The first day of the New Year is wet and windy. Edith Thompson is visited by her mother, Avis and her former schoolmate Ida Burton. After their first re-acquaintance, Ida Burton says: ‘I wish you would let Canon Palmer visit you just as a friend, he won’t talk religion, he is very sweet. I am sure you would like him.’ She explains that the Canon is an Ilfordian and very interested in her welfare. Edith nods assent, and agrees to apply for permission to see him, primarily because her mother and Avis strongly support the idea. For, as much as she has been able to in front of the wardresses, Edith has voiced her indignant objection to the ministrations of the Church of England Senior Chaplain at Holloway, the Reverend S. R. Glanvill Murray. According to her, Murray always presses her for a confession during his visits, notwithstanding her protests about her innocence. Thirteen years earlier Glanvill Murray had clashed with the suffragists at Holloway. One of them, Marguerite A. Sidley, left a memorable sketch of him during her stay there . A more unsuitable, myosgynistic person in a women’s prison seems hard to imagine:
I knew the gentleman of old, and expected that he and I would quarrel over every subject that was introduced into our conversation – and we did. I found that this official of the prison, who is meant to give spiritual consolation and advice, was in reality one of the most narrow-minded, uncomprehending of men. He said to one of our Women’s Freedom League prisoners that unless she believed in certain Church of England doctrines she was of no use to anybody in the world! And once he dared to say, to that chapel full of women, that a woman must never, under any circumstances whatever, leave her husband! He showed over and over again that he knows nothing of a woman’s life, of a woman’s trials – nothing of the life of the class of woman that is usually found in prison. I longed so much to put one of our Suffragists in the pulpit. In five minutes she would have had those women in touch with her, whereas neither the chaplain nor the missioner ever succeeded in moving them. On Fridays, after saying the Litany, we practised the hymns for Sunday, the chaplain beating time with a pointer. One Friday the volume of sound was not quite so great as usual, and the chaplain requested everyone to sing, in much the same tone and words that a school teacher uses. Finding his request had no effect he said, before leaving the chapel, in a very displeased tone of voice, that he hoped everyone would sing on Sunday. I do not want to mock at religion, but I do say that in prison the only religion we got was from the missioner, and that was not made to bear on women’s lives; it was not a religion that helped women. I must say for the chaplain that I never saw a man go through a service looking quite such a martyr. A Month in Holloway Gaol
Edith therefore prefers to dispense with his services altogether now, but would welcome a ‘spiritual adviser’ sympathetic to her. Canon Palmer appears eminently suitable. At this interview Ida Burton may not tell Edith that Canon Palmer is a Roman Catholic priest. She either knows already, or else finds out through a coded message. The point is that Edith is prepared to lie about this to the governor out of her desperate need to have someone close to her in her final hours who is not a not a member of the prison service. Above all, as a Catholic priest Canon Palmer will forever be bound by the seal of the confessional not to reveal anything that she might confide in him of whatever gravity. One imagines that what she intends to convey through him is a secret message of love to Bywaters. In the end she will be enabled to exchange a dying message with him through the kind offices of the Bishop of Stepney.
On Tuesday 2 January Edith writes to the governor for permission to be granted for a visit from Canon Palmer ‘as a friend’. Morton sees no reason for not complying with her request. In the meantime down the road in Pentonville, Freddy Bywaters once again writes to ‘Mrs Edith Thompson, H. M. Prison, Holloway’:
2 January 1923
Edie – I want to ask you not give up hope. I know & you know & some others know also, that you should not be in the position that you find yourself. I’m still hoping that the powers that be will exercise some common sense & displace their suppositions with facts. I know this must be a terrible strain on you, but Peidi mia, don’t lose heart – B.B. I am keeping quite well & I’ve heard that you are a lot better. I’m glad.
I have seen Florrie today & she told me that she had written to you explaining the misunderstanding. I should dearly like to pull the snub nose of a certain person – Do you know to whom I refer? I’ve read two books by Baroness Von Sutton ‘Pam’ & ‘What became of Pam’ – one of Hichens ‘An Imaginative Man’ & one of Rolf Wyllards ‘There was a Crooked Man’ since I’ve been here. If you are able, will you write? I want to say a lot, but cannot, you understand. I can only hope & trust that some time in the future we will be able to talk to one another.
Goodbye, Peidi mia – B.B. –
Always,
FREDDY
This letter is promptly intercepted by the Prison Commission, perhaps because of its intimate character, or more simply because as two convicted felons they are not allowed to correspond. Edith does, however, receive a letter from Florrie Bywaters which she describes as kindly and humane. It is, one surmises, comparable in tone to Florrie’s letter of 6 January, which will be confiscated by the Prison Commissioners and thus survives in their files.
Wednesday 3 January: Gale-force winds are forecast, and local showers and even thunder alternate with long spells of sunshine. The sight of the sun cheers Edith up, as does the prospect of her mother’s visit later today, because Ethel will bring her daughter a very special present. She sits down and writes Bessie the following long and, under the circumstances, buoyant letter:
January 3rd, 1923
Dear Bessie,
I know I ought to have written to you yesterday – but I didn’t feel I wanted to – that’s my only excuse.
Thank you sending along the book. I haven’t [received] it yet, but I soon shall have. When I think I have been longing to get it for three months now and you have had it all the time. I feel so cross that I didn’t mention it before. However, I am going to prepare myself to enjoy it to the full, after waiting so long.
Does it seem three whole months since I first came here to you? Some days it seems like three weeks and others like three days. Time is always our enemy, don’t you think? It either goes too fast or too slowly, always.
I’ve read lots of books since I’ve been here; usually I get through one every day – but they, none of them, have been very striking, nothing in them to impress one, or to make you remember them. Of course, I read ‘If Winter Comes’. Auntie – sent it in to me. That I enjoyed; it is quite differently written from the usual type of novel, and that fact alone made it interesting, but the plot (which doesn’t really appear until quite the end of the book) was even more interesting to me under these circumstances.
Have you read it? You should. Then I read ‘A Witness for the Defence’ by A. E. W. Mason. I wonder if you have ‘The Four Feathers’ by him? I should like to have that. Oh! And I read ‘His Daughter’, a Yankee book by Governor Morris, but there was nothing much in that; at least, nothing much I can discuss in writing.
I could talk to you about it, but I couldn’t write. Now I am starting Dickens again. I think I have read all his at least three or four times, but you can always pick up one and feel interested in it at any time. I remember at school we used to have what was called a ‘Reading Circle’. A Dickens book was chosen by our teacher, we read it at home, not at school, and then we each chose a character from the book and wrote a little essay on him or her, as the case might be. These essays we would all take to Wanstead Park on a Saturday afternoon: we would each read our own out loud, and then it was discussed in general. We usually took our tea to the park and made a little picnic party of it. I remember an essay I was highly commended on by the teacher. It was on ‘Quilp’.
Today it is lovely; the sun is shining and everywhere looks bright and cheerful. I begin to feel quite cheerful myself – isn’t the sun wonderful, it always raises your spirits. But I don’t like it as cold as this. I’ll be ever so glad when the summer comes: the heat I love, but I never did like the cold – not out of doors, at any rate. I don’t think I should mind inches of snow outside if I was inside in a huge armchair before a great, big fire, with a nice book – yes, and some nuts, I think.
I’ve still got faith – I’m still hoping. They say ‘you can always get what you want if you want it enough, but you can’t control the price you have to pay’, and I think that’s so every time.
I got – letter. Thank him for me; it was very sedate and proper, tell him. I really didn’t think he could be like that – I think that is part of him I don’t know yet.
Shall I see you again soon – Edith.
Freddy Bywaters is also writing a letter, probably the longest of his life. It is addressed to the Home Secretary and constitutes the boy’s petition to reprieve Edith Thompson, as well as a plea for his own life. It is reproduced here in its entirety:
3 January 1923
I am writing to ask you to use your power to avert a great catastrophe and also to rectify a grave injustice. Edith Thompson & I have been found guilty & today stand condemned upon a charge of which we are innocent. In the first instance I wish to speak to you of Edith Thompson. The case for the prosecution was based entirely upon a series of extracts from letters written by her to me. There were mentioned in these letters names of some poisons & broken glass. It was suggested that Mrs Thompson had been administering poison & broken glass to her husband. The body was exhumed & no trace of any alien substance was found, but still Mrs Thompson was committed for trial on the charge of having administered poison to her husband. I am asking you to believe me, sir, because what I say is the truth, that Mrs Thompson never had any intention or the slightest inclination to poison her husband or to kill him in any way. The only way to treat those letters is the way in which I read them. She is a hysterical & highly strung woman & when writing letters to me she did not study sentences and phrases before transferring them to paper, but, as different thoughts, no matter what, momentarily flashed through her mind, so they were committed to paper. Sometimes, even I could not understand her. Now, sir, if I had, for one moment, thought or imagined, that there was anything contained in Mrs Thompson’s letters to me that could at any time harm her, would I not have destroyed them? I was astounded when I heard the sinister translation the prosecution had put to certain phrases, which were written quite innocently. Those letters were the outpourings of a hysterical woman’s mind, to relieve the tension & strain caused by the agony she was suffering. If you like, sir, mere melodrama. Furthermore I wish to say that she never suggested to me that I should kill her husband. She is not only unjustly condemned but it is wicked & vile to suggest that she incited me to murder. God knows that I speak the truth when I say that there was no plan or agreement between Mrs Thompson & I to murder her husband. I can do no more, sir, than ask you to believe me – the truth – & then it is for you to proclaim to the whole world that Edith Thompson is ‘Not Guilty’ & so to remove the stain that is on her name.
It was said by an officer of the law, when the result of the exhumation was known, ‘The case against Mrs Thompson has failed’. Why then sir was she committed to trial? I ask you, I implore you, sir, in the name of humanity & justice, to order the release of Edith Jessie Thompson.
I have not much space sir, so will try & be a concise as possible in laying before you my case. I wish to bring to your notice that the evidence against me is only that which has been supplied by myself. I was asked at Ilford if there had been a fight & I said yes. I was not asked for details & I received no caution. When I saw my solicitor on Oct. 7th I told him exactly what had happened the same as I did to the Judge & Jury at the Old Bailey. When I was at the inquest at Ilford, I was advised by a law officer to get the charge against me reduced. I mentioned that to my solicitor who said it would be best to say nothing until the trial at the Old Bailey. You know, sir, why my explanation was not made known before. Mr Justice Shearman suggested to the Jury that my knife was in my pocket for one reason only – namely that I had agreed with Mrs Thompson to murder her husband on Oct 3rd. I saw Mrs Thompson at midday on Oct. 3rd & it was then for the first time I learned that she was going to the Criterion Theatre that evening. My knife was in my pocket then & it had been there ever since 23rd Sept. I was in the habit of always carrying a knife or a revolver. At the inquest, Dr Drought in his evidence stated that the first blow had been delivered from the front. That is quite true, you have my statement made in the Witness Box at the Old Bailey. If I could speak to you I could explain any point you might wish, more fully, but my space here is limited. I ask you to accept my word sir, or perhaps you can shew me some way in which I can prove to you that I am speaking the truth.
I hope & trust that this will receive your careful & favourable consideration sir, & that you will order another hearing of the case.
