Chapter 4: The Best Pal

Tuesday 3 October 1922

This is the day that will put Ilford on the map. It is Percy Thompson’s last day. The deadly machinery that is set in motion will grind on and will shortly destroy two more people and their families. History will record the events taking place within the next few hours under the name of ‘Thompson & Bywaters’.

London is shrouded in a clammy cold on this morning. As Edith and Percy are about to leave the house, Edith turns to Mrs Lester and says: ‘We shall be late tonight, as we are going to a theatre.’ She is wearing her slate-grey crêpe-de-chine frock, and over it the expensive brown musquash fur coat with its heavy boa collar, light silk stockings and black patent shoes, and a brown velvet hat to match her coat. In her red cloth handbag she is carrying opera glasses, a pair of ladies’ brown suède gloves, a pair of gentlemen’s chamois gloves and Percy’s bowler hat. Her husband is dressed in a smart blue suit, black shoes, and linen shirt and cuff links. He has on him his wallet and a cigarette case of white metal. Although Police Constable Geal is later to refer to ‘the sleeve of the coat’, it appears from other evidence that on this night Thompson is only wearing his jacket in spite of the increasing chilliness in the air. Before boarding the train in Ilford, Edith buys her copy of the Daily Sketch and is presumably amused by its page 2 piece on ‘Dancing with the Times!’. One suspects that she and Percy share a giggle over the Dean of Durham’s advocacy of a return to Victorian dance forms, and that they warmly approve of the reply in the paper which denies that contemporary girls merely flock to dances to flirt. After all the Thompsons themselves are tonight attending a ‘frivolous’ show about precisely the social and human intricacies of professional and amateur dancing in a country house.

Just before 9 a.m. Edith rings Freddy to confirm their lunch arrangement. He expects the call and answers the phone. If he is disappointed to hear that she is still going to the theatre, he does not let on in his mother’s hearing. Nor does he bother telling her who called – he never does. Shortly before noon he makes for the station to catch the first train into Victoria. He and Edith meet up at Carlton & Prior’s at 12.30 and make for the Queen Anne’s Restaurant again. They are more at leisure today. She probably apologises for not being able to wrench herself out of tonight’s engagement. Only too aware now of his attraction to her sister, she may suggest again, as she did in yesterday’s letter, that he take Avis out.

After lunch she returns to work, while he completes a few errands in the City. They have agreed to meet up briefly after Fuller’s after Carlton & Prior close for the day. It is about 4.10 when Bywaters arrives outside Fuller’s tea room and waits inside. At 5.10 Edith is at the door of the tea room. He rises to join her, and they slowly walk towards Aldersgate Tube, from where she will take the Metropolitan Line to King’s Cross and then change for Piccadilly. Before they separate outside Aldersgate station and while she clings to him for a moment, they promise each other to meet tomorrow at lunch-time – Freddy’s last day. She will not be able to see him for tea, because she has arranged to meet Ethel Vernon White at Paddington on the 5 p.m. from St Ives and will have to accompany her back to Ilford. He must make lunch tomorrow, and perhaps they can work out something for the evening after all.

At 5.45 p.m. Edith has met Percy and they are on their way to Piccadilly. They have made allowance for rush-hour delays, and therefore get to the Pit entrance of the Criterion slightly ahead of schedule. Here they are expected to meet Edith’s aunt Lillie and Uncle Jack from Stamford Hill. At the appointed time Lillie and Jack join them and find them ‘happy and in their usual spirits’. The performance does not start till 8.40. The intervening time between the meeting of the two families and curtain rise is not satisfactorily accounted for. A detailed account of that evening at the theatre is provided by Edith’s aunt Lillie Laxton. It is reproduced here in full from the Sunday Post of 24 December 1922:

Lillie and Jack Laxton at the time of the murder.
© Daryll Banyard

MRS THOMPSON’S THEATRE PARTY
ON NIGHT OF ILFORD TRAGEDY

By Her Aunt, Mrs Laxton, Who Was There

Great curiosity has been occasioned by the fact that on the night when Percy Thompson was assassinated in the darkened streets of Ilford, he and his wife went to the Criterion Theatre to see that populist farce, ‘The Dippers’.
The Thompsons were accompanied to the theatre by Mr and Mrs Laxton. Mr Laxton is Mrs Thompson’s uncle, and not the uncle of her late husband, as has generally been stated. The Laxtons’ story of what took place at the theatre is therefore illuminating.
At 5 Rostrevor Avenue, South Tottenham, a representative of ‘The Sunday Post’ saw Mrs Laxton, who was just about to leave on a visit to Edith Thompson in Holloway Gaol.
‘Edith Thompson is my husband’s favourite niece, said Mrs Laxton. ‘We have known her from childhood days upwards, and there has never been anything about her to lead us to suppose that she ever contemplated the taking of life.
‘We have seen a good deal of her in the last few years, and, indeed, visited her at her house, The Retreat, but we were not aware that she was on especially unhappy terms with her husband. In fact, although she was inclined to chaff him concerning his meanness, they never openly quarrelled in our presence. My husband and myself regarded them as being just a happy married couple, who might now and them have trifling differences so common to married life, but nothing more.
‘Coming to the night of the theatre party’, continued Mrs Laxton, ‘it had been arranged some days beforehand that we were to go together. Percy Thompson occasionally secured complimentary tickets for the West End theatres, and on the night of October 3 he had two stalls at 8s 6d each. The four of us – Mr and Mrs Thompson, my husband, and myself – met outside Messrs Carlton & Priors warehouse in Aldersgate Street, where Mrs Thompson was employed, about six o’clock. Mrs Thompson was her usual bright, cheery self, full of fun and ready of repartee. We were just one of those happy little parties which meet so often and go to the theatre together.

A Restaurant Dinner.

‘We took a taxicab and went up to the West End to a restaurant I did not know but where Percy Thompson and his wife seemed to have been old customers. At all events, the waiter gave us a warm welcome, and conducted us to a table for four, where we sat down and were served with an excellent meal.
‘Thompson and his wife were joking together all the time, and if occasionally there was just a touch of acid in the way she spoke to him, it was no more than I had noticed before. Generally speaking, one would say husband and wife were on excellent terms together. It was not an expensive dinner we had, and we were not drinking champagne; we understood each other well enough to have no delusions about our financial position, and the two men, Thompson and my husband, shared the cost of the dinner between them. Thompson helped his wife on with her coat after the dinner was over, and we then walked down to the Criterion Theatre to see the play.
‘During the evening Mrs Thompson laughed uproariously at the antics of Mr Cyril Maude on the stage, and whatever domestic troubles she may have possessed were obviously forgotten in the enjoyment of the play. She leaned on her husband’s arm, and the pair of them were obviously as good friends as they ever had been in the course of their lives. Percy Thompson laughed continuously, and often drew his wife’s attention to the different happenings on the stage.
‘I am as certain as one can be of anything in this world that on the night we four sat in the Criterion Theatre Mrs Thompson had not the faintest idea that her husband was going to be attacked and killed that night.
A great actress, greater than any woman we saw on the Criterion stage that evening, would have been required to have gone through the dreadful ordeal of sitting with a man whom she knew was to be murdered in an hour or two.
‘I have known Edith Thompson ever since she was a child, and I am quite positive that she does not possess the temperament necessary to have played the part of a conspirator in a case of murder. She is not, and never has been, a girl able to hide her emotions.

‘He’s too Mean’

‘I recollect that I asked her husband who was not wearing an overcoat, if he would not feel cold going home. Mrs Thompson chipped in, saying ‘Oh, he’s too mean to buy himself one. The day he gets himself a decent grey overcoat, I’ll buy him a frock overcoat to wear with his evening dress, so we can then go to the theatre properly.’
‘Thompson did not appear to be at all put out by his wife’s remark, and merely smiled. He was not a man given to any display of his feelings, and any anger he felt would be bottled up until there came a time for him to let it loose.
My husband and I are fairly observant people, and I can only say that we saw nothing amiss. In fact, we rather envied them their youthful happiness, and sighed a little over the days of our lost youth.
The theatre came out about a quarter to eleven, and we then walked along to the Piccadilly Tube, which is practically next door. Percy Thompson took tickets for Liverpool Street, and we parted at the entrance to the Tube.
Mrs Thompson spoke to me about coming over some time in the near future, while her husband and mine also discussed one or two things they had in common. We said good-bye to them, and then made our way home, never realising for a moment that we had just been through the prologue of one of the greatest dramas the world has ever known.

A Bombshell

It came as a bombshell to us the following morning when we heard that Percy Thompson was dead and that his wife had been detained by the police. We were quite unable to believe it for the time being, and were even more astounded when Frederick Bywaters was arrested by the police and charged with the murder.
Neither my husband nor myself ever had the slightest conception that young Bywaters was Mrs Thompson’s secret lover. We had heard of the boy, certainly, but did not know that he and Edith Thompson had ever been on affectionate terms. It still seems impossible of belief. At any rate, I am quite convinced she did not know the fate that was going to overtake her husband.

According to Mr Laxton, ‘we all remained in the queue till about 7.45 p.m. when we entered the theatre.’ Usually they would have the tickets in advance, and we may assume this to be the case on this night too. The queuing therefore quite possibly relates to entry into the Criterion Restaurant for an early theatre dinner (but not according to Mrs Laxton). It is almost certain that at this point, if not before, the theatre party is joined by another woman who had Avis’s ticket. Whoever this was, whether Bess of Bess and Reg or Ida Burton or another, she is not mentioned during the trial as being present on this crucial night, or for giving evidence about other events involving the lovers in which they also participated. The sole clue about her presence on this night comes from the coverage of the evening in Lloyd’s Sunday News by ‘A Lifelong Friend’ who could only have been this woman:

Incidents of that last West End party come back. I see Edith Thompson as she sat in that restaurant , the centre of the party, its wit and its mainspring. Her eyes sparkle as she breathes in the atmosphere of pleasure and gaiety.
I see her again as she stood outside the foyer of the theatre. I recall an episode that makes incomprehensible to me the murder which was to take place a few hours later.
Another friend who was of our party said to Percy Thompson: ‘Why haven’t you a coat? You will catch your death of cold.’ I forget what Thompson answered; but I remember well the laughing remark of his wife:
‘Oh, he’s too mean to buy himself an overcoat! I have promised to buy him a dress overcoat; but I won’t until he gets a grey one I have asked him to buy.’
A strange jest from a woman with murder in her heart!

It is impossible to dismiss this as fabrication, in spite of the oddity of the court evidence failing to mention that other parties were present. Whatever the reason, the fact is that the Thompsons are their customary selves, as they sit down at about 8.30 p.m. and open their programmes.

Inside the Criterion Theatre © René Weis

The play The Dippers is described as a farce in three acts by Ben Travers and features the popular Cyril Maude partnered by Binnie Hale.

The song ‘Dusky Nipper’, sung by Hale and played during the performance, has been specially composed for the occasion by Ivor Novello to words by Travers.

As well as giving the cast and details of setting and period, the programme advertises Liberty silk blouses, new petticoats from Debenham & Freebody, Apollinaris Natural Mineral Water, and begs the ladies ‘to remove hats, bonnets, or any kind of head dress.’

When the curtain rises, the audience gazes at a country railway station during early evening on a late autumn day. A train is about to pull out for London. An old woman and a small boy just make it. Henry Talboyes, however, an American on ‘probation’ with his English fiancée, misses it and is about to resign himself to spending the night at the station. At that point the chauffeur of nearby Mellington Hall drives up and, mistaking Talboyes for Dipper, a professional dancer commissioned to perform at Mellingham on this night, invites him to come along. Through a precipitate accumulation of sub-Wildean circumstances, Talboyes comes to be teaming up with the lively Pauline Dippers who has ‘mislaid’ her husband, played by Jack Raine. In fact they have had a row and he has left her in the lurch, in the full knowledge that if they lose their performing fee of £100, she will end up in prison.

Henry only realises at the end of Act I that the part he is expected to deliver is that of a famous dance partner, Hank Dipper. The flavour of the play can be gleaned perhaps best from the following bit of dialogue between Henry and Pauline in Act I:

Talboyes: You see … he thought I was Hicks – Hunks – Hanks. Well, directly I got my foot inside the door, old butlers and nephews and people kept dashing up and thinking me Hank. In fact, as I say, you’re the only person who doesn’t Hank me think – think me Hank.
Pauline: So that all the people downstairs solemnly think that Mr Dipper has arrived.

In due course Dipper does arrive to confront the ‘impostor’, but not till Mrs Stella Tavistock, Henry’s fiancée, has had a chance to confront her seemingly wayward lover – as she happens to be on the premises instead of at her home in the neighbouring countryside.

Before the various plot complications generate the pace which resolves the multiple ambiguities in mad abandon, the ill-matched dance pair have to improvise so as not to disgrace themselves and forfeit the money. Pauline suggests that they offer a totally new dance, the ‘Eskimo lumber’, something primitive, archaic, and above all stiff – to allow Henry to play his part. The scene and the second act conclude with Pauline explaining the basic dancing steps to Henry and then dancing with him into the ballroom to the tune of ‘Dusky Nipper’.

A 2021 piano recording of 'Dusky Nipper' (Ivor Novello / Ben Travers), from the 1922 Criterion Theatre farce The Dippers (Ben Travers) © John Snelson

Pauline Dipper singing the ‘Dusky Nipper’ song

The farce ends happily of course. It needs to be commended for its perfect sense of timing and its mildly risqué qualities, as shown in both Dipper’s reputed prowess in designing ladies’ hygienic underwear, and in its alertness to the erotic potential of the improvised dance lessons.

