Edith Thompson in the Press

Newspaper Coverage of the Case

 

 

Newspaper Article 1

The Sunday Express – 29 October 1922

LOVE – LETTERS

By James Douglas

Like all the world, I have been amazed and astounded by the letters written by Edith Thompson to Frederick Edward Bywaters, the young man who is charged with her in connection with the death of her husband, Percy Thompson. I make no comment on the case, or upon the letters. That would be grossly improper. But I may be permitted to allude to the literary form of these extraordinary letters. No novelist could imagine or invent letters like these. The subtlest literary art could not put into words a tithe of the emotion with which they pulse and throb in every line.

A Story in a Sentence

I forbear to quote any of the sinister passages, lest in any way I might seem to invest them with prejudice. But there is one sentence which is sufficient to illustrate my meaning. It is this:-

All that lying and scheming and subterfuge to obtain one little hour in each day –  when by right of nature and our love we should be together for all this twenty-four in every day.

In that marvellous outburst there is the quintessence of every tragic love-story in the world, and yet it was written by the bookkeeper and manageress in a wholesale millinery firm in Aldersgate-street, whose salary was £6 a week, with an annual bonus of £30.

It is true that she read novels. In one of her letters there is a quotation from “Bella Donna”, a melodramatic novel by Robert Hichens. But there is no reason to suppose that she is a woman of culture. It is certain that she is not a skilled writer. Yet in the white heat of passion she can find words that glow and burn with a miraculous flame of felicity which are beyond the reach of men of genius. There is not a touch or trace of artifice or self-consciousness. The bare simplicity and directness of these letters could not be equalled by the most careful and most fastidious creative artist. They seem to be born of the moment with its natural rhythm and pitch and tone. The movement of the mind is imprinted upon them as the movement of the waves is imprinted on the ripples of the sand.

The Mystery of Life

This is the mystery of all real love-letters. They take a form of their own which is utterly above and beyond all imitative or representative art. They are as strange as the fleeting look upon a face or as the evanescent expression in an eye. The mystery of life hovers for a brief instant in the syllables, and is fixed by some miracle in a few ordinary words arranged in an ordinary way that nevertheless seem to be finally right and beyond all possibility of change or modulation.

I cannot explain the process which translates the emotion of the moment into the inevitable words. The whole secret of tragedy is concealed in the mystery. But it is extraordinary that the unsophisticated mind, when driven by passion, can compass effects which are beyond the powers of all the greatest dramatists. The passage which I have quoted is not commonplace. It has the ring of tragic intensity. It thrills and awes and wounds, for it reveals a state of mind which conjures up the anguish and agony of all the tragic lovers in dramatic art. It lays bare the soul in its extremest misery. It fills us with pity and with awe. In a flash we see the whole tragic conflict between law and passion, between duty and desire, between the code of society and the anarchy of the brain and the blood. In it is epitomised the whole story of mankind and the whole irony of existence.

“One Little Hour”

Consider the tragic ache in those three words, ‘one little hour”. It is marvellous, for there is all the yearning of all the unhappy lovers in the world. “One little hour”. There is nothing in the words, and yet there is everything. The fatal pain of love in rebellion against the law of God and man, against the edict of society, against the system of life, against everything but “the right of nature and our love.” It is profoundly tragic to see the tide of passion in a woman’s heart matched against all the enormous powers of religion and law. We watch a glimpse of terrible forces that defy the universe. We see a soul rent and riven in twain by relentless furies and tortured by pitiless desires.  The thing is so tragic that we seem to be confronted by a devouring fire which consumes every barrier and every obstacle. It is marvellous that such a tempest of passion could find a lodgment in the heart of a poor little City worker who appeared to be like the thousands of other poor little City workers whom we encounter every day in the tubes or trains or omnibuses or trams. And yet in its devastating energy it cannot be surpassed in any tragedy of Shakespeare or Sophocles.

Maddened Cries

How do they write these love-letters that break into print in the police courts and in the divorce courts? By what wizardry of the spirit do they discover these wild words that reveal the torment and frenzy of their wrought brains? We read them in cold blood and they frighten us. We say to ourselves that thus and not otherwise we might have written if we had been caught in the same soul-trap of passion. For there is an accent of fatality in these maddened cries which mocks at the sense of free will. There is a note of exaltation which is almost delirious. There is a shudder of ecstasy which tears the victims out of their relationship to their fellow creatures. They are beings doomed and drowned in a moral disaster far beyond help or rescue, aid or refuge.

What puzzles one is the capacity of the most ordinary minds to experience and endure the most extraordinary moral agonies. In classical tragedy the extremest moral suffering is reserved for kings and queens and those of high estate. But every day we see common folk hurled from the most awful heights into the most awful depths. It is not necessary to be delicately nurtured to drink the bitterest cup. It is not necessary to be elaborately educated to endure the most cruel pangs. The soul has no rank or station. The heart has no lineage. Pain is a democrat. Passion is no respecter of persons.

Woe to the Rebels!

It is well for the world that the temperament which begets the supreme horror of tragedy is rare, and that it is seldom flung into the dilemma which provides its culmination and consummation. Most of us are born with a sense of proportion, a sense of humour, and a sense of prudence. We shrink and recoil from the abyss. “We wince and relent and refrain.” We bow before the wise judgment of mankind. Woe to those who refuse to accept the verdict of life! “One little hour,” they cry, as they go down into the unending darkness. One little hour! They ask too much. The lesson of life is that we just humbly take what it gives. If we try to take more it destroys us. There in a nutshell is the high tragedy and the high comedy of mortal existence.

 

Newspaper Article 2

The Sunday Post – 10 December 1922

MY IMPRESSIONS AT THE ILFORD TRIAL.

By Mrs Milton (Anthony Carlyle)

I have for the first time in my life been to a trial at the Old Bailey, at which a woman and a man are going through the most terrible ordeal that surely can fall to the lot of any human creature – that of facing the judgment of his fellows as to whether or not he is guilty of having taken human life.

A woman and her lover – Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters – accused  jointly of the murder of the woman’s husband ! The woman attractive, even pretty. The boy – he is only a boy, and a chivalrous, romantic boy at that – pleasant to look at even in his hour of agony. Two young things whose way through life should surely have led along a less terrible path.

Two young things who have known each other years – first as friends, gradually seeing more of each other, conceiving a growing passion, which neither realised until it was too late – and one of them was bound in the sight of God and man to one whom she thought at first she could love; whom she did love, or believed she loved, for nearly two years.

The boy – the merest youth at the time of her marriage – has looked upon her until quite recently as a friend – a pal even, perhaps with something of brotherliness. She is, this woman, seven or eight years older than he is, which perhaps accounts for the decidedly strong influence she has brought to bear upon him. She has consciously or unconsciously attracted him. She has held his thoughts even though he has been parted from her for long months at a time. She holds them still, as is quite evident to even the most idle student of human nature who witnessed Bywaters’ ordeal in the box.

Shielding the Woman.

His thought is for her – to shield her – to fight desperately to guard her from the dread possibility of paying that penalty which may be his.

Romantic he must always have been. I can imagine that he grew to regard her with admiration – with growing admiration that changed at last to passion, if not to that real deep and strong love which is the sweetest thing that any man and woman can know. I can imagine her seeing the dawning of that passion in his eyes. I can imagine that she might even at first have found it amusing, might have regarded it indulgently, and so hesitated to check it. Remember she was a woman, or nearly a woman, while he was still no more than a little boy. She had tasted of life before he had begun to dream of it – save from the point of view of enjoying cakes and robbing mischievously – orchards.

I think that it is perhaps one of the most pathetic things about this trial – the youth of Bywaters. It makes so comprehensible, so natural, all that he has done. He is fighting all the while for the woman – not for himself. He makes no attempt to deny that he attacked her husband – struck him with a knife.

All he pleads was that he was more or less maddened by the woman’s unhappiness, that the husband would not listen to a reasonable request that he should set her free, and that the attacking was made only after the husband had threatened to shoot him.

Obsession Stronger Than Passion.

For some long time since first these two realised that their passion was mutual, the woman, in some mysterious way that no man can understand (and few women), has impressed her personality upon him – her unhappiness with her husband, her affection for himself. She has made him feel that she needs him – that in his hands alone her happiness lies. That knowledge, I should say, has been stronger far than the boy’s passion for her. Indeed, I cannot help wondering if his feeling is no more than passion, and never has been more than passion – fanned by her persistent letters, her nearness when he has been on leave. Her need of him, and the fiery strength of her own feelings for him, must have obsessed him even across the seas. He can never have wholly shaken himself free of it. It obsessed him – standing trial for his life.

And the woman? She is more difficult to understand, both as a woman and as a human being. It is not often that woman cares for a man so very much younger than herself, and one whom she has known since his young boyhood, as the world must believe Edith Thompson has cared for Bywaters. It is only an overwhelming strength of affection – love, passion, call it what you like – which surely could move a woman to do that of which Mrs Thompson is accused.

She is accused of having lived by the side of the man who was her lawful mate – whom she chose to be her husband – thinking of Bywaters, nursing a growing grievance against her husband, an insidious dislike for him, which, taking the evidence of her extraordinary, unrestrained letters, had grown to hate because he was the barrier to her happiness Bywaters’ side – hate because he denied her that freedom for which she craved. And so great, it is suggested, had that hate grown, that it roused in her thoughts so terrible that they led to even more terrible deeds. She is accused of having lived daily at her husband’s side planning, planning, planning to take his life – of giving him poison, of going even to the length of breaking up glass and putting it in his food.

A Strange Plea.

Her plea is that she was contemplating suicide – Bywaters’ plea that he knew it, and that he gave her quinine in the hope of satisfying her appeal to him to help her out of that tired tangle which spells life for some people. A strange plea. Yet Bywaters stuck bravely to it. Mrs Thompson herself not so bravely. In this case the woman is decidedly the weaker. She is all to pieces physically and mentally – certainly mentally.

The strain is telling terribly. The ordeal has been sapping her strength. Her nerves are at breaking-point. One could see that as she left the dock to go into the witness-box this morning – a slim thing looking utterly incapable of those things of which she stands accused.

Just as she stepped out on her way to the witness-box she gave a little soft, whimpering sob, a queer, hopeless, helpless sound that was infinitely pathetic. Whatever she has done, only her God and herself can know what Edith Thompson has suffered.

I was in my seat before the prisoners were brought into the dock. I could look about me and study the faces of the men, their manners. And the women – women who had come to watch a sister woman literally in torment, to listen to her every word echoed and re-echoed – turned against her with amazing rapidity in condemnation. Calm faces, most of them curiously enough; interesting faces and uninteresting face’s; emotionless-looking men – men who are one and all helping to turn the wheels within wheels that go to make up the machinery of law and justice. I watched them all, and then my attention was claimed and held by the prisoners.

When Bywaters Faltered.

I watched Bywaters as he answered the questions that were asked of him steadily, and at the beginning without faltering. He spoke clearly and with little hesitation. Under cross-examination he faltered, but he clung to his story.

He described his following Edith Thompson and her husband on their way from the theatre. He told how he came up with them, how he caught Thompson’s arm and swung him round, pushing his wife from his side. He explained how he urged the man again earnestly and passionately to give his wife her freedom – how the latter refused, saying (to use Bywaters’ own words) ‘I’ve got her and I’ll keep her …. and I’ll shoot you !’

There was. a tense pause at this juncture. I heard men beside me draw in their breath and wait. Bywaters went on to say that he struck at Thompson with his knife, which he always carried, believing that the latter intended to carry out his threat to shoot. He showed dramatically how he struck at Thompson’s throat.

Here he faltered for the first time, and seemed to be dazed. He then said that he could not remember – that he had no clear recollection of anything that happened after he struck the first blow. He insisted that he had no intention to kill Thompson. He told how he had run and walked and how he had finally reached home. How not until next day on reading the paper did he realise that Thompson was dead; and he added wearily – ‘I could not believe it was true.’

Listening, I let my glance wander from this unfortunate youth to those below him in the well of the Court, watchful and quiet, some of them turning over their papers, others with their eyes on the prisoner. Up to the Judge high above the rest, scarlet-robed, dignified, patient. Then away up to the gallery and those of the general public lucky enough to gain admittance.

A pretty girl had removed her hat, and was leaning forward as one sees them at matinees. Another was absorbed in the contemplation of her own face in a tiny mirror the while she dexterously applied a powder-puff. A strange world this while a man and a woman are standing trial for their lives! 

The Woman at Bay.

Then I looked at Mrs Thompson. Her face was hidden almost by her smart hat. At first she wore her fur-coat, but later discarded it. Once I saw her lift a glass of water to her lips. She must have looked at Bywaters, but it was difficult to tell. She scarcely stirred in her seat even when he was being cross-examined. And when Bywaters, walking steadily, still expressionless, was brought to the dock, he did not seem to look at her.

A few seconds later she was being led, as he had been led, to the witness-box. I could see her better then – very slim, inconspicuously pretty, and infinitely weary-looking. She swayed ever so slightly as she walked, and when at first she was being questioned, her answers were nearly inaudible. Obviously she was exercising an agonising effort to control herself. Once or twice at some whispered answer of hers l was aware of a curious tenseness of the bodies about me. Again I thought of a desperate, hunted, thing caught and still fighting for freedom, a tired thing battling against the keenest brains, striving to think, to answer coherently, her wits no longer alert against the mightier wits of the men who were examining her.

It was an impressive sight. Men, almost medieval in appearance, seeming to belong to a past age, but able to hold the whole Court the instant one or other of them stood up. Frampton, unhurried, even benevolent of aspect. Cecil Whiteley, eager, keen, fine of feature, reminding one rather of an alert greyhound but gentle of manner, pausing longer than his colleagues after asking a question, and, I should imagine, bringing something of assurance to the prisoners, yet ever ready to spring.

It is very wonderful to watch a scene like that. The picture of the woman at bay is one I never shall forget

 

Newspaper Article 3

WEEKLY DISPATCH: 17 & 24 & 31 December 1922

EDITH THOMPSON’S LIFE

By her father, William Eustace Graydon

17 December 1922:
WHEN THE THOMPSONS FIRST MET

It is but natural that, in putting together at the present season some facts about the life of my poor unfortunate girl, my memory should first recall two Christmases in the happy past.

It was on Christmas Eve, fifteen years ago, that my daughter Edith, with the permission of myself and her mother, first brought home to Shakespeare-crescent young Percy Thompson, whom the law has now decided she conspired to kill.

She was then a bright child of fifteen, with a very winning disposition, liked by all who knew her. No parents could hope for a more affectionate daughter than she had always been. On the threshold of life, it seemed as though we had good grounds for hoping that her future would be a succession of happy, peaceful years.

The contrast between then and now is to me like a nightmare. I cannot comprehend how such a terrible change has been wrought. My dear wife and I are living in a horrible dream.

TWO CHRISTMAS DAYS.
An Engagement Celebration.

Percy Thompson was a youth of nineteen when he first came to our house – four years older than my little girl. Next day, Christmas Day, he joined our little, quiet family circle round the fireside, for in view of the evident fondness existing between him and my daughter I thought it probable that sooner or later he would become one of the family. He was a steady, good-looking young fellow, with excellent prospects, and my wife and I saw no reason why we should not permit him to pay his addresses to Edith, though she was then but a mere child.

The second Christmas that lives in my memory is one six years later, December 25, 1915. That day was a joyous threefold celebration in our home. Besides being Christmas Day, it was my daughter Edith’s birthday and also the day upon which she became officially engaged to Percy Thompson after an unbroken friendship of six years.

My poor girl! At this moment I recall the natural pride with which on that day she wore the engagement ring Thompson had given her to mark the event, a beautiful five-stone diamond ring. In return she had given him a silver cigarette case, and also a gold ring which he wore as proudly as she did hers.

THE GIRL ESSAYIST.
Skill With the Pen.

When I think of those two Christmases in particular and of the present one, I begin to doubt the evidence of my own senses. I am dazed and numb. Again and again I ask myself: What has happened? … What has happened?

I am aware that there exists much prejudice against my unhappy girl. I do not blame the public for that. It is unfortunately only too easy to acquire prejudices against our fellow creatures when the light is shone fiercely upon only their more culpable characteristics. My daughter Edith has been denounced as callous in temperament, utterly selfish, a sort of female vampire.

Nothing could be more false, more unlike her real self. Whatever she may be, she is not, never has been, and never could be, any of these things. Were it not so tragic, such ideas of her would seem laughable to all who know her intimately.

Surely, if she really possessed the selfishness, cruelty, and cunning attributed to her now, their presence would have been betrayed years and years ago to the watchful eye of her parents.

Edith was a mite of five when she first went to school – a little kindergarten establishment at Manor Park. Later on she attended Kensington-avenue council school in company of her sister Avis, who was two years younger. The two girls were inseparable. They have always been the greatest of chums. Edith, being the elder, watched over Avis. In her childish way she thoroughly enjoyed the sense of responsibility conferred on her. It suited her temperament, which even then was that of a leader.