I am, Sir,
Yours respectfully,
FREDERICK E. F. BYWATERS
The eagerly awaited hour of the visit at Holloway has arrived, and Mrs Graydon presents Edith with the framed sketch of the Morea. It is over three months since she took it to be framed. For a moment all the old excitement lights up in the woman’s eyes, as she examines the picture. The monkey was meant to sit opposite it, like herself, and together they would gaze at this copy of Freddy’s ‘home’. But now the Morea is a very long way off in the Antipodes, plying the South China Sea while her former laundry steward is waiting to die in a mean spot in a wretched prison. In spite of all this the mother, watching her daughter’s delighted handling of the little picture, is momentarily overcome with joy at the knowledge of having brought her this tiny bit of happiness. Her father, she tells Edith, misses her greatly and will be seeing her on Saturday when he will be off work. It may be for this reason that Edith will write him a letter the following day. It is her last extant piece of writing. The version reproduced here is the one that she rewrote at the governor’s request:
Dearest Dad. –
Somehow today I feel I’d like to write to you. It seems such a long time since I saw you – and yet it isn’t. It’s only the same distance from Saturday as it was last week. I wonder why some days seem so long ago and others quite near.
Of course nothing different happens here, every day is the same. The best part of each day (and of course the quickest) is the half an hour’s visit I have. It never seems to be longer than ten minutes.
Do you remember the book I told you I wanted? They tell me it is out of print, and I couldn’t help thinking that even in little things my luck is entirely absent. You remember I only missed No. 13 because there wasn’t one.
I have been reading Dickens’s ‘Our Mutual Friend’, but the print is so frightfully small and indistinct that I can’t see anything if the light has to be on, and it is after dark always that I feel I would like to read the more.
Yesterday mother showed me the sketch of the Morea. It looks nice in its frame, don’t you think? I was quite pleased about it.
I am getting quite used to things here now. It’s really astonishing what you can do without when it is ‘Hobson’s choice’.
You’ll be coming to see me on Saturday, won’t you? On that Saturday of last year, I wonder if you remember what we did?
I do, quite well. We were all at Highbury, and the huge dinner Harold ate I can see now if I close my eyes. And there were the rattles and trumpets and whistles in the Tube and Avis getting out without her ticket and our throwing it out of the carriage on to the platform when it was too late. Oh, dear! What a lot can happen in a year!
I hope Saturday comes quickly, it has been such a terrible long week. Au revoir until then.
EDITH
Friday 5 January is a mild day. In the corridors of the Home Office in Whitehall it is known that the Home Secretary’s decision on the Ilford murderers will be announced any moment now, as he is scheduled to depart for his country estate at Minsterley near Shrewsbury later in the day. There is little doubt in the minds of Wall, Blackwell and others that the politicians will heed their advice, which is to let the law take its course. It is shortly before noon when Blackwell dictates the following letter to the people of Manor Park:
With reference to your letter of 30th ultimo, addressed to the Prime Minister on behalf of your sister, Edith Jessie Thompson, now under sentence of death, I am directed by the Secretary of State to inform you that he has given careful consideration to all the circumstances of the case, and I am to express to you his deep regret that he has failed to discover any grounds which would justify him in advising His Majesty to interfere with the due course of the law.
Immediately the decision is known, the Home Office dispatches messengers to the two prisons. The governors are instructed to implement the customary security precautions, including the deployment of additional police. The parental visits are to proceed as normal. The prisoners will be told at the conclusion of the interviews. Simultaneously telegrams are cabled to John Ellis of Rochdale and William Willis of Manchester. The country’s chief executioner, Ellis, has already been instructed to be on stand-bye in view of the Home Office’s likely ruling. He at once notifies his two assistants Robert Baxter of Hertford and Thomas Phillips of Bolton. They are to meet in London on Sunday to inspect and prepare the scaffolds. Ellis will hang Mrs Thompson; Willis with Seth Mills and Tom Pierrepoint is to execute Bywaters. While this group prepares to converge on the metropolis, Mrs Graydon and Lillie Laxton once more retrace their weary steps to Holloway Prison. They register the increased police presence but fail to interpret it correctly.
Edith seems in surprisingly high spirits and is ‘quite bright-eyed’, which suggests that she may be drugged. She is sitting in her usual position in the doorway of the cell, separated by the deal table again from her visitors. But this time the visitors are not allowed to sit as close as they used to; their chairs are at a measured distance from the table, and when Lillie pulls hers forward she is politely asked to revert to the designated position. Edith thanks her for sending in If Winter Comes, which she enjoyed, but found more ‘ordinary’ than she expected. The magazines which Lillie has taken to Holloway have been intercepted and Edith has not seen them. She is sadly amused while relating this and continues:
This morning the governor sent me back, censored, a letter that I had written home to Manor Park. I had said, or referred to, something that was not allowed. It is the first time I have had such a thing happen, and it is the first time I have had to rewrite anything I have written.
Lillie is surprised to hear that this is the ‘first time’ that such an interference has happened to Edith’s correspondence, because the press has implied that letters between the prisoners are being monitored and suppressed. Above all, she has read in the Daily Mail that Bywaters has written her a long letter, which may be the confiscated letter of 2 January, or it might have been confused with Bywaters’s long letter to the Home Secretary. Has she received it, or does she know anything about it? A grave look flits over her face:
I don’t know. He would be sure to ask whether he could write to me. If he was permitted to write and if his letter has left Pentonville, I should receive it in due course; but I have not received it yet.
She has, however, had a letter from Florrie, she tells them, which has cheered her greatly and to which she has replied. More than that Edith will not say in front of the wardresses. Instead she cheerfully notes that this morning she has had three letters from relatives and one from a friend, ‘all nice cheering letters’. It is her next remark which baffles her visitors who share the prisoner’s total innocence of the ways and means of the law: ‘I have been weighed as many as three times in one day’. A little wryly she proceeds to explain that she has been consuming two pints of milk a day, because the tea is ‘inferior’.
While the prison officials are regularly checking her weight and calculating averages for the drop, Edith is concerned about her increase in weight since 11 December. Indeed, according to the governor’s report of 9 January 1923, ‘her weight on reception was 118 lbs and her weight on Jan 8th was 133 lbs’. The official record of the execution states that her ‘build’ was ‘spare but muscular’ and gives her ‘weight in clothing: 130 ¼ lbs’, rather less than the governor’s account.
Unsuspecting, she continues to enquire after what is happening ‘outside’, and when told that the Paris Conference has failed, she replies: ‘I am sorry, because it seems as if there must be more trouble’. Lillie mentions that the Prince of Wales is rumoured to be set on marrying an aristocratic Scots woman to which Edith replies laughingly: ‘What, another one?’. She is interested to learn details of the New Year’s Honours list and poor Lillie can only remember Spilsbury. ‘Who else?’, her niece asks without further comment, but she is now clearly troubled. She is looking at Lillie gravely and intently, as she asks whether she ‘has heard any news’. She tells her ‘No’, and Edith remains silent. The rest of the visit is taken up by more general talk, and by Mrs Graydon filling Edith in on how things are at home. The time for the visit is up and the two women part from the prisoner. As they leave the prison the sisters are still ignorant of Edith’s fate. But outside the newspaper boys are screaming from every street corner that Thompson and Bywaters are to hang on Tuesday. There will be no last-minute reprieve.
Over in Pentonville Florrie Bywaters is reading out to Freddy Edith Thompson’s letter to them. Edith has slipped into it a secret love-message which he alone understands. He asks his sister to tell Edith that it is reciprocated. In her letter she offers to return the bronze monkey, but Bywaters prefers her to keep it. He suggests that she arrange for the watch she give him to be forwarded to his brother Frankie. Above all he is concerned about her welfare and hopes she will bear up. He also wishes her to know that he has written to her.
It is shortly after 3 p.m. when Dr Morton, the governor, calls on Edith Thompson to deliver the news. She remains very calm while he is talking. In the next hour, even as another wintry dusk is settling over London, Edith Thompson is fighting off her intellectual realisation that the cessation of her being is now purely a matter of hours. Nothing will now interpose itself between her and the scaffold. What will it be like, hanging there surrounded by men? How much will it hurt? Will she be able to breathe during the last seconds of her life, or will the noose be too tight? She is bewildered and she is very frightened. The women about her are reeling from shock, which exacerbates the prisoner’s sense of desolation and utter loss. Where is ‘mater’ now, or dad to hold her? She sits down at the wardresses’ urgings, but she cannot stay still. They try to restrain her gently. It is about 4 p.m.
Trapped, facing certain death, Edith Thompson’s relative calm suddenly gives way to hysteria. Madly fighting off the tentacular hands that reach out to drag her back into this cage of cold stone, she is screaming ‘I never did it!’. As strange arms and hands pinion her to the bed, she is crying in despair. The governor has been summoned and is rushing towards the cell. He is a doctor, but the spectacle which greets him of the sweat-drenched manic woman would have unsettled many a tougher veteran from the trenches of Flanders. He injects her with ¼ grain of morphia. Ten agonising minutes later the woman is ‘quite quiet’ and subsides into an uneasy sleep. She is medically attended for most of the long sixteen-hour night from Friday to Saturday.
She does not sleep for any length of time. Again and again she wakes in sheer terror, like a little girl rocked into reality by a ghostly presence in her bedroom at night. The strong drug keeps her locked in stupor, but it fails altogether to remove her awareness of impending doom. The women who sit with her in shifts urgently talk to her in her waking moments, about anything to keep her mind off the unthinkable and unspeakable topic. She again moans and speaks the name of Bywaters, and ‘Why did he do it?’ These four nights, from Friday to Tuesday morning, will be remembered as a time of unremitting horror by all the staff at Holloway who were involved in the case of Mrs Thompson. Twenty years later, as Diana Mosley records about her stay at Holloway (Loved Ones, 1985), an old wardress who had become attached to Edith Thompson still disliked passing the prison mortuary alone at dusk.
At 231 Shakespeare Crescent in the meantime, Mr and Mrs Graydon are numbly sitting at their kitchen table, supported by Avis, waiting for Newenham to return. He will bring the Evening News. Without him the family are unable to cope with the press, who are pleading for a statement. The Daily Sketch in particular deserves an interview for its campaign. Over a million people have signed its petition, when previously the highest number of signatories for a reprieve was a mere 150,000. Mr Graydon, like Avis, saw the announcement on the billboards in the City, as he returned home from work. Newenham bought his evening paper in Gracechurch Street and rushed to read it under the light of a streetlamp. Somehow he got home that night. Through the Daily Chronicle representative, Newenham and the family released the following statement that evening:
As a family we consider the decision of the Home Secretary to be inhuman … Our hopes had been buoyed up by the long delay of the authorities in making the announcement with regard to a repeal. The decision has astounded us.
If the sentence is carried out we believe that the public conscience will be shocked. To modern ideas the hanging of a woman is absolutely repugnant.
Our faith in the innocence of Mrs Thompson is as strong as ever it was, and we shall continue to pray that some unforeseen turn may arise to save her life.
We have received no official intimation of the Home Secretary’s decision. My father, mother, sister, and I myself all read the news in the evening papers …
Over in Norwood Mrs Bywaters is on the verge of collapse, when she writes the following letter direct to the King, enclosing her husband’s letter from the King and the Army Council and certificates of the 1914-15 Star and War medals:
To His Majesty the King
Your Majesty
I do humbly appeal to you to spare the life of my son Fredk. Bywaters, now lying under sentence of death.
I am driven mad with anxiety, so I take this step as the last resource, and implore your Majesty to grant me this request.
Had my poor boy a father to advise him this terrible thing would never have happened, but my husband made the supreme sacrifice in the Great War, leaving me with a family of four young children to support.
I have done my best for them and brought them up respectably.
Freddy, my eldest boy, went out into the world at the age of thirteen and a half years. When only fifteen he joined the Merchant Service (he was not old enough for the Army) and stayed with the P. and O. until Sept. 23 of this year, his character all the time being excellent.