In the intimacy of Verity’s tiny underground theatre the slickness of Travers’s farce leaps into uproarious life. In the interval Percy and Laxton go into the buffet for a quick Bass each. Lillie and her niece stay behind in the theatre. Edith is thrilled with the play which explored familiar territory; the comedy of nimble dancing and of teaching heavy-footed men is one which she has lived through at first hand.

It is 10.45 when the party leaves the theatre, briefly stopping in the foyer to collect their coats. Then the Thompsons and the Laxtons turn to their right to descend the steps into the bowels of the circus. Percy and John purchase the tickets, two to Finsbury Park for the Laxtons and two to Liverpool Street for the Thompsons. Edith and Lillie wait in the centre of the booking office platform, chatting till the men return with the tickets. Kissing her aunt goodbye and shaking hands with her uncle, Edith motions towards the Finsbury Park lift and says, ‘You go that way’, while she and Percy will take the Bakerloo to Oxford Circus and then the Central to Liverpool Street. It is almost eleven when the Thompsons are travelling east on the Central Line. Shortly before it departs, they board the 11.30 from Liverpool Street to Ilford.

In Upper Norwood Mrs Bywaters is already asleep in bed. She is due up in the City tomorrow and is taking it easy tonight. Her son at this very moment is walking towards the railway bridge at Mill Road near the bottom of Ilford Hill. While Edith and Percy were travelling to the theatre, Freddy went to Tower Hill and took the District Line from Mark Lane to East Ham. The journey lasted a mere twenty-one minutes. He arrived at No. 231 at about 6.30 p.m. and probably joined the parents, Newenham and Avis for dinner. Mr Graydon had got Freddy the tobacco which he had requested the previous night and he put it in his new pouch. Both Avis and her mother noticed it, and Mrs Graydon commented:

‘You have got a new pouch, Freddy. Was it a present?
[He replies ‘yes’.] From a girl, I expect?
Freddy: Yes.
Mother: I expect the same girl gave you that as gave you the watch?
Freddy: Yes, the same girl gave it me.
Mother: I know who it is, but I am not going to say. Never mind, we
won’t argue about it. She is one of the best.
Freddy: There is none better.’

Mrs Graydon could not bring herself to acknowledge that her adored daughter was acting improperly. She readily saw how much charm Freddy exuded and sensed that both her girls had fallen for him. Presumably she still hoped that it would work out and that Avis would in the end marry young Bywaters. Perhaps she just wanted Freddy to know that she knew – and that she would stick by Edith no matter what she did. This interchange took place, according to Bywaters, just before he left at 11 p.m. For most of the evening Freddy naturally fell in with the rhythms of No. 231. Newnie, Avis and her parents were with him at different times. He was depressed, though, and when he had a moment alone with Avis suggested that they have a drink in the local. She went through to the kitchen dining room and asked her parents’ permission. Then she and Bywaters headed for the Avenue Hotel on the Church Road, where Avis ordered a Guinness, while he probably had his favourite Bass.

The Avenue near 231 Shakespeare Crescent © René Weis

Also in the course of the evening Avis told Freddy that Edith and Percy were out at the theatre. Her father was present at this point, but Bywaters made no comment, which struck Mr Graydon as odd. As Freddy was about to leave the house, he turned to Avis and said ‘I will be down to take you to the pictures tomorrow evening.’ It was 11 p.m. and he walked along the Crescent and into Sibley Grove, before reaching East Ham Station. He would be at the station by 11.15 p.m. Fresh in his mind were Mrs Graydon’s words about Edith in connection with the tobacco pouch. His imminent return to sea loomed large, along with a feeling that his relationship with the wife had been indirectly legitimised. Her mother knew of it and seemingly entrusted her daughter in his keeping. According to his own testimony, he told himself

I don’t want to go home; I feel too miserable. I want to see Mrs Thompson; I want to see if I can help her.

This was almost certainly the last time he might see her in an evening, as tomorrow she would be wrapped up in the task of meeting Ethel Vernon and then showing her around. He turned away from the station at East Ham and cut down again through the streets of Manor Park, his childhood playgrounds. Whether he grasped the fatefulness of this dark walk through the cold deserted streets, or whether he was deluding himself about the consequences of a direct confrontation with Percy, only he ever knew.

He was carrying a knife purchased at Osman & Co. of 165-66 Aldersgate Street, just up from Carlton & Prior. No one had ever noticed Bywaters carrying this knife, although he claimed he had owned it with its leather sheath since November 1921, always took it with him abroad and usually kept it in his overcoat pocket. The prosecution poured scorn on this but failed to prove their case that the knife had been recently acquired from Osman’s.

Carlton & Prior (left) and Osman & Co (right) in 1940 during the Blitz, with a C19 drawing of the same spot © René Weis

The sales staff would undoubtedly have recognized the young man if he had bought a knife at the shop the week before the murder, the more so since he was hovering about next door, and opposite at Fuller’s, virtually every day. It was not uncommon for merchant seamen to be possessed of knives when they were in foreign parts, and particularly in the Far East. Getting a knife under the circumstances was hardly prima facie evidence to be used to convict, although his carrying it on him this night was a different matter. The knife itself consisted of a double-edged blade, which measured five and a half inches and protruded from a four-inch long, chequered pattern handle. The weapon caused a stir when it was produced in court, not least among the jury. The police might never have found it, had Bywaters not told them precisely where to look, wholly unaware of the damage its visual impact would inflict on his case.

The 11.30 train from Liverpool Street arrives in llford shortly before midnight. On this night the Thompsons use the stairs to the bridge, walk down the balustraded slope and emerge in the York Road entrance.

The York Road entrance to Ilford station through which Edith and Percy passed almost daily © René Weis

They cross over into Belgrave Road and begin to walk down the balustraded slope and emerge in the York Road entrance. They cross over into Belgrade Road and begin the walk of just under a mile towards Kensington Gardens. It ought to take twenty minutes at most, probably less on a chilly autumn night in deserted suburban streets. There is no conclusive evidence of Bywaters’s precise movements at this moment. He certainly arrived at Ilford station before the 11.30 from London. His own two statements on his subsequent movements before the attack are contradictory: ‘I waited for Mrs Thompson and her husband’, he conceded in his written statement, but later insisted that the word ‘waited’ was put to him by Inspector Hall. In court, when questioned by his counsel, Bywaters maintained that ‘When I got into Belgrave Road I walked for some time, and some distance ahead I saw Mr and Mrs Thompson, their backs turned to me.’ What probably happened was that Bywater waited in York Road to watch the Thompsons emerge. He may originally have wished to have it out with Percy on the spot but would have been deterred by the appearance before the couple of four other late-night Ilfordians, Mr and Mrs Percy E. Cleveley of 62 Mayfair Avenue, Miss Dora Finch Pittard of 59 Endsleigh Gardens and Mrs Jessie Secretan of 92 Courtland Avenue.

This foursome now make their way towards the Kensington Gardens area, followed at some distance by Edith and Percy Thompson. Behind them, and stalking them at this point, is Freddy Bywaters. He notes that Edith is walking on the inside of the pavement. She is probably holding Thompson’s arm. They are discussing the play and a forthcoming dance event which she is urging him to attend with her. The streets of this particular part of llford are not well lit. The fifty-candle-power electric standard lights are sparingly spaced out to provide pools of light for the street intersections. Beyond the Northbrook Road the spaces between the avenues – bordered on either side by the abutting back-garden walls of these substantial Edwardian houses – are therefore fairly dark on an overcast night. The huge sycamores and chestnuts which have flourished here since Victorian times further darken stretches of the street. But the night of 3/4 October is clear and crisp. Edith and Percy almost continuously have the foursome in sight, except for a couple of minutes after crossing the Northbrook Road, when the Belgrave Road rises and then gently bends to the right before opening on the avenues in a long straight line (cf. map).

At about 12.10 a.m. the party splits at the corner of Mayfair Avenue where the Cleveleys live. The two women proceed alone to Courtland Avenue where they stop briefly to say good night. It is then that Mrs Secretan sees a man standing on the left hand side between Courtland Avenue and De Vere Gardens. The man, who is later identified as Joseph Edward James Row, is probably intoxicated and relieving himself against the wall or being sick. Miss Pittard, who is shortsighted, fails to see him. The two women decide to enlist Cleveley’s help and ask him to walk them home. He obliges and they see Mrs Secretan to her door at 92 Courtland Avenue. While their backs are turned on the way down to 92, or outside 92, the Thompsons pass at the top of the Avenue. They also walk past the drunk near Dr Maudsley’s garden gate. The time is 12.20 p.m. Pittard and Cleveley are still in Courtland, the drunk is in place, Edith and Percy have reached the intersection of Endsleigh Gardens and Belgrave Road.

Murder scene in police map

In the meantime Bywaters has decided – in all likelihood – to cut across to the Drive, possibly through Beal and Mansfield roads, then to descend through, and intercept the Thompsons in Endsleigh Gardens. The fact that during his first interrogations he will mistakenly assume that he fled through Endsleigh may point to his recollection of running through it at some point during the night, but towards Belgrave rather than away from it. The Thompsons are now crossing Endsleigh Gardens. On their right-hand side is Miss Pittard’s corner house, No. 59, and in front of it is a street light. It is probably in this front garden that Bywaters is hiding.

The Thompsons have nearly reached the other side when Bywaters rushes out. With his right hand he grabs Edith and roughly pushes her over to the side. She hits the pavement on the unlit corner of Endsleigh and Belgrave and is momentarily dazed. Almost at the same time Bywaters, with his free left hand first and then with both, pushes her husband further up past the house into the dark. The distance from the light in Endsleigh Gardens to this spot measures thirty-seven yards, and it is fifty-four yards from here to the lamp at the south-western corner of Kensington Gardens. By now the two men are fighting, and Bywaters is violently hitting Thompson. He has drawn his dagger and is wielding it in his right hand.¹ If the two men are communicating at all, it can only be through muffled sounds. It is highly improbable that they engage in the sort of dialogue that Freddy will contend took place.

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. Below the same scene 1985 / 1922, with arrow showing Edith’s movements © René Weis

The fight is a short and bloody one. Frantically Bywaters stabs Thompson again and again, inflicting eight slight cuts on the left side below the ribs, on the front of the chin and on the right side of the lower jaw, as well as a three-and-a-quarter-inch-long cut on the right inner side of the elbow, and three severe stabs in the neck and back of the neck, all of which are situated towards the right. One of these passes upwards and penetrates into the floor or the mouth, another one, which is fatal, severs the carotid artery and leaves a deep cut in the oesophagus. Immediately Thompson’s stomach fills with blood, and he is rendered helpless by the blow. During this violent scuffle the two men have moved forty-four feet, from the back wall of 60 Endsleigh Gardens to within half a yard of the carriageway which separates the two gardens. They have been wrestling both on and off the pavement. The entire area is covered in blood, and particularly the wall where Thompson tumbles over and slides down with a pitiful groan.

Ilford murder spot, 4 October 1922

Edith Thompson dimly takes in the scuffle in the badly lit spot. Then, in ‘a most piteous manner’, she screams: ‘Oh don’t; oh don’t’. These words reach all the way to the bedroom of the sales manager John Webber at 59 De Vere Garden. They are not heard by Pittard and Cleveley down in Courtland, perhaps because they are busy chatting and also because of the sealing effect of the foliage. Webber is already undressed and cannot act immediately. While he is hurriedly dressing, Edith runs up to Percy while Bywaters bolts. Her screams, the first loud noise in the last one or two minutes, may well jolt him. His instinct is to run towards Wanstead Park. He rushes up the Belgrave Road in the direction of Seymour Gardens. In doing so he passes under the pool of light cast by the lamp at 62 Kensington Gardens. At this point Edith clearly recognises the grey trilby hat and the blue overcoat as Bywaters’s. She knows already that he is the assailant.

Before his wife reaches him, Thompson, audibly groaning, collapses into a sitting position against the wall. His wife holds him in both her hands and anxiously listens to his breathing. Even as she is bending over him, blood wells from his mouth over her hands and coat and quickly saturates his clothes at the front. Helpless and panic-stricken, Edith leaps up and rushes across the street. In the middle of the road between Endsleigh and De Vere she runs into Cleveley and Miss Pittard. They have turned the corner of Courtland Avenue, got beyond De Vere and decided to cross over towards No. 59 at the corner of Endsleigh Gardens. The woman who, in Cleveley’s phrase, seemed to surge up to them ‘out of the darkness’, throws herself at Miss Pittard in a hysterical start and exclaims: ‘Oh, my God, help me, my husband is ill, he is bleeding on the pavement.’ Miss Pittard holds her up for a moment. She asks for a doctor, and all three of them turn back towards Maudsley’s surgery. At precisely this moment Mr Webber steps into Belgrave Road and sees two women and a man charging in his direction and towards Maudsley’s house. Edith Thompson is running ahead. She gets to the surgery, rings the bell and once again starts running, this time up the road towards the prostrate body, leaving Pittard and Cleveley behind to bring Maudsley along. But Miss Pittard follows Edith at once after telling the doctor that there is a severe case of sickness up the road. Edith is already back with the body and strikes a match to look at Percy, when John Webber comes up and enquires whether the man had a fall. Her answer is that she does not know and then, when he offers to be of assistance, she shouts: ‘Don’t touch him, don’t touch him, the lady and a gentleman have gone off for a doctor.’