Edith was a particularly clever child. She brought home prize-books, medals, and certificates with a regularity that, I need hardly say, made my wife and I very proud of her. I remember one of her triumphs – an essay on a penknife. It showed unusual imagination for one so young. Recently I have often recalled that juvenile effort in connection with the letters she wrote to Bywaters. She always had great skill at putting down her ideas on paper.

In those days our house was always ringing with the shouts and laughter of children. Edith was popular at school ands had crowds of girlfriends. Her mother and I both used to notice that she had practically no boy acquaintances. All her companions were of her own sex. As she grew older this characteristic remained with her. She was never a girl to flirt or seek admiration from the opposite sex. Her husband and Bywaters were the only two men who ever played a part in her life. Beyond them she never had more than the most casual acquaintance with boy or man.

SCHOOLDAY TRAITS.
Ringleader in Games.

 I remember how these girl school-friends of hers used to call at the house in the evening to get Edith to help them with their home lessons. They used to make her a sort of confidant of all their little troubles. It was her nature to sympathise with others. She used to give her pocket-money every week to a school fund which provided poor people with necessaries and purchased them a good dinner at Christmas.

I used to have opportunities for observing her good nature at the children’s parties held at our house on birthdays and Christmases. Edith always had the giving of presents from the Christmas-tree. I made it a rule that all these presents went to the little guests. Edith would distribute them gladly without a trace of envy.

One particular Christmas I recall, when three or four more children turned up than were expected. There were not enough gifts on the tree to go round. Edith insisted on making up the deficiency with some of her own toys so that no one should go away disappointed. For such a young child as she was then it was a sweet act.

She was the ringleader in all the games at these parties, the most daring at snapdragon, which I recall as being a great favourite with her, and tireless at hunt-the-slipper and blindman’s buff.  These trivial things, this child’s play of hers, come back to my memory after many years, bitter-sweet in my present grief. Charades were always a feature of birthday parties at Shakespeare-crescent. Edith was very ingenious at inventing them and rehearsing the other children.

IN THE ROLE OF PORTIA.
Natural Talent for Acting.

Her natural talent for acting was considerable. As a young girl she had a passion for Shakespeare and could recite many of the principal passages from his plays with real dramatic effect. At school she took part in several Shakespearean representations. She made a quaintly dignified little Hippolyta in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’; but the performance I remember most vividly was her Portia in the Trial Scene from ‘The Merchant of Venice’. I can see her now on the stage – a pretty little figure in her long black robes, declaiming in a childish treble the appeal:

The quality of mercy is not strained,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath; it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

Ah if my poor girl could but have pleaded her own case with the same success as years before she pleaded on that schoolroom platform the cause of Antonio.

She never lost her fondness for the drama. When she was older she joined an elocution class with Percy Thompson, her husband, and they played together in a dramatic representation of Dickens’s ‘Christmas Carol’.

She liked the theatre very much, the plays that appealed to her most being of the romantic type. There was never anything morbid in her tastes. She was too healthy and high-spirited for that. It was romance – romance with a happy ending – that always attracted her most.

Her distaste for the kinema was nearly as strong as her passion for the theatre. I doubt if she ever went inside more than half a dozen kinema shows. The usual film drama bored her. She used to say it was too crude and unimaginative for her liking She missed the words, the living speech of the characters, the play of ideas.

The plays she saw afforded her food for discussion for days afterwards. It was the same with the books she read. She did not, like many people, dismiss them from her mind the instant they had served the purpose of whiling away an idle hour or so. She took these things very seriously.

To go back to Edith’s schooldays. She did so well at her lessons that it was decided she should become a teacher. She began her training as a pupil teacher, but owing to certain regulations that came into force just then she had to give up the idea. It was rather a blow to her, for she was extremely fond of the work.

She left school at fifteen, and began to go to business immediately, but continued to attend evening classes in commercial subjects. Her first situation was that of junior clerk at a wholesale clothiers in the City. It was a position of considerable trust for so young a girl, because she had the handling of large sums of money. Straightaway she showed sighs of possessing considerable business capacity, and also of growing ambition to do well for herself.

After some time she left this place for a better situation with a cardboard box manufacturer in Southwark, and later still went back to the City again as a bookkeeper in another firm of a similar type. Each move she made was a step upwards. Her natural ability, combined with her diligent ambition, made her prospects of a successful career very bright.

At the age of seventeen she entered the Aldersgate-street firm, where she remained nearly thirteen years, rising to the position of bookkeeper and manageress. It has been stated that she was a milliner. This is not the case. She was connected solely with the office side of the business. Like may other girls whose talents ran in this direction, she positively hated the needle. I don’t think she could have trimmed a hat  that would have been at all satisfactory had she tried for a twelvemonth.

MET AT A CHURCH.
Thompson her first admirer.

Side by side with this went, curiously enough, an excellent knowledge of how to wear clothes. Though she could not make them, she knew how to put them on. She dressed quietly, but was most particular in the things she wore. I have often seen her transform the appearance of a hat her mother or sister was wearing by altering, with a tug at the brim, its angle on the head.

It was soon after Edith left school to go to business that she first met Percy Thompson. She made his acquaintance at a church she frequented, and later they used to travel in the train together to business. It was a surprise to myself and my wife when she first asked for our permission to bring him home. Up till then she had never shown, as I have already remarked, any inclination for the opposite sex, even as playmates. Girls, books, and her work absorbed all her attention. Thompson was certainly the first admirer she ever gave the slightest encouragement to, and, with the exception of Bywaters, the only one.

At that time Edith was not so much as even aware of the existence of Bywaters. He would be I suppose, a little chap about five or six years old, living not far from Shakespeare-crescent.

Bywaters came into our family circle much later, as the school chum of Edith’s younger brother. She may have heard talk of him in those early days, but I doubt whether she could have visualised him. I think I am correct in saying that she never even saw him till after her marriage with Thompson early in 1916.

Percy Thompson, as I have said, came to our house on a Christmas Eve when he was nineteen years of age. He told me in a straightforward, manly way that he was very fond of my daughter, that she reciprocated his affection, and asked me for my permission to continue to pay her his addresses. I liked the look of him and the frank way he had approached me, and gave him my consent, pointing out, however, that there could be no question of marriage yet as my girl was barely more than a child.

NO HONEYMOON.
At Business Two Days After Wedding.

After that Thompson came to our hoyuse regularly every evening and on Sundays for a space of some six years. Apart from flowers, of which she was very fond, Edith accepted no presents from him during this time. The first present she ever accepted from him was her engagement ring.

During these six years neither my wife nor myself saw anything that led us to anticipate that the marriage of Edith and Percy Thompson would prove otherwise than a happy one. Had I done so I should have intervened at once to put an end to the acquaintance. But they seemed devoted to each other, and if they had the usual lovers’ tiffs, Edith never brought her troubles home to us.

My daughter’s engagement to Thompson was celebrated on Christmas Day, 1915. Their marriage swiftly followed – on January 15, 1916. They had had a very long unofficial engagement and there was no reason why they should postpone their wedding any longer. It was a quiet ceremony (the war was on) and took place on a Saturday. There was no honeymoon, and the following Monday both of them were back at business as usual.

THE EARLY DAYS.
When Husband was ‘Called Up’.

 In the uncertainty of conditions then prevailing, it was deemed inadvisable for them to set up a home of their own. The young couple remained under my roof temporarily, a fortunate arrangement as it afterwards proved. A fortnight after the wedding Thompson was called up to join the Army. It was a great shock to the young bride, who believed that her husband was exempted from service on account of his health. He was, in fact, discharged from the Army six months later as medically unfit, on account of the disorderly action of the heart.

My daughter broke down after he had said good-bye, and had to stay in bed the whole or the following day. Thompson joined the London Scottish and was in camp with them in Richmond Park. There Edith used to go three times a week and every Sunday, to see him, sometimes in company with her sister Avis.

Then one day came the news that he was to be discharged. Edith went down to the hospital at Richmond and brought him home. She came into the house hugging his arm, her face wreathed in smiles, and they settled down once more to enjoy, as she laughingly termed it, ‘the interrupted honeymoon’.

24 December 1922:
MARRIED LIFE OF THE THOMPSONS

I cannot but think that the terrible tragedy which has involved my daughter, her husband, and Bywaters was largely brought about by pride – that sort of pardonable pride common to most people to and married women in particular.

If only my daughter had come to me or her mother and told us that her married life was not running smoothly! We could have advised her; and, if necessary, there was a home for her to come back to. She must have known that so far as we were concerned she need not have stayed a day where she was unhappy.

But, like many another wife, she preferred to keep her troubles to herself – even from her own family.  Neither myself nor my wife ever had the slightest suspicion that there were serious differences between Edith and her husband.

HIDDEN UNHAPPINESS.
The Word that was Never Spoken

Of all our family, only my daughter Avis seems to have had an inkling that Edith was not so happy with Thompson as she might have been. Avis was a good deal in her sister’s company, and went about theatres and concerts with the Thompsons. She had many opportunities for detecting any signs if unhappiness. She saw none worth mentioning. Only since the tragedy has she told me she had an instinct that Edith and Percy Thompson were not the happy couple they appeared to the world.

At home here her mother and I did not even have this instinct to enlighten us. If we had my daughter would not now be lying under sentence of death. Of that I am positive.

When I saw Edith after her arrest one of my first questions was ‘Why did you not tell us a home that you were unhappy?’

Her reply was: ‘I was too ashamed to. You and mother have always been so happy together. There had never been any trouble of that sort in our family, and I didn’t want to be the first. It seemed such a disgrace.’

Poor girl! In trying to avoid the comparatively minor scandal she brought upon herself the worst that could possibly happen to her. What a difference a word or two, a mere hint, would have made to all of us!

HALVES IN EVERYTHING.
How Man and Wife Shared Expenses

When Percy Thompson was discharged from the Army towards the end of July 1916, he continued to live with his wife under my roof till the following Easter, a period of about nine months. They dwelt here as part of the family, sitting down to meals with the rest of us. Each morning they went up to business, my daughter leaving home with Avis and myself about an hour earlier than Thompson, who was then a shipping clerk in a firm in Bishopsgate.

Edith was now bookkeeper in the Aldersgate firm where she afterwards became manageress. She was doing very well. I suppose that her salary would be about £5 a week. Thompson was earning considerably less, though several years older. I know that, being ambitious, he felt the difference. But it never gave rise to any jealousy between himself and Edith. My daughter was too generous to bother about money.

I may mention here that when Percy Thompson was in the Army my daughter used to draw the wife’s separation allowance every Tuesday evening and take the whole of it round at once to her husband’s mother.

The pair now began to save up towards buying their future home. It was at this time they began to share all expenses equally, a practice they continued to the end. Whether or not it was a good plan for husband and wife is a matter of opinion. But it was theirs, and they stuck to it rigidly for years.

They went halves in everything, down to such small things as omnibus fares. If Thompson bought a garden rake, he came to my daughter for her share of the cost. If it were a box of chocolates she willingly paid her half. A few more expensive purchases, such as a bedroom suite, were made entirely with Edith’s money, because she had more to spend than her husband.

Their life during these months at Shakespeare-crescent was quiet and simple. Both were diligent workers and kept regular hours. Occasionally they went to a theatre, but their chief diversion was the Saturday night concerts at Central Hall, East Ham. Both were fond of music. At one time my daughter took singing lessons, but not with any marked success.

Thompson liked singing too. He had a light baritone voice but was very diffident about using it in public. He was a very self-conscious man. This was the most marked thing about him: and in more ways than one it prevented him from doing himself justice. He was a better listener than talker. He could not even be induced to learn tennis because of his exaggerated shyness.

Likewise with dancing. He disapproved of it, mainly, I think, because he could not dance himself. On the other hand Edith was a splendid dancer. Before her marriage she was in the habit of going to heaps of dances with the family. Though never once with an outsider. After she was married she practically never went to a dance in view of her husband’s attitude.

When we were all living together at Shakespeare-crescent, whist and waiting for the Zeppelins were our principal evening recreations. Thompson, on account of the bad physical condition of his heart, used to suffer considerably during these later visitations. Edith was always too concerned about him to have time to bother about her own fears, though after a raid she was often on the verge of collapse.

HOLIDAY MOMENTS.
Presents and Week-End Parties.

In the Easter of 1917 Thompson was recommended a change of air by the doctor, and after some delay he and Edith went down to live at Westcliff in furnished apartments. He was not ill enough to have to give up work, though a less industrious and conscientious man might have considered himself justified in so doing. He was anxious, though, about his health, and rather given to doctoring himself. His medicine chest was full of bottles of all sorts of mixtures, out of which he had only taken one or two doses.

The Thompsons lived at Westcliff for just over two years, all the time in apartments. Edith used to drop in and see us at least one night a week, usually Friday, and Thompson came along from the City later to take her home, She invariably brought some little present for her mother – flowers, chocolates, or some novelty.

In the summer we spent many week-ends with the Thompsons at Westcliff. They were very enjoyable times to all concerned. To us it seemed that Edith and her husband were getting along excellently together. I can hardly believe, even in the light of what I know now, that we were wrong in our conclusions; that perhaps already differences had arisen between them. Not differences about Bywaters, I must say here. Her does not appear on the scene till much later. At this particular time Edith could hardly have been aware of his existence.

It was in September 1919 that the Thompsons came back to London to live. They took up their abode at No. 65 Mansfield-Road, Ilford, the house of Thompson’s married sister.

THE SMOOTH DAYS.
Arranging Theatre Outings.

They continued to live their orderly, matter-of-fact existence. Edith began to play tennis a good deal in the evenings and on Saturday afternoon when Thompson was working late at the office.

Together they went to concerts and theatres, my daughter Avis usually accompanying them. Avis at this time always had lunch with her sister in the City twice a week, when very often these theatre visits would be arranged. They used to meet Thompson in the evening after business, go to a restaurant and have a little dinner and then to the theatre. At the end of one of these evenings they would calculate up the total expense and each of them – Edith, Avis, and Thompson – pay their exact third. Not even the cost of a programme was omitted from the calculation.

In view of what has since happened I recall that one of the plays Thompson saw in company with Edith and Avis was the dramatized version of the book ‘Bella Donna’, I think at the Strand Theatre, as it then was. Considerable prominence was given to the incidents of this book at my daughter’s trial. The impressions made on most people is that Edith devoted particular attention to ‘Bella Donna’, with its poisoning theme – made in fact a study of it.

‘BELLA DONNA.’
A Talk Between Sisters.

I want here to put things in their right proportions. My daughter was always a voracious reader, her favourite novelists being W. J. Locke and Robert Hichens. She read each of his novels as it was published. Avis, who had facilities for obtaining books at discount prices, used to buy them for her, sometimes two or three a week. It was actually Avis who bought ‘Bella Donna’ for her sister to read.

Both the girls read the book. And afterwards, as was their practice, discussed the characters at great length. Here in this very room where I am now sitting I was present one evening when one of these discussions was going on. I can distinctly remember the words used by Edith in connection with the character of ‘Bella Donna’ herself. They were: ‘She is not a human woman’, and again ‘She is unnatural’.

It is just what I should have expected her to say: for I never did and never shall consider her as in any way resembling a woman of this ‘Bella Donna’ type. Edith’s sensibilities were far too acute. I have known her faint at the sight of a dead mouse in a trap. She could not bear the sight of blood. Her temperament was such that she could not pull a splinter out of her finger. It was not a matter of pluck but simply of nerve.

While the Thompsons remained at Mansfield-road I saw a good deal of them. They often came to Shakespeare-crescent together to dinner in the evening, and for a period of a fortnight in the summer of 1920 they stayed here while my wife and I were away on holiday. Edith was now doing better than ever in business.

All this time, however, she had been very anxious to have a home of her own. Thompson shared her views. Both were tired of living in apartments and other people’s houses, as they had done since their marriage in January 1916. They had been thrifty with this object in view; so that in June 1920 they were able to achieve their ambition. They bought outright No. 41 Kensington-gardens, Ilford, and moved into it the following August. The deeds were made out in Thompson’s name, but the money was contributed equally by him and his wife.

This home of theirs, in which I sadly remember they both took so much pride, was a double-fronted housed with a garden back and front and a small semi-circular drive at the entrance. They rechristened it ‘The Retreat’, after the name of the road in which they had lived at Westcliff.

For fully the next nine months their principal occupation was getting their house in order. The happiest of young married couples could not have displayed more delight in the task. I, my wife and Avis also did our share in the work, spending many of our evenings putting things straight, in house and garden. The five of us were always busy. We retiled the path, made a lawn, and planted rose trees in the front garden.

AT THEIR HOBBY.
Joyous Garden Hours.

