, Bournemouth, where Edith, Percy, and Avis spent their summer holiday of 1922; of the tennis courts and green in front of Derby Road; of the inside of 231 Shakespeare Crescent from the mid-1980s; of East Ham Station and the East Ham Palace; of Sibley Grove and Westcliff; and a number of production photos from The  Dippers at the Criterion, the play Edith and Percy saw on the night of 3 October 1922; of Ilford High Street and Hippodrome; of the Hotel Cecil where she danced and dined in January 1922 at a formal dinner hosted by London businesses; of the Co-Optimists at the Palace Theatre.

Several contemporary recordings of songs referred to by Edith, or otherwise popular at the time, have been inserted in chapters of THE STORY. This includes the first ever recording, on piano by John Snelson, of the lead song (Ivor Novello & Ben Travers) of The Dippers. 

PAGES added in the course of  2020 under SOURCES on the site are:

Notable British Trials

Court I Old Bailey, as it looked at the time of the trial: view from the dock

a complete, and corrected, version of the 1923 Notable British Trials volume, edited and introduced by Filson Young, with illustrations. Young’s volume contains the official, fully authorised transcript of the trial of Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters. NOTABLE BRITISH TRIALS 1923

 Percy Thompson Autopsy and post-mortem reports

Sir Bernard Spilsbury around the time of the autopsy of Percy Thompson

the complete autopsy report on Percy Thompson, conducted by the shortly to be knighted pathologist Dr Bernard Spilsbury; the tissue analysis by the Home Office pathologist John Webster; and the post-mortem report by the police surgeon Dr Percy James Drought. Also included are extracts from Spilsbury’s biography, and intimations in it about Edith Thompson’s innocence. Autopsy Report Percy Thompson (Sir Bernard Spilsbury)

The Ilford Murder, by James Douglas

James Douglas (1867–1940), Editor of The Sunday Express

an important pamphlet by a leading newspaper editor of the period. Douglas covered the trial and wrote extensively about it. The pamphlet appeared on 17 December 1922, after the trial and sentencing but before the Appeals were heard. The Ilford Murder: The Case for and Against a Reprieve, by James Douglas

Witness to a Murder: John Webber

Scene of the murder, 4 October 1922, with arrow showing the trajectory of Edith Thompson’s rush to Dr Maudsley’s surgery from the spot where Percy collapsed dead.

a detailed analysis of the testimony given by John Webber at the trial. Webber heard Edith Thompson scream during the assault. The judge tried to discredit his evidence given in court. Webber’s testimony is here set in the context of the twelve other witnesses who heard the screams, or else were drawn into the immediate aftermath of the murder by being near the scene of it. Four witnesses (including Webber) of the thirteen from that night testified at the Old Bailey; two others gave accounts of what they heard to the police. The judge’s ‘summary’ of Webber’s evidence is tendentious in the extreme and was profoundly unfair to the accused. The extent of his hostility is evident from a close comparison of his ‘summary’ with Webber’s testimony, which is borne out extensively by other witnesses. Witness to a Murder: John Webber

A Month in Holloway Gaol

Marguerite Sidley (1886-1983)
Women’s Freedom League
Holloway Prison, February 1909

a brilliant, detailed account of a month spent in the north London women’s prison in 1909 by the twenty-three-year-old Marguerite Sidley of the Women’s Freedom League. The prison described by the young suffragist in 1909 was essentially identical to the one Edith Thompson knew thirteen years later. The prison chaplain in 1909 was the same Glanvill Murray who was instructed to look after Edith Thompson. Marguerite’s disdainful response to Murray tallies almost exactly with Edith’s, both women objecting to his priggishness: he had little sympathy for female emancipation and he kept pressurising Edith to confess to a crime she did not commit. A Month in Holloway Gaol

The Murder of Mrs Thompson, by Edgar Wallace

Edgar Wallace (1875 – 1932)

Edgar Wallace’s passionate defence of Edith Thompson, in his 1920s essay The Murder of Mrs Thompson, is quoted prominently on the Home Page of edithjessiethompson.co.uk. In his time Wallace was a bestselling author of detective novels, as popular then as Agatha Christie would be later. Long after his death an entire generation would rediscover his novels though forty-seven black and white films that became a staple of British television nights in the early 1960s.

Wallace declined the invitation to cover the trial for a major newspaper because he was convinced that Edith Thompson was already convicted and that her trial would be a mere charade: for the full text of Wallace’s defence, see George Dilnot 1934  Appendices and Bibliography