Within seconds Miss Pittard is back with her and, seeing Thompson lying on the pavement in a pool of blood, asks what happened: ‘Oh, don’t ask me, I don’t know. Somebody flew past, and when I turned to speak to him blood was pouring out of his mouth’, Edith Thompson replies. By now she is wholly incoherent and in a state of hysteria. It is 12.30 a.m. and an interminable five to eight minutes elapse before Maudsley arrives on the scene. He also strikes a match and feels Percy’s pulse. He turns to the wife and asks whether her husband was taken ill on the train home from the Criterion Theatre, or on the road. She tells him ‘no’. Maudsley is puzzled by the amount of blood still pouring from the man’s mouth but, incredibly, misses all the injuries inflicted, in spite of partly undressing Percy’s top. He suspects a sudden haemorrhage. The one thing he knows for certain is that the man is dead and appears to have been so for about ten minutes. He tells the wife who exclaims: ‘Why did you not come sooner and save him?’

The time is now 12.40 a.m. The citizens of Ilford are mostly asleep, as yet happily unconscious of the drama that has burst on the scene of their respectable suburban streets. It is at this moment that the telephone rings at the Ilford police station. Dr Maudsley is on the line and is requesting the ambulance. PCs George Edwin Pearcey and Cyril Geal are directed by Police Sergeant Grimes to leave the station and accompany, or wait for, PC Henry Palmer, who will drive the police ambulance to the scene of the death. The sight that greets the two policemen when on their bikes they arrive at the carriageway gate at 12.50 a.m. consists of five people leaning over the dead man, presumed dead from a haemorrhage. A yard or so from the body is the wife, supported by two bystanders. She is greatly distressed. The ambulance has now arrived and the policemen lift the body into it to convey it to the Ilford Mortuary. At that moment, at approximately 1.05 a.m., Police Sergeant Walter Mew on patrol appears on the scene. He instructs Geal to accompany Palmer to the mortuary. He and Pearcey then offer to take Mrs Thompson back to No. 41. The two officers are naturally anxious to be as helpful as they possibly can to the widow. She is walking unsupported, and anxiously asks Mew: ‘Will he come back?’, to which he soothingly replies in the affirmative. Her next agitated statement, almost muttered to herself, will stick in Mew’s mind: ‘They will blame me for this.’ It would be interesting to know whether the stress was on the ‘blame’ or on the ‘me’. The time is 1.15 a.m. when Mew, Pearcey and Edith enter The Retreat and meet Mrs Lester. That something is dreadfully wrong is at once clear to her from the blood splattered all over Edith. She is close to hysteria again, and they take her through to the back morning-room and make her comfortable. Mrs Lester tries to comfort her and at the police’s suggestion asks for her parents’ address and her brother-in-law’s. While the police are gone, Edith moans to Mrs Lester that ‘they’ would not let her accompany Percy in the ambulance: ‘They have taken him away from me; if they would let me go to him, I would make him better’. It occurs to Mrs Lester that Mrs Thompson is frantic and does not realise that Percy is dead. It is nearly 1.45 a.m. when Mew calls at 49 Seymour Gardens to enquire after Richard H. Thompson and to tell him the grim news. He at once hurries across to No. 41. His first impression of his sister-in-law is that she is ‘overcome’. He asks her what has happened and Edith replies:

Edith: Percy has been taken away. He had a seizure, coming from the station. He complained of neuritis in his leg and he was rubbing it as he walked along and before I know what had happened he fell against me with a cry ‘Oh’. That was the last he ever spoke. I screamed for help and a lady and a gentleman came after some time and assisted me to get a doctor but when he arrived Percy was dead.

In the meantime the ambulance has arrived at the mortuary in St Mary’s church on the High Road, Ilford. The body is taken inside and Geal and Palmer undress it. At once, out of the gashes in the body, the truth stares them in the face. They are dealing with murder, not an accident. The two PCs immediately notify the station and Walter Grimes of the K division of the Metropolitan Police in charge on this night at Ilford informs the divisional inspector. He then waits for his colleague Mew to return. Mew is at the mortuary by now and inspecting the wounds of the deceased. He returns to the police station, and then he and Grimes set out again, cycling through the Mill Road tunnel up Northbrook and back into Belgrave Road. The time is about 2.40 a.m. They examine more closely what has now become the scene of a crime and search for the murder weapon. They only find large quantities of blood on the pavement for a distance of about forty feet. The two men proceed up the road towards 41 Kensington Gardens. The woman, they know now, is hiding something. She must have seen the assailant, unless she did it herself. But that seems wholly preposterous and Mew, who has already met the widow, probably briefs Grimes to this effect. She undoubtedly is genuinely hysterical, and Mew for a moment wonders whether Percy might have fallen on his own knife during a seizure. But the injuries on the back of the neck rule this out. It has to be murder. When the two officers enter The Retreat once again, it is 3 a.m. Edith is exhausted, terrified and still in shock. Then Mew asks:

Can you account for the cuts on your husband’s neck?
Edith: No, we were walking along and my husband said ‘Oh’, and I said ‘Bear up’, thinking he had one of his attacks; he then fell on me and walked a little farther; he then fell against the wall and then to the ground.
Mew: Did he have a knife?
Edith: No, I did not see a knife or anything.

Mew then asks her for permission to search her handbag but draws a blank. She explains how she rushed across the road and into Pittard and Cleveley, and that they helped her to get a doctor.

Not satisfied with their progress so far, but convinced that the woman is lying, the officers return to the mortuary, after urging Mrs Thompson to get some rest and cautioning her that they will need to see her again in the morning. Her head feels sore from the fall, and as she drags herself upstairs to her bedroom at about 3.30 a.m., she is desperately fighting off the sensations of utter helplessness which are visited on her in her nightmares. Her most abhorrent visions seem to be crystallising into a formidable reality. Percy is dead. What would she not give now just to recall yesterday, when she professed to loathe his company. Why did Freddy do it? She never meant for anything like this to happen. While she sinks back into her empty bed, haunted by fear and sorrow, Freddy Bywaters restlessly tosses in bed in the tawdry villa at 11 Westow Street, the events of the past few hours repeating themselves incessantly in his head. Perhaps he still feels the arresting sensation of ramming the knife into the body in Ilford and shudders at the memory of Percy’s breath on his face, his warm blood sticking to his hands, as if pleading on the threshold of death. He never saw Edith Thompson after the scuffle started, and his frenzy totally wrenched him from himself. He vaguely registered her scream.

Having attacked Percy, Freddy ran on towards the Park and Seymour Gardens and up to The Drive. It is only then that he realised that he was still carrying the knife. He dropped it down the last drain on the left before the intersection with The Drive. Panting, he carried on up The Drive and down Highland Gardens making for the park, crossing over the enclosure through Wanstead Flats, Leytonstone and then Stratford. Here he ordered a taxi to take him to Aldgate. From Aldgate he crossed to Fenchurch Street where he hailed another cab to Thornton Heath. Then he walked to Upper Norwood. For the two and a half hours which it had taken him from Belgrave Road to the cottage in Westow Street, Freddy Bywaters had been like an alien, dimly remembering once familiar places as he passed through them this night. As he passed Brady Street off the Whitechapel Station, he may have looked down into the eastern slumland and thought of the East End murderer of 1888 who had killed near here. Was he like that now, would anyone ever think of him as an assassin? He knew that he had done something awful, and he must have suspected that Percy was fatally injured. But he was not a murderer! That word denoted something so different from himself that he could never accept it. It may be hard to credit, but Bywaters would to the end protest not only Edith Thompson’s innocence, but firmly believe in his own.

At 3 a.m. Bywaters let himself into the house with a latchkey. His mother heard him enter and asked ‘Is that you, Mick?’ He replied ‘Yes Mum’ softly, and went on upstairs. He did not bother to destroy Edith’s letters, or to wash his coat which faintly showed brown blood stains. Perhaps he felt safe, or maybe he realised that if the police were going to look for letters they would find them anyway, since quite a few were on board the Morea. In any case, he should be off to the Far East shortly and then they could not touch him.

Wednesday 4 October 1922: A mean and steady drizzle is falling on llford when the first commuters pass to the station through Belgrave Road at the break of dawn on their way to the station. In the row of shops towards the park and up from the blood-stained pavement, rumour at first has it that a dog was run over there last night. But not for long. Gradually the street begins to bustle with unusual activity as policemen and plainclothes officers are seen knocking on doors, kneeling down in front gardens, poking in hedges and drawing figures on the pavement. The news of the murder in the Belgrave Road spreads like wildfire through sleepy Ilford. Any doubts about it are dispelled by the crowd of aggressive young men with identity cards descending like jackals for a carrion dinner on the locals, begging them for photographs: of anything, particularly the area, and of the Thompsons. Did anybody here know them? What is she like? How about him? And it isn’t just the local papers like the Ilford Recorder and the East Ham Echo either. The big London papers have come to Ilford: the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, the Daily Sketch and even The Times will arrive in the course of the afternoon. The eventual headline will be the scoop of the month: ‘Murder in quiet Ilford residential road – Wife suspected of Lying by police! Yard called in!’ Within twenty-four hours it will have acquired a riveting new twist and the papers will be able to announce the charging of a young boy and, as they soon dubbed her in some quarters, of the ‘Messalina of Ilford’, with the murder of the latter’s husband.

The press would continue to have a field day with ‘Thompson & Bywaters’. As the case unfolded in court, it became clear that the story would more than fulfil its initial promise. Every aspect of it made superb copy: its setting of suburban respectability and intense covert passion, the planning and plotting of the murder, the killing followed by the discovering of the letters and the public humiliation of the woman by hearing her most private language of love read out aloud in two separate law courts in front of her lover, her family, her friends and acquaintances as well as her husband’s hostile family. In fact the whole nation was invited to become her audience, when the papers began to print the ‘sensational’ letters of the Ilford woman. The flavour of the case was enriched immeasurably by the wholesome appearance of the accused: the elegant, intelligent, attractive and well-spoken widow, the smouldering, curly-headed boy, the son of a dead soldier, whose romantic and chivalrous nature would turn him into a tragic and doomed hero overnight. The final act, the lovers’ deaths at Holloway and Pentonville, provided the papers with their tremendous finale, worthy in their view of a Greek tragic ending. They had almost all of them forgotten about the little people who were struggling in this maelstrom. The two exceptions would be Beverley Baxter and, more ambiguously, James Douglas, editors respectively of the Daily Express and the Sunday Express.

While Ilford is buzzing with excitement, and while anxious parents elect to go and meet their children from school at the corner of Highlands Gardens, Edith, attended by her mother since before dawn, is resting fitfully upstairs at 41 Kensington Gardens. It is nearly 9 a.m. Over in Norwood Freddy Bywaters is getting out of bed. He has slept in his underwear and is not in a communicative mood. His mother remarks: ‘You were late last night, were you not?’ and when he says ‘Yes’, she asks: ‘Did you go to sleep in the train?’ Freddy replies, ‘Yes, and went to Norwood Junction’, which is down the line. He does not volunteer any further information and probably withdraws upstairs. His darkish coat does not reveal the bloodstains easily to the naked eye, so he feels reassured on that score. He will just pretend that everything is as usual and will therefore turn up at the Graydons’ as promised to take Avis to the cinema. His elder sister Lilian’s arrival at 10.20 a.m. may provide a first testing of his composure and of his ability to re-focus his mind away from the horror of last night.

In Ilford at 11 a.m. Francis Hall of Limehouse, a divisional inspector of police, K division, calls at No. 41. Never one to be sentimental and convinced that the woman is lying, Hall introduces himself: ‘I am an inspector of police. I understand you were with your husband early this morning in Belgrave Road. I am satisfied he was assaulted.’ Edith is still agitated, but according to Hall produces the following answer:

We were coming along Belgrave Road, and just past the corner of Endsleigh-gardens, when I heard him call out ‘O’er’, and he fell up against me. I put out my arms to save him, and found blood, which I thought was coming from his mouth. I tried to help him out. He staggered for several yards towards Kensington Gardens, and then fell against the wall and slid down; he did not speak to me. I cannot say if I spoke to him. I felt him, and found his clothing wet with blood. He never moved after he fell. We had no quarrel on the way; we were quite happy together. Immediately I saw blood I ran across the road to a doctor’s. I appealed to a lady and gentleman who were passing, and the gentleman also went to the doctor’s. The doctor came and told me my husband was dead. Just before he fell down, I was walking on his right side, on the inside of the pavement, nearest the wall. We were side by side. I did not see anybody about at the time. My husband and I were talking about going to a dance.

Hall’s record of Edith’s statement reflects with reasonable accuracy what she said. The point needs stressing as Inspector Hall unscrupulously and with signal ruthlessness will tailor his report to suit his own interpretation of the events of this day and the next. He will be tripped up on this at the trial. As he leaves the house he puts it to the widow and her mother that he might have to invite them shortly to the Ilford police station, as the death of her husband is now a murder investigation; the wife ought to be near at hand if she is needed for information. Half an hour later a taxi hired by the police is conveying Edith and Mrs Graydon to the station on Ilford Hill, where once she walked hand in hand with Freddy. The police car probably follows the same route as the one that she walked with Percy yesterday.

It is noon when Edith crosses the threshold of 41 Kensington Gardens to leave with the police. She will never see it again. At about the same time Bywaters and his mother emerge into Westow Street and start their journey down the hill towards the railway station. He also will not set eyes on his home again. But he is to enjoy another six hours of freedom. In the lunch hour on this increasingly dismal wet day, Hall reports on the telephone to his superior at the Yard. Superintendent Arthur Neil, usually in charge of the district, is on leave. F. P. Wensley, one of the Force’s most senior and distinguished detectives, handles the call. Hall explains that the woman is at the station, but that she is ‘very much distressed’ and has so far failed to come up with a coherent account of the night’s tragedy. Wensley promises to drive to Ilford.