He has always been the best of sons to me, and I am proud of him, but like many other boys of his age he fell under the spell of a woman many years older than himself, who has brought all this terrible suffering on him.
Your Majesty, I explore you to spare his young life. I have given up my husband. For God’s sake leave me my boy.
I am
Your Majesty’s most humble servant.
(Mrs.) LILIAN BYWATERS
Saturday 6 January
Freddy Bywaters has spent a restless night. The news of the petition’s failure on Friday upset him, but the kindly governor’s sympathetic presence rendered it all so much easier. It almost felt like a sharing of bad news. Throughout the night though, alone in the dark with his thoughts, he again rehearsed the events of the last three months and particularly the trial. His one thought now remains for her: how can they possibly justify hanging her? He has always believed that no one innocent can be found guilty, let alone sentenced to death; and surely the absence of poison and glass from Thompson’s body constitutes conclusive proof of Edith’s innocence. He has repeatedly explained this to Major Blake, who seems to believe him despite not sharing his conviction about the woman’s essentially decent and moral character. Like her, Freddy is now wondering about ‘it’ and probably discusses it with the warders; two more ‘real’ nights to go, and then the last one of all. Will death be like sleeping, and why does it happen early in the morning?
Over in Manor Park where Freddy grew up, the Graydons are poring over the Home Office’s letter, horrified by the yawning gap between the official jargon and the stark ineluctable reality which it barely acknowledges. Mrs Bywaters is prostrate. Even now she cannot accept that ‘these people’ will destroy her son in cold blood. May not the King himself intervene? Across the table from the mother, Florrie is writing a reply to Mrs Thompson’s letter of 4 January:
Florence (‘Florrie’) May Bywaters, 1925 © René Weis
11 Westow St.
Upper Norwood
Jan. 6th 1923
Dear Mrs Thompson,
I received your letter this morning and read it out to Mick when I saw him. Oh God what can I say to you now? Words are such poor things. Mother is nearly mad today. I wonder if she will pull through?
But I dare say you are anxious to hear what Mick had to say. First of all re: the monkey. He says for you to keep that – but that he would like Frankie (my little brother) to have the watch. So you could perhaps have it sent on. He told me to tell you he understands the message and it is reciprocated. Also he sent his love and says to try and bear up. He has written to you but the letter was sent to the ‘Home Office- – so I doubt whether you will get it now. Of course Mick poor devil – didn’t know [about the Home Secretary’s decision] when I saw him. Even then he didn’t seem much concerned over himself – his one thought was for you. Oh what a great heart he must have. But then you must of course know that as well as I.
I’ll be ever so glad if you would drop me a few lines – so that I could let him have any message – will you? I can’t say any more now – my heart is too full. With our kind thoughts and wishes.
Sincerely yours,
FLORRIE BYWATERS
In the meantime prisoner 9640/Thompson is sitting up in bed. The deathwatch record that she suffers from a bad headache, caused by the after-effect of the heavy sedation and the shock to her system of the failure of her appeal. Her solicitor has called to see her, to speak her whatever comfort he can. She enquires whether in this extremity she may write to Bywaters without the letter being seen by the governor, and is informed that it is not possible. She therefore declines to send him a letter. Already she has decided that Canon Palmer, if anyone, must help her. She sinks back into her bed, only vaguely aware of the time and the mild flickers of sunlight breaking fitfully through her cell windows. At about twelve noon she becomes brighter and takes ‘2 pieces of bread & butter, cheese, tomato & tea and smokes 2 cigarettes.’ Her parents, brother, and sister are visiting early today, she has been told. They are nearly desperate to see her. This time their meeting is one of unutterable pain.
The prisoner looks haggard and tired, notwithstanding the eerie and deceptive shine in her eyes. She dully replies to their questions in monosyllables, but visibly derives some comfort from the knowledge that Canon Palmer is scheduled to see her. He is already on the premises of the prison. Earlier that morning he rang in to Holloway and spoke to the governor. He was granted the necessary permission and Dr Morton suggested that 2 p.m. might be a suitable time, since the relatives did not normally arrive until the appointed time of 2.30. On arrival at 2.10 Canon Palmer calls at the governor’s house. He is then led into the prison by Morton himself, who is told that the Graydons have arrived early and are at this moment visiting. The prison governor and the canon therefore adjourn to the former’s office for an informal chat, till such time as the prisoner is alone. On what follows the governor’s report is remarkably detailed as well as curiously elusive. In view of its documentary importance, it seems right to reproduce it here from the moment that he and Canon Palmer go to his office:
I therefore spoke to Canon Palmer for some time in my office; no mention was made by him as to what religious denomination he was and I concluded he was C. of E.
Before leaving my office to see Thompson Canon Palmer said: ‘I suppose I could see you again after I see Mrs Thompson as I may want to have a talk with you.’
About half an hour after Canon Palmer was brought to my office. He informed me that the prisoner wished to have his ministrations he proceeded to tell me how difficult it would be owing to all his engagements but that he would cancel everything & spend the whole of Monday with her except ½ hour which he would want for ‘his office’.
I informed Canon Palmer that it would be necessary for me to speak to the Chaplain on the matter & having had his comments I would then have to present the facts to the Prison Commissioners. I promised to telephone if permission was given or not.
The Chaplain was not at home & I therefore visited the prisoner and asked if she had any remarks to make to me in connection with Canon Palmer’s visit. She replied, ‘Oh yes I want him to attend to me’ or words to this effect.
I then rang up the Commissioners & spoke to the Secretary Mr Wall, who raised the point what religion Canon Palmer was & informed me that he knew there was a Canon Palmer of Ilford who was a R.C. priest. Mr Wall instructed me to find out the Chaplain or R.C. priests’ views in the matter as the case might be & if they objected Canon Palmer could not visit. I first saw the Chaplain. He was unable to trace Canon Palmer’s name in the Clergy List as a member of the C. of E. I asked the prisoner if Canon Palmer was a C. of E. priest to which she replied ‘As far as I know he is.’
I consulted the R. C. priest who informed me that he knew Canon Palmer was a very prominent R. C. priest in Ilford. The description of his appearance agreed with that of the priest who visited during the afternoon.
The Chaplain then saw Thompson and asked if she did want to become a Roman Catholic to which she replied she did not.
In view of the fact that the Chaplain and R. C. priest both objected to Canon Palmer visiting in any professional capacity I telephoned to him this morning [7, not 6th as stated at the heading of the letter] & informed him I could not allow him to see the convict Thompson again. He asked had the woman refused to see him or why I would not admit him, in reply I informed him I could give no reason on the telephone & referred him to the Home Office which he said he would visit to-morrow (Monday). I would like also to state that the matter crossed my mind more than once in talking to Canon Palmer of (what religion is he) and although he used several terms which are very common with R. C. priests I knew that these term are also common with High Church Priests of the C. of England. I regret having omitted to state what took place during the visit of Canon Palmer.
I am informed that the great part of the conversation was in a frivolous vein but that Canon Palmer said words to this effect: Miss Burton had something very particular to say but she could not say it with all these people present. He then went on to say would you like me to see you alone to which the prisoner replied, she would. No mention was made of religion or any suggestion as to what religion he belonged to. I beg to state that in one of Miss Burton’s letters she used the same words viz I have something very particular to say. As a result of this remark I gave special instructions to the Officers to note carefully anything Miss Burton said but nothing of any importance was reported.
The governor was doing his level best while negotiating what could for him be a potential minefield. He clearly suspected that Canon Palmer was a Roman Catholic priest but hoped to be allowed to ignore it. After the dreadful scenes the day before and the prisoner’s fearful night, he was eager not to deprive her of the comforts provided by this charismatic priest. The fact that her conversation with him was mostly ‘in a frivolous vein’, presumably at least in part about her love for Bywaters, suggested that she was unlikely to confess to the murder at this stage. But once Wall and Blackwell knew of Canon Palmer’s visit, as they must, his hands were tied. He might have tried to lean harder on his two chaplains, but their human failings had proved stronger than their humility. The extent to which the governor’s nerve failed him transpires from the slip with the date and the omission from the report of what took place during the Canon’s visit itself. By playing it as safe as he could at this stage, Morton exhibited a certain political wisdom, for Canon Palmer was not a man easily dismayed by pompous and invidious officialdom. The repercussions of his visit would stretch well beyond the 6 January.
For Edith Thompson, Canon Palmer’s visit proves unexpectedly one of the happiest half-hours that she has had since her incarceration. His failure to secure admission to her on Monday will leave her in a state of bewildered indignation at the thought of such petty cruelty. As the winter day draws to its end, Edith is reminded of the awful pace of time and the ever closer approach of her last hour. She is drugged to sleep but finds little peace. It is to be doubted that she is alarmed by the noise of carpenters busily hammering away not far from her cell. They are erecting a wooden screen to prevent Mrs Thompson’s last journey from being overlooked by the curious from nearby houses. It has been nearly twenty years since the last execution of a woman at Holloway. There has been no need for any such provision in the lifetime of any but a few serving in Holloway prison in January 1923.
The afternoon at Pentonville is no less traumatic. Freddy is visited by his mother, his two sisters and cousin. They warmly embrace him, a rare privilege but one granted them almost from the beginning of his arrival in Pentonville. He so vehemently protests the woman’s innocence that for the first time even his mother and sister are perhaps fully convinced of it. Pale and drawn he says:
I don’t care for myself … I lost my temper. He always made her life a hell and he used to say if she ever left him he would make it worse than ever for her. I didn’t know what I was doing. I had no intention of killing him, and I don’t remember what happened. I just went blind and killed him. …
The judge’s summing up was just, if you like, but it was cruel. It never gave me a chance. I did it, though, and I can’t complain. …
I can’t believe that they will hang her as a criminal! … I swear she is completely innocent. She never knew that I was going to meet them that night. If only we could die together now it wouldn’t be so bad, but for her to be hanged as a criminal is too awful. She didn’t commit murder. I did. She never planned it. She never knew about it. She is innocent, innocent, absolutely innocent. I can’t believe that they will hang her.
At this he breaks down and starts to sob. His mother’s heart nearly bursts as she listens to his sobs. There is little that she can do no. He recovers and hands her a message to deliver to Mrs Thompson. ‘Would you like to see Frankie?’ his mother asks, to which Freddy replies: ‘No mother, let him think of me as I was. Bring him up to be a man.’ Before they depart, he once again reminds them of their pledge to do everything possible for Edith Thompson and remarks bitterly: ‘I have not met with justice in this world, but I shall in the next. But I hope I shall die like a gentleman. I have nothing to fear.’
Desperate to comply with Freddy’s express wishes regarding his lover, his cousin, young Miss Simmons, boards a taxi to the offices of the Daily Express. Its editor Beverley Baxter has openly supported the case for a reprieve of at least the woman. Miss Simmons can only tell Baxter what has just happened at Pentonville, but he interprets the manner in which the boy has admitted his guilt as tantamount to a confession. He assures the young woman that the paper will do everything in its power. He at once rings the Home Office and discovers that Bridgeman is at Minsterley. Stern is contacted next. He agrees to go out to the Welsh border even at this late stage and put Edith Thompson’s case to the Home Secretary.
There is no public transport available, so the Daily Express charters a small aeroplane to Shrewsbury from where Stern and a posse of reporters will proceed to the estate. It is late at night when the car, and in it F. A. S. Stern and the Daily Express men, pulls up outside the Home Secretary’s estate. He has already retired to bed, but after the initial consternation he agrees to meet them downstairs. Stern apprises the Home Secretary of the new light Bywaters’s ‘confession’ throws on the case of the woman and, for as long as he can, pleads with the only man in the world who can save Edith Thompson’s life now. Bridgeman listens and appears sympathetic. But in the end he regrets that he cannot interfere with the course of the law and that his decision is final. Then for the second time that night he goes to bed, while the party from London listlessly returns home, conscious of the burden of failure.