Thompson was very fond of gardening. It was the only hobby he had. My daughter was equally fond of flowers, and together they worked joyfully to make the front garden one of the most charming in the road. I remember it that first spring they lived there, with its banks of daffodils and the horseshoe in the centre bright with multitudes of red and yellow tulips.

Geraniums were, perhaps, Edith’s special favourites. She would often go out and spend thirty shillings at a time on them, ordering the florist to have the plants sent home at once. She was as excited as a child on these occasions, and could never rest till she had planted them.

Even in her present misery she has still a thought for her geraniums. The other day, when her mother visited her at Holloway, she was so anxious to know what had become of them and besought my wife to take care of the plants in case they suffered from frost.

It was, as I have said, in August 1920 that the Thompsons went to live in their new home. And it was just about this time that young Bywaters first came into my daughter Edith’s life.

Up to this period the Thompsons had certainly never seen, and I don’t think even heard of, Bywaters. As a boy he had gone to school with my younger son Billie. They had been great chums, but after leaving school lost sight of each other for a time. Bywaters at about the age of fifteen had entered the employ of a shipping firm in Leadenhall-street, afterwards leaving them to go to sea in the service of the P & O Company as a writer. My son Billie had sone gone to sea, but with the White Star line.

THE KNOCK AT THE DOOR.
Bywaters introduces himself.

One evening in January 1920 I answered a knock at the front door. A very smart. good-looking youth stood on the step. He introduced himself as Freddie Bywaters, my son Billie’s old school chum.

Billie also happened to be home at the time and Bywaters came in and had an hour’s chat with him. He was practically a stranger to the rest of us, but soon made himself at home. He created a very favourable impression on me as a youth of sound judgement. Though only a boy in years, he had a very matured outlook. His views were those one would expect from a man. I have never met any other boy whose critical faculty was so well developed. He talked well, in a cool, precise way without indulging in any of the wild enthusiasms usual to youngsters of his age.

My daughter Edith was not present on that occasion. After an hour’s conversation Bywaters left us. A few more months were still to elapse before the fateful meeting between him and Mrs Thompson.

31 December 1922:
WHY THOMPSON BROUGHT BYWATERS HOME

In entering upon the period of the disastrous mutual infatuation between my daughter Edith and Frederick Bywaters, I want to point out that right until after the tragedy no member of my family ever had the slightest suspicion of the true state of affairs.

Ignorant as we were of my daughter’s unhappy married life, we were doubly ignorant of this fatal development. It was never even dreamt of by us.

The behaviour of Edith and Bywaters never gave us any clue, I look back at the many times I saw them here in this room together – times when they were, as I know now, committed to one another. Their attitude towards each other was never more than that of friends. They kept their secret well. My daughter was always a good actress, and Bywaters played his part equally well.

EARLY IMPRESSIONS.
‘Boy with Grown Man’s Mind’

Bywaters was approaching the age of eighteen at the time of his first meeting with Edith. He was undeniably a good-looking youth, the most conspicuous thing about his appearance being his luxuriant wavy hair, which he wore brushed back high from the forehead. It contained a curious mingling of light and dark shades of brown, due, I expect, to the bleaching effects of the hot suns of the East.

His eyes and eyebrows were dark, his jaw quare and very determined for a youth of his age. He was of medium height, broader than usual, and well made. He dressed smartly and was always very particular that his trousers should be properly creased.

He talked, as I have already said, with a grown man’s mind on the things he had seen. Still, he was only a boy and a good deal of his conversation about this time was concerned with his former football triumphs in the school eleven. He remembered such incidents vividly and delighted in recalling them to my sons.

A WELCOME VISITOR
But Not Known to Mrs Thompson

When he first called at hour house in January 1920, Bywaters was working by his boat in Tilbury; that is, helping to get it ready for the next voyage. Consequently he looked in on us again during the next few weeks for a chat with my son Billie. This was chiefly in the evening when the day’s work was done.

We sat round the fire, and Bywaters entertained us with descriptions of the places he had been to, the things he had done, the life of the natives, and so forth. He had a talent for bringing a scene before the eye of the listeners in a few clear words.

In due time his ship became ready for sea again, and Bywaters sailed with her to China and Japan. We saw no more of him for about three and a half months. He had paid us, I suppose, some four visits and was now known to all the family except my daughter Edith. She never happened to be in the house on any of the evenings Bywaters was here, and I do not think the fact of his reappearance was ever mentioned to her. Thompson, certainly, was so far quite unaware of Bywaters’s existence.

The Thompsons had settled down in their new home at Kensington-gardens, Ilford. Very many pleasant Saturdays I and the rest of the family spent there. We had music followed by little suppers, which my daughter Edith prepared herself. She was especially good at making salads and fruit jellies. Both Edith and her husband seemed perfectly contented on these occasions.

I remember too, the happy family parties at Kensington-gardens, to celebrate the return of Edith’s young brothers from a voyage. They invariably brought her home presents, usually beautiful tea or dinner services from Japan. Her house was filled with dainty china she had acquired in this way.

At these reunions all was mirth and gaiety. Even Thompson used to shed some of his natural self-consciousness and sing with the rest of us, his favourite songs being such ballads as ‘Sincerity’ and ‘Maire, my Girl’.

Such was the domestic life of the Thompsons just previous to the advent of Bywaters into it. It was to all intent and purposes no whit less happy than that of the majority of married couples.

Then Bywaters reappeared once more. It was his last trip on the Plassy, and the boat put in at Tilbury. He was then living with his mother at Upper Norwood. The Plassy moved up the river to the East India Dock for reconditioning, which lasted over eight weeks.

THE FIRST MEETING.
Evening in the Father’s House

It was this fact that brought about Bywaters’s first meeting with Mrs Thompson. He was finding it very inconvenient to travel backwards and forwards every day from Upper Norwood to the East India Dock. As the dock was only the matter of a twopenny tramway car fare from my house in Shakespeare-crescent, Bywaters asked me if he might lodge here while he was standing by the Plassy. I consented, and he remained with us for two months in all.

It was the invariable habit of Mrs Thompson to come to Shakespeare-crescent on her way home from town every Friday night to see her mother. She usually arrived between half-past seven and eight o’clock laden with shopping. Her arms full of flowers, a book, a newspaper, and the sides of her attaché-case almost bursting with the purchases she had crammed into it.

On one particular Friday evening when Edith arrived as usual, a good-looking youth rose from his seat where he was talking to me and waited to be introduced to her. It was Bywaters, and that was the first time they ever set eye on one another.

Thompson came along to our house a little later in the evening and was also introduced to Bywaters. It would have been a marvellous prophet who could have foreseen from these two matter-of-fact introductions the terrible events that were to follow.

HUSBAND’S FRIEND
The Wife Not Interested

So far as Mrs Thompson and Bywaters were concerned, as soon as they had shaken hands on that first occasion they seemed to have no further interest in one another. I doubt whether they so much as spoke to one another again that evening. If they did it was the merest commonplace.

With Thompson it was different. I could see from the very start that he liked young Bywaters; he warmed up to him in a way unusual for one of his reserved disposition. Thompson liked the boy (their respective ages were then 30 and 18) because of his shrewdness, and they immediately got on well together. Bywaters seemed to find a corresponding attraction in Thompson.

That evening the party at Shakespeare-crescent split into two groups, masculine and feminine. The women talked of shopping and other domestic matters, and the men chiefly of seafaring topics, in which we were all interested. Those two groups remained apart until the time came to break up for the evening. I mention this to show how ordinary and formal were the circumstances in which Bywaters and Mrs Thompson first became acquainted, Thompson when he said goodbye to me that evening spoke about Bywaters ‘I like him very much’, he said. ‘He is a smart, interesting boy. A clean-looking fellow.’

In fact it was as Percy Thompson’s friend and not as Edith’s that Bywaters was first to become on intimate terms with them. And this state of affairs continued for a long while. Thompson’s liking for Bywaters grew at each meeting on these Friday evenings at Shakespeare-crescent. The talk continued to be practically confined to sea-faring matters. Bywaters shone on these occasions. He liked being asked questions about his experiences, and never tired of answering them.

So things went on during the eight weeks that Bywaters lodged with us while he was working on the Plassy in East India Dock. But after a while he began to get very tired of the delay in putting to sea again. He had practically nothing to do at the dock (being then a writer) and time hung heavily on his hands.

So far from showing any interest in Mrs Thompson at that period I hardly ever heard him refer to her. All that troubled him then was how soon he could get to sea again. Finally he was transferred to the Cap Polonia at Southampton, and sailed away on a voyage to Bombay.

Again we lost sight of him for some time. His name dropped out of our conversation except perhaps for an occasional reference by one of my sons. The Thompsons never mentioned him. They were now busier than ever furnishing their house, which they did in a very methodical manner, deciding what they wanted, and waiting till they had saved the money to buy it. They bought good things, for they both took a great pride in their home, and nothing but the best within their means would satisfy them.

Furnishing, tennis, occasional theatres, filled up Mrs Thompson’s time during this period. Percy Thompson had also become acquainted with some Freemasons, and he and his wife attended a number of masonic banquets together.

Three months elapsed before Bywaters again appeared. Then very late one evening he looked in for an hour on his way from Southampton to Liverpool. He had returned from Bombay, spent six weeks at Southampton, and was now transferred to Liverpool to bring a ship, the Malwa, round to London.

Bywaters never saw the Thompsons on the occasion of that flying visit, nor a fortnight afterwards, when he was back with the Malwa at Tilbury. In November 1920 he was off again in the Malwa on a short voyage to Bombay, without having once called on the Thompsons.

I think it is indisputable that up to this time neither my daughter nor Bywaters were interested in each other beyond the interest aroused by ordinary acquaintanceship. And in this case the acquaintance, by reason of Bywaters’s continual absences, seemed unlikely to develop into any warmer relationship. The following year, however, was destined to change all.

A LITTLE SCENE
Use of Christian Name

The Malwa, with Bywaters as baggage steward on board, returned to Tilbury on the first Saturday in January 1921. Bywaters, anxious to get ashore quickly, left the boat while it was in midstream, for which youthful misdemeanour he was suspended by the company for a time.

Bywaters came to see us at Shakespeare-crescent just too late for our New Year party. Had he arrived in time for that he would have found Mr and Mrs Thompson present among a score of other guests. He would also have been witness of a little scene arising from Thompson objecting to one of the male guests addressing his wife by her Christian name instead of calling her ‘Mrs Thompson’.

Bywaters was still living at Upper Norwood, and he again found it convenient to stay with us for ten weeks. I had no objection because I liked his company and conversation. During this time he met Mr and Mrs Thompson several times, and became more friendly than ever with Percy Thompson.

The degree of intimacy between him and Mrs Thompson showed no change. They continued to display no particular interest in one another, and I don’t think at that time they had anything to conceal. Edith probably thought like the rest of us, that Bywaters was a bright, good-looking youth, and was amiable to him as her husband’s friend.

FATEFUL HOLIDAY
Making Up a Party

Percy Thompson, however, was soon to give tangible proof of his liking for Bywaters. He invited him to their house, and, what was more, used his influence to get the young man a new berth on the Orvieto. This was entirely Thompson’s own doing. Edith knew nothing about it till everything was settled. Thompson was a friend of the purser of the Orvieto, and spoke to him on Bywaters’s behalf, and the latter was invited to join the ship. Naturally Bywaters was very grateful to Thompson and the friendship was further cemented by this incident.

Bywaters went away on the Orvieto to Brisbane, a long voyage. He returned at the beginning of June 1921 – an unfortunate date, as it afterwards proved, for all parties concerned.

In the meantime the Thompsons and my daughter Avis were making arrangements for their summer holiday. They had decided to make up a party of three and go to Shanklin, in the Isle of Wight. Bywaters appeared at this juncture. He mentioned that he would like to take a holiday, having nothing else to do just then. Whereupon Percy Thompson, remarking that party of four would be more convenient than one of three, invited Bywaters to join himself, his wife, and Avis on their holiday at Shanklin.

Bywaters agreed readily and so it was arranged.

My daughter Edith had nothing at all to do with the giving of this invitation. It was Thompson’s idea from the very beginning. And I doubt if, on accepting the invitation, Bywaters was at all influenced by the fact that Mrs Thompson was to be of the party.

UNCONFESSED LOVERS
No Outward Signs  

I think it was upon that holiday that the seeds of the ensuing disaster were sown; but up till then I do not think Bywaters and Mrs Thompson had given each other a serious thought. That week’s proximity at Shanklin created an entirely different relationship between them. From being friends they passed to lovers – unconfessed lovers, perhaps, but each conscious, I think, of the change that had taken place.

Nevertheless their outward demeanour betrayed nothing. My daughter Avis, who was always with them, never had her suspicions aroused. In fact, Bywaters was not very much in Edith’s company, and he was hardly ever left alone with her. Edith and Avis were usually together, and Thompson and Bywaters. Thompson did not bathe on account of his weak heart. His wife was not very keen on it either, and such bathing as was done by the party was confined to Bywaters and Avis.

Nothing arose to mar the pleasures of that holiday. The weather was exceedingly fine, the surroundings delightful, excursions were made to beauty spots in the vicinity and it was with general regret that at the end of the week the party broke up. Avis stayed on alone at Shanklin for another week. Bywaters and the Thompsons returned to London together, the latter intending the have the remainder of their holidays later in the year.

AN INVITATION
The Trio at Ilford

Thompson had found young Bywaters so agreeable a companion at Shanklin that he was loath to part with him. He now suggested that the youth return with them to their house in Kensington-gardens, Ilford, and stay there for an indefinite period. I can only conjecture in the light of after events that this suggestion must have proved very acceptable to Mrs Thompson and Bywaters. Anyhow, Bywaters readily fell in with it.

But again, it should be remembered, the invitation was spontaneous on Thompson’s part. Thompson was not the sort of man to remain unsuspicious if such a desire had been expressed by his wife. So it is evident that he, like the rest of us, had not the faintest idea at this time that during the week at Shanklin young Bwaters and Mrs Thompson had become lovers.

The three of them went straight back to Kensington-gardens, and there Bywaters stayed until the quarrel on the following August Bank Holiday, a period of about six weeks.

Looking back now it occurs to me that while at Kensington-gardens Bywaters did not appear so anxious to get another ship as he had been on earlier occasions when staying with us at Shakespeare-crescent, for instance. Previously he had grown very tired of shore life after a time.

But beyond this fact, which was hardly noticeable at the time, there was still nothing to give the onlooker the slightest impression of the real state of affairs – that a passionate love affair had sprung up between Bywaters and Mrs Thompson, and that this was the secret reason why he did not want to go to sea again, for the time being at any rate.

To be continued [but it was not]    .

Newspaper Article 4

Lloyd’s Sunday News – 17 December 1922

EDITH THOMPSON

BY A LIFELONG FRIEND OF MRS THOMPSON

If anyone had told me six months ago that the time was near when my friend, Edith Thompson, would be notorious throughout the world as a heartless murderess, I should have thought the speaker was quite mad.

The idea would have seemed grotesque, ridiculous. Yet only six days ago I, her old schoolfellow, saw her sentenced to death at the Old Bailey, saw her carried a bundle of human wreckage to the prison which may be but a stepping-stone to the ignominy of the gallows.

Beside me in the crowded court was one of the many barristers who had listened throughout the hearing. We had got into conversation. I had told him the woman in the dock was once dear to me.

I had protested vehemently to that sympathetic stranger that the Edith Thompson I knew could not have been capable of the awful crime for which this woman in the dock was standing trial for her life.

And he had turned to me with a wistful smile, and said these words, which, I think, are branded on my mind forever: ‘The devil himself knoweth not the heart of man.’ And he had told me they were uttered by a famous judge when a prisoner stood in that very place charged with the crime of murder, ‘The devil himself knoweth not the heart of man’!

Can it be that I have never seen the heart of my woman friend? Can it be that there were secret places in the heart of Edith Thompson that we, who admired and loved her, never guessed at.

QUICKWITTED CHILD:

NINE-YEAR-OLD EDITH GRAYDON AT TOP OF THE CLASS

Hard indeed it is to reconcile my many memories of her with the image of her as she is seen by the world today.

Those memories go back near twenty years. Twenty Years! Yet it seems as though it were but yesterday that she came as a new girl to the Kensington-avenue Council School Manor Park.

Hers was then, and even more noticeably so in later life, one of those vivid personalities which immediately impress themselves upon those about them. She was a mere slip of nine years. Slight and reedy of figure, with supple body and pale, dark-eyed face, and dark hair. And above all she was vivacious, quick-witted, and insinuating in manner.

It was not long before she was the recognized leader in our class; not long before she moved rapidly into top place; not long before we saw in the flower-like child our superior, mentally and physically.

I cannot attempt any explanation of those hidden sources of magnetism which we call personality; I can only record that in my childish way I loved her. For she drew love as a cloud draws water – and the truth of that statement was never so marvellously illustrated as it was at the trial at the old Bailey, where the amazing spectacle of Bywaters’ truly heroic stand for the woman he loves will never be forgotten by those who witnessed it.