In the meantime the widow and her mother are accommodated in the matron’s room at Ilford Police station. The tiny room faces south-west and looks out on the station’s backyard through barred windows. In the left-hand corner, down from the sash window, is a gas stove. The room includes a radiator in the form of a thick heating pipe running through it, and a couch. There is no lavatory.

Matron’s room interior, Ilford Police Station, 9 May 1985 © René Weis

The commotion caused at No. 231 by the arrival of a police officer in the dead of night, bringing the news of Percy’s death, is easily imagined. Retrospectively it seems fitting that, of everyone concerned, it should be Avis who was to keep the coolest head. It is almost certain that she accompanied her mother to 41 Kensington Gardens in the middle of the night of 3/4 October. At some point in these early hours Edith appears to have confided part of the truth to her mother and sister. Certainly the available evidence points that way for two reasons: Avis’s movements in the early morning of Wednesday 4 October, and Mrs Graydon’s reluctance to talk about Bywaters during the day. In their naïveté the three women must have assumed that, since no one saw Bywaters that night other than Edith, he could not be tied in with the crime, as long as no provable link could be made between them. It is for this reason that at some stage on Wednesday morning, Avis called at Carlton & Prior. The news of her brother-in-law’s death had preceded her and had triggered a curious chain of events that was to bear directly on her visit.

Matron’s room (arrow) in llford Police Station (1985) © René Weis

When Rose Jacobs heard that Percy Thompson had been murdered, she went to Edith’s desk, unlocked it and from it appropriated a small tin box, a ‘WHERE IS IT’ book with Bywaters’s photo in it, and a letter which she had addressed on Edith’s instructions to Miss Fisher. For over a year Rose Jacobs had been privy to the illicit carryings-on between her supervisor and a boy her own age. She may well have resented Miss Graydon’s total obliviousness of her presence. Now she would get her own back. It must have struck an ominous note in Rose Jacobs’s heart when Avis Graydon suddenly appeared at No. 168, instructing her about the disposal of the items: ‘Will you take Miss Graydon’s box and “WHERE IS IT?” book home and keep it till I ask for it. You’ll find it in the desk.’ Rose did take them home, though she subsequently handed almost everything to Sergeant Hancock. The box contained three letters from Bywaters: the Christmas note of December 1921, the letter of Monday 25 September on their abortive attempt at being ‘pals only’ in Fenchurch Street station, and his reply to her on Sunday night, 1 October. Rose Jacobs thus provided the prosecution with three important letters by Bywaters, two of which they would use successfully to construct a theory of a conspiracy shaping up between the lovers days or even hours before the death of the husband.

On arrival at Ilford Wensley is briefed by Hall, and then he meets Mrs Thompson:

As soon as I had had a word with Hall I saw her. There was no doubt that her distress was genuine. She could scarcely have been called a pretty woman, but she had a distinctly attractive personality. She carried herself well, was dressed tastefully – she still wore the evening gown in which she had gone to the theatre – and spoke with an air of culture. In moments of animation she must have been a woman of considerable fascination. Even seeing her as I did at this original interview, when she was under great stress of mind, she impressed me as being normally a woman above the average in intelligence.

His questioning of her, probing but considerate, elicits details of her married life, her visit to the theatre and their walk back from the station. She co-operates this far, but then becomes vague and confused, and consistently frustrates Wensley’s questions. He is puzzled by the seeming randomness of the killing, as the widow fails to think of anyone who might conceivably have reason to desire her husband’s death. In the course of the afternoon the Graydons, the father, Newenham and Avis, visit Edith at the police station. As yet she is under no restraint apart from being asked not to leave. Had she felt herself to be wholly innocent she might well have insisted on returning to No. 41. But immediate and expert legal advice was not at hand. Even at this juncture a return to her home, given the events of the next twenty-four hours, might well have saved her life. From talking to the Graydons, Wensley senses a certain reluctance on their part fully to co-operate with the enquiry. This puzzles him. His suspicions are aroused when he meets Richard Thompson and asks him: ‘What sort of a fellow was your brother?’ Thompson is remarkably forthcoming and then, almost casually, drops Bywaters in his conversation with the superintendent, appending the remark that the sailor who lodged at No. 41 was overly familiar with the wife and that he for one could never understand how his brother ‘tolerated the situation’. Bywaters, Thompson thinks, has already sailed, as he was due out at about this time. Wensley is impressed by the fact that the other family have given no hint of this other possible participant in the drama, nor have the Graydons let it transpire that their daughter’s marriage was less than completely happy.

With this new information in hand, he returns to Edith and her mother. He naturally makes no bones about this source of information, which will eventually cause Richard Thompson some heart and headache. Who, Wensley asks of the two women, is Bywaters? The question produces a detailed answer about Freddy’s identity and his relationship with the family. Only his whereabouts of the night of 3 October draws some ‘fencing’ from Mrs Graydon, but eventually she yields and reveals that Freddy stayed with them at No. 231 and that he left at 11 p.m. Wensley’s course of action is clear: Bywaters must be considered a suspect. The widow, though not yet seen as having plotted the murder of her husband, is clearly worried and seems to want to shield this man Bywaters. He must be found. It is mid-afternoon. Throughout London the Flying Squad and the local C.I.D. offices are put on alert and instructed to keep watch on 11 Westow Street, the Morea in Tilbury, the offices of the P & O in the City, and No. 231 in Shakespeare Crescent, as well as the railway termini at Liverpool Street and at Fenchurch Street. Officers are delegated to watch Paddington Station, where they know Ethel Vernon is due at 5 p.m. She has been wired to go straight to 41 Kensington Gardens where Avis will meet her. The net is closing quickly.

On two or three occasions in the afternoon, in the presence of the matron, Edith complains to her mother about a bump on her head where she fell – although so far she has made no mention of being pushed and hitting her head on the pavement. The mother feels the spot and confirms the existence of a swelling. The matron does likewise but fails to detect anything out of the ordinary. In court the ‘bump’ would be ignored.

While her detention continues, Freddy Bywaters spends his lunch hour shopping with his mother for materials. Yesterday he took Edith Thompson for lunch at the Queen Anne Restaurant. Today he is a killer walking the same streets in the same city, and already the police are looking for him. Between 2.30 and 3 p.m. in Paternoster Row, at the corner of Cheapside and just past Nicholson’s, he parts from his mother. She has no more errands to run and will go on from here to visit friends, while he proposes to stay up in the City and hopes eventually to return home later in the evening. His movements between 3 and 5 p.m. are not accounted for. By five, he has reached Mark Lane Tube station. Before descending the stairs to board the District Line for the journey to East Ham, he buys the Evening News. Its headline, ‘REPORTED GREEK “REFUSAL” TO LEAVE THRACE’, followed by the top billing on the meeting between Venizelos and Lord Curzon, interests him less than the third column on the front page headed ‘SHIPPING CLERK MURDERED: Midnight Mystery at Ilford’, and which opens with

Who is responsible for the mysterious death of Percy Thompson (33) … It is stated that Mrs Thompson, who is about 27 years of age, has declared that she saw nobody attack her husband. She has shown great distress, and the police have found it difficult to obtain a coherent account of the affair from her…

If till now Freddy hoped against hope that he only injured Thompson, the printed word tells him otherwise. This time the familiar journey east on the Tube assumes the guise of a passage into the unknown. He is weighing up the odds for and against running. In the end it is clear that he has decided to sit it out. Tomorrow, in under eighteen hours’ time, he will be sailing down the Thames away from Tilbury and London. Beyond lies the boundless ocean. Darkness is closing in around him as, in pouring rain, he hastens through Sibley Grove towards No. 231. It is about 6.15 p.m. when he enters the Graydons’ house. Newenham and his father are alone. They are visibly distressed. Freddy asks Mr Graydon whether he has seen the Evening News to which he replies ‘No’. Then, putting it on the kitchen table and pointing out the report on Percy Thompson, Freddy ventures to say ‘This is a terrible thing if it is true’, to which the father responds haplessly, ‘I am afraid it is only too true.’

Freddy learns that Edith is at Ilford Police station, attended by Mrs Graydon, while Avis will be over soon as she has installed Ethel at No. 41. For the next ten minutes and over a cup of tea the three men sit disconsolately in the kitchen / dining room. All this time the house is being watched and Bywaters’s presence has been telephoned through to Ilford. The men of C.I.D. are ordered to hold fire. Inspector Hall is something of a psychologist and prefers Bywaters – whom he by now strongly suspects – to learn that the woman with whom he appears to be involved is in custody already. For this reason, and to throw Bywaters even more off balance, he instructs Police Sergeant Williams and Detective Sergeant Ernest Foster to run Avis Graydon home from Ilford. At approximately 6.30 p.m., Avis knocks at her parents’ door. Her brother opens. With a heavy ‘Hullo Newnie’, she passes him and is followed in by the two officers.

In the kitchen, in seeing the group, Freddy immediately rises and walks to the fireplace. ‘Good evening, Freddy’, Avis says, and he replies, ‘Good evening, Avis’. Foster then asks ‘Is your name Frederick Bywaters?’ and, when Freddy says yes, states: ‘We are police officers and wish you to accompany us to Ilford Police Station to be interviewed in connection with the Ilford murder.’ Bywaters remains silent and finishes his tea. Then the two officers, accompanied by Mr Graydon, Newenham and Freddy Bywaters, drive to Ilford.

Bywaters at Ilford police station, 4 Oct 1922, still carrying his copy of the Evening News

Avis will prepare dinner. She has already seen her mother and sister whom Mr Graydon and Newenham are now visiting. They are bound to tell Edith that Freddy is also at the station and is helping with enquiries. The police do not object. The reason is that neither suspect can be charged for lack of evidence so far, let alone for a collusive crime. As long as both fear that at any point the other one may crack, there is a fair chance of catching them out by playing them off against each other. In this the police will fail. Rather it is Bywaters’s desire to protect the woman which is to provide them, within twenty-four hours, with everything they could have hoped for.

It is nearly 7 p.m. when Bywaters is taken into the presence of Wensley, Hall and a typist. They are sitting in the C.I.D. office. He is fully composed and hangs up his overcoat before sitting down. Wensley notices that there are small spots on the sleeves. He sends off for Dr Drought ‘to decide whether they were blood or not’. ‘What do you want of me?’, asks Bywaters indignantly. Looking him over, Wensley takes in his youth. He could be Freddy’s father. Perhaps he remembers at this moment his own two sons engulfed by the same catastrophe that had taken away this boy’s father. But he is repelled by Bywaters’s insolence and firmly reminds him that, if he is as innocent as he claims to be, he need not resent these necessary questions. At that point Drought enters and announces that the stains on the coat sleeves are blood. He simply applied a piece of wet newspaper to them and allowed it to soak up. It came out red. Wensley now bluntly tells Bywaters that his coat will be kept and that he himself will be detained. Freddy replies: ‘Why, I know nothing about it.’ But the superintendent persists and proceeds to explain that he needs a statement and the material facts. The statement is the result of a question-and-answer session. On several points the two detectives press him hard ‘to clear up some obscurity’, and Wensley complains that Bywaters appears to resist this. The session lasts about one and a half hours. It is 9.p,m. when Wensley and Hall leave the C.I.D. room and ask for Bywaters to be put up in the library for the night. The statement which the two officers are given shortly after reads:

4th October 1922
FREDERICK EDWARD FRANCIS BYWATERS, 11 Westow Street, Upper Norwood, age 20, Laundry Steward, states: –
I have known Mr Percy Thompson for about 4 years, and his wife, Edith for about 7 years. Mr Thompson is a shipping clerk; his wife is in a millinery business, and they reside at 41 Kensington Gardens, Ilford. I stayed with them from June 18th 1921 to the 1st August 1921. The first week that I was there, I was there as their guest and the remaining weeks I paid 25/– per week. The cause of my leaving was that Mr Thompson quarrelled with Mrs Thompson and threw her across the room. I thought it was a very unmanly thing to do and intervened. We had a quarrel and he asked me to leave, and I left. I had always been exceedingly good friends with Mrs Thompson. I was also on visiting terms with the mother of Mrs Thompson, a Mrs Graydon, who resides with her husband and family at 231 Shakespeare Crescent, Manor Park. After I left Mrs Thompson I went back to reside with my mother at my present address. On the 7th September 1921 I got a position as a writer on board the S.S. ‘Morea’. I sailed on the 9th September and returned to England at the end of the following month. Shortly after I came back from the voyage I called on Mr and Mrs Thompson at their address. Mrs Thompson received me quite friendly, Mr Thompson a little coldly but we parted as friends. The same evening I called on Mrs Graydon and I there again saw Mr and Mrs Thompson, who were visiting her. I have never called upon Mr and Mrs Thompson since that time. I have met them once or twice at Mrs Graydon’s since, the last time being in June last. Since that date I have never seen Mr Thompson. I have met Mrs Thompson on several occasions since and always by appointment. They were verbal appointments. On Monday last I met her by appointment at 12.30 p.m. at Aldersgate Street. We went to lunch at the Queen Anne’s Restaurant, Cheapside. After lunch she returned to business and I have not seen her since. Mr Thompson was not aware of all our meetings but of some he was. I have known for a very long time past that she has led a very unhappy life with him. This is also known to members of Mrs Thompson’s family. I have written to her on two occasions. I signed the letters Freddy and I addressed her as ‘Dear Edie’. On the evening of Monday 2nd October I called on Mrs Graydon and stayed there till about 10 o’clock. I never mentioned the fact that I had lunched with Mrs Thompson that day and as far as I know Mr Thompson was not aware of it. I left my home yesterday morning about a quarter to twelve. I was dressed in the same clothes that I am now wearing. I went up West and remained there until the evening. I was alone and never met anyone that I knew. I then went to Mrs Graydon’s, arriving there about 7. I left about 11 o’clock; my impression is that it had gone eleven. Before leaving I remember Mrs Graydon’s daughter Avis saying that Percy (Mr Thompson) had ‘phoned her up, and I gathered from the observations she made that he was taking his wife to a theatre that night and that there were other members of the family going. When I left the house I went through Browning Road, into Sibley Grove, to East Ham Railway station. I booked to Victoria which is my usual custom. I caught a train at 11.30 p.m. and I arrived at Victoria at 12.30 p.m. I then discovered that the last train to Gipsy Hill had gone; it leaves at 12.10 a.m. I had a few pounds in money with me but decided to walk. I went by way of Vauxhall Road, and Vauxhall Bridge, Kennington, Brixton, turning to the left, into Dulwich, and then on to Crystal Palace, and from there to my address at Upper Norwood, arriving there about 3 a.m. I never noticed either ‘bus or tram going in my direction. On arriving home, I let myself in with a latchkey and went straight to my bedroom. My mother called out to me. She said ‘Is that you Mick?’ I replied ‘Yes’, and went to bed. I got up about 9 a.m. and about 12 I left home with my mother. I left my mother in Paternoster Row about half past two. I stayed in the City till about 5. I then went by train from Mark Lane to East Ham, and from there went on to Mrs Graydon’s, arriving there about 6. The first time that I learnt that Mr Thompson had been killed was when I bought a newspaper in Mark Lane before I got into the train to go to East Ham. I am never in the habit of carrying a knife. In fact I have never had one. I never met a single person that I knew from the time that I left Mrs Graydon’s house until I arrived home. Mrs Thompson has written to me two or three times. I might have received one letter from her at home. The others I have received on board ship. I have destroyed these letters. She used to address me as ‘Dear Freddy’, and signed herself ‘Edie’. I occupy the back bedroom on the top floor at my address, and that is where I keep all my clothing. When I said that I was dressed in precisely the same clothing yesterday as I am to-day, I meant it to include my undergarments, with the exception of my collar and handkerchief which are at home.
This statement has been read over to me [and] is voluntary and true.