On this dreary evening an eighty-two-year-old novelist and poet writes a pitiless lyric about the young woman from Manor Park. Since the age of sixteen, when he closely watched the public hanging of Elizabeth Martha Brown at Dorchester for killing her husband in a fit of jealousy, the poet has harboured a keen and undisguisedly erotic interest in the hanging of women. At the time, as he recollects now, he noticed: ‘what a fine figure she showed against the sky as she hung in the misty rain, and how the tight black silk gown set off her shape as she wheeled half round and back’. Thirty-five years later Hardy would create in Tess of the d’Urbervilles one of the most vulnerable and attractive heroines of English fiction whose fate it is to be hanged. Edith Thompson is a real-life Tess for Hardy. He has read her correspondence and has been impressed by her looks. As soon as he hears that she will hang, he sits down and produces the following poem:
‘On the Portrait of a Woman about to be Hanged’
Comely and capable one of our race,
Posing there in your gown of grace,
Plain, yet becoming;
Could subtlest breast
Ever have guessed
What was behind that innocent face,
Drumming, drumming!
Would that your Causer, ere knoll your knell
For this riot of passion, might deign to tell
Why, since It made you,
Sound in the germ,
It sent a worm
To madden Its handiwork, when It might well
Not have assayed you.
Not have implanted, to your deep rue,
The Clytaemnestra spirit in you,
And with purblind vision
Sowed a tare
In a field so fair,
And a thing of symmetry, seemly to view,
Brought to derision!
For all Hardy cares, the woman and her family who at that moment are breathing with the icy grip of death tightening about their hearts might not exist in the flesh at all. T. S. Eliot, the recently published author of The Waste Land, also feels a need to participate in the debate about the Ilford murder. He has recently explained that his Rothermere-funded venture Criterion embodies pure Toryism as opposed to ‘suburban democracy’. Here is an opportunity now to repay the Daily Mail proprietors for past favours by a stern public tribute, encompassing both the Italian Fascists and ‘Thompson and Bywaters’. So Eliot writes the following letter which will appear in the Daily Mail on Monday 8 January:
Sir, –
It is so remarkable to find oneself in agreement with the policy of any newspaper on more than one point that I am writing to express my cordial approval of your attitude on nearly every public question of present importance. Nothing could be more salutary at the present time than the remarkable series of articles which you have been publishing on Fascismo; these alone constitute a public service of the greatest value and would by themselves have impelled me to write to thank you. On the Ilford murder your attitude has been in striking contrast with the flaccid sentimentality of other papers I have seen, which have been so impudent as to affirm that they represent the great majority of the English people …
T. S. Eliot
Clarence Gate-gardens, N.W.1
Still on Saturday night, at 46 Gordon Square, Eliot’s friends the Woolfs are gathering for a party with Sickert, Roger Fry and other Bloomsbury notables. The party will last till the early hours of the morning. Back at No. 50 after 3 a.m., Virginia Woolf vainly tries to sleep :
People seemed to be walking. Then a woman cried, as if in anguish, in the street, and I thought of Mrs Thompson waiting to be executed. I turned about. Footsteps sounded. A door opened. I heard voices … nothing was wrong. The shriek was Mary’s.
Woolf had reason to know of Mrs Thompson, as Roger Fry’s sister Margery was scheduled to spend some time with the prisoner on Sunday in her capacity as a visiting magistrate. The matter may have been raised at the party from which Margery was conspicuously absent. In January 1923 she was living with Roger at Dalmeny Avenue, literally next door to Holloway Prison. She called on Edith Thompson to help her pass the hours that carried her closer to Tuesday morning, as well as offering to convey any last messages that the prisoner might have. She met the condemned woman on Saturday 7 January. The experience and its aftermath turned her into a committed abolitionist. Many years later, in giving evidence to the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment in 1950, Margery Fry would testify about this particular execution. Edith struck her ‘as a rather foolish girl who had romanticised her sordid little love affair and genuinely thought herself innocent, discounting her own influence on her lover’. Above all, Fry was taken aback by the ordinariness of the woman from Ilford. While she was visiting, another Samaritan appeared in the person of a woman offering to sing negro spirituals to the prisoners, and to Mrs Thompson in particular. The singing, which took place in the chapel, deeply moved Fry who invited the itinerant singer and her husband to accompany her home to have tea with Roger and herself.
On Sunday 7 January Mrs Bywaters is writing a last letter to Edith Thompson from Freddy, on his specific instruction, since he is forbidden to write to her himself. In her own words,
It was a difficult task, but it was almost the last request of my boy, and I agreed. No one knows with what blinding tears and agony of heart I sat down to pen that missive, surely one of the most dramatic messages ever written. Hard though it was, I determined to fulfil my promise to my boy to the very letter, and he gave me a message to convey to Edith Thompson.
Fred had made applications to see her or to send her a letter, and when these failed he asked me to tell her what was in his heart. I have not kept a copy of the letter, but I know that I addressed her as ‘My dear Edie’, and that after telling her that I was convinced that she was innocent of murder and that her letters were melodrama and not fact, I offered her a few words of comfort such as I would have addressed to my own daughter. Then I gave her my son’s last message. It was
‘Tell Edie that I still love her and that my love will last through eternity. I believe that we shall meet again, for all things will be understood, and our love will triumph in the end.’
Fred had also asked me to tell her how much he wished that he could be with her when the last moments came so that he could sustain her, and there was a sentence or two which is too sacred ever to be revealed.
I assured Edith Thompson that even in my grief I forgave her and had no feeling of hatred or malice.
It was a struggle as to how I could finish off the letter which cost me so much to write, but at last I signed it ‘With kindest thoughts from your darlingest boy’s mother.’
(Mrs Bywaters in Thomson’s Weekly News 27 January 1923)
Asked about its content Mrs Bywaters replies: ‘It is far too sacred and intimate for me to state its contents.’ The Bishop of Stepney is visiting Bywaters today. His mission – perhaps with the tacit collusion of the prison governors, neither of whom mentions the bishop as visiting, presumably because he is deemed to be wholly bona fide – is one of Christian charity. But also, and above all, he offers to relay a last message from him to her; and, if he visited her earlier in the day, he would also have taken her message to him. In the end not even the parents of either prisoner will learn the exact substance of these secret messages, the conveying of which is furthermore exempted from the otherwise mandatory presence of prison staff during visits.
Edith’s penultimate day on earth has started with the by now customary bad headache, as the morphia wears off. Also, since Friday afternoon her bowels have not moved. During his morning visit therefore, the governor administers a laxative which leads to the desired result. She is only mildly sedated during the rest of the day and again protests her innocence, this time to the smart, well-spoken and kindly middle-aged lady who speaks to her with such unchallengeable authority. She asks that Fry bear a message of love to Bywaters and refuses even to consider that there was anything improper about this adulterous relationship. As the light fades Edith is getting increasingly restless and panic-struck. To pre-empt a renewed bout of hysteria, Morton injects her with 1/6 grain of morphia which plunges her into a deep sleep, as though she were resting in the precariously reassuring knowledge that this night is yet to be followed by a morning and a day.
Monday 8 January: A mild and grey drizzle is falling over the metropolis. On the glistening pavements and at the mouths of the city’s some thousand Tube and railway entrances, paper boys are shouting the news of the latest developments in the ‘Thompson & Bywaters’ case, particularly the failure of the nocturnal visit to Shropshire. During the governor’s morning visit Edith Thompson puts on a brave show. She feels better for her night’s rest and is cheered by the news of the impending visit of the Bishop of Stepney. Eager to keep her spirits up, Morton tells her that her family’s visit will be three times as long as previous calls. She thanks him but is baffled and hurt when she learns that Canon Palmer has been refused another visit. She hoped to have him with her at the end: he was so kind, understanding and strong. At this very moment he is in Whitehall, trying hard but in vain to get the Prison Commissioners’ decision overturned.
The Bishop of Stepney is announced. He brings the all-important message from Freddy. He will be thinking of her and she will remember him in those dreaded moments before death. Shortly they will be reunited. Before taking his last leave the Bishop asks whether she has anything to confess, to which she replies: ‘I am prepared. I have nothing on my soul.’ In the time which remains between his departure and the family’s visit, Edith, though nearly prostrate, picks up a pen for the last time and begins to write to her mother and father. All that the parents will reveal about its contents was that it did not contain a confession. Exhausted she tries to compose herself for this last and infinitely precious visit. To ensure that the visit passes without ‘incident’, the governor administers a heavy dose of sedation.
Numb with sorrow, the Graydons embark on this penultimate journey to Holloway. They are repeatedly recognized on public transport and are stalked by the press, although today even the papers keep an almost respectfully low profile. Lillie Laxton is anxiously pacing outside the prison gates waiting to intercept the family to be allowed in with them, once more to see her niece. Her brother-in-law tells her that she is welcome to join them, as her name appears on the list of authorised visitors, and since the rules for the day are unchanged. This time Edith is not sitting ready at the table. Two wardresses are just then helping her to rise painfully from her bed, put on her stockings and wrap a dressing gown about her. All pretence of courage and cheer has vanished. The family gaze at the pale and ravaged woman who needs to be supported as she moves slowly towards them. The governor has told them of her general ‘cheerfulnes’ and well being. If only for a fraction of a second he could look at the young woman with the eyes of her mother now. Edith barely murmurs a faint ‘hullo’.
There is no need for more. Her appearance speaks and pleads to them with the now muted passion which once beat in those long love letters to Freddy Bywaters. There is a wardress on either side of her and, facing her, are two other attendants keenly watching. This time Lillie, Avis, Newenham and the parents are wholly oblivious of the guards and try their utmost to soothe the young woman’s fears, which, they sense, lurk just beneath the surface of the temporarily dulled exterior. At first she merely stares at them and replies with nods of ‘yes’ and ‘no’. She then relates to them haltingly the visit by the Bishop of Stepney and complains that Canon Palmer is not allowed to attend to her. But mostly she remains apathetic, and it is only after repeated genialities by her brother that a flicker of light and curiosity returns into her cloudy eyes. Even as Newenham is talking, the governor’s messenger delivers the note which Mr Graydon had been passed on his way into the prison. Morton had desired to read it but lacked time to check it out. He promptly forwarded it to the prisoner’s cell, where Newenham reads it out slowly and deliberately:
Graydon, 231, Shakespeare-crescent
Manor Park, E
I have sent telegram to the Home Secretary and the king for pardon for your daughter. Good news Coming.
Bethell, Coldbath-street, Lewisham
The small party crowded into the hospital cell at Holloway at once and naturally assume that Bethell means Lord Bethell, the Member of Parliament for the Romford Division of Essex which used to include Ilford. Such a promise from such a place can only be good news. The tragic scene in the prison is momentarily flooded with the light of hope. Everyone is exhilarated by the news and there is even laughter. The guards warmly share in the relief prompted by the telegram. Edith alone fails fully to realise the potential importance of this latest development. After their initial flurry of excitement the family become wary again. Their time is nearly up. Mr Graydon is almost overcome as he asks whether they can all embrace and kiss her. This time the guard nods emphatically.