To have the power to draw love implies a like capacity for giving love. Edith Thompson was volatile, as I have said, and she was capable of warm and lasting affections, as my own relations with her go to prove.

THE GRAYDON HOUSEHOLD

The Graydon family lived then where they live to-day. But twenty years ago Mr Graydon was a struggling clerk with a young family to keep. There was little spare money for pleasure.

How the Graydon parents contrived to set aside monthly the payment for the building society through which they purchased that little red-brick villa, they alone know. It must have meant countless little sacrifices, numberless economies. But they succeeded. Six months ago they were able to take life a little easier: the long lane had had its turning. But now, by one fell stroke of a merciless Fate, all those sacrifices, all that labour of a lifetime, has been swept away.

The Graydons have given their all that their daughter might have every chance in her fight for her life. It has left them where they were when they started life as a young couple thirty-five years ago.

Growing up in this tiny home, where every penny counted, Edith early made up her mind to turn to for herself. Among her many accomplishments was a facility with the needle. At fifteen she went out to earn her own living. At twenty she was earning more than her father. It was always a peculiar thing about Edith Graydon that she combined with a bookish romantic nature an astuteness for business which was to stand her in good stead when she married Percy Thompson.

In the wholesale millinery business of Carlton & Prior, in Aldersgate-street, she soon made herself felt. She was recognised as an exceptional girl – ‘a girl in a thousand’, her employer has said of her.

A keen bookkeeper, she also had a flair for buying. She was soon earning five pounds a week. She was trusted and proved herself trustworthy. One thing led to another. She was sent over to Paris on the business of her firm, and her keen buying and astuteness led to a repetition of the new activity. She was overjoyed when she told me before the event that she had been chosen to make the journey. She was doubly happy when she came back and received the congratulations of her employer for having succeeded brilliantly. All this time she was living at home, bringing into the little villa in Shakespeare-terrace more money than her father: bringing, too, the light of a fascinating personality which radiated throughout the home.

Edith Thompson was one of those women who seek instinctively to improve themselves. She led a busy life; she liked gaiety and amusement, but she also found time for books. Day by day, sitting in the crowded third-class carriage that took her to her work, she read omnivorously. During the luncheon hour, when she came out of that glass door of her employers’ premises into the hubub of Aldersgates-street, she carried a book under her arm.

On the one side there was the strenuous life of a clever young business woman; on the other, that of the secret dreamer of romance, and of love.

Love came to her first in 1915 – that is to say, the first real love affair of her life.

Oh, yes, there had been little affairs with other boys and young men. It was inevitable that it should be so with a girl of Edith’s temperament. For romance, even more than we who were near her suspected, played a great part in her life. Beneath that sleek head of black hair there was a vivid mind and fiery imagination. Who can doubt that she dreamed her dream of the ideal lover?

And when Percy Thompson came into her life it seemed, for a time, as though that dream were to come true.

LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT:

PRIVATE PERCY THOMPSON, OF THE LONDON SCOTTISH

That was in 1915. The war was in its second year. The man who fired this romantic girl’s heart was in khaki. Must one class this marriage as the most tragic of all those hasty war marriages? I think so.

In 1915 khaki had an irresistible glamour. Men in khaki were heroes. And this thick-set young man, with the brooding manner and deep eyes, seemed to Edith Graydon, I have no doubt, the most heroic of them all.

The scene of the first meeting was a party in the house of a mutual friend in Manor Park. There was Percy Thompson resplendent in his uniform as a private in the London Scottish.

They were introduced. The flame leapt high: it burnt with sudden and intense heat.

It was, perhaps, love at first sight.

So, too, it may have been love at first sight which gripped the heart of a certain fresh-complexioned boy who, diffident and shy, worshipped this fascinating girl, eight years his superior, from a distance and in silence.

BYWATERS STILL AT SCHOOL

However that may be the predestined forces of the lives of these three unhappy mortals were moving towards the last act of the terrible drama.

When Percy Thompson, a man grown, was courting Edith Graydon, Freddie Bywaters was attending school, and dreaming who knows what dreams of boyish love.

Edith Graydon took the man of her choice along to her parents’ home. He was introduced to her parents as their prospective son-in-law. But they did not like him. Love makes some men tender, some it makes morose, savage. Percy Thompson was of the type of brooding lover

Without social graces, just an intense young man, with the prospect of active service before him, and a limited time to spend with his sweetheart.

Had Edith been of a less dominating character it is possible that parental counsels would have prevailed against a match, which to all onlookers was so obviously ill-sorted. But they did not. Edith Graydon had always had her own way. For years she had been dominating that little home with her vivid and intense personality. She had her man, she went her own way.

There is one anomaly in the lives of these two people. I have emphasised the fact that Edith Thompson was a forceful personality; and so she was.

In a sense it might be said that she dominated her fiancé, and, later, her husband. But it would not be altogether true. There are facts which make a qualification of this estimate necessary.

First, then, the matter of their property. The money that went to buy their first home was the wife’s money; the title deeds are in the name of the husband. The major part of the income was derived from the activities of the wife; the banking account was a joint one.

These may be small matters, but they have their significance; they reveal Thompson as a masterful man. Yes, in many ways he was that; and it may be that that very masterfulness made its appeal to the nature of Edith Thompson in the early stages of that courtship.

Before Thompson was invalided out of the Army on account of his heart months later, there had been a series of incidents which boded ill for their future happiness.

One day there was a party in the tiny living-room of Shakespeare-crescent. Friends of the family were there and, sitting in the corner, Percy Thompson. Always at those little affairs the centre of attraction was the eldest daughter of the house, fascinating Edith Graydon.

There can be no doubt that Edith’s popularity with the men was a sore point with her lover. For on that occasion, just because the high-spirited girl was romping with a young fellow, Percy Thompson got up and walked out.

It was but the first of many such scenes. That courtship was far from being a happy one. We used to wonder how long it could last, for it was apparent that no two people could be more ill-assorted. 

AFTER THE WEDDING:

‘NEITHER HAPPY: QUARRELS FREQUENT AND VIOLENT’

Yet, so often one sees happy marriages result from the union of entirely different temperaments, there was in the case of these two the hope that after marriage things would go more smoothly.

In January 1916, Edith Graydon became Edith Thompson. Thompson had returned to his civilian employment as a shipping clerk. The marriage was precipitate for Thompson had nothing saved and no money with which to provide a home for his beautiful bride.

It was characteristic of Edith that she overcame all difficulties where her will was concerned. She determined to continue her work in the City; she announced herself content to put up with lodgings.

The young couple moved into lodgings near the Graydons’ house. Trouble started from the first. And always the bone of contention was the attitude of Percy Thompson to his wife’s men friends. It seems as though he resented her even talking to any other man.

After their return from Southend, where the brief honeymoon was spent, the two had probably realised the ghastly mistake they had made. Neither was happy, quarrels were frequent and violent. And always after these quarrels there would be a return to a short-lived intimacy; only to relapse again into an acrimonious dispute about some third party.

Percy Thompson was a man who wanted humouring; his temperament – certainly not devoid of sterling qualities – was not one which blended with the high-spirited nature of his intensely vital wife. It was merely the old story of a somewhat hasty marriage and subsequent misery.

During this time, and for the next few years, Edith Thompson’s life was one of hard and incessant work. They had no maid so that it fell to her lot, not only to do a long day’s work in Aldersgate-street, but also to attend to the duties of her little home.

As I know during this time Edith would be up every morning at six cramming into the early hours of the day the normal day’s work of a married woman. I have known her often and often do the washing before sitting down to breakfast she had herself prepared and put upon the table. Then, the breakfast things washed up, she would go off to the City and be at her place of business at nine o’clock.

Her husband worked different hours. He left always a little later than his wife. He arrived back later in the evening. At half-past five Edith Thompson would leave Aldersgate-street and return home. When her husband arrived there would be a cosy supper set out for him.

That early period of their marriage I have some reason to know something of. Edith Thompson had never had much time for learning the art of housekeeping; but she was in no wise self-sufficient.

In this, as in other matters, she was keen to learn, and was always grateful for any assistance I or other married girl friends were able to give her.

With £10 a week coming into the little home, with no more money worries, and with much outside amusement, one would have supposed these two young people would have been able with time to adjust their differences and settle down to a life of tolerable happiness.

For my part I waited for one great event to cement their relationship – an event which might have saved the woman’s soul and found the latent tenderness in the man’s heart.

But that event never happened. No baby came to Edith Thompson and her jealous husband.

And instead of a gradual readjustment to meet the requirements of each other’s temperaments, the rift widened.

Love had died, slowly, perhaps, and by imperceptible phases: hate took its place.

Meanwhile the boy who had been the silent and distant adorer from afar made his appearance on the scene. Freddie Bywaters had tried to show his feelings in a boyish way on many occasions. He had come with little gifts of flowers: gifts which were received without a thought by the recipient.

He returned a grown man – tall, good-looking, passionate. After many migrations from lodging to lodging – they were several times requested to move because of the scenes which were continually disturbing other occupants of the house […] joint savings – The Retreat, 41 Kensington Gardens, Ilford.

To this new home Freddie Bywaters, home from sea, came as a paying guest. Very soon the old, old story of the eternal triangle was played yet once more. The quarrels continued. Bywaters, now thoroughly the slave of his passions, was the unwilling spectator of many ignoble scenes.

It were useless to try to probe the brain and … of this amazing woman. Like everyone else who has known her, I can have known but the mask she showed to the world. Certain it is that she returned the love of Bywaters, and turned to him when the domestic atmosphere was marred by the wrangles which were becoming more and more frequent.

First sympathetic interloper, Bywaters became fellow conspirator. Consider the respective ages of these two people, take into account the character of the woman, as I have tried to draw it, and it will not be hard to decide who was here the dominant partner.

Bywaters’s moral code collapsed.

A TERRIBLE QUARREL

And from that time forward the tragedy marched towards its ghastly climax

That Percy Thompson suspected the illicit relation cannot be doubted. I remember one occasion when he came to visit his invalid mother. It had been his habit always to bring his wife. This time he came without her.

‘Where is Edith’, asked Mrs Thompson who is a chronic invalid.

‘She has gone to the theatre’, her son answered.

At that moment another relative came into the room. ‘To the theatre’, she exclaimed. ‘Why, I have just met Edith with Bywaters in Wanstead Park!’

Thompson rose when he heard this and a deep flush spread over his face. It was a case of a thoughtless blunder. It resulted in a terrible scene, in which many blows were struck. The tragedy had marched forward yet another stride!

I think nothing made for disharmony between the Thompsons more than one characteristic of the husband. Edith Thompson was a pleasure-loving girl. As I have said, dancing, parties, and the theatre were her chief sources of amusement. But she was also very keenly interested in books, a great reader. Her husband never opened a book; he therefore was debarred from sharing her intellectual life.

Once a friend warned Thompson that he was foolish to tolerate in his house a man who was obviously in love with his wife.[Richard Thompson claimed in his Lloyd’s Sunday News piece that he spoke to his brother about Bywaters and was told to mind his own business] He was advised to separate since their life together was becoming a scandal, in their respective families and among their friends.

To all these counsels Thompson had but one dogged reply: ‘I married her for better or for worse. I shall stick to her whatever happens.’

And from that attitude his obstinate and downright nature never swerved.

Meanwhile, Edith Thompson and Freddie Bywaters took the wide and easy path to destruction. They had many things in common; and not the least of these was their mutual love of reading.

A NOVEL A DAY:

FANCIED HERSELF IN ROLE OF LOVE-SICK HEROINE

Edith, as her father has often told me, found time to read a novel a day. Her taste was formed, and she preferred novels dealing with love; such novels as that so often referred to in her letters reads at the trial, Robert Hichens’ ‘Bella Donna’.

Together the clandestine lovers discussed the plots of the books as they read them. Edith Thompson, passionate and hungry for passionate love, by a twist of the imagination, saw herself in the roles of every unfortunate and love-sick heroine of which she read.

The process of her mind’s disease – for who can doubt that hers was a morbid mentality – is not a subject I can write of. Its influence on her conduct is not, however, difficult to trace.

Unknown to those about her, there must have been a secret mental process divorced from all human feeling; with but one overwhelming objective – the gratification of her illicit love.

Until, at the last, the old Edith that we know and loved, was dead.

Yet, even as I write of this unhappy woman, I recall a characteristic of hers that endeared her to those about her.

Edith Thompson was an open-handed, generous soul. She once told me that in a single year she had spent no less than £100 on presents for her friends – a very large sum for a woman in her financial position.

At Christmas she would sally forth on shopping expeditions, and no one was forgotten. That is a tragic thing to recall at this time, and under these circumstances. For Christmas day is Edith Thompson’s birthday! This year there will be no Christmas shopping, no ‘glad anticipations’, no happy returns.

I go back again and again to the circumstances of that tragic night. And always I find myself still in darkness, still in doubt.

That Edith was in the highest of spirits that night at the theatre I know; no one better. She was the life and soul of the party. Must I believe that as she sat there beside her husband she was cognisant of his imminent tragic fate?

For me at least that thought is impossible. How could it have been? What woman, humanly constituted, could have sat there, have dined

[probably at Pinoli’s, 17 Wardour Street, Soho: see below, but note that Lillie Laxton’s piece about dining together before the theatre – quoted in Criminal Justice – would seem to be contradicted by her husband who states that the foursome met at the Pit entrance of the Criterion Theatre at 6.45 pm and stayed there in the queue until they entered the show at 7.45.]

and then have returned to the suburban quietude with that knowledge hidden in her heart?

Would not, I ask myself, some sign, some betraying gesture, have revealed the tumult in her breast? Would not some thought of what such a thing have meant have left her petrified, frozen with horror?

All these things I ask myself again and again. And I have no answer. I must remember that those hellish letters were written by a woman – who knew that this man whose life she plotted against was the son of a widowed mother, of a chronic invalid. Had pity no place in her heart?

Then I think of her as I saw her with her husband so short a time before the murder. They seemed normal, happy even. I can remember an occasion in September when we were all in their little garden. There was no apparent shadow then, no hint of the imminent crime.

She laughed, she jollied with her guests; she even put in a word for her husband when he was taking in a poor spirit some joke against himself. ‘Oh don’t mind him’, she said. And with the words there was a suggestion of protective affection.

Surely this amazing woman must pass down in the history of crime as an inscrutable enigma.

OLD BAILEY QUEUE:

THE DERELICT WHO HAD LOVED EDITH GRAYDON

During the trial at the Old Bailey I passed a night among the queue waiting on the Newgate-street side for the next day’s hearing.

It was an extraordinary experience. There, huddled together, were men and women of all descriptions; well clad and those in rags, old and young – an extraordinary assortment.

And among that crowd I noticed the face of a man, gaunt and haggard, and with the growth of a week on his clay-like face. Something moved me to speak with him. I wanted to know what could be his reason for waiting there through the cold night to watch that woman’s suffering. He told me his story, quite simply and without embellishment. I am convinced that it was true, for it had the hall mark which truth alone bears.

This derelict was once a pupil at the Kensington-terrace School, Manor Park, the school attended by Edith Thompson and myself. He had loved Edith passionately. And, having passed from school to become a seafaring man, he had kept in touch with her. His affection, so he said, was returned, and he had made up his mind to marry her.

He returned from a long voyage in 1916. He went immediately to seek her out. He was a fortnight too late. Edith Graydon had become Edith Thompson: she was at Southend on her honeymoon!

His history from then one was one of a slow descent into the under-world. It was the usual story – drink, and its last chapter where the wastrel comes to the doss-house.

‘And so I have come down to this’, he said shivering in the cold. ‘I stand here in the queue outside the Old Bailey in the hope that I may be able to sell my place this morning – sell my place for some stranger to go in to gloat over the agony of the woman I once loved’.

Yet, who shall judge this poor fellow?

And who shall presume to sit in judgement upon Edith Thompson, convicted murderess?

Those were the tasks of judge and jury.

As for those who knew the central figures of this squalid tragedy of love, of hate, of crime, should we not find it possible even now to withhold utter condemnation, leaving just a small place in our hearts for pity?

‘Be pitiful, for all of us have to fight a hard battle’.

You, reader, and I know but a little of that lost battle that was fought by Edith Thompson and her lover.

And since the devil himself knoweth not the heart of man, let us pass on to the sweet sanity of normal life, and happiness and love – but not as the Pharisee, thanking God we are not as these, but rather pitying them.

 

Newspaper Article 5

Lloyd’s Sunday News – 24 December 1922

EDITH THOMPSON

BY A LIFELONG FRIEND OF MRS THOMPSON

I have seen Edith Thompson in prison.

I have looked upon her as she sat guarded by the ever vigilant wardresses, who are her companions by day and by night.