(Sgd) FREDERICK E. F. Bywaters

While Mrs Graydon and her daughter settle into an uneasy night in the matron’s room, Freddy prepares to face the night alone in the library. From its large window he can see the inside courtyard of the building. He does not know that Edith is a mere ten yards away in a room clearly visible from the library. She has been apprised of his presence in the station by her father and her brother and is praying that they will not be connected. These fantasies are about to be shattered. At 11 p.m. Inspector Frank Page, on duty at Westow Street, rings Wensley at New Scotland Yard to relate that Mrs Bywaters has just returned home. He is instructed at once to ask to be allowed to search Freddy’s room and at the same time to explain the circumstances of what happened earlier in the evening. Thompson’s death, the fact that her son is in custody, and the pressing presence of a police investigator intent on burrowing through his private effects, throw Mrs Bywaters into a panic. She does not dare refuse access to her home to a policeman, who promptly opens Freddy’s suitcase and searches through his coat pockets. Within minutes he turns up two long letters from Edith, the one of Thursday 21 September, and her last letter to him dating from Monday 2 October. The first of these contains the damning phrase about jealousy (‘he has the right by law to all that you …’); the second provides evidence of a long and deep involvement of the two suspects, and, most importantly, it precedes the husband’s death by little more than twenty-four hours. Also found in a case are the two notes which Edith sent to Bywaters on Friday 29 September and Monday 2 October, asking him to come or wait for her. Wensley is delighted with his discovery and before midnight the message has been passed on to Ilford and to Hall in particular. He has already made his plans for tomorrow, confident that the waiting and the uncertainty of the two detainees can only be to his advantage as a softening-up. The woman in particular seems brittle. Not long after the events narrated here, Hall will confide his view of Mrs Thompson to A. F. Neil, one of the ‘big four’ of the Yard:

Frank Hall told me that she did not impress him as a pretty woman by any means. She was of a type, which was all that could be said about her. She had rather nicely-shaped eyebrows and eyelids, which had long, thick lashes. This physical asset accentuated the colour of her eyes, which in certain lights or shades added to her charm. Beyond this she was not a woman a man would turn round and look at a second time.
Her personality was a matter of opinion. His sensible way of describing it was that if a dozen men were intimate with her, three might be influenced, but the other nine would remain impartial.²

Hall’s ‘sensible way’ of assessing character did not impress Wensley, who was reputed for his intellectual acuity, not for bludgeoning suspects. The two men would not interact comfortably. It is important to stress that the most controversial incident about to happen between the arrests and the trial occurred in Wensley’s momentary absence from the station. He would term it ‘one of the most dramatic interludes in the whole case.’

Thursday 5 October: The dismal weather continues unabated. It is mild and wet. At the Ilford Town Hall the coroner has instructed Dr Percy J. Drought to carry out a post mortem on Thompson. It is on this day that Bywaters was scheduled to return to the Morea for sailing the following morning, while in her office Edith and her monkey would be gazing at the framed sketch of the ship. Instead, within a few yards of each other, they start what is effectively their second day in captivity. The newspapers are all set to go. The police have intimated to their Fleet Street contacts that the case is about to take a dramatic turn.

It is about noon that the detectives advise Mrs Thompson that she will need to make a statement later. Shortly before 3 p.m., she is invited to meet Hall and Wensley in the C.I.D. room. Before she enters the office, they have carefully arranged the letters retrieved the previous night from Freddy’s home so that she cannot possibly miss them. Hall will feebly attempt to conceal this stratagem at the Old Bailey, but will be forced to admit in cross-examination that the ‘letters were on the table where we took the statement, and she must have known [that Bywaters was there already as a suspect] on account of the letters’. She knows because her father and brother told her that Freddy was being held. When the policemen notice her eyes wandering over the desk, they impress on her that they are now fully aware of her relationship with Bywaters and motion to the letters asking her to identify them. Then they wonder whether, in view of her being on ‘affectionate terms’ with her husband, these letters were written with her consent. She admits that they were not. How could they be? Her statement, like Bywaters’s, is produced in the form of questions and answers.

5th October, 1922

EDITH JESSIE THOMPSON, 41 Kensington Gardens, Ilford, age 28, married states: –
My husband’s name is Percy Thompson. He is a shipping clerk employed by Messrs O. J. Parker & C., Peek House, 20 Eastcheap, E.C.
I am employed by Carlton & Prior, Millinery Manufacturers, 168 Aldersgate Street. E.C., as a book-keeper. We have been married 6 years and have no family. We were married in the beginning of the year 1916, in that year my husband joined the London Scottish Regiment, he was discharged as medically unfit a few months later and did not do foreign service. I have always been on affectionate terms with my husband. I remember Tuesday 3rd October 1922, we both went to our respective businesses that day, I met my husband by appointment at ¼ to 6, in Aldersgate Street, that day, we went to the Criterion Theatre, we there met my uncle and aunt, Mr and Mrs J. Laxton, we left the Theatre about 11 p.m. we all four went to the Piccadilly Circus Tube, we there separated, my husband and I went to Liverpool Street, and we caught the 11.30 train to Ilford. We arrived at Ilford about 12 o’clock, we then proceeded along York Road, Belgrave Road and when we got between De Vere and Endsleigh Gardens (we were walking on the right-hand side), my husband suddenly went into the roadway. I went after him, and he fell up against me, and called out ‘oo-er’, he was staggering, he was bleeding, and I thought that blood was coming from his mouth. I cannot remember whether I saw anyone else there or not, I know there was no one there when he staggered up against me. I got hold of my husband with both hands and assisted him to get up against the wall. He stood there for about a minute or two and then slid down on to the footway, he never spoke. I fell on the ground with him. I cannot remember if I shouted out or not. I go up off the ground and ran along Courtland Avenue, with the intention of calling Dr Maudsley, but on the way I met a lady and gentleman and I said to them something to this effect ‘Can I get a Doctor to help me, my husband is ill’. The gentleman said ‘I will go for the Doctor’. Dr Maudsley arrived shortly after, although it seemed a long time. A crowd had collected round my husband by this time. The doctor examined my husband and said that he was dead. An ambulance was sent for and the body was removed. I was accompanied to my home by two Police Officers.
I know Freddy Bywaters, I have known him for several years; we were at school together; at least I wasn’t but my two brothers were. He is residing with his widowed mother at 11 Westow St., Norwood. He is a ship’s writer and periodically goes away to sea. He has been for a very long time on visiting terms with my family. In June 1921 Bywaters came to reside with my husband and myself at No. 41 Kensington Gardens. He came as a paying guest. I think he paid 25/- or 27/6 per week. He was with us up to the beginning of August 1921. I remember August Bank Holiday 1921. My husband and I quarrelled about something, he struck me. I knocked a chair over. Freddy came in and interfered on my behalf. I left the room and I do not know what transpired between them. As far as my recollection goes, Freddy left on the following Friday, but before he left my husband and he were friends again. We have been in the habit of corresponding with one another. His letters to me and mine to him were couched in affectionate terms. I am not in possession of any letters he writes to me. I have destroyed all as is customary with me with all my correspondence. The letters shown to me by Inspector Hall and addressed to Mr F. Bywaters are some of the letters that I wrote to Freddy, and were written to him without my husband’s consent. When he was at home in England, we were in the habit of going out occasionally together without my husband’s knowledge.
This statement has been read over to me. It is voluntary and it is true.
(Sgd) EDITH THOMPSON

The taking of the statement lasts approximately one and a half hours. The time is 4.30 p.m. on Thursday 5 October 1922.³

To understand exactly what happens next one needs to be familiar with the layout of the station at Ilford. Although the matron’s room and the cells remain to this day virtually unchanged, the library where Bywaters was held has disappeared as a separate room. Today it is merged into one with the old kitchen. The C.I.D. room seemed impossible to identify from the plan of the station, unless it was the mess room or, just possibly, the charge room by another name. The reason for this is that by 1922 Ilford Police Station had acquired an annexe at its western edge, sitting more or less directly opposite the courtyard from the window of the matron’s room. This became the C.I.D. office. It was still visible in satellite pictures of the station in 2020. To walk from the matron’s room to C.I.D. meant passing the library. Anyone crossing the yard in the dark could see into the lit library or into the matron’s room, even though the latter had bars on it.

Writing nine years after the events (he was not present just then) Wensley stated

At this point there occurred one of the most dramatic interludes of the whole case. Neither she nor Bywaters knew that the other was detained. The C.I.D. office at Ilford, in which she had been interviewed, adjoins the main police station, and passage between them is through a yard which she had to pass on her way back to the matron’s room. The way back led by the library where Bywaters was waiting, and through the window she caught a glimpse of him. In an instant her nerve had deserted her. ⁴

The scene of the confrontation in Ilford Police Station © René Weis

In court Hall declared that at 4.30 pm, after taking Edith’s initial statement – it left out any reference to Freddy Bywaters –

Mrs Thompson and I left the [CID] room; I took her to the matron’s room. In doing so we passed the library where Bywaters was detained. She saw him as she passed, and she said, ‘Oh, God; oh, God, what can I do? Why did he do it? I did not want him to do it.’ She further said almost immediately after, ‘I must tell the truth.’ She was a little hysterical and I said, ‘You realise what you are saying; what you might say may be used in evidence. She then proceeded to make a statement, which again was written down and signed … It is as follows [see below]:

Edith’s version is quite different. In court she declared:

In my first statement … I made no reference to Bywaters, because I was not asked about him. I remained at Ilford police station throughout the day of the 4th and the night. My mother was with me. On Thursday, 5th, I saw the prisoner Bywaters there. He was brought into the C.I.D. room where I was. After that I made my second statement.

When asked by counsel ‘Why did you tell the officer you had not seen any one about in Belgrave Road?’, she replied ‘I was very agitated, and I did not want to say anything against Mr Bywaters; I wanted to shield him.’ Asked ‘Was it when you saw him at the police station that you detailed the full story?’, she said

No. I made my second statement, which is the true statement (exhibit 4) after Inspector Wensley [she means Hall] had said to me, ‘It is no use your saying he did not do it; he has already told us he has.’ The inspector then said to me, ‘Go back to the C.I.D. room [so she was in the courtyard when he said that to her] and think about it, and I will come for you in half an hour. When at the end of that half-hour Inspector Hall came to me I made my statement [the confession about seeing Bywaters]

Her version chimes with Bywaters’s who in court stated

I knew Mrs Thompson was in custody, and I wanted to help her. I was kept at the police station all night, and the following evening I signed the statement …. Before signing that statement I had been taken to Mrs Thompson. I was taken from the library to the C.I.D. office.

When asked by counsel ‘You were taken past her?, he replied ‘No, in her presence.’ To counsel’s ‘Where was it?’ he answered ‘In the C.I.D. office.’

Filson Young, who was present at the trial, noted in his transcript of it ‘This is an example of the confusion arising from the bad acoustics of the Central Criminal Court. The witness’ meaning as to his seeing of Mrs Thompson was never made clear to the Court.’

Rather, it is all too clear what happened. The police had engineered a confrontation between the two suspects. If only Edith Thompson had not consented to go to Ilford Police Station the day before. There was no proof of any kind against her. Had she declined there was nothing the police could have done to force her to do so. And she would not have been confronted with Freddy under these circumstances.

What happened is that when Edith had completed her first statement she was invited to return to the matron’s room. At the same time Freddy was taken the few yards from the library to C.I.D. so that the two of them nearly collided in the door. If challenged the police could argue that it was a question of unfortunate timing. When Hall first testified about this incident, in Stratford Magistrates’ Court, Edith had reportedly become agitated by his blatant lie. Hall knew full well that he had confronted them to break her and that by doing so he was sailing very close to the wind. In Hall’s own, artfully bland words, ‘No steps were taken by the police to prevent Mrs Thompson and Bywaters seeing each other.’