Edith rises to meet her father and confusedly murmurs that he should take her home. Holding her in his arms, he speaks his last words to her ever. They spell out his faith in the ‘Bethell’ message and his knowledge of her sealed fate: ‘Well now, don’t worry about it, you’ll be home with us tomorrow night.’ He yields his place to Ethel, followed by Avis, Newenham, and Lillie, who bravely takes her leave with ‘See you again tomorrow at half-past two, Edie’. At this the prisoner smiles wanly and, as avidly as her drugged state allows, drinks in the final image of the people she has loved most all her life. After the door has at last closed on them, she remains silent and curiously pensive for a long time. Never again, ever will she see those faces, hear those voices, look at her adored mother.
It is dark outside. The governor is still waiting for an opportune moment to pass on to the prisoner a very last message from the Home Secretary as well as arranging for her transfer to the death cell proper. Whether she realises the significance of the change-over is impossible to establish. Probably an excuse of some sort is given for moving her thus in the dark, carefully shielded from the ramshackle screen erected over the weekend. Once in the new cell Edith notices that there are two doors into it. Then Morton reads her the Home Secretary’s final communication stating that ‘after full consideration of all the representations made to him, he regretted that he found no grounds for departing from his decision’. For a moment she is dazed. Then she starts to scream.
The prostrate family return to Manor Park on public transport. Lillie parts from them at Holloway. Back in the Crescent, where Ethel Vernon White has been helping the family out for over three months now, Mr Graydon puts his hat and coat on the hall stand. Then they sit down and silently have the tea provided by Ethel. She tells them how the telegram was delivered at ten past eleven in the morning, shortly after they had all gone. Mr Warren called at that moment and immediately opened the telegram in case it contained an important new development. No sooner has he read it than he set off in a taxi to Holloway where he arrives at 12.30 p.m. and waited for the Graydons. But already, even as Ethel is talking, it is clear that the message was a cruel hoax. In a little over twelve hours therefore their daughter and sister will die on the scaffold of Holloway prison as a convicted murderess. The vigil has begun.
A mere couple of yards away to the east of Freddy Bywaters’s death cell lies Dr Crippen with Ethel le Neve’s letters buried with him. Like Crippen, Casement occupied the cell in which Bywaters is spending his last night. When Casement’s cousin Gertrude Bannister visited him here on 27 July 1916, they had cried together, and he had begged her not to let him lie ‘in this dreadful place”, but to take his body back with her to the old churchyard in Murlough Bay. Forty-eight years later it would finally come to rest in Glasnevin, far from the walls of Pentonville.
While waiting for the afternoon visit Freddy writes a number of last letters, one to a close friend or relative:
8th January, 1923
My Dearest –
I want you now that you know Edith to always to love and cherish her memory as a brave-hearted, noble, and loyal woman. Dear, I think, and I know, that you can understand what she has suffered. Don’t pity her but love her. You are right, dear, we will soon be together, and what was not be on this sordid planet, the land of cowards and curs, will be in another world. As you go into the – restaurant [the Holborn restaurant] on your left is a staircase leading to the balcony (there Bywaters gives a rough sketch of the interior) you will then see a table in about the position I have marked with a cross in this crude diagram. Go there sometimes, you dear girl. I know how you have tried to help me. Thank you, you darling pal. I hope that your life will be one continual round of happiness. You have known misery and sorrow, therefore you can appreciate happiness. You deserve the best, dear, and I think you will get it; anyway, I do hope and trust that you will. Good-bye, my dearest – . Give my love to all at home, and write to – for me, please. Give her my fondest love. Good-bye, dearest.
Freddy
At 2.30 p.m. Mrs Bywaters begins her visit, accompanied by Freddy’s two sisters and Florrie’s fiancé, as well as Mrs Simmons and her daughter. No one can blame his mother for comparing him in a moment of tearful collapse to one of the early Christian martyrs. He is so young and yet so old as he faces them all with extraordinary calm, solicitous only for his mother’s welfare: ‘I’m all right but you, you mustn’t worry. You’ve done everything possible for me, and now just do everything you can to keep yourself cheerful.’ She is weeping, like her companions, and the warders can barely control themselves when they see him display such constancy. Then he anxiously enquires whether his mother has written to Edith Thompson as he asked her to. She has and he is greatly relieved. Again and again he protests her innocence and reiterates his own version or the events of 3 October. He is thinking of tomorrow and of her: ‘Why can’t I be with her?’, he asks his mother:
Poor girl, it must be terrible for her. If only I could be with her at the very end I feel sure it would help her ever so much. – You must never think badly of her, mum. I want you to do this for me – will you promise? Always think of her as your daughter – a very good daughter, and don’t believe the evil things you have seen and heard.
The mother promises. The visit passes all too quickly. They speak of his schooldays and early years in Manor Park, and of his father. Then he mentions Frankie and suggests that his mother buy him a copy of Tom Brown’s Schooldays:
Let him read it all, mum, but don’t let him miss that part where the Squire tells Tom not to say or do things he wouldn’t like his sisters to know about. I want him to learn that off by heart and never to forget it.
The particular passage in question occurs when the squire sees Tom off and advises him to ‘keep a brave and kind heart, and never listen to or say anything you wouldn’t have your mother and sister hear, and you’ll never feel ashamed to come home, or we to see you’. As the family are about to tear themselves away and kiss him goodbye, he looks intently at his mother and quietly says: ‘Give my love to Edie’. He knows that this final message cannot be delivered but hope perhaps that it will find its way into the papers, where the Graydons and Avis can read it. He wants them to know how he has kept faith with Edith to the end.
It is 4.30 p.m. by the time a distraught Mrs Bywaters leaves the prison gates, where a taxi-cab is waiting and swiftly carries her off to Hammersmith to stay with relatives. Tomorrow she will leave for the country. Tonight she desires to stay up in London to be physically closer to the boy till it is all over. Now that they are gone, he is alone with the hour of death. The warders around him find it harder than usual to engross him in draughts or football. As the night shift comes on, the men of the day shake hands with Bywaters. Already his steadfastness has become a legend, as his huge mailbag certifies.
The governor is foremost among those who tonight cannot close their eyes to the horror it is their duty to perform the next morning. In four years from now he will confide in his memoirs that he considered capital punishment to be ‘morally and inherently wrong.’ (below) His account of the night of 8 January 1923 at Pentonville remains a stirring document. Notwithstanding two minor slips, it is remarkably accurate:
Major Wallace Blake, governor of Pentonville in 1922-3
Bywaters looked to me such a fine upstanding lad, with bright blue eyes and fair hair – a typical English boy. And his manner was exactly what you would expect, quiet, respectful, and thankful for any little kindness. His eyes showed that he had suffered much more than one usually does at that age. I thought, ‘What a strange thing: this boy, if he had not done that mad action for the sake of a woman, would, I feel certain, have turned out a good citizen.’ He was not a murderer at heart; it was due to the terrible emotion that possessed him at that time. I liked the boy.
The night before he was to have been hanged, I called him into my room. I could not bear the idea of that boy being all alone with his thoughts, which were enough to drive him mad. He was an only [sic] son; and he must have been thinking of his mother and the woman, the two beings he loved more than anything in the world, whom he was so soon to leave. He must have wondered why his life should be cut short. What had he done? Why had he done this terrible thing?
When he came to my room, he thanked me in a shy way for being so kind to him. I saw he was relieved to have even a short time with me, away from his thoughts. He said, ‘I thank you, sir.’ He sat down, and I started speaking to him about his travels, and then he told me how beautiful were the colours of the Aurora Borealis, and the wonderful sunsets, and about the strange lands he had visited. He was visualising and telling me of some of these beautiful places, and the many journeys he had made to them, when he seemed to notice my expression, because at that moment I was thinking of the last journey he was to take, at 8 o’clock [sic] the next morning.
I looked at this lad, and I thought, Is it necessary to take his life? He looked up at me and said, ‘Do you think they will hurt her? I am always thinking of it, sir. I wish to God I had never done what I did, I must have been mad; but I loved her so much. Please see they do not hurt her. It was my fault; she is innocent. Everyone should have been able to see that. She never did anything – it was me.’ I said, ‘All right, my boy, we will try in every way to save her as much pain as possible.’
I had been suffering with neuritis in the night, and was rather late in visiting him next morning, but he looked at me with gratitude in his eyes and thanked me. The question that was on his tongue, about Mrs Thompson, he did not ask. But his thoughts were of the woman he loved, and his heart went out to her.
They hanged Mrs Thompson. Her end was terrible. She had been moaning for days, and often the words, ‘Why did he do it? Why did he do it?’ came from her lips. In the last few days of her life, her hair was going grey, and her suffering had been so great, that she had had a complete collapse. They carried her to the scaffold and had to hold her while they fixed the cap round her head; she was moaning all the time. They hanged a practically unconscious woman.1Violet Van Der Elst, On the Gallows (1937).
While Freddy is talking to the governor in the late hours of Monday night, Edith Thompson is disintegrating at Holloway. In her terror she alternately cherishes the moments of lucidity that remain to her as they are the last ones in her life; and then again she lets herself sink into the morphia-induced stupor, hoping against hope never again to wake from it. Dimly though she knows that they will wake her to kill her. Morton and Dr Walker carefully monitor her state of mind as she slowly surfaces from the first period of sedation. She fearfully casts her eyes around and asks what time it is. She is offered dinner but cannot take it. She starts to cry and pleads with them not to put her to death. Then, for the last time, she rallies all her strength to fight them off and to break out. The governor again injects her with morphia. The antiseptic smell of the injection calms her momentarily, and she motions to the governor and begs him to ensure that her fur coat and the letters she has received be handed over to her mother. He promises to forward her application to the Prison Commission and assures here there will be no problem. She is in such turmoil that the drug fails to work for two hours, as she struggles for consciousness. At 11 p.m. her spirit begins to break and she closes her eyes. At midnight she is asleep. At 3.5 a.m. she is awake and crying out deliriously for ‘Freddy’. Again and again his name escapes her lips, as she fights the oppressive pull of unconscious darkness which so shortly she is to inhabit. She calls for her parents, but Bywaters is foremost in her tortured mind. Shortly after 4 a.m. she has again subsided into sleep. At 5.15 a.m. she is wide awake. She is vaguely conscious of a dreadful irony about her use now of the lavatory. The sheer enduring normality of her body’s natural rhythms seems almost peculiar at such a time as this. She is calmer now and is given a mug of tea which she drinks. She also smokes a cigarette. Morton and Walker have been taking it in turns to look after her, and Walker is present when the nightshift leaves at 6.30 a.m.
The women come away in a state of acute distress, mindful of witnessing what no one ought to have imposed upon them. Edith is sitting up on her couch. She is crying again, like her poor mother over in Manor Park. The two new wardresses attending on her now are talking at her, gently and soothingly. One of them eventually assists her in dressing. She will be wearing her silk slip and underclothes. Over them she will be dressed in the mourning costume that her mother lent her for the trial. Her hair is tied up at the back of her head. As they pull her dress over her, the two women feel how her body is trembling. She is served a piece of buttered toast and an apple, but barely nibbles at them.
Glanvill Murray has entered. She dislikes him. He furtively proceeds to arrange her cell into a chapelle ardente with flowers, candles and a crucifix. He is now entirely convinced of her innocence and probably tells her so. He is a kind and intelligent man, and bitterly regrets his earlier obstructing Canon Palmer’s ministrations to this cruelly reduced shadow of a young woman. He speaks to her of God’s mercy and everlasting light and bliss. She continues crying and asks for a cigarette which is granted.