I have seen the woman I knew as a butterfly that went out to meet life joyously, a thing of the sunshine, sitting in the half light of a bare prison room, garbed in the uniform of shame.

And I have done more than that: for I have glimpsed something of that fear against which she is battling: buoyed up by the hope that the end is not yet.

Edith Thompson has not yet pictured to herself the reality of the gallows. She stands with her back to that fear fighting it off with the weapon of hope – Hope that dies only when the breath has left the body.

When I saw her carried, an inert and crumpled mass of womanhood, from the dock at the Old Bailey, I turned away so as not to witness that last agony. I said to myself as I was carried on the tide of humanity towards those jambed doors: You will never see Edith Thompson again. That is the end.

‘IT WAS AWFUL’:

MRS THOMPSON’S COMMENT ON END OF THE TRIAL

Imagine, then, my surprise and my joy, when I read this letter from the condemned woman, written on the official prison notepaper.

Dear –

I have just received your letter and I hasten to answer it.

Yes, it was awful last Monday [Monday 11 December 1922, the day she was sentenced to death]. I can’t explain what it felt like. I suppose no one knows unless their position is the same. It would be so much easier to bear even if I knew or even felt that I deserved that verdict, but I’m hoping for such a lot on Thursday [the day of the appeal]. Everyone seems so hopeful for me. I suppose it is catching.

The time here, on the whole, seems not as long as in remand – so many things are different. I can’t tell you because it is against the rules, but it is a fact, and I sleep better here than I did there; really I have very good nights’ rest.

There is plenty of time and opportunity to think all day long, so that by the time the night comes my brain is quite worn out and rests quite naturally.

This is something I am really pleased about, because I never – no, I think, not once – had a really good night’s sleep. I have asked and obtained permission for you to visit me. Now, as you are going away on Friday, I wonder if you will have time, but if you don’t come I shall quite understand, and hope that you will be having a real good rest over the holidays.

I remembered it was mother’s birthday yesterday [17 December 1922], and wrote to her. I’m glad you went down to see them. I expect they want cheering a little.

You know, dear, it’s really about them I worry far more than about myself. It must be painful for them – the publicity alone must be more than they can cope with. You see I am shut away here and know nothing of all that. However, perhaps things will come right even yet.

Ask – to write; only tell him to mind his p’s and q’s. Now there is nothing else I want to say except to thank you – I can’t tell you how much – for all you have done for me and for mother during this time.

It has helped tremendously to know that everybody, friends and relatives, have all stood by me during this time and have believed in me and still do.

I can’t say anymore, but I’m sure you will understand how I feel, and remember that all I want you to do now is to wish me luck for Thursday.

EDITH

When I turned my steps towards the gaol on a murky afternoon last week [Thursday 21 December 1922] I already knew that the appeal for Frederick Bywaters was dismissed. It was with a heart of lead that I knocked upon the small doorway of the prison which is set in its main, iron-studded gateway.

The door of the prison swung open; I stepped across the narrow threshold. It closed. The sounds of the busy world outside become suddenly muffled. A blue-uniformed official was standing beside me scrutinising my credentials.

My name and address is entered into a ponderous ledger. I am asked into a room where there is little save bare necessities as a great, brightly burning fire.

Presently a neatly uniformed woman comes. She beckons me to follow her.

She is taking me to a quarter of the gaol where those condemned to death pass the little balance of their lives. Across a courtyard we go, our footfalls sounding strangely loud; along flagged paths bordered with small patches of soot-covered London grass, wherein are set some rosebushes.

It is the most tragic garden in London. We pause before a door, the wardress producing a key. We pass in and pause. The key turns again. We are locked in.

THE DEAL TABLE BARRIER

It is a little vestibule. I am told to wait. The wardress disappears, her footsteps echoing down unseen corridors. Presently another woman appears. We pass together along a narrow passage furnished with linoleum. Everything is scrupulously neat. Upstairs, then along a landing.

It seems an endless journey to my painfully pounding heart. Yet each step takes me nearer to that woman who was once my friend and is now the lone occupant of the condemned cell.

How swift is thought!

During that progress towards that place of sorrow my mind flashed over the past we had shared so often together. It seems like a horrible dream, like some ghastly hallucination from which I should awake to hear the clear laughter of Edith Thompson – Edith Thompson in the glittering gaiety of a West End restaurant, Edith Thompson in her Ilford garden, laughing, joking, playing.

THE PRISON DRESS:

DAINTY GESTURE OF CONTEMPT FOR HER CLOTHES

‘You are allowed half an hour’ the voice of the wardress informed me.

We are before a door. It was open and before it stood a deal table, beyond, the bareness of a room in the murky half-light of the December afternoon.

Sitting some yards from me, with two wardresses on either side of her, was Edith Thompson.

She was dressed in a grey plain dress. A checkered apron covered her skirt, upon her head was a white cap with strings, which tied under her chin.

These things I only noticed later.

As I saw her at first it was only the face I was conscious of. Edith Thompson! Blanched face, and dark eyes; a mouth of tragic droop and hands that moved in her lap tremulously. Whatever may be said of this woman – and much nonsense has been written about her by people who cannot possibly have any real knowledge of her – there can be no doubt about her courage.

It was she who helped bridge over the gulf that was between us – the physical gulf that prevented me going to her; and the gulf that lies between a free person and a condemned fellow creature.

Her first question was of her mother: Had I seen her mother? How was she bearing up? When she was informed there was a visitor she had thought immediately of her mother: to see me had been a disappointment, for friends are but friends, and under what circumstances could a woman want her mother more vehemently than under such as I was seeing my old friend?

Have you ever tried to carry on a conversation in the presence of three perfectly impassive spectators?

It is something of an ordeal even to talk intimately in a railway carriage when strangers occupy adjacent seats. Imagine, then, what strain is involved in trying to put a brave front on such a meeting as that which I had with Edith Thompson last week.

And yet, as I have said, it was she – it was the condemned woman who put me at my ease, who removed with the magic of her personality and her assurance that intolerable atmosphere of the prison.

How did she do that? I will tell you. You know, in those much-debated letters, there are, by common consent, touches of genius. Well, that same flash saved our prison meeting from the threatened fiasco.

‘Well’, she said, ‘I suppose you want to know how I’m getting on here? I will tell you. Strange as it may seem, I am infinitely more comfortable here than I was when on remand. That was simply horrible. Here, all things considered, I have comfort. Of course I loathe these clothes.’

These last words were accompanied with a little dainty gesture of contempt, and as she made it I saw a slight movement on the part of one of the vigilant watchers.

But Edith Thompson had set me at my ease by the only possible tactics under the circumstances: she had not tried to pretend she was not there; she had not adopted any artificial manner as though she would contrive that both of us could pretend we were not where we were, and under the conditions we were.

She referred to the incidents of her prison life in a perfectly natural manner. It was a supremely artistic gesture; and it was also a thing for which I want so much that she should have credit.

FAITH IN APPEAL:

‘I SHALL WAKE FROM THIS AS FROM SOME AWFUL DREAM’

You see, don’t you, how difficult it must have been for her, with that ghastly horror at the back of her mind, to try to ask ordinary questions in a natural manner? What a supreme effort of will and heart was required to save me from the spectacle of the real and terrible suffering.

So we talked as the afternoon drew on towards evening.

‘How do you pass the time here?’ I asked her, and I think there must have been a catch in my voice, for she answered so spontaneously, so brightly.

‘Well, you know, ever since I was sentenced I have been waiting for the appeal which is being heard today. I feel so convinced that it must succeed that I shall wake from this as from some awful dream that all will come right yet, as I said in my letter.’

She asked me whether I knew the result of either appeal, and before the wardress could intervene to forbid my answer I had told her I knew nothing.

‘How do you pass your days?’ I asked.

She put up her hand to her throat – an old gesture of hers, and one which served to remind her of the beautiful amber necklace she once wore in place of that white and simple string.

THE WOODEN SPOON

‘This is the routine’, she said, turning to the wardress’, I suppose I may tell that?’

‘They are kind to me here in the prison hospital, and I am given breakfast in bed at half-past seven. Then I dress in these’ – another little gesture of disdain – ‘and from then on the morning is my own to do what I like in. Sometimes I write, sometimes I read, sometimes I knit mufflers which, I am told, go to the boys in the Borstal Institute.

‘Then at midday I have dinner. I am not allowed to have a knife or fork, and it is rather difficult to eat with the wooden spoon they provide; but I suppose that must be put up with!’

‘After dinner I walk in a yard alone for an hour – that is to say, I see no other prisoners. I do not enjoy that.’

‘At four I have tea, and at half-past eight I have to go to bed.’

I realised what a boon it must be for Edith Thompson, the bookworm, to have access to the books of the prison library. I asked her what she had been reading in prison.

‘You know, I have always loved W. J. Locke’s romances. Well, I have been reading ‘The House of Baltazar’. It is wonderful.

‘But sometimes I feel I cannot read, for my mind goes back again and again to what is going on outside – I mean the appeal. I can never get away from that for long. But there is one blessing. While I was on remand, and during the trial, I simply couldn’t sleep. I think that was why I so nearly collapsed during the trial. But now I sleep every night, and soundly.’

How I managed to do it I hardly know. But as I conjured up in my mind the mental anguish that such suspense must inflict upon this wretched woman, I made up my mind to talk of cheerful little things. It seemed to me that if she could live in memory some of the happy times of the past, when there was no shadow across her life, then, at least, something would have been gained.

FAIRY TALES OF LONG AGO

So I took her back to her childhood.

‘Do you remember that thrilling journey we made all the way to Stoke Newington to see your grandmother?

Her face lit up.

‘Of course I do. And remember how we climbed up on the old lady’s knee and demanded fairy tales.’

‘Yes, and do you remember, Edith, how at the end of each old favourite you would exclaim ‘But I know a better one than that?’

I was searching desperately in my memory for other episodes from the past which would take her mind off her condition.

You who have never undergone such an ordeal can have but little conception of the painfulness of it all. There was I for a little half-hour, free at the end of that time to go out again into the sweet air of freedom. But with the knowledge that I was leaving behind me a woman who in all probability will never again move among her fellow-beings as a free woman.

I remember an occasion in 1918 when a party of us went to Canvey Island, that quaint little place in the mouth of the Thames, for a holiday. [Edith and Percy lived in Westcliff-on-Sea at the time; they left in 1919]

Edith was in the highest of spirits for her brother had been demobilised just a few days previously, and there had been a festival at home in honour of his return.

EDITH THOMPSON’S MODESTY

Someone suggested a bathe. There were many people bathing, girls and men running down to the water’s edge, splashing in amidst loud laughter and shouted jokes.

‘I’m going in’, I said to Edith. ‘You’ll come too, won’t you?’

‘No. I don’t think I should like to,’ she answered.

‘But why not?’ I persisted.

‘Well, if you want to know, I think for girls to run down to the water in such flimsy costumes is utterly shameful.’

That was a characteristic view. For Edith Thompson was essentially feminine and modest. She had a slight, pliant figure – the sort of figure that can afford to go to the water’s edge clad in tightly-fitting bathing costume; but she considered it immodest.

When she did, at last, give in she walked to the water wrapped in a loose bath robe.

THE LAST SMILE:

HOW ORDEAL OF THE 30 MINUTES’ INTERVIEW ENDED

And, just as she was modest to a somewhat Victorian degree, so was she luxury-loving. She dearly loved beautiful fabrics, and, I think, it must have been her love of beautiful things that influenced her choice of a career.

As a buyer for a wholesale firm of milliners she was always in contact with the beautiful things all women crave. In her home, too, she imported something of her exotic love of luxury and voluptuous comfort.

Cushions she had in abundance, and all those touches she added to her living rooms which make a place a real home.

For example, she had a really quite wonderful collection of Japanese china. It must have been worth a considerable sum of money, for I have been told the pieces are all good, and all well chosen.

And with this innate modesty she had a dread of violence and of the sight of suffering. Let me tell a little story which well illustrates this trait in her complex character.

We were both quite small children at the time. The incident occurred one Sunday when we were coming out of the schoolroom of St Barnabas Church, Manor Park, after Sunday school.

A frog had got trampled on by some heedless little foot. It lay panting in the path before us, its glassy eye blinking horribly in pain.

Edith saw it and recoiled in horror, for all creepy things repelled her, as did, indeed, all animals at near quarters.

‘How disgusting!’ was her first comment; then: ‘Poor thing, what can we do?’ Then, as the idea came into her head, and she turned to carry out her project: ‘I know, we will get teacher to come and do something for it.’

I reminded her of this trivial incident, as she sat there in her prison clothes. She laughed, and the sound of her laughter was like an echo from the past. ‘Fancy you remembering that’, she said.

So through that brief half-hour we spoke of such things. Does it seem unlikely? Does it seem absurd? Well, I am not concerned with whether it does or does not. I am just putting down so much of that last conversation I shall ever have with my erstwhile schoolfellow as I remember it. You know one rarely behaves under any circumstances as one expects one will.

I had imagined I should be saying things of a heroic kind; that I should be telling her to be brave; that I still believed that her fate would be averted. And then when the time actually came there we were talking about fairy tales, frogs, and bathing parties!

It seemed but five minutes that I had been sitting on that hard chair talking to this condemned prisoner, when the wardress intimated that the half-hour was up, and that I must go.

OUTSIDE THE PRISON GATES

We were not allowed to approach one another. So we smiled – bravely, I hope, but perhaps with a twist of the lips. Then we turned, and that pale face, that slight prison begarbed figure, disappeared.

It was almost dark when I made my way out of the prison. The door closed with a metallic clang. I was once more in the street. People hurried by me with shining faces; the spirit of Christmas seemed everywhere; that prison and its inmate faded as unrealities from my mind. But as I passed along within the shadow of its walls, a shrill-voiced paper-boy, carrying a fluttering bill, was shouting the result of the appeal.

A moment later I knew the fate of my friend was sealed. Even while she sat immured, buoyed up with hope invincible, Fate had cast the die against her.

I can never hope to see Edith Thompson again. But my mind goes back incessantly to the past. I strive to solve this insoluble mystery of human personality. And I find no solution – only contradictions against which my mind butts as a moth onto a lighted window.

NIGHT OF MURDER:

EDITH THOMPSON’S JEST AT THE THEATRE

Incidents of that last West End party come back. I see Edith Thompson as she sat in that restaurant

[Pinoli’s Restaurant, 17 Wardour Street, Soho, a stone’s throw from the Criterion Theatre: we know from Avis Graydon that Edith and family and friends frequented this restaurant: there were five of them, not four, at the restaurant and theatre on 3 October 1922: the mysterious fifth person had Avis’s ticket that night. She was, probably, the same Ida Burton who visited Edith at Holloway, introduced her to the RC priest Canon Palmer, and played a role in Avis’s conversion to Catholicism. Avis mentions her ticket and so does Bywaters, who refers to Avis’s ticket for the Criterion in his testimony on 8 December 1922 at the Old Bailey. Ida worked at the GPO (General Post Office) in the City while Avis worked for Henley’s round the corner.]

the centre of the party, its wit and its mainspring. Her eyes sparkle as she breathes in the atmosphere of pleasure and gaiety.

I see her again as she stood outside the foyer of the theatre. I recall an episode that makes incomprehensible to me the murder which was to take place a few hours later.

Another friend who was of our party [Edith and Percy, Jack and Lillie Laxton, and the ‘friend’ who stood in for Avis] said to Percy Thompson: ‘Why haven’t you a coat? You will catch your death of cold.’ I forget what Thompson answered; but I remember well the laughing remark of his wife: ‘Oh, he’s too mean to buy himself an overcoat! I have promised to buy him a dress overcoat; but I won’t until he gets a grey one I have asked him to buy.’

 

LOVE OF MUSIC AND DANCING

A strange jest from a woman with murder in her heart!

I think of Edith Thompson in every phase of her life, but I remain completely baffled. I cannot square with my knowledge of her the awful facts which have come to light in the course of the trial.

Here was a woman who was so essentially attractive and wholesome that children went to her instinctively for sympathy. Is that not usually looked upon as a sure sign of a woman innate womanliness? Yet so it was: She had no child – as I think, unhappily; yet she loved children, and none more than the child of her brother-in-law.

If I had been asked to sum up Edith Thompson in a word at any time prior to this murder I should have said without hesitation Edith the Joyous.

How she loved all that makes life bright and happy. I remember her as a quite little thing, dancing with a grace and finish that would have made possible for her a career on the stage. In her now deserted home are many trophies of her clever dancing, prizes won at open competitions. And above all, she was a superb waltzer. I think the waltz was her favourite dance.

Then there was her love of the theatre and her love of music.

PLAYS SHE LIKED BEST

She once told me her favourite song was ‘One Little Hour’, a setting to the words of Evelyn Sharpe … One little hour! The phrase that occurs in that tragic letter which was read at the Old Bailey. One little hour!