Edith’s counsel at the Old Bailey knew full well what had happened, but establishing that the police had acted dishonestly would not do his client any particular favour now. As Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett remarked in his closing speech at the Old Bailey:

Mrs Thompson was taken to the police station and another statement was taken from her. A statement was taken from Bywaters, and next day, the 5th, a statement in writing. Still a denial by Bywaters of Mrs Thompson, and still a denial by Mrs Thompson that Bywaters was the man, and by an extraordinary chance, if the story of the prosecution is to be believed, when Mrs Thompson was being taken back to the C.I.D. room she happened to pass the very room where By waters was standing, and she saw him. That is one story. The other story is that Mrs Thompson was actually taken into the room where Bywaters was, and they were confronted with one another. The woman said, “ Oh God, oh God, what can I do? Why did you do it? I did not want him to do it. I must tell the truth.

That the police had all along intended to confront the two of them is suggested by a police officer who was present at the time. Her name was Lilian Wyles, one of the capital’s first female officers, who would rise to the rank of chief inspector. In her memoir published thirty years later, A Woman at Scotland Yard, Wyles recalls her encounter with Edith Thompson at the police station in Ilford. She had been summoned to Ilford at short notice by Wensley:

When I arrived at the station, Mr Wensley drew me to one side. ‘I want you’, he said, ‘to go to the room where Mrs Thompson is, for a short time. Listen to what she says. Don’t say much yourself; keep to ‘yes’ and ‘no”’. He patted my shoulder, and I crossed the yard to the room where Mrs Thompson was. She was agitated and excited, keeping on pacing the room and gazing from the window. She wanted to know why she must stay in that room, and in the station; why could she not go home? As she looked from the window which overlooked the station yard she had a clear view of the side door of the station, and the door or the C.I.D. office which, in those days, was across the yard, opposite the station proper. Then she turned impatiently from the window, so did not see issuing from the station a group of men, the D.D.I., two sergeants, and another young man who was a stranger to me. They walked slowly by the window where Mrs Thompson had been standing. Later she was to get a glimpse of that young man. Then her hand flew to her mouth, there was a slight scream, and Mrs Thompson moaned: ‘Not that, not that! No! No! Why did he do it? Oh, God!’ The strange young man was Bywaters.

It will be remembered that both Mrs Thompson and Bywaters were hanged after a long trial which caused much public feeling. So much interest was shown in the case that when the trial was in progress at the Old Bailey, the clear glass in the door of Number One Court was broken to atoms by the pressure of people trying to gain a glimpse of the accused persons. Mrs Thompson’s solicitor and her counsel fight to the last to save the life of their unhappy client: all to no purpose. My brief encounter with that unfortunate woman filled me with sad memories. I never thought her wicked enough to plan Percy Thompson’s murder. I feel she never wanted his death. She had lived in a romantic fantasy, writing foolishly to an impressionable young man, and not counting the consequences. How dearly she paid for her folly! ⁵

Wyles’s account leaves one in no doubt that the police were determined to confront the suspects. After spotting Edith constantly looking out of the window, they deliberately walked Bywaters ‘slowly by the window’ of the matron’s room, hoping that she would see him. Had she not by chance ‘turned impatiently from the window’ she would probably have cracked that very night of Wednesday 4 October.

According to Wyles Edith moaned ‘Not that, not that! No! No! Why did he do it? Oh, God!’ whereas Hall has her exclaim ‘Oh God; oh God, what can I do? Why did he do it; I did not want him to do it.’ She is shaken by a fit of hysteria, and as though to herself, she mutters: ‘I must tell the truth.’ Hall immediately interposes and pretends to caution her: ‘Mrs Thompson, you realise what you are saying; what you might say may be used in evidence’. She is numb and looks helplessly about her. Then, while they are still standing in the door of C.I.D., Hall tells her an outright lie: ‘It is no use your saying he did not do it; he has already told us he has. Go back to the C.I.D. room and think about it, and I will come for you in half an hour.’

Between 4.30 and 5 p.m. Edith is left to brood in the gloomy room. The impending darkness outside and the continuous patter of rain underline her desolation. Her mother is not at hand to consult, and she does not know whether Hall can be believed. If he strikes her as particularly odious, it may be partly because of the glaring difference between this man and her grandfather, who prided himself on belonging to the finest police force in the world. If Freddy has confessed already – why else would he be here? – there is no point in pretending further that he is not implicated. She knows that he will take the rap, but she will help him get off. ‘They’ must believe, understand, and forgive. Her counsel, Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett, will spend hours trying to dissuade her from addressing the world. But he will labour in vain, and she will walk straight into her doom by giving evidence, fully convinced of her innocence and intent on carrying the jury in Bywaters’s favour. When Hall enters, Edith informs him of her desire to amend her statement, as follows:

When we got near Endsleigh Gardens, a man rushed out from the Gardens and knocked me and pushed me away from my husband. I was dazed for a moment. When I recovered I saw my husband scuffling with a man. The man who I know as Freddy Bywaters was running away. He was wearing a blue overcoat and a grey hat. I knew it was him although I did not see his face.

After signing this, she wearily walks back to the matron’s room where her mother is waiting. Already she is deprived of privacy, and even close physical contact with the mother will shortly be forbidden. Hall now summons Bywaters into the C.I.D. room and asks whether there is anything he wishes to add to his statement. When he hesitates, Hall shows him Edith’s confession and plays his trump card: ‘I’m going to charge you and Mrs Thompson with the wilful murder of Percy Thompson.’ Immediately Bywaters replies: ‘Why her? Mrs Thompson was not aware of my movements.’ According to Bywaters, Hall then promises that Edith and her mother will be allowed to return home, provided he makes a full confession. In his own words recalling the encounter:

When I saw Mrs Thompson she was so ill I thought she was going to die, and I thought the sooner that I got it down the quicker she would be released and could go home with her mother.

Hall is alone with Bywaters at this point. He has timed it to coincide with Wensley’s absence as his methods would probably not meet with the Yard’s approval. It is shortly after 5 p.m. that the following statement is taken from Bywaters, already protesting Edith’s innocence.

I wish to make a voluntary statement. Mrs Edith Thompson was not aware of my movements on Tuesday night 3rd October. I left Manor Park at 11 p.m. and proceeded to Ilford. I waited for Mrs Thompson and her husband. When near Endsleigh Gardens I pushed her to one side, also pushing him, further up the street. I said to him ‘You have got to separate from your wife’. He said ‘No’. I said ‘You will have to’. We struggled, I took my knife from my pocket and we fought and he got the worst of it. Mrs Thompson must have been spellbound for I saw nothing of her during the fight. I ran away through Endsleigh Gardens, through Wanstead, Leytonstone, Stratford; got a taxi at Stratford to Aldgate, walked from there to Fenchurch Street, got another taxi to Thornton Heath. Then walked to Upper Norwood, arriving home about 3 a.m. The reason I fought with Thompson was because he never acted like a man to his wife. He always seemed several degrees lower than a snake. I loved her and I couldn’t go on seeing her leading that life. I did not intend to kill hm. I only meant to injure him. I gave him an opportunity of standing up to me as a man but he wouldn’t. I have had the knife some time; it was a sheath knife. I threw it down a drain when I was running through Endsleigh Gardens.

It is now 6 p.m. and the police are pleased with their progress. The Ilford murder is all but solved. What remains murky is the extent to which the woman set it up. The letters found in Westow Street can be deemed impressive evidence of collusion, but in themselves they are not enough to implicate her. Also the murder weapon has so far eluded the searchers. Some time that evening, at about 8 p.m., Edith Thompson and Freddy Bywaters are jointly charged with the wilful murder of Percy Thompson. She is petrified and remains silent, while he protests ‘It is wrong, it is wrong.’ As of now they are both in remand custody. At 9 p.m. Mrs Graydon hugs her daughter goodbye and leaves for Manor Park, while Edith and Freddy prepare to spend a second night at the station. This time he will sleep in a cell, as will she, their first night of their remaining ninety-five. Innocent and ignorant of the ways of the law, the Graydon family have to take advice from the police, and then from their solicitor, regarding their daughter’s defence. The same is true of young Bywaters, whose family cannot even afford a solicitor. He will have to enlist legal aid.

Friday 6 October is a fairer day. Early showers have subsided by the time the coroner Dr Ambrose opens the inquest on Thompson at the Ilford Town Hall. A jury is empanelled and then proceeds to the mortuary to view the body. The coroner instructs its members to the effect that in this case he only proposes to take evidence of identification. The jury will have to wait for the police’s gathering of evidence and completing of their searches before it can come to a conclusion about the guilt of the two accused, appearing this same morning at Stratford Petty Sessions. Then Mr W. E. Graydon is shown in and testifies that he saw the body of the deceased in the mortuary and that he is indeed Percy Thompson. At that point the coroner adjourns the inquest till Thursday 19 October. The body of the dead man is transferred from the mortuary to 231 Shakespeare Crescent. It will stay there till Tuesday 10 October, the date set for the funeral.

Crowds have gathered outside the Stratford Police Court, spurred on by the prominence accorded the case in the press. Bywaters arrives first, still wearing his blue suit. He is accompanied by Detective Leonard Williams who has also been delegated to convey Bywaters’s and Mrs Thompson’s property from the station to the court. When Freddy, who at this point is still unrepresented by a legal adviser, notices these personal effects being prepared for exhibition in court, he unguardedly enquires: ‘Have you a knife there?’ To the inspector’s ‘No’, he replies:

I told them I ran up Endsleigh Gardens, but coming to think of it after I did it I ran forward along Belgrave Road towards Wanstead Park, turning up a road to the right. I am not sure whether it was Kensington Gardens where they lived or the next road. I then crossed over to the left side of the road and just before I got to the top of [the][ Cranbrook Road end I put the knife down a drain; it should be easily found.

Finding the knife, with Hall (cigarette) and Wensley looking on

It will take the police till Monday to find it. This act of well-meant collaboration will seriously jeopardise Bywaters’s standing with the jury, as the dagger will look a formidable sight in the setting of Court I. Any solicitor would have counselled him to hold his peace.

When finally Bywaters steps into the narrow and elongated oak and cast-iron enclosure of the Stratford Magistrates Court, he is escorted by Detective Ernest Foster who arrested him at No. 231 on Wednesday night. Facing him are three Justices of the Peace, including one woman, and presided over by Mr John Trumble.

Shortly after him, Edith Thompson enters the dock supported by a police matron and followed by another police officer. She is separated from Bywaters by Foster. She looks pale, a face highlighted by her ‘shapely eyebrows and long eyelashes’, as one contemporary observer remarks. She is dressed almost identically as she was during her night at the theatre, wearing her crêpe-de-chine skirt and over it a long brown jacket. Around her neck she has wrapped the brown fur boa-collar of the coat and on her head is a brown velvet hat. Her hands are in white kid gloves. As she crosses through the court she steals a swift glance at her mother, brother, and sister – the father is over in Ilford at the inquest. At first she cannot bear to look up at the court and in panic hides her face in the musquash collar when Trumble starts to read the charge. He stops and asks whether anything is the matter with her. She is induced to drop the collar. Outwardly she appears composed, but her knees are knocking together so badly that she is provided with a chair to sit through the proceedings. A glass of water is offered at her request. Trembling and clutching her garments, she sits listening to the charge and is probably wholly unaware of Bywaters’s repeated sidelong glances at her. It is Hall’s turn now, and he reports his version of the events of 3 and 4 October, up to the point where Bywaters made his first statement. Beyond that he is not prepared to go today. The court is then informed that the two prisoners are remanded till Wednesday 11 October. As they are already leaving the dock Bywaters, through the gaoler, intimates that he wishes to ask a question, and re-enters the dock: ‘I want to ask for legal aid.’ The clerk replies: ‘The police will help you – your friends will be communicated with.’ The police car then takes Bywaters to Brixton. Edith is granted a few moments with her mother and then is removed to Holloway Prison.

It is early afternoon when she enters the castellated building north of the Parkhurst Road. Immediately after the huge portals have swallowed her, she is put through the humiliating routine of having her possessions itemised, of changing into coarse prison garments behind a large screen, and of becoming a number. Remand prisoners are subject to the same prison regime as convicted criminals. From now on Edith Thompson, fastidious to the point of vanity, is to share the lives and proximity of women of a kind she never met before. The scented baths of Kensington Avenue have been replaced by the grimy communal tubs at Holloway, few if any of which are even enamelled. The girl who lived on rich lunches at the Holborn, the Waldorf and West End restaurants, whose movements were curtailed solely by an ineffectual husband, is now thrust into a faceless anonymity that will not even allow her the privacy of using the lavatory on her own. Already she feels owned by the prison and its spider-like bureaucracy. They will control everything about her, including her bowel movements. She will be attended by a male doctor – as there is no female physician available yet and her letters will be monitored, censored and, without her knowledge, repeatedly confiscated.

In the meantime Bywaters has become number 8606 at Brixton. He will shortly write to her, and she will reply. Initially, the governor of neither prison will interfere in their correspondence, rightly assuming that as remand prisoners they are deemed innocent till found guilty. At Brixton Bywaters retains his remarkably insouciant calm, apparently confident that he will only be convicted of manslaughter. The first weekend that the two pass in prison sees the death of Marie Lloyd at the early age of fifty-two. Edith must have seen the only prima donna of music-hall more than once and, like thousands of others, relished her earthy and cheeky comedy.