Outside the sounds of dawn herald the 9 January. The persistent drizzle throughout the night does not deter the crowd from forming at the break of day. It consists predominantly of women, some of them carrying umbrellas, others merely in hats and raincoats facing the forbidding red and grey structure of Holloway. A forlorn middle-aged woman has sandwiched herself into a sign saying ‘Murder cannot be abolished by murder; and also on the reverse side, ‘If these two are hanged Judge & Jury are Murderers also.’ The same spectacle is simultaneously enacted over in Pentonville. There the thronging crowd is already congesting the Caledonian Road and mounted police are on duty to clear it should there be a riot.
It is nearly 8 a.m. when prison officers Young and Wood arrive at Holloway from Pentonville. The have been deputed to assist with the hanging of the woman, as the Prison Commission deems this task to be incompatible with the natural inclinations of the fairer sex. Once on the premises and outside the death cell William H. Young decides to take a peep at the famous murderess through the spy hole in the main door. He sees her sitting on the bed, weeping, while a wardress comforts her. His instructions are to use this spy hole shortly before 9 a.m., as it will show him the executioner entering from the door opposite, which is his cue to enter the cell.
At 8.15 a.m. Morton calls on Edith Thompson and injects her with 1/32 grain of strychnine. She has just finished another cigarette. He also offers her a large measure of brandy. He is only away for a mere fifteen minutes, when the watch tells him that she is still very bad. At 8.40 Morton re-enters the death cell. The being who confronts him is hardly recognisable as her former self. He gives her 1/100 grain of scopolamine-morphine (twilight sleep) and 1/100g grain of morphia. Very shortly after this she becomes dazed and subsides into silence. She is now barely conscious. The hands of the clock point to 8.59 a.m. Ellis and one of his assistants enter hastily with the straps, while Young charges in through the main door. Edith moans and makes as if to say something on seeing Ellis. In Dora Walker’s words when asked in 1956 ‘Did Mrs Thompson struggle, shout or scream?, Edith Thompson ‘hung back and grunted as an animal going to be killed. It could not be described as a human shout or scream.’ Then she feels Young’s arms round her waist, lifting her up while saying ‘Come on mate – it’ll soon be over.’ Within seconds Ellis has pinioned her hands behind her back, while the assistant ties her skirt and then her ankles. Young is holding her and feels her breathing, as her head collapses on his shoulder. The chaplain stands by, appalled. He experiences an almost irresistible impulse to act: ‘When we were all gathered together it seemed utterly impossible to believe what we were there to do. My God, the impulse to rush in and save her by force was almost too strong for me.’ Instead he reads the burial service as the groaning form of the woman, now a mere tied bundle of as yet breathing human flesh, is carried out into the open and into the brick shed. She stars to moan when the cold air and drizzle touch her face. Ellis raises her head to pull the white cap over it. She is still being held by Young, when he fastens the noose under her chin and left ear. For a fraction of a second the hooded figure on the drop is unsupported and collapses even as the hangman jumps back and kicks the lever. She falls six feet and ten inches. The thud of the trap and the sudden sharp tightening of the rope is followed by an undulatory swaying motion. No fewer than six men and two women have crowded into the shed. Except perhaps for the assistant hangman the others are visibly shaken. They are the governor and his deputy Miss Cronin, as well as the chaplain, Shrimpton, the clerk of works, Dr Walker, and Young and Wood. Ellis appeared deeply affected. According to Dr Walker, ‘The executioner was most upset and completely broken down. He came out shouting ‘O Christ, oh Christ.’ Ellis does not believe in hanging women, and this particular woman, he suspects, is innocent. Looking down into the yawning gap in their midst at the figure suspended in the pit, Morton derives some comfort from the knowledge that at last it’s all over. Dr Walker and he now have to descend into the pit to check the woman’s heartbeat. Then she will be winched up for the coroner and the post mortem.
Over in Pentonville Freddy Bywaters has entered eternal sleep. After talking to the governor he retired and tried to rest. But even his great fortitude could not dispel the horror of the morning. So he sat up and once more he and the warders spoke of travels in the Far East, played draughts and discussed Mrs Thompson. He repeated to them what he had been pleading to the world, that he alone ought to die in the morning. He smoked heavily and eventually felt ready to lie down, but not for long. At 6 a.m. he decided that it was useless and dressed in the navy blue suit which he wore at his arrest. He pressed the creases in his trousers as he had always done, and polished his patent leather shoes, all the time chatting with the watch. They recorded that the only outward sign of agitation on the boy was a strained and anxious impression in his eyes. For breakfast he had boiled fish, bread, butter and tea. Then he attended the service in the prison chapel where he received Holy Communion. His next half hour was spent in the yard between the condemned cell, the prison cemetery and the hospital. His open grave was barely screened from his view. He curiously watched the wet dawn of a London January day rise, and dimly took in the chill in the air. He would die like a gentleman and his mates on the Morea would read of his courage.
He returned to the condemned cell and attended to the chaplain’s words. At 9 a.m. Willis entered, shook hands with him, and pinioned his arms. The governor was present too and accompanied the hurried procession to the drop. Bywaters almost ran towards it. Unlike Edith he took it all in, particularly the white cap which cut out his sight and the noose which tightly fastened under his chin and hurt his breathing. He heard the executioner step aside and felt himself fall the first inches of the seven feet four-inch drop.
Four years after the executions at Holloway and Pentonville, in a book called Quod, Reminiscences of a Prison Governor (1927), Major Blake came out strongly against capital punishment:
Unfortunately, however, as humanity is constituted today, gaolers are necessary, and I am of the opinion that the more fitted a man is for his position the more he dislikes that part of his job which has to do with an execution. And if a prison Governor is not a man of broad views, tolerance towards his fellows and a strong sense of humanity, then he is a mere automaton whose strings of red tape are pulled by the authors of the Standing Orders. For the life of me I cannot see that we are doing a man any good by hanging him. Certainly we are preventing him from committing any more murders; a hundred years ago we used to hang people for stealing. But just as that prevented the actual victims of the law from committing any more thefts, but did not stop other thieves from doing so, I do not think that hanging a murderer is a preventative of homicide, When I was in the United Sates, since thirty-give years ago, the percentage of murders in the State of Michigan, where capital punishment had been abolished, was very considerably less than was the case in those other states where the death penalty was in force. But whether capital punishment is a preventative or not, I believe it to be morally and inherently wrong. In voicing this view a little time ago to a well-known London magistrate who is a far cleverer man than myself, he disagreed with me in toto. The chief plank in his platform of argument was: ‘Supposing a man murdered your wife or your child, would you not want to kill him?’ To me the very fact that I should be desirous of doing so is in itself the most convincing answer to my friend’s contention, I should want to kill the murderer of someone dear to me because I should be seeing red, and, above all things, the law must not see red. On the contrary, it should exercise all its powers to nullify that feeling in those over whom it has jurisdiction, for it is no part of the law to exact reprisals. Where in such a case I should desire nothing so much as revenge it should be the function of the law, unbiased by personal feeling to step in as arbitrator to award a fitting punishment which should be tinged with no element of vengeance. All legal punishment should be inspired by a whole-hearted endeavour to reform the criminal. And you cannot possibly reform a man by hanging him.
The night of 8-9 January at 231 Shakespeare Crescent consisted mostly of Mr Graydon, his two children and Ethel Vernon White attending to Mrs Graydon, who since early evening was in a state of collapse. The grief-stricken family rallied round the mother whose wailing and weeping resounded in the house. Mr Bristow from next door came in during the course of the night through the connecting gate at the back of their houses and brought them a bottle of whisky. He had noticed that the house was in almost complete darkness and therefore popped his head through the window: ‘you must have a drink’, he said. Throughout these dreadful and endless hours the mother prayed in vain to be allowed to be with her little girl. In moments of delirium the family re-experienced a world of childhood and adolescence in the Crescent, when Edith would look after her sister and little brothers. The mother surrendered to momentary spells of unconsciousness, while the father held her hands and wiped her face. At 9 a.m. the family imagined the bell tolling the executions of their two loved ones – for their affection for Bywaters had turned into love and respect over the past three months. No newspaper boy entered the Crescent on their side this morning. They had been ordered to keep out so as not to disturb the grief at No. 231.
Ponderously the family set out for the last time to Holloway. They pass through the Caledonian Road and glance at the huge crowd gathered outside Pentonville, where at that very moment Bywaters is still hanging from the gallows. Edith in the meantime has been stripped and washed by the governor and Dr Walker, assisted by a couple of nurses.
When he descended into the pit at 9 a.m., Morton knew what to expect: the beating of the heart for possibly as long as half an hour after the plunge, and the noisome smell of urine and faeces released from the body at the moment of the fracture of the odontoid process. But within hours of Edith Thompson’s death, rumours about the manner of it are spreading. By the evening of 9 January one rumour in particular is circulating, namely that ‘her insides fell out’. As it happens, she had put on over a stone in the period from 11 December 1922 to 9 January, in conditions of extreme mental stress and sparse eating – lending disturbing support to the hypothesis that she may have been pregnant.
In accordance with the letter of the law, the prisoner will have to hang for another hour. At 10 a.m. she is brought up and taken to the mortuary. Looking at the body of the woman on the slab, Morton notes that her neck is severely bruised from the rope. He at once sends her slip and underwear to be cleaned as her family will be seeing her in it. As regards the dress, it is spoiled and will be burnt. It is this which will cause a few raised eyebrows, as well as considerable frustration to her mother. The woman is washed and re-dressed in her hastily cleaned underwear. They close her eyes and put her hair in a chaste coif. Then they lower her into the prison’s standard elm coffin, where she is framed by the customary white frills. Her neck is covered in white silk. They fold her hands and put a sheaf of white lilies in them. At her feet they lay a bright cross of holly whose red berries are set off by more lilies at her legs. In his post-mortem report Morton fails to fill in any details whatever of the ‘Internal Examination’, even though the predicated specifications for this take up the bulk of the form. This omission is so striking we may assume he had good reason to be reticent on this point.
The Graydons have arrived. The mother looks very pale and composed. The father is repeatedly overwhelmed by grief, while Avis is comforted by a friend, perhaps Ida Burton. They are kept waiting for a long time, while the inquest report is drafted, and the coroner completes his preliminaries. Then the body is moved to the front of the building, as far as possible from the scaffold. The coroner is Dr F. J. Waldo. Twenty years before he presided over the inquest of Annie Walters and Amelia Sach held on the scaffold itself, while their coffins stood across the drop. The woman lying dead by law now was then a mere nine-year-old girl. Waldo takes formal statements from four witnesses, including identification by Mr Graydon as well as Inspector Hall. Turning to the father, Waldo says: ‘I do not desire you to see the body if you do not wish, but if you do wish to see it and give evidence you may do so.’ Mr Graydon indicates that he wants to see his child, as do his wife, daughter and her friend.
One by one they bend over her. She looks very still. Avis asks whether she can kiss her sister. Permission is granted, but ‘only on her forehead’. So she leans forward and kisses Edith. Her father follows and then, last of all, the mother. Through her tears she looks at the silent face of her child, and is puzzled to know that no sound, no words, no recognition will ever again pass those lips which she knows so well. With profound emotion her father gives his daughter’s husband’s name and her age and name. He then asks for her fur coat and wedding-ring. For the last time the bereaved family move inside the prison’s walls, then they find themselves outside in Parkhurst Road. Behind them they leave what is dearest to them, their daughter’s body. For the rest of her life the mother will try and recover it but will always be rebuffed. Shortly after the parents’ departure the body in the coffin is crudely covered with lime and then sealed. It is lowered to a depth of eight feet in the prison’s tiny graveyard. It will stay there for forty-eight years, till 10.15 p.m. on 31 March 1971.