Yet Edith Thompson had no gifts in this direction. She loved music and especially music of the sentimental kind, but she had no voice, nor could she play the beautiful piano she bought to grace her drawing-room.

And on such occasions as that red-letter day when the little family circle gathered round the returned soldier-brother in the tiny room in Shakespeare-crescent – the happiest day of her life, she said of it – she could not sing, or play, or take active part in the musical proceedings that passed the happy evening away.

It was the theatre which gave her emotional outlet; and to it she turned for the emotional stimulus she loved – perhaps to her undoing.

It was only a short time ago that she saw Maurice Moscovotich in The Great Lover, a play which moved her profoundly. The Wandering Jew, with Matheson Lang in the principal role she went to see many times. But no play made so deep an impression on her impressionable mind as The Bird of Paradise.

In that play of unhappy love Edith Thompson found something which made its direct appeal to her. It is not difficult to understand the nature of the thoughts which passed through her brain as she sat through that play. The coloured wife of the white man, and the tragedy of the utter hopelessness of the unnatural marriage. And its end – the suicide of the woman.

Plays, books, admiration, and an insane search for ideal love; who can doubt but that each worked upon a mind neurotic, and unbalanced, fomenting the surging desires that were her daily and nightly lash.

THE ENIGMA:

HOW THE SOUL FELL AND THE BODY TRIUMPHED

Yet whatever the depth of her secret depravity, and however secret her sin, I can think of her only as I visualise her now.

All memories of the happy and carefree past fade; I see her, and I shall always see her, a slender woman with a face of perfect whiteness, dark-eyed and tragic, arrayed in the disfiguring garments of a condemned convict, of a murderess.

And as I conjure up this picture of her I remember, too, the great hope which was her support when she sat facing me between those two blue uniformed wardresses in the hospital of Holloway Gaol. That hope is now gone. And I ask myself how will she support the hours when hope is dead and nothing stands between her and the gallows?

Nobody can comfort her now. She has played desperately with life, with fate, and now the grim accounting is at hand. If she goes out into the great darkness, if no reprieve comes to save her at the eleventh hour, then with her to her grave goes the secret of her personality.

What that secret is no one will ever know. It will die with her.

HER FRIEND’S ANALYSIS

It will be written of her that she was a woman without a heart; a murderess of vile and inconceivably wicked instincts. A creature whose passions were without bounds; whose duplicity was only matched by her lust.

All that will be said of Edith Thompson, the bright-eyed, laughing child who romped through youth with me, the woman whom, in later years, I looked up to and admired as a natural leader, a true friend, with generous heart and tender impulses.

What is the solution?

Surely it is to be found in the riddle that each of us it to his or herself.

There were two Edith Thompsons. There was the Edith Thompson of the Body; there was the Edith Thompson of the Soul.

And so, between these two the battle was waged. The Soul fell and was trampled; the Body triumphed.

It is a battle that each of us must fight. For those who lose, even where Justice demands life, it is not forbidden for us to be pitiful.

 

Newspaper Article 6

Lloyd’s Sunday News – 7 Jan 1923

EDITH THOMPSON

BY A NEAR-RELATIVE

‘I have seen my last of Edith Thompson in this world, for the few hours of life that now remain to her will be sacred to her father and mother and her family’, said a near relative of the condemned woman to Lloyd’s Sunday News yesterday.

‘When I entered the prison on Friday afternoon I did not know that I was there for the last time; the Home Secretary’s decision had not yet been announced, and there was still hope.

Yet, somehow, there was something in the air that seemed to tell me that the prison officials already knew my unhappy friend’s fate.

I had noticed too quite an unnatural number of policemen in the approach to the prison gate – an inspector, two sergeants, and three constables; more than I had ever noticed before.

Then there was a difference in the interview though it did not become significant to me until afterwards. Edith Thompson was still in her old interview position, sitting in the doorway of her prison-room, with a table close against her, parting her from me.

But, instead of sitting in my former place, my chair was placed away from the table. I shifted to the old position, but I was politely required to keep at the measured difference.

In that last hour that I should ever look upon her, I found Edith Thompson quite cheerful; so cheerful indeed that I even felt a little ashamed of myself in not being able fully to help her with as much cheerfulness of my own.

She has never had a high colour, so that she now had no noticeable pallor; and, as she was quite bright-eyed, I marvelled at her good spirits.

She thanked me, first, for a book I had taken to her, and then she remarked upon it, saying it had not equalled her expectations – ‘ordinary’ she called it.

Some magazines that I had taken to her she was not allowed to have.

‘This morning’, she then went on laughingly, ‘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.’

That bit of news from her opened the way for a question of my own. In a newspaper I had read that Bywaters had written a long letter to her, and I asked her whether that was so.

NO LETTER FROM BYWATERS

‘I don’t know’, she replied, with a grave little look on her face for the first time. ‘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.’

Then she told me that she had received a letter from Bywaters’s sister. [Quoted in Criminal Justice]

What had been written she did not say, but although it was too delicate a matter to probe in the presence of the two watchful wardresses, I gathered that it was a kindly, human [sic] letter.

That morning she had received four letters – three from relatives, and one from a friend; ‘all nice, cheering letters’, she said.

Strangely significant was her next remark in view of what I was to learn as I came away from the prison a little later – the decision of the Home Secretary not to intervene in the execution of the law.

‘I have been weighed as many as three times in a day,’ she told me.

Then I learnt that she has been drinking two pints of milk a day, the tea being ‘inferior’, as she said, a little wryly.

She asked me what had been happening ‘outside’, and when I told her that the Paris Conference had failed she said ‘I am sorry, it seems as if there must be more trouble.’

We might talk of everything except the one thing that touched us most; and so I told her that the Prince of Wales was announced as likely to marry a Scotswoman of noble birth. Her comment was in keeping with her good spirits:

‘What, another one?’, she remarked, laughingly.

DR SPILSBURY’S HONOUR

She was much interested in the New Year’s honours; and there I failed, for I could remember nobody in particular, except Dr Spilsbury, who gave evidence at her trial.

‘Who else?’, she asked, without further comment.

But, as a matter of fact, she was quizzing me in the question as much a to say, in a playful way, ‘You’re a fine one to remember anything’.

A moment or two later a change came into her face; she looked at me intently a moment, and then she asked me, quietly, whether I had ‘heard any news’.

I knew what she meant and replied ‘No, nothing at all’, little knowing the news that was awaiting me outside the prison.

She made no answer, only her look intensified her silence.

And so we talked on, speaking of other general matters, until my time was up; and then I came out into the outer world to learn that her fate was sealed and that I had taken of Edith Thompson my last farewell.

[Here, on 7 Jan 1923, Lloyd’s Sunday News continues with the lifelong (‘intimate’) friend of Edith’s: she is different from the ‘near-relative’ of the piece which precedes it.]

 

Newspaper Article 7 

Lloyd’s Sunday News – 7 January 1923

EDITH THOMPSON

BY A LIFELONG FRIEND OF MRS THOMPSON

Just two weeks ago I laid aside my pen at the end of a task I had felt bound to undertake out of loyalty to an old friend in great distress. I had then finished describing Edith Thompson as she had slowly revealed herself to me in the course of a long and intimate companionship, but now I must write again. Time after time during the past week I have reread the article contributed to the last issue of Lloyd’s Sunday News by Mr R. H. Thompson, Edith’s brother-in-law.

That article showed the woman who is at this moment standing on the threshhold of death as a voluptuary, a decadent creature of loathsome habits, with never a good point in the whole of her amazing nature. Tearfully I have discussed these terrible charges with those of my friends who shared, to some extent, my intimacy with the condemned woman.

Almost without exception they have advised me to remain silent – to leave the verdict to the readers of my own writings and those of Mr R. H. Thompson.

That I cannot do.

Yet what is the alternative?

Certainly I cannot take Mr Thompson’s story as a whole and characterise it as a string of untruths. But this I can and do urge with all my soul – Mr Thompson has misunderstood; in his grief he has put a terrible construction on innocent little incidents.

Some of his suggestions I cannot pretend to dispute. Of some of them I know absolutely nothing. But others there are which bear a perfectly simple explanation, and before I deal with some of the things which Mr Thompson said let me draw attention for the moment to what was perhaps the most terrible accusation of all – the one which was left unsaid.

We have read of Edith’s extravagant habits, of her passion for expensive clothes, and of other things which would swallow up the whole of her week’s salary of six pounds in a few hours. Then we are left to ask ourselves ‘Where did the rest of the money come from?’

Nothing more is said, no charge is formulated, but it is enough. The awful doubt arises. The inference to be drawn is unmistakable.

Edith Thompson cannot answer for herself; but even if she were free she could not assert with more emphasis than I do now that that inferred charge, at least, is untrue. I know the court has condemned Edith Thompson as a murderess; I know, too, that that same court drew very definite conclusions as to the nature of her relations with Freddie Bywaters. In the light of what has been revealed those decisions cannot be questioned.

At least one of Edith’s friends became apprehensive on the one point many months ago, and urged her not to seek Bywaters’s company. Her reply didn’t leave room for further argument. Very quietly she said ‘I do not seek his company. And I am quite able to take care of myself.’

There the matter had to rest.

I was that apprehensive friend. The suspicion had come quickly. I had known Edith since schoolgirl days. It wasn’t difficult to notice when things were worrying her, and my greatest mistake was to attribute her strained mental condition during the past few months to remorse at her conduct with the man who ultimately stood beside her in the dock.

If she had been grossly immoral, if she had been carrying on intrigues with a number of men, is it possible that she could have hidden her secret completely from all who knew her intimately? Wouldn’t some of us have seen her with different companions? Most assuredly the tongues of the gossips would have wagged. But they didn’t.

No! Edith Thompson has been found guilty of much that is terrible to contemplate, and I do not pretend to defend her moral character so far as Bywaters is concerned, but that apart I cannot, and will not, allow to go unchallenged any suggestion that she was a woman of loose morals.

And here in the midst of all this awful tragedy I find one thing for which I can be thankful. There in her condemned cell, each day carrying her nearer to the dawn of that day which may be her last on earth, one mercy at least is shown to Edith Thompson.

FAMILY SUFFERINGS

She is almost entirely cut off from the world in which she failed so ignominiously. She is not allowed to see the newspapers; even her visitors may not talk to her of the articles which have been published since that dreadful evening at the Old Bailey, nearly a month ago.

Some pain at least has been spared her.

But what of her family?

For a respected and honoured family to have a daughter condemned as a murderess is surely a calamity which calls for some measure of sympathy! So too with that brave and solitary figure Mrs Bywaters. I agree with Mr Thompson that his family too is suffering innocently and is deserving of pity, but I would add this: One member, and one member only, of each family was involved in this terrible crime. The two criminals did not act as representatives of their families; neither did they kill Percy Thompson because he was a Thompson. Sympathy softens suffering, and all these blameless victims of circumstance have an equal right to our condolences.

I speak, of course, only of the families. Of the condemned couple each of us has the right to think as he or she will.

Now let me turn to some of the more startling assertions in Mr Thompson’s article. First of all there is the episode of the scented baths.

If, in all that has been written about the awful crime and its sequel there is one germ of laughter I should say it was contained in those references to the scented baths. It is all so perfectly simple.

Edith did indulge in scented baths. But is that in itself a criminal act? If so I am afraid there are many criminals still at large.

But Edith Thompson did not scent her bath with guinea bottles of perfume. The real fact are much more prosaic, and rob the incident of all its sensationalism.

What happened was that a friend solved the problem of what to give Edith for a birthday present by buying her a large bottle of eau de Cologne.

Mr Richard Thompson may never have heard of the horrible practice of pouring eau de Cologne into a bath. Anyway, let me assure him that is one of the secret vices of we women – when the eau de Cologne is available in sufficient quantities. Edith Thompson had heard of it. And she tried it. But she made one awful mistake. She used a very strong extract rather too freely!

A SIMPLE GARDEN MISHAP

She told the story to me as a joke against herself, but she was visibly annoyed when she referred to the fact that a relative [probably Richard Thompson], without knowing anything of the present or of the mistake which led to the too powerfully perfumed atmosphere, had accused her of reckless extravagance.

So much for those reprehensible scented baths!

Now let me deal with a much more significant happening – the mysterious slither of glass in Percy Thompson’s finger. My memory on this point is not the least bit doubtful, for the incident occurred less than three weeks before the tragedy.

Percy Thompson, whose love of home life has already been described, was pottering around in his garden one day busily working on the glasshouse. His father-in-law, Mr Graydon, had come over from Manor Park to help him, and while the two men were cutting glass for the frames Percy ran a splinter of glass into his finger.

Mr Graydon drew it out and the incident was forgotten until a few days later when the tiny wound began to look ‘angry’. Mrs Graydon was having tea with her son-in-law when the latter complained that his finger was becoming uncomfortably sore, and in an endeavour to give him some ease Mrs Graydon prepared a bowl of hot boracic water in which the troublesome finger was steeped.

A little while later a tiny particle of glass appeared!

Could that trivial incident have hidden a malignant secret? Could Edith Thompson who was miles away at the time that slight accident befell her husband, have willed the splinter of glass into his finger, however much she had desired his end?

There is another point I should like to contest most strongly, but I must admit at once that I do not feel on such firm ground as I did in offering an explanation of the scented baths and the splinter of glass.

Mr Richard Thompson has toyed with the suggestion that his unfortunate brother was driven to drink by an intemperate wife of vulgar and disgusting habits. We may not wish to believe this charge; we may refuse to believe it; but who can disprove it?

Was that quite a fair charge to make when the only material witness is dead? I have very few observations bearing on this charge, but one memory is of such special significance that I give it despite my anxiety to avoid saying anything hurtful against those who are no longer in a position to defend themselves.

I was one of the very merry party at the Graydons’ on the occasion of Edith’s ill-starred marriage. It was noticeable that the bridegroom avoided all intoxicating drink, and a member of the family who happened to join two other friends and myself during the evening remarked on this fact. A third member of the party seemed highly amused, and explained her mirth by relating a request made to her by Percy Thompson while she was dispensing liquid refreshments to the guests.

‘Don’t give it all away,’ Thompson had said, laughingly; and then, in an aside, ‘I’ll have some whisky if you have got a coloured glass to put it in.’

Do not think from this that my case is that a man who drinks at all is of necessity a drunkard, or that there is anything especially evil in a man practising sufficient deception to allow his friends and relatives to consider him a teetotaller when, in fact, he is not.

HAPPY GARDEN SNAPSHOTS

But I do claim the incident as proof that the unhappy Edith did not so torment a husband who had never looked at strong drink, until, in despair, he deliberately sought forgetfulness in intemperance.

All this of course is only relevant if we accept without qualification the allegation of excessive drinking on the part of these two people. But look at all the happy snapshots which have been published in Lloyd’s Sunday News from time to time.

Do these pictures of happiness which makes the horrors of the present seem so unreal, suggest drinking bouts and orgies of dissipation?

In all my experience of Edith Thompson and her ways I have never once seen her show even a suggestion that she had taken too much strong drink. And of this I am quite certain – she never, never drank stout. All I have ever known her to have was an occasional glass of port wine or a little sherry or champagne. Even then she would only drink a small quantity, because she knew that a very little wine would make her excited.

HER HIGHEST BET £1

Next I read that Edith ‘gambled heavily for a woman in her position,’

Edith never made a bet bigger than £1, and it was only on one occasion that she risked so much money over one horse, for she lost and, womanlike, decided that anything more than ‘bobs’ on big races, just for luck, was a silly game.

Perhaps half a dozen times during the year would she display any interest in horse-racing, and she had her little flutter merely to be ‘in the swim’.

Now I turn to the charge of extravagance in the matter of dress, and the question has a particular interest for me since Edith used to give me the benefit of her professional experience in buying my own clothes. Our tastes in dress were very similar, and I know pretty well to a shilling how much of her money used to go on her back. It was surprisingly modest.

So far as hats are concerned Mr Thompson is perfectly right. I don’t think Edith ever went a week without a new hat. But listen to the explanation.

In the course of her business she frequently had to go to the big West End stores in search of order for her firm’s millinery business. Now would any milliner send his representative in a dowdy hat to call on a prospective customer?

Those frequent new hats were referred to many times before Mr Richard Thompson ever thought of them, and I have heard people chaff Edith in front of her employer on being a walking advertisement.

And that view was never disputed.

I will go so far as to say that the one-hat-a-week charge is a distinct understatement of the real facts. I have known Edith wear two new hats in one afternoon, but never without a definite object, for few women could display smart millinery to such an advantage as Edith Thompson.

Of the ill-fated man’s home life I can say little for he never gave even the most frequent of his wife’s visitors any opportunity to study him. Just an expressionless ‘Good morning’ or ‘Good afternoon’, and he would relapse into silence or go out into the garden.