On Monday 9 October, a cold and miserable day, the police are positioned at last over the top left drain up in Seymour Gardens. By using huge ladles they reach down into the muddy holes. It is in the presence of Hancock and Hall that the dagger is retrieved from the place which Bywaters indicated to detective Williams on Friday. No sheath is found which the police interpret as a significant pointer towards murder rather than manslaughter.

Tuesday 10 October: This day marks the funeral of Percy Thompson. The arrangements are in the hands of Mr James Hawes, undertakers of 45 Station Road, Manor Park. They collect the body from the house in the morning. The coffin which they have prepared for Thompson consists of French polished oak, with brass handles. The inscription, on a brass plate, reads: ‘Percy Thompson, died October 4th 1922, aged 32 years.’

Only the Graydons’ immediate neighbours know of the time and itinerary of the funeral procession. But many have lowered their blinds out of respect for the dead. The coach and the hearse, covered in floral tributes, arrive outside No. 231 at 11.30 a.m. Mr and Mrs Graydon and Newenham and Billie occupy the coach as it silently heads across the Browning bridge, up Fourth Avenue and over the Romford Road. At the corner of Rabbits Road the cortège is joined by members of the Thompson family, parked in front of the Carnegie library. They were reluctant to join the Graydons in the Crescent – even though the widow’s family took the body into their home. As chief mourner Richard Thompson moves to the front of the solemn procession from Messrs O. J. Parker. In another car follow Percy’s two sisters. The invalid mother is too sick to attend. At the huge City of London Cemetery where the Graydons, at Edith’s prompting, have purchased a private grave, the coffin is taken into the Nonconformist chapel. Some forty mourners apart from the family have congregated by now in the cemetery.

The service is taken by a Congregationalist minister, the Rev Charles Noakes of the Stepney Meeting House. Into the chapel itself only family and close friends of the deceased are admitted. During the burial service Richard Thompson shows signs of great emotional strain, as do his sisters. Towards the end of the ceremony Noakes delivers, as part of his address, the following sermon:

We are met this morning in the presence of tragedy. What we call death is generally painful and affecting under ordinary circumstances, but when it is associated with tragedy it becomes a pathetic nightmare. Doubtless some of you feel just now that there is no star in your sky! You are almost to the point of moral collapse. Oh, the heartache: oh, the soul agony! A useful and honourable life has been cut short by a dark and dastardly deed, which represents human nature at its grossest and worst. But such a dark and dastardly deed is possible because our Creator made us free – free to degrade life and make it ignoble and paltry, and free to make it noble and good. One can but faintly imagine the anguish you are passing through at this moment. You are treading the winepress. You are passing through Gethsemane, and the question arises, ‘Has Christianity a message for such a tragic occasion as this?’

The Graydons must be thinking of their daughter and young Bywaters in connection with these words. Every day now their lives are undergoing strange permutations that they can hardly fathom. Standing in this chapel on this day, sharing some of the grief of the family on the other side, a family who are now no longer talking to them, not even to share their common sorrow, they must feel as if propelled by the formidable thrust of events into ever more complex and bewildering responsibilities. What once appeared a tragedy – the death of a loved one – in this extremity is a mere step to be overcome. Desperately sorry though they feel for Percy, the mortal danger their daughter stands in is all too evident, and more horrific.

After Noakes has wound up his sermon with the traditional consolations derived from Christian faith, the parties adjourn to the graveside. Percy will be laid to rest here, but not for long. At the head, among a sea of wreaths, sits a cushion of lilies, white chrysanthemums and roses. The tribute reads, ‘From Edith’. Next to it is placed a cross from Percy’s mother inscribed, ‘To my boy. As the light of dawn follows the darkest night, so, after suffering, it pleases our Father to bestow eternal peace – Mother’. On a bunch of lilies are the words, ‘My wee token to Uncle Percy. I did love him so – Little Nephew Graham’. Among other tributes are:

‘To our brother Percy, in remembrance of happy days’, Lily and Ken [Chambers]

‘All our woe and sadness, in this world below, belongs not the greatness we in heaven shall know’, from Ethel and Dick [Richard Thompson and his wfe]

‘Your mother and dad’ [from the Graydons]

‘With deepest sympathy’, from Miss Tucknott

‘With affectionate remembrance’, from Reg and Ruby [i.e. Rose Mirabel] Westcliff-on-Sea

‘In loving memory’, from Bess and Reg

‘In loving memory’, from Uncle Jack and Aunt Lil

Others, for which no legends are extant, come from ‘Uncle Fred, Aunt Edie & Leonard’, the Walkinshaws from Highbury; ‘Avis, Newnie, Willie & Harold’; ‘John and Ethel’, probably the Birnages; and ‘Mrs and Miss Lester’.

Even as they leave the cemetery the Graydons are anxiously imagining, and steeling themselves against, the next day’s proceedings at the Stratford Petty Sessions.

By seven o’clock on Wednesday morning over 2000 people are mobbing the court rooms. Edith arrives there at 9 a.m. in a taxicab and enters the building. On her solicitor’s F. A. S. Stern’s advice she has changed into mourning and is now wearing the same coat and hat, but a black and white spangled skirt and low-cut black jumper. In court Mrs Thompson is allowed to sit. It is 10 a.m. when she takes her place, followed by Bywaters, who has just arrived in the prison van. He is standing up erect, separated from her merely by the presence of a guard. In the well of the court are Wensley and Edith’s brothers, mother and sister. Today Edith is far more composed than last time, although her pallor indicates the strain on her. She is sitting mostly with her left leg crossed over her right.

As she is listening to the prosecution’s case led by Mr William Lewis, she gathers that they have not yet found all her letters to Freddy. He is only referring to their most recent correspondence. Lewis’s summing up is thorough and takes up well over an hour. Incredulously the widow attends to his untrue account of their confrontation in the Ilford police station. She becomes agitated and signals her dissent to her solicitor. Stern goes up to her and calms her. He knows the ways of the police and courts, she does not. Lewis’s address is succeeded by Drought’s forensic evidence, which is followed by Hall quoting Edith’s confession and Bywaters’s amended version of events. Then Laxton and finally Miss Pittard take the stand in the witness-box. After that the prisoners are remanded in custody till Tuesday.

Edith in Stratford Magistrates Court, 11 October 1922

On her return to Holloway Edith dictates a letter to the branch manager of Barclays Bank at 202, High Street North. The note is typed on her solicitor’s official stationery and reads:

Dear Sir,

I hereby authorise you to hand to the Bearer, my Mother, all documents and deeds deposited with you for safe custody by either my late husband or myself and I further authorise you to hand over to my Mother the balance of Cash outstanding to our Joint Credit for which I enclose cheque.

Yours faithfully,
Signed EDITH THOMPSON

The Manager
Barclays Bank Ltd
202, High Street North
East Ham E.6.

Also today, in the laboratories of the Home Office, Dr John Webster of St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington is carefully examining Bywaters’s overcoat. He establishes that on the left and right sleeve there are a large number of stains of human blood. He also analyses the knife but fails to conclude categorically that the blood on the blade and handle is of human origin. The case against Bywaters is shaping up, but the prosecution as yet lacks the necessary evidence that would tie the woman in with the killing.

It is in search of further incriminating material that on Thursday 12 October Detective Inspector Alfred Scholes of the Port of London Authority visits SS Morea still berthed at Tilbury. From Freddy’s cabin Scholes retrieves a locked ditty box and, after a careful search of the cabin, he officially grants the Morea permission to sail; she will do so the following day and make for India, without her popular mess steward. The ditty box is handed by Scholes to Sergeant James who in turn passes it to Hall. The police at once drive out to Brixton to wheedle the key out of Bywaters. He surrenders it, and Hall opens the cache. It contains all of her letters as of November 1921, except the ones already found on him and at his home. In his ardent desire to collect all her correspondence, Freddy has virtually signed her death warrant. The police eagerly peruse the extensive correspondence. It matches their wildest hopes. They have now effectively finished compiling their file of material evidence against Mrs Thompson for the Director of Public Prosecutions. Also enclosed in the ditty box is the photograph of Edith Thompson which she sent to Bywaters, and which the police duly appropriate.

On Tuesday 17 October Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters appear once more in court. The proceedings consist of calling further witnesses for the prosecution. These include Thompson’s brother Richard. Thompson professes to have suspected that his brother and sister-in-law were unhappy together, but Percy ‘never complained. I saw Bywaters once, and that was sufficient for me.’ At hearing this unexpected jibe – which Thompson will not repeat at the Central Criminal Court – Bywaters laughs out loud. Edith may smile wanly in concert to indicate that she also recognises that they must expect no mercy from that quarter. The court’s sympathies are bound to lie with Thompson, for he is repeatedly overcome while giving evidence. Of a naturally timid and vindictive disposition, he anxiously glances up at the young sailor in the dock who stares at him with ironic contempt.

Thursday 19 October: Freddy Bywaters appears at the Ilford Town Hall at the resumed inquest on Percy Thompson. While this sombre and solemn assembly congregates in Ilford, ten miles over to the west a momentous meeting is gathering at the Carlton Club. The Conservatives elect to bring down the Coalition government. Bonar Law’s support for the ‘putsch’ decides the issue. Lloyd George’s coalition resigns and the King invites Bonar Law, shortly to be elected leader of the Conservative Party, to form a new government. His Cabinet of sixteen, formed on Monday 23 October, includes Stanley Baldwin whom Edith met fleetingly at Phyllis Court during the Henley Regatta.

Monday also marks the last day of the inquest on Percy Thompson. The weekend, the first blustering and gusty break of true autumn weather, has been taken up by the defence solicitors and particularly by Stern’s scanning of Edith Thompson’s letters. Stern realises that he must prevent these letters being put in evidence at any cost. He succeeds in securing a temporary reprieve for Edith Thompson’s correspondence at the inquest. The prosecution make Mr Carlton identify sixteen of Mrs Thompson’s letters written on violet paper as being in her handwriting. Stern’s plea for the letters to be regarded as ‘inadmissible evidence’ because (a) there is no ‘prima facie’ case against her, and (b) Bywaters has assumed full responsibility, encounters some scepticism from the coroner:

Coroner: I have gone through these letters, and I confess that there is grave suspicion in my mind.

Stern: But you have not heard the explanation.

The coroner, however, yields and tells the jury that whatever the case against the woman may be – particularly in connection with the letters – will be ‘thrashed out’ at the Old Bailey. Their verdict only relates to manner of the death and to Bywaters. One hour and a half after the proceedings began, and after consulting for a mere eight minutes, the jury returns a verdict of ‘wilful murder’ against Bywaters. It makes no mention of Mrs Thompson.

The next two days Thompson and Bywaters are brought up at the Police Court again. If the case is already deemed to contain the makings of a classic spectacle for the mob, Tuesday 24 October at Stratford enshrines it in the popular imagination.

This is the day that the now famous letters are first read in court and reach a nationwide audience. Bywaters enters the dock looking genial and nods a friendly acknowledgement to his solicitor. Edith seems much improved and smiles at various acquaintances in court. Perhaps Stern has been overly sanguine to her about his ability to keep her letters out of the case. When the prosecution suggests that the letters which have come to light since the last session bear on the case and that they are proposing to read them, Stern objects. The presiding magistrate Mr Eliot Howard remarks in response to this:

She must have known perfectly well who did it, and again and again in the course of that night’s detention she told different stories.

Stern: She told lies, admittedly, but that does not make her guilty.

Howard, who likes Bywaters and is convinced that the boy was set up by the older woman, rules that there is indeed a prima facie case against Mrs Thompson and that the letters can be legitimately submitted. The secrets of Edith Thompson’s romantic soul, with all its flaws and none of its beauties, are about to be revealed.

The witnesses today include Carlton, Rose Jacobs, Higgins, and Hancock who will give excerpted readings of the letters, before Lewis resumes after lunch for the Crown. Rose Jacobs’s evidence stuns both the prisoners. On the verge of a tearful collapse, Miss Jacobs admits to searching ‘Miss Graydon’s’ desk after the arrest and appropriating the photograph of Bywaters, which she cannot produce because she has burnt it. On hearing this Freddy colours deeply and mumbles a protest.

It is about 11 a.m. when Hancock starts on extracts from the letters. He first reads her note of 20 August. The combination in the letters of supremely intimate details and the suggestion of inflicting injury to her husband shatter Edith’s resolve to be brave. Her grand passion suddenly sounds sordid. The further intimation of a cunning set-up to murder the unsuspecting cuckolded husband crushes her spirit and she collapses. Howard orders her removal from the court till the lunch-time adjournments. The morning’s proceedings wind up with a long quotation from Exhibit 17, the note of 10 April 1922 describing the bitter taste in the tea and her husband’s idle boasting that he was like a cat with nine lives.