Holloway Prison graves before the women were moved in 1971
In Pentonville Freddy Bywaters has been taken down. His mother and her relatives are incapable of giving formal evidence of identification to the coroner, so Francis Hall obliges once more. For him identifying the boy’s dead body is part of a job well done. With a certain pride he relishes the fact that he played a prominent part in a famous murder investigation which produced two convictions and two executions. Freddy Bywaters is buried in lot number 38, in the north-eastern corner of the cemetery. Daffodils grow over it today. This time on Monday he was a living being. Now he is the corpse of a twenty-year-old, wrapped in a sheet of fire.
In the afternoon two men call at the offices of the Daily Express and ask to see Beverley Baxter. They claim to be two prison officials who officiated at the hanging of Mrs Thompson. If so, they can only be George Wood and William Young, the two warders borrowed from Pentonville. In a report of 1948 commissioned by Lord Waverley (who, as Sir John Anderson, had been Permanent Undersecretary of State at the Home Office at the time of the executions) and in a covering letter to him of 15 April 1948, the then septuagenarian Young explicitly denied his participation in the visit to Baxter, because it would render him ‘guilty of a Breach of the Secret Act’. Waverley was sceptical about Young’s evidence in the report and had it carefully checked against the governor’s. The discrepancies remain signalled in the margin.
They clearly show that the former warder was trying to smooth over uncomfortable details of the execution. It is impossible to determine now beyond a doubt who went to see Baxter: whether it was the two prison officials who were genuinely shocked and felt compelled to see the paper to plead for women to be exempted from hanging, or wanted to sell their story for money; or whether they conveyed their news to fellow officers who reported it to Baxter. The alleged visit to the Daily Express cannot be proven, but Baxter had no reason to make it up. In a letter to the Observer in 1956, Rabbi E. M. Levy of Middle Temple recalled a visit to Parkhurst prison on the Isle of Wight in April 1923:
On my return to London by train I fell into conversation with two men sharing the compartment with myself. One of these men told me that he was a prison warder and had witnessed the execution of Edith Thompson some time previously. He said it was a horrible affair and he could not get it out of his mind. He said there was a struggle; that she fought, kicked and screamed and protested her innocence to the last, and that it required about five men to hold her down whilst being carried to the gallows and having the noose put over her. The warder was clearly disgusted with the whole proceeding and, if I remember rightly, expressed the view that she should not have been executed in her condition and that, in any event, it was wrong to execute a woman. All this I remember very clearly, as it made a deep impression on my mind at the time, and I have often spoken about it to my wife and friends in later years.
Did Rabbi Levy too invent this? There was moreover another alleged visit that night, by the governor of Holloway to Thomas Marlowe, the editor of the Daily Mail. According to a further piece in the Observer, 18 March 1956, Morton went in great distress to persuade the paper to launch a campaign to abolish the hanging of women, because of what had happened that morning. Here is how Tom Clarke, former editor of the News Chronicle, recalled that evening in a letter to Beverley Baxter:
Your call for the full facts about Edith Thompson’s execution in 1923 takes my mind back to an incident recorded by me at the time which I feel has some bearing on the subject. I was News Editor of the Daily Mail in 1923. Going through my diaries for the autobiography I am now writing, I find it recorded that on the night of the execution my editor, Thomas Marlowe, rang the “buzzer” summoning me to his room. Hurrying along the corridor of Carmelite House I nearly collided with a man of distressed bearing whom Marlowe was escorting to the lift.
Back in the editorial sanctum Marlowe said to me “Do you know who that was?” I did not; and he then told me his agitated visitor was the Governor of Holloway Gaol, who had been so upset about what happened at the execution that morning that he had come to say he would never again take any part in the hanging of a woman and he wanted the Daily Mail to start a campaign against hanging.
Marlowe had obviously been embarrassed by his caller, but he was never a sentimentalist. I have always thought it a pity that Marlowe, a man whose experience of people and affairs was matched only by his deep integrity, wrote no memoirs. He once told me he would not leave “a scrap of paper”. For that reason one can only offer this second-hand record of one of his experiences which might have made a thought-provoking contribution to the controversy about hanging.
The fact remains that as a result of these indiscretions the rumour started, almost as soon as Mrs Thompson had been executed, that her ‘insides’ had fallen out. It was a rumour of almost certain truth.
The issue is confused further by a curious memo of 24 April 1948 from the Secretary of State to Sir A. Maxwell which notes:
The Lord Chancellor also told me that shortly after this execution Miss Fry told him that one or the horrible things connected with it was that the condemned woman on the morning of her execution had to be sewn into leather knickers because the effect of hanging is to cause the entrails to drop out of the body and that when the woman was told why this had to be done she was very much affected. Is there any truth in this story? Does hanging have this effect & are any similar precautions taken in the case of men?
The reply to this memo correctly maintains that ‘no special precautions or special garments were used at the execution of Mrs Thompson’. Margery Fry did not see Edith on the morning of her death, nor does she herself mention this detail in her report on the hanging to the Royal Commission. What probably happened was that Fry heard the rumour of Edith’s severe haemorrhage, if not miscarriage, and its horrific impact on all present. She may have been told that leather knickers would have prevented it from splashing out. It seems to be the case that shortly afterwards special underwear became regulatory for the nine women who were hanged in Britain after Edith Thompson; and it is possible that Margery Fry met some of the others like Susan Newell (executed 10 October 1923) or Louie Calvert (26 June 1926), since as of January 1923 she had vigorously contributed to the crusade against the death sentence.
By 6 p.m. the Graydons are reading in the Evening News how their daughter was prostrate all night and asking for Bywaters in moment of lucidity. The parents’ agony is alleviated only by the sure knowledge that ‘Edie’ is now at last and forever at rest. Towards the end of the week Margery Fry revisits the prison, where she meets the governor, Murray the chaplain and Miss Cronin:
I was greatly impressed by [its] effect upon all of them. I think I have never seen a person look so changed in appearance by mental suffering as the Governor appeared to me to be. Miss Cronin was very greatly troubled by the whole affair. I distinctly remember her saying to me, ‘I think if she had been spared she could have become a very good woman’. I was struck by this as Miss Cronin was not at all a sensitive or easily moved person; her avowed preference amongst prisoners was for ‘Liverpool toughs’. Mr Murray was so much shocked by the whole experience that, after retirement, he spent much energy in writing and public speaking in favour of the abolition of the death penalty …
Mrs Graydon’s fruitless campaign, in the months that followed, to retrieve her daughter’s clothes and her body, are documented in the Home Office files. Thus, on 21 February 1923, she is writing the Secretary of State for Home Affairs:
Sir,
The Governor Majesty’s Prison of Holloway informs me that it I against the regulations to allow the clothes of my daughter, Mrs Edith Thompson, to be returned to me.
Might I appeal to you to allow the return of the black costume and blouse last worn by my daughter before her conviction which were my own personal property, loaned to her to wear during the trial so as to allow her to appear on mourning?
This particular costume and blouse did not belong at all to my daughter, but to me, and under the circumstances I should be very grateful if you could see your way to grant this request and allow my own clothes to be returned to me.
I have the honour to remain, Sir, your humble and obedient servant,
Ethel. J. Graydon
The reply of 21.3.1923 curtly states that Edith was dressed in these clothes at her death and therefore they cannot ‘be given up’.
Three letters by the family testify to their lasting sorrow, courage and kindness, and compare all too well with a letter by the Home Office ministers concerned, also reproduced here.
On Sunday 14 January the Weekly Dispatch carried the following letter by Mr Graydon:
Sir –
I had hoped that after the execution of my unhappy daughter, I should have been able to retire into obscurity and to try, if not to forget, at any rate to be forgotten.
Certain sections of the press, however, are still engaged in publishing intimate details of my daughter’s life.
May I, through your columns, protest again this?
Mrs Thompson sinned and she paid the penalty. How great that penalty was only those who knew and loved her can tell. Surely the decent thing is to let the past bury itself, if not out of pity for her, out of consideration for those she left behind.
Wherever I or any member of my family goes we are pointed at, stared at, photographed. My house is besieged all day and every day by anybody who is the victim of morbid curiosity.
During all these terrible weeks we have had no privacy, and now that we have a desire to go away for a brief period we are haunted always by the thought that we shall be we known and followed.
To continue to rake up the past is only to prolong the agony. And when that past is almost entirely fictitious I feel bound to protest.
Nine-tenths of what has been written about my daughter has been completely untrue.
Now that she is dead, cannot these lies cease?
Cannot we be left to the privacy which I used to think was the right of all Englishmen to enjoy?
I am, Sir, yours faithfully.
W. E. GRAYDON
The following morning Monday 15 January, the Home Office official Blackwell was redrafting a reply to an anxious letter by T. E. Groves, a Stratford MP, enquiring after the manner of Mrs Thompson’s death, in view of the press reports. The original letter had been shown to Anderson, who invited Blackwell to rewrite it. Evidently the two mandarins were eager to ensure that the entire truth about the events of 9 January, in which they played such a leading part, did not come out. So they decided to tamper with the truth, confident that if ever they were challenged on their mendacity they could argue their way out of any corner. Here is the letter:
15 January 1923
Dear Sir,
In reply to your letter of the 10th instant, I am desired by the Home Secretary to say that from reports he has received he is satisfied that the execution of Mrs Thompson was carried out in the most humane manner possible. The statement that the prisoner was ‘in a state of collapse practically all through the previous night’ is without foundation. She slept soundly for several hours. As for the suggestion that she had to be carried to the scaffold, it was thought to be more humane to spare her the necessity of walking from the cell, but she was not unconscious.
Yours faithfully
Unlike Blackwell’s, Anderson’s conscience would increasingly haunt him. In the wake of the House of Common debate on the death penalty on 14 April 1948, and again in the arguments in Parliament which followed the serialisation in the Observer of Arthur Koestler’s book on the death sentence , Anderson (as Lord Waverley) unsuccessfully attempted to gag Beverley Baxter and subsequently Koestler and the Observer. 2Reflections on Hanging, London 1956 Reportedly ‘distressed’, he once more inspected the file on the woman he had helped to bring to her death, when Lewis Broad’s book The Innocence of Edith Thompson was launched in the Sunday Dispatch of 26 October 1952. It must have brought him little joy. Both books punishingly brought home the guilt of all those involved in the processes of the law of capital crimes.
On 20 January Newenham Graydon wrote the following letter to the governor of Holloway:
231 Shakespeare Cres
Manor Park
E.12
20th January ‘23
Dr J.H. Morton
Holloway
Dear Sir,My Mother and Father have asked me to express their thanks to you for your kindness and consideration towards both our family and Mrs Thompson during the time my sister was in your charge.
There were very few visits passed that did not bring from Mrs Thompson some word of thanks due to you, and I only wish it was possible for me to adequately express the feeling of gratitude we have towards you, as well as the whole staff who came into contact with her.
Very sincerely yours,
Newenham E. Graydon
Having done his human best by the prisoner, Morton now intended to impress his superiors and forwarded the brother’s generous note to Blackwell with a covering message:
The attached letter may be useful to the Commissioners in case they should decide to take any action should statements of ill treatment & c. towards the abovenamed whilst in custody here occur in the future.
J. H. Morton
Were his superiors aware of quite how much Morton had done to alleviate Edith’s suffering? Tennyson Jesse came to know the governor well while researching A Pin to See the Peepshow. Morton confided in her that he was convinced that Edith Thompson was innocent; that he had done everything in his power to spare her the worst. In a letter of 4 April 1945 Tennyson Jesse wrote accordingly that
The unfortunate Edith Thompson was innocent … Capital punishment is a horrible thing but the very merciful Governor of Holloway kept Edith Thompson as unconscious as possible to the end. It still was a terrible miscarriage of justice.