HELPED HIM AT THE OFFICE

Of this surliness Edith never complained, but she has often told me of the bitter disappointment she felt at the suspicion that her husband did not appreciate the help she often gave him. Quite apart from her own tasks, Edith worked very hard to make things run as smoothly as possible for her husband in his employment, and time after time I have seen a table in the house at Kensington Gardens strewn with the books which Percy Thompson had brought home for his wife to straighten out.

Back they would go to the City next day, and for a little while Thompson’s work would be all plain sailing.

Then the figures would gradually become involved once more, and again Mrs Thompson had to put matters right. She has even spent her Saturday afternoons in her husband’s office helping him with his bookkeeping. [see letter of 6 March 1922: ‘…Last Saturday we went over to Tulse Hill – to Mr Manning’s – I went to his office and helped him with his books until 5 p.m. & then met Mater & Dad. …]

AN APPEAL FOR JUSTICE

Won’t all these additional points help Mr Richard Thompson to a better understanding of the facts he gave us in his article last week? In the light of the horrible events of the last three months I know how easy it is to attach undue significance to trivial incidents; I think too I can feel some of the grief which fills the soul of the man who wrote those words.

I ask you then – you who have read both our stories – to pause a moment and turn your thoughts to those two wretched creatures who in a few short hours will be launched into the Great Beyond.

It is only left for them now to repent of their terrible deed and seek the forgiveness of their Maker. An inflexible justice has placed them where the world can injure them no more to await the last dread moments in which their own lives shall be claimed as forfeit for the destruction of the life which was so callously thrust from the path of their evil design.

 

Newspaper Article 8

Sunday Post – 17 December 1922

EDITH AND PERCY THOMPSON

MRS FANNY MARIA LESTER, TENANT AT 41 KENSINGTON GARDENS:

  In this article, exclusively contributed to “The Sunday Post” by Mrs, Lester, who occupied part of “The Retreat”, the house inhabited by the Thompsons at the time of the tragedy, the intimate history of their domestic life is given for the first time.

It was from Mrs  Lester’s nephew that Thompson bought the house, and the contract provided that she should be allowed to retain half of it. The Retreat is quite a pretentious residence in its way, with its short carriage drive leading to the red and gold door, which marks it out from its neighbours. Inside the arrangement of its furniture shows Mrs Thompson’s artistic temperament and good taste.

Living almost in the family, Mrs Lester had a unique opportunity to make the observations regarding the tragic couple’s relations which she here details.

 To begin with, living as I have done practically on the Thompsons’ doorstep, my recollections of these poor young people are almost too strong and intimate for me to realise what has happened. The things my memory holds bear an even more tragic significance than I had ever dreamed of.

Oh, yes, I could see right from the beginning of my connection with them that there were difficulties. But there were other times when I felt I should like to have smiled at them in my old motherly way, and thought that no shadow ever could hang over them. Incompatible though their natures undoubtedly were, the impression many people have got of a continual atmosphere of grim and silent hate is not true. The smouldering fire did leap up often enough, but I would not have them denied the moments of happiness that were occasionally actually theirs.

Worked from early morning till late at night 

Mr and Mrs Thompson came to Kensington-Gardens in a hurry, because, from what I could learn, they had decided that a change of atmosphere might avert the break which had begun to threaten.

It did not take me very long to realise that I liked Mrs Thompson more than her husband. She struck me as being an extremely bright and intelligent girl, and I could not but admire the manner in which she worked from early morning till late at night. Every morning at half-past six Mrs Thompson would be up and about, cleaning the house and getting the breakfast. After this had been done she would make the bed, and then go off to her work in the City. She would be the first home at night, and would get her husband’s dinner, and then, if time permitted, she would indulge herself with a little music. She was an artist to her finger-tips, and continually I marvelled how her vitality managed to stand the strain of it all.

Somehow or other I never really liked Percy Thompson. I am not attempting in any way to palliate the dreadful crime of murder. All that I have to say concerning the affair in the way of criticism is that Mrs Thompson should have left her husband long ago. He was not a suitable helpmate for her, and so far as I could ascertain the couple had very little in common. Thompson was inclined to towards saving, and could only with difficulty be induced to sanction any expenditure out of the ordinary. His wife bought most of the household necessities, and paid for quite a lot out of her own pocket. From time to time she told me a great deal of her past life, and I could not help feeling a little sorry for her.

She had been brought up, so she told me, in comparatively humble circumstances. Her father, Eustace Graydon, had at one time conducted dancing classes and afterwards taken up his old profession of tobacco-blending. At the age of sixteen Edith Graydon set out to earn her own living, and went to Messrs Carlton & Prior’s in Aldersgate Street, E.C., where she started work at a few shillings a week. She was an extremely smart girl in business, and did so well for herself that she became the accountant to the firm, and was earning at the time the tragedy took place about £7 a week. Her husband did not get so much, and the knowledge of it was perhaps responsible for his attitude towards their household expenditure.

Thompson met his future wife at a dance in Manor Park about the middle of 1915. He was a man of Scottish descent, and in the early days of the war enlisted into the London Scottish. It is very doubtful, however, whether he could have had much heart for soldiering, for he was always ill in some way or another, and it was stated that he had a weak heart.

An inexplicable attraction 

Whatever the cause, he was discharged from the army as medically unfit about the end of 1915, and shortly afterwards induced Edith Graydon to marry him.

Why she did it I have never been able to discover. She was a sprightly, life-loving girl, full of fun, and always anxious to sample the joys the world could offer. Thompson was a difficult, morose sort of man, with scarcely a laugh in him for whole days. It was hardly to be expected that such an ill-assorted couple should get on well together, and so it proved.

They were not in a position to take a house immediately, after the marriage; what they did was to go into lodgings at Westcliff and come up to town every day to their work.

During the war Westcliff was frequently raided by German aeroplanes, and Thompson complained that his heart was becoming worse in consequence. Mrs Thompson had to come up from Westcliff to please her husband, and take lodgings in Ilford. They did not stay long in any particular place. There were quarrels between them, of such a violence that the owner of the house would request them to leave. The reason was, I think, that his constant pondering over his ill-health drove him into a state where he had to get rid of his temper on someone.

The coming of Bywaters 

The coming of Bywaters caused me a good deal of perturbation. I knew him from the fact that Percy Thompson brought him to the house to stay, and I cannot say that I greatly liked the boy. He stayed at The Retreat for some time, and then went away to sea. As a matter of fact, it was I who got him away. My son, who has a good berth in the Orient Steamship Company, found Bywaters a place on one of the liners.

For some months past I had been watching the growing intimacy between Mrs Thompson and Bywaters with alarm. I know too well how an ill-treated woman will fly to another man for sympathy, and when that sympathy was ready to hand in the person of a young and good-looking boy no great intelligence was needed to understand that there might be trouble before long.

I doubt very much whether Thompson at first took Bywaters seriously. He was very young, and the fact of Mrs Thompson having known him since he was a child might have deluded the husband into believing that no harm could come of the association. That Thompson must have thought so is evident from the fact that he permitted Bywaters to accompany his wife and himself to the Isle of Wight in the summer of 1921.

I have remarked previously, and the evidence goes to prove it, that Percy Thompson was a man so self-centred as to seem possessed of less than ordinary wits. Also, he frequently showed his obstinacy, which I was sometimes led to describe as “pig-headedness”. Had he been endowed with real concern for the happiness of his wife he must have known that sooner or later there would arise occasion for trouble between himself and Bywaters.

Eventually, of course, he did come to realise it, and when his cruelty increased his wife often threatened to discard him altogether. But Thompson clung on, apparently refusing to entertain the idea of a separation.

Never give way for another man 

Percy Thompson never abandoned hope of ultimately winning back his wife’s affection.

Once when their conflicting temperaments had landed them in a bigger quarrel than usual, and Mrs Thompson had threatened to run off with Bywaters, I said to him – “Why don’t you and Edith separate if you can’t get on together?”

“I shall never do that as long as I live”, was the answer. “I love her too well to allow another man to take my place”.

Probably I am a little prejudiced towards Mrs Thompson, because she was really a likeable woman. But the right was not altogether on her side, I must admit. She had grown very naturally to dislike her husband, and efforts which I and other people made to patch up their estrangement were made difficult by the somewhat contemptuous way in which she had come to regard him.

It was quite evident that she was making a desperate attempt to assert her individuality, and that, combined with her increasing hatred, seemed to make her seek opportunities for giving him mortification. Towards the end she had reached the point of treating him as though he were of no importance to her life whatever. It was simple [sic] a battle of wills, and I think she was winning.

Mrs Thompson’s love for “The Retreat” 

I think he loved his wife in a jealous sort of way, although his was not the nature that could ever successfully ally itself with such a generous-hearted woman as Edith Thompson. I did not like young Bywaters coming to the house, and I warned Mrs Thompson that she should not have him any more. She promised me she would not do so, and, so far as I am aware, that promise was faithfully kept.

People are asking why on earth Mrs Thompson did not run away with Bywaters and force her husband into a separation. Well, several reasons have been put forward, one about her position in the city. That was right, and I can give another.

Mrs Thompson was passionately attached to The Retreat. She would countenance no arrangement that would not permit her to retain it and its furniture, to which she had given much of her income and all her care. It is a desire which women who have kept a home will understand.

There is no doubt, of course, that the couple should have separated long before. But Thompson doggedly hung on, hoping against hope that one day he and his wife would settle down to a comparatively happy existence.

On the night of October 3, when he and his wife went off to the Criterion Theatre to see “The Dippers’ with two friends he was merrier than I had ever seen him. Certainly Thompson never had any suspicion that anyone might be lurking in the streets to kill him, nor did his wife by her demeanour betray that sinister happenings were about to take place.

How I learned the tragic news 

I shall not forget the night of the tragedy if I live to be a hundred. On the morning in question the Thompsons had gone out, informing me that they were going to the theatre, and would not be home until midnight or later. It was quite a usual occurrence, and was not calculated to cause me the slightest alarm. I live at The Retreat with my daughter Amy, and on the night of the murder we went to bed as usual about half-past ten. My daughter read to me for a little while, and then I dropped off to sleep.

About two o’clock in the morning I was awakened by my daughter. I could hear a great noise downstairs, and wondered what was amiss. I was feeling very frightened, and asked my daughter whether it could be the Thompsons making such a commotion. I could hear footsteps coming up the stairs, and then, to my utter astonishment and fright, there came a knock at my bedroom door. A light protruded itself, to be followed by the silhouette of a policeman.

“What’s the matter?” I asked affrightedly. “What do you want? Has someone come in and left the door open?”

“I’m very sorry to disturb you, ma’am”, he said apologetically, “but there’s a young lady downstairs whose husband has just dropped dead. I was wondering whether you would come down and see her. She says she lives here”.

My daughter and Mrs Thompson were great friends, and almost before the constable had ceased speaking she had thrown on a wrapper and rushed downstairs to see Mrs Thompson. I followed more slowly after I had put on some clothes. I found Mrs Thompson lying on a cane chair in my sitting-room in a semi-hysterical state, her clothing covered with blood. She stammered out something about her husband having had a sudden attack of haemorrhage, and then went off into a faint, from which my daughter and I had a great deal of trouble to restore her.

“Where’s Bywaters?” 

The policeman remained with her all that time, and once or twice when she attempted to tell me of what had occurred he stopped her. About half an hour after Mrs Thompson had been brought in two detectives arrived at my house, accompanied by Mrs Thompson’s brother, when we were informed that Percy Thompson’s death was not the result of haemorrhage, but that he had been murdered. It was a terrible shock to me, and I could not help feeling dreadfully sorry for poor, half-conscious Mrs Thompson lying on the chair.

Later in the morning Mr and Mrs Graydon and Mrs Thompson’s sister Avis arrived at The Retreat. I was attending to Percy Thompson’s brother, who had fainted, when I turned to Mrs Graydon (Mrs Thompson’s mother) and said to her “Where’s Bywaters?”

“Why”, replied Mrs Graydon, ‘”you surely don’t think he did it?”

“I didn’t say so”, I said. “But there is a third person in this. Your daughter couldn’t possibly have done it if she had wished. She is too much afraid of blood, and, besides, she would not harm anyone”.

I then said to Mrs Graydon – “Is Bywaters at sea, or is he at home?”

“Oh, he’s at home”’ said Mrs Graydon. “He was with us until eleven o’clock last night”.

At all events, the police soon learnt where Bywaters lived, and at 10.30 that morning he was arrested, and charged with the murder. The two detectives never left Mrs Thompson from the time they arrived at The Retreat. They took her to the police station shortly after ten o’clock that morning, and she has never returned to her home since. The rooms she and her husband occupied have been locked up and sealed by the police, and will not be opened until the contents are sold to pay for Mrs Thompson’s defence.

Liked to entertain musical parties 

It may not be altogether popular, but I cannot help stating that I feel dreadfully sorry for Mrs Thompson. I know she has been found guilty of a terrible crime, but the Mrs Thompson I knew is not the woman they tried at the Old Bailey. She did not have an enemy in the world, and she studied her husband a great deal more than was to have been expected.

Mrs Thompson did not meet Bywaters at night after he had come back from his voyage in the Orvieto. She may have done so unknown to me, but my candid impression of the matter is that she would have found it utterly impossible to have done such a thing if only for the fact that it was nearly ten o’clock every night before she finished her work at home. She was always working and often never received the slightest thanks from her husband.

It is very difficult for me to believe that she really tried to poison her husband. He was a man always fancying that he was ill, and I doubt very much whether any illness that he did suffer was the result of attempted poisoning by his wife.

The marriage was unhappy. Taken on the whole that must be the opinion. Mrs Thompson liked to entertain and give musical parties; in fact, occasionally the neighbours complained about singing and playing continuing into the small hours of the morning. That was about the only way the poor girl ever got any relaxation. If she did not have friends in the house there was always the fear that her husband would be in a mood to grumble at her.

At the bottom of the trouble, I think, was Mrs Thompson’s romantic nature. She is a girl who in happier circumstances might have risen to great things. Young Bywaters really made her happy, and the only thing to be regretted is that they should have gone to the awful length of taking the law into their own hands in such a drastic fashion. Much better had Mrs Thompson left her husband long ago and so averted her dire fate.

 

Newspaper Article 9

Empire News – Sunday 17 December 1922

EDITH THOMPSON AT HOLLOWAY

Edith Thompson’s cell at Holloway is reached by climbing up several flights of iron stairs. It is a light, airy apartment scrupulously clean and furnished with a bed and chairs and washstand basin. [this is her in the prison hospital]

Mrs Thompson wears a flannel nightdress and a grey flannel dressing-gown, in which she is wrapped when any visitors are admitted to interview her.

There is no doubt but that she has suffered intensely. Her face is pallid; she is exceedingly nervous, and her appetite has completely failed..

I DID NOT DO IT! 

She is constantly under the notice of wardresses, who in turn sit in the cell day and night.

Her sleep is broken, and during the silent watches of the night and early morning she constantly moans and now again starts up out of a nightmare crying ‘I did not do it. I could never have done it. I am innocent.’

That, all through, is her continuous appeal. The wardresses bend over her endeavouring to soothe her into quiescence, but comfort seems to be impossible to her poor, tortured soul. She is on invalid diet, but eats little – a raw tomato, a small portion of boiled chicken, and a little fish, with glasses of hot milk.

She is restless and unable to settle down even for a moment. Her once beautiful eyes are strained and anxious.

Sometimes she writes letters to her friends. There is little restriction placed upon her correspondence though every sentence comes under the eyes of officials.

MOTHER’S VISIT 

Visitors are taken up to the cell and are given chairs against the open door. They are permitted to remain for twenty minutes – the regulation time – but that may be extended at the option of the governor of the gaol.

Her solicitor, Mr Stern, who has worked day and night in connection with the case, has interviewed her; but the most pathetic visit was when her mother, Mrs Graydon, and her sister Avis, who gave evidence at the trial on Mrs Thompson’s behalf, came into the cell.

The prisoner broke down when she saw the frail, bowed figure of her mother. At length, controlling her emotion with a mighty effort, she sat up and chatted for a little while. She spoke on business affairs but made no reference to Bywaters. She persisted that she was innocent, and that she knew nothing about the crime.

‘It is terrible, terrible’, she kept repeating.

One of the greatest trials of her life in prison is that she is not able to indulge her artistic tastes. Unless the governor consents, flowers, of which the condemned woman is passionately fond, cannot be brought to her.

BYWATERS CALM 

The youth Bywaters  … He reads a great deal and writes notes. One letter he wrote to Mr Graydon [the day after the verdict at the Old Bailey], the father of Mrs Thompson, with whom he had been on friendly terms, ran as follows: –

Dear Mr Graydon: – Yesterday must have come as a great shock to you – it did to me. I have seen mother today, and she told me that she had seen you. I am going to appeal and fight hard now. I tried hard before, and I am going to try still harder.