On the resumption of the case and having taken up her place again in the dock, Edith at once is exposed in her letters of 21 April and 1 May 1922. In the latter she speaks of her period being slighter than usual and of abortifacient herbs. She refers to the light bulb and a fervent desire to transform their stealthy ‘little hour’ into twenty-four hours each day. Listening to this language of passion and imaginary crime, the author collapses. Stern rises and requests permission from the court for her to absent herself during these readings. His presence would be adequate. The clerk curtly informs him that in an indictable offence the prisoner must be in court. The readings continue. Crimson-eared she sits in a trance-like state. A bowl of water has been provided in which she washes her clammy hands. The matron next to her fans her and a bottle of smelling salts are placed on the dock rail in front of her. Her appearance is a poignant one, and observers remark on how elegant she still looks in her new pleated brown skirt and white jumper. She is only sporadically taking the proceedings in, through a mist of voices, faces, scents and outside noises. When Lewis’s voice intones the passage describing Thompson’s attempt at bludgeoning the wife into submission through a fake heart attack and is thwarted by her calling his bluff, Stern intervenes and urges Lewis not to stop in mid-sentence. Could he continue from ‘… he got up and stormed –‘? At this Bywaters inexplicably laughs loudly, whether because defence counsel caught out Lewis editing his evidence prejudicially, or because the entire scene in the bedroom of No. 41 is so intrinsically farcical and reflects poorly on Percy. Her lover’s laughter may jolt the widow out of her trance for a moment, but not for long; and by the time the readings are completed and further evidence has been given regarding Bywaters’s overcoat and the finding of the knife, he also is sitting down, weary and looking distressed. He is holding his head and seems dazed. It is late afternoon when the prosecution asks for a further week of remand. Eliot Howard argues that it is cruel to keep the prisoners in gaol for so long: ‘We remand the case until tomorrow’.

Edith Thompson leaving Stratford Magistrates Court, 25 October 1922

Edith’s father (left), Mr Carlton, and Edith’s mother leaving Stratford Crown Court, 25 October 1922

The three main witnesses summoned on Wednesday 25 October are Mrs Bywaters, Mrs Lester, and Mr Graydon. Somewhat recovered from the harrowing experience of yesterday, Edith smiles faintly as she enters the court and murmurs ‘Good morning’ to Bywaters in the dock. She keeps her composure throughout Mrs Bywaters’s testimony, and when Mrs Lester relates that the Thompsons often had high words between them in their bedroom, ‘the faintest suggestion of a smile trembles a second or two on her face.’ Edith’s father follows Mrs Lester. He briefly tells of her marriage to Thompson and gives her age. When he notes that there are no children of the marriage, Edith breaks into tears and sobs uncontrollably. The father continues, while his daughter, in her fear, shame and pain looks in his direction with mute pleas. My Graydon is himself almost overwhelmed as he listens to his weeping daughter a mere ten feet away. The prosecution asks for yet a further week of remand. Howard grants it but notes that they are wasting time and that he will not tolerate further stalling because of the distress inflicted on the accused by the drawn-out investigation.

Wintry weather is settling over the capital as Thompson and Bywaters prepare to spend yet another weekend in prison. Through the cell windows they watch the snow fall thickly and gradually shroud the whole of London. Traces of it are still visible on the ground when on Wednesday 1 November, All Saints Day, the prisoners are driven once again to Stratford. To guard against the invading cold Edith has put on her heavy musquash coat, and is wearing a black velvet tam-o’-shanter from the right side of which projects a spray of feathers which brush repeatedly against the shoulder straps of the prison warden who sits by her in the dock. As she enters the court clutching her coat she is photographed. Once more the prosecution applies for a week’s extension of the remand. The Crown is convinced that an exhumation of Thompson’s body will conclusively convict the widow, not only or even primarily for aiding and abetting her husband’s death, but for procuring it herself by glass and poison.

On Thursday 2 November, under a chilly and bright winter moon, Thompson’s body is raised from its resting place and prepared for an autopsy to be carried out independently by Spilsbury and Webster. A heavy police cordon seals off the inside and outside of the cemetery to keep the press away. Spilsbury’s and Webster’s exhaustive examinations of the tissue of Thompson’s heart, stomach, gut, kidneys, and liver are recorded in Spilsbury’s own report submitted on 1 December 1922. The report concludes:

I found no indications of poisoning and no changes suggestive of previous attempts at poisoning. I detected no glass in the contents of the intestine.⁶

Spilsbury’s resistance to the Solicitor General’s imputations regarding the possible inaccuracy of such scientific evidence is well illustrated by the record of his appearance at the Old Bailey. His evidence ought to have allowed the defence successfully to challenge the Crown’s case on the basis that its hypotheses about criminal collusion were demonstrably unfounded and rested entirely on the hyperbolised rhetoric and incandescent fantasies of the letters. (Mrs Thompson’s family was convinced that Spilsbury’s report would at once exonerate Edith; and fifty years later her sister again reverted to the exhumation and, erroneously, insisted that it had been let slip by Curtis-Bennett. Unbeknown to her Freddy Bywaters himself had pleaded with the Home Secretary in a letter of 3 January 1923: ‘it was said by an officer of the law [that] when the result of the exhumation was known, “The case against Mrs Thompson has failed.”)

On Wednesday 8 November Thompson and Bywaters briefly appear in the dock and are remanded for another week; and again on Wednesday 15 November, the day the country returned a Conservative government under the stewardship of Bonar Law.

It is after the brief session in court that, back in Brixton, Freddy Bywaters sits down and writes to Edith. He has corresponded with her regularly since their arrest. Surprisingly, they continue discussing books and, in a more subdued manner now, their feelings for each other. But today Freddy’s letter raises an eyebrow with the usually kindly and indulgent governor of Brixton. Perhaps the letter carelessly alluded to evidence given at Stratford, or he may be hinting cryptically at shared memories, as in the letter of 18 November reproduced here. Whatever the contents of the letter are, the governor decides to seek the advice of the Prison Commissioners at the Home Office in Whitehall. After all, he is a plain-dealing man and readily defers to his superiors, the high-flying and uncomfortably hawkish civil servants. ‘This sort of correspondence’, he notes in his memo to Whitehall, ‘has been going on between this prisoner and his fellow prisoner in Holloway. The letters are not clear.’ He encloses Bywaters’s most recent letter.

In the meantime, on Friday 17 November, Freddy is writing again. He feels in a great epistolary mood and writes till paper runs out. He does not suspect for a moment that their letters, though censored, might be intercepted. He writes again:

No 8696 Nov: 18th 1922
Name F. Bywaters
Brixton

G.M.M.C.

Today I want to finish the conversation of yesterday. It was rotten – wasn’t it – when I was feeling in a mood to talk for a long time I had to desist owing to lack of material. Now P.m. [Peidi mia] comment ca vas –
Why haven’t you written to me so that I recd. letter first post this morning? Answer – A change for me to be in this position? – I’m going to take full advantage of the opportunity. The enclosed cutting – Is the part I have underlined quite correct? If it is – I shall have to use spectacles. Now suppose we have a conversation about the book. My opinion now – yours when you answer. In the first place don’t think I liked it as much as I did ‘Atonement’. The best parts I see you noticed. I think Coict made quite an unnecessary sacrifice – though – she was prompted by the highest motives. If she had told Grier she would never had those times of torment – which – you can understand – but I cannot. (It was explained very well by A. & C. Askew – in ‘The Shulamite’). Did you like Grier? Or Bently?
Funny. – I dreamt last night that you wrote to me & told me that you had been able to finish ‘His Daughter’. I would talk about ‘Sam’s Kid’ more, only I have no particular wish to explain my feelings to an audience – you alone yes – it is different.
You understand fully – don’t you Pal? You asked me what I do all day – I suppose practically the same as you. Sit on a chair – think or read, eat at specified times & then sleep; One day is over. I look forward to the day at Court – it breaks the monotony. Do I sound a bit morbid & down – I don’t feel over exhilarated: – One of those ‘One little hours’ would be good now. But this I suppose is only a passing phase – not the longing for ‘One little hour’ – the other part. I’m going to finish now p.m. Carissima mia. Goodbye

FREDDY

On Monday 20 November he is writing again. On Tuesday morning J. H. Walls at the Home Office prison division, after conferring with Blackwell, sends a stern rebuke to the governor of Holloway Prison:

Please note that letters written by the woman E. Thompson to the man Bywaters will not be posted. She will not, however, be told of this. If she writes any, they will be sent up to this Office, where they will be retained.
If she has written to him, or if she has received letters from him, why were they not submitted to the Commissioners. None appear to have been sent up.

J. H. WALL

A more detailed missive is posted to Brixton:

This letter [of 16 November] will not be allowed to go – Please leave it with this paper. He should not be told.
No letters from this man to the woman Thompson will be posted. He will not be told of this. He may continue to write to her, but the letters will be forwarded to this Office.
A similar instruction is being sent to Holloway regarding the woman’s letters.

The writer then proceeds to wield the cudgel:

What do you mean by ‘this sort of correspondence’? No letters to or from the woman Thompson have been submitted by you to the Commissioners. If letters have passed why were they not submitted … The letters should not have been allowed to go and you should have asked for instructions before allowing correspondence between two prisoners in the same case, particularly in a such grave case.

The matter does end here. In their mistaken belief that the two prisoners might either betray their guilty complicity in the letters or in their behaviour at court, the mandarins at the Home Office, acting in concert with the DPP, order a tight watch to be held over the two accused during their last day in court. For a moment it appears as if their hopes of a last minute give–away have been fulfilled. On entry into the dock Mrs Thompson

shouted to the male prisoner (Bywaters), asking if he had received 2 letters she had sent this week. Bywaters replied he had not. He seems to have known they were stopped, as he has not attempted to write since the attached letters of 20 inst. ⁷

But since Bywaters would write to Edith the day after the committal, on Friday 24 November, it would appear that he retained some hope of getting letters through to her. Again, on Wednesday 29 November, he sends her a telegram addressed to ‘Edith Thompson / Remand Hospital / Holloway Prison’: HAVE YOU RECEIVED LETTER ARE YOU ILL LET ME KNOW from FREDDY’. The telegram is not delivered. As the proceedings draw to a close, Edith and young Bywaters must feel traumatised beyond endurance. Their counsel have prepared them for the worst, a committal to the Old Bailey to stand trial for murder. Eliot Howard’s words still come as a shock, and particularly to the gathered families. As the prisoners are about to be led out of court, Mrs Graydon rushes forward

with a haunting cry of ‘My child, my child’. Kindly officials pressed her gently back, but she crept forward and for one moment clung to her daughter’s dress …. Mrs Graydon sat sobbing bitterly and was finally let out into the densely-packed street.⁸

With the mother’s cry resounding still in her ears, Edith lets herself be guided into the waiting prison van which she boards as if in a trance. Her parents wearily retrace their steps to Manor Park. Already they, the once respectable Graydons, hardly care about the scores of photographers, journalists and intruding spectators who seem to feast off their unhappiness. Their humiliation has been so utterly complete since 24 October when their daughter’s letters were first read in court, that now they have done with pride. All they are left with is hope and a terrible fear. The awfulness of what the future might hold only occasionally strikes home, and even they can barely acknowledge the reality of the gallows. Their lives have been irreproachable, and they have worked hard. Edith has been their brightest and most beautiful child and has never harmed anyone. After all, the autopsy disproved the claim that she tried to poison Percy. So why are the lawyers dragging her through the horrors of more public exposure? The Old Bailey in their minds is associated with crime, vice and the gibbet. Their daughter surely does not belong there, even if she did act like a very foolish girl.

Friday 24 November marks Edith Thompson’s first day at Holloway in the certain knowledge that she will face the ordeal of the Old Bailey in thirteen days from now. In the days to come she will sleep poorly and prepare for the day of reckoning. She suspects that she and Freddy are being closely monitored, but still writes to him and her family with astonishing relaxedness. The prison governor and the warders discover in the young woman from Ilford a resilience that they did not anticipate. Her unshakable conviction of her innocence fans her spirited hopefulness: the law is ultimately bound to protect her, not to destroy her. She explains that she has nothing to fear. If the truth can be revealed in its imaginative and emotional entirety, even Freddy, she protests, will be cleared of the charges against him. Once she is allowed to tell their love story, judge and jury will forgive the boy for killing for love. Her solicitor Stern is sceptical. Her leading defence counsel, the recently knighted Henry Curtis-Bennett, is horrified at her briefing him to let her go into the witness-box. He is appalled by her naïveté about the sentimental possibilities of the courtroom, and angered by her refusal to let him answer for the letters. He had, he would state later, ‘an answer to every incriminating passage’, but she, in her vanity, he thought, hoped to save the boy by her sheer presence and acting ability. She refused to accept that she herself stood in great danger and took it for granted that she would be safe.

Bywaters is now transferred to Pentonville, on the day Erskine Childers, whose The Riddle of the Sands Freddy read as a young boy, perishes in Dublin’s Kilmainham Gaol. During the week and a half before his appearance at the Central Criminal Court, Freddy remains optimistic. The governor of Pentonville, Major Blake, is a humane and well-intentioned man. Young Bywaters will become a great favourite of his.

On Monday 27 November Edith Thompson is persuaded by her solicitor to make a will. She leaves everything to her mother. The short document dictated in her prison cell reads as follows:

THIS IS THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT of me JESSIE EDITH THOMPSON residing lately at 41 Kensington Gardens Ilford in the County of Essex but now on remand at His Majesty’s Prison at Holloway. I HEREBY APPOINT my mother Ethel Jessie Graydon the Wife of William Eustace Graydon of 231 Shakespeare Crescent Manor Park in the County of Essex to be the SOLE EXECUTRIX of this my Will and I GIVE DEVISE and BEQUEATHE to the said Ethel Jessie Graydon all my real and personal estate whatsoever and wheresoever situate and over which I shall have any power of testamentary disposition I REVOKE all former Wills by me heretofore made and declare this to be my last Will and Testament IN WITNESS whereof I have hereunto set my hand this 27th day of November One Thousand nine hundred and twenty two – EDITH JESSIE THOMPSON –
SIGNED and DECLARED by the abovenamed Testatrix Jessie Edith Thompson as and to be her last Will and Testament in the presence of us both being present at the same time who at her request and in her presence and in the presence of each other have hereunto subscribed our names as witnesses – F. A. S. Stern Solicitor 41 The Broadway Stratford – J. K. Richard Officer of H.M. Prison Holloway –

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

4

The Best Pal

© René Weis