On Thursday 25 January Mrs Graydon wrote to the Stratford Express which carried her letter that weekend:
Would you kindly allow me to use your columns in order to express my thanks to the hundreds of newly found friends in the district covered by the Stratford Express who have so kindly sent me their sympathy and condolences during the agonising period through which my family and I have just passed. Verily one’s true friends are not found until adversity’s heavy hand descends upon one’s shoulders. It has been the kindness of these unknown friends which has kept my spirits up so far, and my gratitude to them knows no bounds. I thank them all from the bottom of my heart.
Yours sincerely
Ethel J. Graydon
231 Shakespeare-crescent
Manor Park E.12
The family of Edith Thompson stayed put in the Crescent. Eventually the boys left and married. The little house at 231 Shakespeare Crescent remained home for the parents and for Avis, already resigned to a solitary life. The mother died there on 7 January 1938, at the age of sixty-five. Only then, seventeen years after the tragedy, did Avis and her father move back to Ilford, leaving behind the home in which Edith had grown up and lived out her girlhood. It was for this reason that Mrs Graydon had been unable to leave No. 231, the one place where, in her memories, her daughter lived and continued to breathe untouched. In February 1941, not long after the move to Gants Hill, Avis buried her father. The parents rest side by side in the City of London Cemetery, in the grave bought by Edith and occupied for a few weeks in 1922 by Percy Thompson, who even now lies a mere 100 yards to the north.
Since 1923 Avis had been a devout Catholic and worshipped at St Francis RC church in Stratford. Every year to this day on the 9 January a memorial service is held to commemorate her sister.
After the father’s death, and as a new generation of Graydon children were coming up, Avis felt increasingly that their prospects must not be prejudiced by a tragic past. Mindful that the written and printed record remain, she destroyed most of the photographs of her sister in the family’s possession, as well as Edith’s infinitely precious letters. Edith would live on in her heart, she told herself, and in God’s peace. She only kept her sister’s fur coat, her watch, and an old necklace and traycloth that she vividly recalled ‘Edie’ working on as a child. She increasingly became reclusive but remained interested in the past and the present. She outlived most of the participants in this 1920s tragedy.
She read in the Ilford Recorder of Richard Thompson’s death in February 1952, and in the summer of 1955 she was deeply pained when another young woman, called Ruth Ellis, almost exactly her sister’s age, perished on the scaffold at Holloway. Whether she was aware of renewed interest in Edith’s fate during the 1950s cannot be established. In her heart the flame of hope never wavered. Its light would shine till the day that she imagined she would be reunited with the sister who had become a tragic legend.
In 1973 Avis Graydon was traced to her address in Roll Garden in Gants Hill, and she agreed to discuss Edith Thompson. A sympathetic interviewer whom she came to trust drove her past 41 Kensington Gardens and 231 Shakespeare Crescent.3Mrs Audrey Russell of the Court Welfare Department at the Royal Courts of Justice spent many hours in the company of Avis Graydon and recorded her reflections on Edith Thompson’s early life and tragic death. I was fortunate to meet Mrs Russell and am greatly indebted to her unstinting assistance with the research for this book. Sitting in the car outside the house in Ilford fifty years on, she gazed at it in silence. She pointed out the Thompsons’ bedroom and their front room. Then she remarked that Edith would never have approved of the way the place is made up now. As they passed the spot where Percy fell she expressed sorrow at his terrible death. Throughout this trying journey into the past, she remained composed, true to the dignity that was always hers. Asked whether seeing her sister in her coffin at Holloway was the first time that she ‘could actually believe that Edith was dead’, she replied:
Yes, and sometimes I can’t believe it now. Do you know, sometimes I think I’ll go to that door, and she’ll be coming in. I do! I know it’s fantasy, but I do sometimes think that … I often think to myself one of these Sundays she’ll be at the door.
Avis Graydon died at the King George Hospital in Ilford on 6 August 1977. She was eighty-one years old, the same age as her grandmother had been, and is buried at St Patrick’s RC cemetery in Leytonstone.
Edith Thompson remains in unconsecrated ground in Brookwood Cemetery. So far her body has not joined her parents, as her mother longed when she lay dying in the upstairs bedroom at 231 Shakespeare Crescent on the eve of World War II. Had the Home Office or Prison Service cared to inform Avis Graydon of the transfer of the bodies from Holloway in 1971, Edith Thompson would now truly be home with her parents.
Freddy Bywaters has never left Pentonville since the night he entered it on Monday 11 December 1922, after being sentenced to death. The body was not claimed after abolition, and even though (possibly) his younger brother Frank and (certainly) nephews and nieces are alive at the time of writing, it is doubtful that the family will ask for a reinterment.
NOVEMBER 2018: At dawn on 20 November 2018 Edith Thompson’s remains were exhumed from Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey. Two days later, on 22 November 2018, she was reunited with her parents in the City of London Cemetery. She now rests alongside them, in accordance with her mother’s wishes. Her funeral service was held at the Anglican Church, Aldersbrook Road, Manor Park, close to her childhood home.
Edith Thompson’s grave, City of London Cemetery; on the day of its inauguration, 26 June 2019. © René Weis
POSTSCRIPT
The Rt Hon. Douglas Hurd
The Home Secretary
The Palace of Westminster
London SW 1
31 August 1988
Dear Sir,
In the course of the afternoon of the recent parliamentary debate on the death penalty, my publishers, Hamish Hamilton, sent you a copy of my book, Criminal Justice: The True Story of Edith Thompson. The events related in the book happened over sixty-five years ago, but the execution of Edith Thompson at Holloway Prison in 1923 remains a tragic blot on this country’s tradition of effective and equitable justice. I argue in my book that Edith Thompson was innocent of the charges brought against her. In his review of Criminal Justice in the Observer Mr Ludovic Kennedy noted that Edith Thompson’s innocence was so well established now as to be hardly a matter of debate any longer. If so, then the case for a posthumous pardon is considerably strengthened. I realise that clearing Edith Thompson’s name may present some difficulty, because it means reversing a long-standing judgment but it would seem to be the right thing to do.
I recognize that a pardon for Mrs Thompson at this late stage could be interpreted as a mere gesture: it will not return to her the life that was tragically and unjustly cut short, nor can it really make amends to her family. Nevertheless, knowing of your strong sense of justice and fair play, I feel that you may well agree with me that, as a matter of principle, it would be wrong to shun our retrospective responsibilities in this matter. Bearing this in mind, I would heartily beg you whether you cannot see your way clear to restoring true justice to Edith Thompson in whatever symbolic way is possible after all this time.
My case for Edith Thompson’s innocence is fully expounded in Criminal Justice. I must therefore request your forbearance for drawing attention to some of the more salient point in her defence again.
The case against Mrs Thompson rested almost entirely on a series of fantasy wishfulfilment letters she wrote to Frederick Bywaters. Much of the material in these letters had no basis in reality but was a sort of ‘acting out’ in writing of what are not uncommon, albeit rarely expressed, wishes. Some of the early letters were read as expressing a desire for her husband’s death and as suggesting that she had tried to procure the administration of poisons and particles of glass. But the post-mortem produced no evidence that either poison or glass had been consumed. At the most these letters might possibly have been seen as admissible evidence on the second indictment – which consisted of five counts – but this was not the charge that was brought. As I show in my book, these letters are open to an innocent interpretation and the most damaging passages all date from several months before Bywaters attacked Thompson.
Mrs Thompson and Bywaters were tried together on the first indictment, that of the murder of Percy Thompson by stabbing in a street in Ilford. That Bywaters killed Thompson has never been disputed. Equally, that Edith Thompson set it up has never been proven. Indeed, examination of the known facts and of the couple’s correspondence does not suggest that she was so involved. Instead, the Crown used a selection of her letters in Court to generate a climate of prejudice against her as an immoral adulteress who seduced a young man eight years her junior. Despite the fact that there is no evidence of any kind in the letters or otherwise that Edith Thompson knew that her husband would be assaulted that night in that particular place and in that manner, the Solicitor-General stated in his opening address to the jury that ‘there is the undoubted evidence in the letters upon which you can find that there was a preconcerted meeting between Mrs Thompson and Bywaters at the place’. As only half of Edith Thompson’s correspondence was submitted in Court, the jury may well have been led to believe, by this erroneous claim, that a reference to the place, the time, and the manner occurred in one of the letters withheld from them. That the jury was furthermore influenced by the judge’s openly expressed disgust concerning the sexual immorality of the correspondence is on record in a letter which a juror wrote to the Daily Telegraph thirty years later: ‘It was my duty to read them [the letters] to the members of the jury … “Nauseous” is hardly strong enough to describe their contents … The jury performed a painful duty, but Mrs Thompson’s letters were her own condemnation’.
On what grounds in law rather than on morals could the letters convict Mrs Thompson? Even if they had been used on the second indictment, she would have been exonerated by Sir Bernard Spilsbury, who appeared for the Crown and whose post-mortem report on Percy Thompson (PRO: Crim 1/206) categorically 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.’ In view of this the Solicitor-General’s prevarication in Court, that ‘a post-mortem examination showed that there were practically [my italic] no traces of any poison’ must be deemed to fall far short of the accepted high standards of British justice and of fairness to the accused.
Equally unfair to the accused was the prejudicial summing-up by the trial judge. His ignorance of the contents of the novel Bella Donna which was used in evidence against Mrs Thompson, his failure to give due weight to her hostile view of the novel’s protagonist, whom she described as ‘abnormal – a monster utterly selfish and self-living’, and his loaded misquotations of her evidence in Court, reflect poorly on his grasp of the issues at stake.
Nothing highlights the extent of his prejudice so gravely as his treatment of the important evidence of Mr John Webber about Mrs Thompson’s protests during the murder. Webber’s evidence in Court (Notable British Trials: Bywaters and Thompson, pp. 19-20) is that he heard ‘a woman’s voice saying “oh don’t, oh, don’t” in a most piteous manner’, as he was ‘about to retire to bed’. On hearing that, ‘he went out into the street’. When the judge first addressed Webber’s evidence, he inaccurately claimed that Webber lived in a house ‘somewhere opposite, and it was five minutes before he came out, and he heard Mrs Thompson in a piteous tone say “oh, don’t, oh don’t”’ (NBT, p.142). Webber in fact lived 50 yards down the road on the same side as the scene of the crime, hardly ‘opposite’, and he did not hear Mrs Thompson after he came out, but before. When the judge readdressed Webber’s evidence (NBT, p. 152), he introduced it as ‘one other very curious piece of evidence’, and told the jury that it may well be unreliable, because Webber was ‘some way off’ when he heard Mrs Thompson: ‘I am not saying it is true; it is for you to say whether it is accurate, or whether it is imaginary, or whether he has made a mistake’. Such reckless impugning of a witness’s reliability was particularly damaging, as the jury naturally looked to the judge for guidance. The judge’s further intimation to the jury, that Bywaters’s running off after the crime and Mrs Thompson’s running for a doctor may reflect, as the prosecution alleged, a preconcerted plan about ‘how to avoid suspicion’ (NBT, p.153), beggars belief in the minds of all fair-minded people.
Under such circumstances, I find it impossible to conclude that Mrs Thompson was given a fair trial. There is no colourable evidence that she helped to plan or knew of this attack and considerable doubt about any active involvement in her husband’s death. Moreover, irrelevant moral prejudices coloured the judgment of the Court; rather than for murder she was hanged for adultery. It is, I believe, our bounden duty now at last to clear her name.
René J. A. Weis