I should like to see you one day. Perhaps you could meet mother when she is coming. There is quite a heap I should like to say, but at present I seem too full for words: ‘All human wisdom is contained in these words – wait and hope’.

My very best wishes to all.

Sincerely,

Freddie

 

Newspaper Article 10

Thomson’s Weekly News – 6 January 1923

EDITH THOMPSON’S ROUTINE AT HOLLOWAY

Edith Thompson present a most pathetic figure as she sits with tightly clasped hands in her cell in the hospital ward of Holloway Prison.

Although every effort has been made to keep from her the fact that public sympathy is more on the side of her lover, Bywaters, than with her, she seems to have sensed a good deal of what is passing outside the prison walls.

Of Bywaters she speak but rarely, and this only when she gives way to one of those dramatic outbursts which have marked her life in prison since the result of her appeal was made known to her. At such times she stoutly denies her complicity in the murder of her husband, or that she had any actual knowledge whatever that Bywaters had such a thought at the back of his mind when she was in his company on that fatal day. Her one persistent cry is ‘Why should I suffer for his crime?’

SPENDS MOST OF HER TIME WRITING 

As her general health has improved, however, these outbursts have become more rare. For the most part, throughout the day she is quiet and orderly, and seems to be able to think quite clearly.

For some days after the trial and pending the result of the appeal, she was compelled to remain in bed. She gave way to utter despair, but now she rises each day after breakfast. Most of the day she spends in reading or writing, covering page after page with neat writing and columns of figures, which evidently relate to her private property. Many of these pages she afterwards tears up. For hours she will sit scribbling, quite ignoring the presence of the two wardresses who are in constant attendance on her.

Throughout the Christmas season Mrs Thompson rallied a great deal and was quite excited at the exceptional size of her mail. Shoals of letters reached her, both from personal friends and from total strangers. Almost the whole of Christmas Day she spent reading these letters, and did not go to chapel or attend the service which is held for the hospital patients in the long ward. Instead the chaplain visited her in her own cell during the morning.

A quick thinker and writer, Mrs Thompson wrote a number of replies to the Christmas letters she received, but in all of them she steadfastly avoided any reference to her position. Usually it is difficult to get her to go to bed at night, for she seems to dread the long night hours. On Christmas night, however, it seemed as if she wanted to get the day over as quickly as possible, and although the other prisoners in the ward were allowed an extra hour before the lights were lowered for the night, she retired to bed long before the usual time.

Since her stay in the hospital she has been reduced to a nervous wreck through continued weeping. As soon as the lights have been lowered, and she has found herself deprived of the solace of her books, in which she appeared to become so absorbed as to forget all else, she would give way to fits of weeping.

TERRIFIED BY NIGHTMARES 

Even when sleep had forced her tired eyes to close her brain seems active, and again she lives through the terrible ordeal of the trial, as is evident from he moans and cries of ‘Oh, I did not do it’.

Her sleeping hours indeed are hours of torture, so much so that the medical officer has had to prescribe a sleeping draught.

The cell, or room, which she occupies although in the hospital wing, it is quite separate from the long ward, where ordinary sick patients are housed. It is in the corridor which leads from the entrance to the hospital to the ward, so that all prisoners, officers, visitors, etc must pass her room door to reach the ward.

As the sounds of footsteps pass the door Mrs Thompson shudders, and every time a wardress’s key is turned in the lock of the heavy iron gate which serves as a door to the ward she shivers as if all her nerves were set a-jangle.

At first some difficulty was experienced in getting Mrs Thompson to eat, but she is rapidly regaining her appetite, and is very particular about her food. As a condemned prisoner she has been allowed to choose, in a measure, what she will have to eat, and latterly took quite an interest in the ordering of her meals.

The bathroom immediately adjoins her room, so that it is only necessary for her to go out into the corridor and in at the next door. Usually she has dreaded this journey, although assured that no other prisoners were about at the time. Latterly, however, she has taken more interest in her surroundings, and actually hesitated at the door of the bathroom so that she might peep in on the other prisoners in the long ward through the iron gate.

Every day Mrs Thompson goes out for an hour’s exercise during the morning, and again during the afternoon, but instead of going out through the door leading from the ward, as the other prisoners do, she is taken through the doctor’s room, which is a few doors below her own, and so out into the high-walled garden, which serves as exercise ground for the hospital patients.

Her times for exercise are always different from those of the other prisoners, so that, apart from the other two wardresses who never leave her and perhaps an officer passing through, she has the garden to herself.

STARTLES WARDRESS IN EXERCISE YARD 

On one occasion a wardress with two working prisoners passed through on their way to deliver clean linen to the hospital. The two women, who were pulling a laundry truck with washing baskets on top of it, wore convict dress, and as soon as she saw them Mrs Thompson gave a cry, and but for the watchful wardress would have fallen to the ground. She was led to a seat, half-fainting.

The sight of the prisoners in their garb had startled her and conjured up disturbing thoughts of the future. Gasping, she looked down at the drab prison dress which covered her own body, and then put her hands up to the white cap upon her head. Then with a terrible catch in her voice she cried, ‘Oh, do I look like that?’

Mrs Thompson, whilst she has made all arrangements as to the disposal of her property in the event of the extreme penalty being enacted, has always been hopeful that the Home Secretary would reprieve her, and has even asked how many years she will be kept in prison in the event of a reprieve, and where she will be sent to, and what work will be given to her to do during her years of imprisonment.

One who has had a good deal to do with many prisoners under sentence of death says of her –

‘Never have I seen so variable a woman under similar circumstances – at times so coolly discussing her own possible death on the scaffold or her private affairs, and then seemingly so desperately afraid, and bitterly condemning the fate that has so worked against her. Mrs Thompson’s is indeed the most complex nature I have ever seen under such conditions.’

 

Newspaper Article 11

Sunday Illustrated – 7 January 1923

MRS THOMPSON CLINGS TO HOPE OF BEING SAVED

When Mrs Thompson heard of the Home Secretary’s decision from the lips of the Governor of Holloway Prison, she collapsed.

She was seriously ill when her parents, brother and sister visited her yesterday. She had to be supported when called from her bed in hospital.

Her brother told Sunday Illustrated that as she staggered into the room between two wardresses she cried out:

‘Mother! Mother! they are going to hang me!’

She wore a striped dressing-gown over her nightdress, and sat at a table placed near the doorway of the room.

She appeared to be on the point of falling, said her brother. Her face was deathly white, and there were black lines under her eyes. She said that since hearing her fate she had not slept a wink but had lain awake on the bed with as vision of her dreadful end always before her.

‘It is not that I must die’, she said, ‘but the manner of it. I had never imagined that my last hope would have failed. I do think that the Home Secretary might have given me mercy, even though he refused me justice.

TRUE FACTS NOT TOLD

‘The true facts of the case have never yet been told. Some day they may come out, and then it will be seen how an innocent woman was hounded to death.’

At this stage she had to be revived with a drink of water. After a wild outburst of grief she became more composed, and said that the thought of her innocence would help her to go through the ordeal which awaited her.

Referring to a letter Bywaters had written her, she said ‘I understand everything now, and there is no bitterness between us. I still think there is yet a chance for both of us. Something tells me that we will not die. I am trusting to Providence.’

When the interview ended she urged her father to try all he could to save her.

‘Surely’, she pleaded, ‘there must be some loop-hole’.

 DEFERRED DECISION

‘It was heart-breaking to listen to her pleadings’, her father told our representative last night. ‘Turning to me she said passionately, ‘It is the biggest miscarriage of justice which has ever occurred in this country, dad. Why did the Home Secretary defer his decision until the end of the week? It prevented my friends making a final appeal to the public; it has left them so little time.

‘Even now I cannot realise that the appeal failed. I thought capital punishment had been abolished.

‘I am innocent! I would never have been condemned to death if I had been allowed a separate trial.

‘Again and again she protested her innocence, declaring that she never remembered what took place on the fatal night.

‘As I was going down the corridor, she said ‘Ta-ta, daddy dear. I will see you again on Monday, and many times after that, I am certain. Never fear.’

Mrs Thompson will attend church in gaol twice today if she is well enough. She asks often for the chaplain and declares that their little chats, away from ‘the depressing presence of the wardresses’ comfort her.

She reads a great many novels and on Friday and Saturday was absorbed in Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend.

 

Newspaper Article 12

The Sunday Post – Sunday, 31 December 1922

Mrs Thompson’s Stormy Courtship.

Unrevealed incidents in the early life of Ilford victim. 

Told in special interview by the husband’s brother.

 Despite all that has been written about Percy Thompson and his wife, there still remain fields which have been missed or only partially exposed.

     The true character of the dead man, for instance, has never been minutely examined; many incidents have been related in connection with the strange alliance between two people so thoroughly opposite in temperament as were Percy Thompson and Edith Graydon, but no authentic statement has been made up till now by anyone in a position to know. The pathetic circumstances that exist in the Thompson family itself have scarcely been looked upon.

     “The Sunday Post” has secured an exclusive interview for this object with Mr Richard Thompson, the only brother of the murdered man.

     For the first time he relates the troubled story of how Mrs Thompson came under the spell of her husband, and, strange as he was in many ways, how the attraction was maintained up to the time of their marriage, in spite of the trials their dispositions led them into.

The pitiful story of the Thompson family’s endeavours to keep details of Percy Thompson’s death from his aged mother, who is lying seriously ill at her home in Golders Green, a suburb of London, discloses another and perhaps the most poignant side of the dreadful crime which has become universally known as the “Ilford murder”.

From the first the one great desire of the family has been to spare this poor ailing old lady the terrible details of how her son was murdered in cold blood. Extraordinary precautions have been taken by Percy Thompson’s brother and two sisters in order to spare her any added pain, even to the extent of obtaining permission from the police to prevent newsboys from crying out in the vicinity of their mother’s house.

As soon as it became known that the unfortunate victim of this crime had been stabbed the family solicitor advised the Thompsons to withhold the news from their mother, and this was done. Indeed, it was not until after the burial had taken place that Mrs Thompson was informed of the death of her son.

At the request of Mr Richard Thompson, the deceased man’s only brother, the painful duty of telling Mrs Thompson that her son was dead was undertaken by the solicitor, an old friend of the family.

Because she was so ill, the doctor who has been in constant attendance upon Mrs Thompson for some considerable time advised that it would be almost certain to cause a serious relapse if the old lady was informed that her son had been murdered. Acting upon this advice, Mrs Thompson was informed that her son Percy had died of a haemorrhage whilst in the company of his wife in Belvedere Road, Ilford.  As was expected, this news had a very serious effect on Mrs Thompson, and for a time her condition was so serious that her recovery was despaired of.

EARLY DAYS OF THE THOMPSON FAMILY.

During the succeeding days, when the poor distracted woman was hovering between life and death, the task of keeping the tragic news from her was made trebly more difficult by the fact that she was continuously crying out, “Where is Edith? Why doesn’t she come and see me?” To the members of the family who were in daily attendance upon her this continual crying out for the woman who was mainly responsible for the death of their brother was heartbreaking. Indeed, so terrible did it seem that there were occasions when the family considered whether it would not be kinder to tell their mother the real facts of the appalling catastrophe which had suddenly descended upon them.

The story of how Mrs Thompson found herself a widow with four young children, ad her struggles to provide them with the necessities of life and a good education only to have her eldest son murdered in revolting circumstances, is particularly pathetic.

Her husband, who was a ship’s captain, died 22 years ago at the age of 53, and left his family absolutely unprovided for. He died as the result of injuries received in his youth from a fall from the mast of one of the many ships upon which he had sailed. From this time on the responsibility of looking after the children fell upon the shoulders of the bereaved woman, and the details of how well she succeeded are best described in the actual words of the relative who supplied them, Mr Richard Thompson, brother of the murdered man.

THE COUPLE’S FIRST MEETING. 

“When my mother found herself alone in the world with her four children in 1901”, said Mr Thompson, “her one thought in life seemed to be to give us all a sound education and thus fit us for the good positions which she hoped we would ne day occupy/.  Possessed only of a small pension this was by no means easy, but by dint of strenuous endeavour and the fact that she was a very clever needle-woman she was able more or less to satisfy her desire. The success with which she carried out her plans for her children’s welfare was fully realised as we grew up and went out into the world.

“Percy, my only brother, soon settled down and became a responsible employee of Messrs Parker & Co., a firm of shipping agents in the City, whilst I went in got accountancy and obtained a good post with one of the leading paper manufacturers in London. My two sisters, both of whom were considerably younger than Percy and I, obtained posts as secretaries in the City and ultimately married men in quite good circumstances.

“Percy, I am afraid, has been considerably misjudged. From various accounts that have been given of his intractable ways and the violent quarrels that are supposed to have been frequent between him and Edith Graydon during her married life one would naturally suppose him to have possessed the virtue of a brute and the mind of a savage.

” The truth is that Percy was not of the most sociable type of man, and lacked many of the graces that go to make life run smoother and sweeter. He was never the man to compromise, to give way on a question in which he believed himself to be in the right and that, no doubt, led to the description of him as dour and dogmatic.

“Among ourselves we called him so. But we knew well enough that, in nine cases out of ten, when Percy made up his mind on a thing and would admit to no alteration in his convictions, then there was a good matter of fact argument behind it all.

“He was practical – intensely so. It would have been better for his happiness had he learned that life demands more of us than a rigid adherence to our beliefs of what will be for us right or wrong.

HIS CONFIDENCES TO SOLICITOR. 

“While I am on this topic, I may point out that his business acquaintances never had anything but good to say of him.

“The only man outside the family who could really be said to know anything of Percy’s heart and mind was, I believe, his solicitor. To him he spoke most freely of his affairs, but I do not believe that he ever, even to him, broke his rule to say nothing of his relations with his wife.

“The real facts of my brother’s wooing of his wife have been most inaccurately described”, Mr Richard Thompson continued. “Percy met Edith Graydon, who was then a young and somewhat gawky girl of 15, art a dance in London in 1908. He was introduced to her by a mutual friend with whom he came that particular evening. Even at this time Percy showed a more than passing interest in that gay, pleasing child, and took no pains to conceal his admiration for her.

“Percy had come to the dance with a party of four, two girls and another boy, and it used to be a favourite joke of his to relate the obvious signs of displeasure bestowed upon him by the girl with whom he had come when he danced attendance upon Edith Graydon. As he was not a good dancer, his attentions at first were not received any too kindly by the object of his affections. Indeed, it would not be too much to say that the sprightly young Miss Graydon snubbed him during the first evening of their acquaintance.

AN ASSIDUOUS WOOER.

“However, Percy Thompson was not the sort of youth to give in easily, and far from being discouraged he continued to make it a point of always attending ant functions to which Edith Graydon was known to be going. At this time there were about three youths clamouring for chief place in the girl’s affections, but probably because Percy Thompson was the most persistent the other two adoring swains were finally discarded, and Percy Thompson achieved his great desire.

“Everybody who knew Percy and saw him in the company of the high-spirited girl who afterwards became his wife marvelled that two people so opposite in everything, even in their outlook on life, should form such a close and seemingly serious friendship. The idea that the pleasure-loving girl would ever marry the extremely logical and dignified Percy was looked upon by all of us as utterly ludicrous.

“Gradually, however, as time went on and the two young people continued to go about everywhere together we became somewhat reconciled to the idea, although the prospect of their marrying was never really viewed with popularity by any of our family.

“As he was always a fellow of fixed ideas and great determination the lovers’ tiffs which arise and pass rapidly in the case of ordinary people were usually of fairly long duration. Once Percy had got an idea in his head it was almost impossible to get him to change his mind. He was, hoverer, extremely longheaded for a man of his years, and his decisions were, I must say, invariably just.

“One incident which I think will demonstrate Percy’s doggedness and that determination to which I have referred took place after he had known Edith Graydon for about a year.

“They had arranged some time previously that they go to see a certain musical comedy at one of the leading theatres.

“But when the night arrived the girl as she still was, did not want to go, but said she would much rather stay at home that night. But Percy would not hear of it

“You said you would come’, he said disappointedly. ‘If you don’t come, now that I have made all the arrangements, you need not trouble to come out with me in future.’

“Without another word he tuned on his heels and left the girl almost weeping, and although she cried out to him to come back he walked straight away, and went to the theatre by himself.

“If this incident had arisen between two ordinary young lovers they would no doubt have spent the whole of the next evening in patching up the quarrel. Percy, however, would not entertain the idea of a reconciliation. Although Edith wrote and asked him to come round to see her at her home in Manor Park he ignored the letters, and stayed away for over two months. It was only by his meeting her accidentally in the street that the friendship was renewed.

ANOTHER DOMESTIC TRAGEDY. 

     “This affair is not the only tragedy that has overtaken our family in recent years for a terrible accident occurred less than four years ago. My eldest sister had married a civil engineer, Mr Leslie Wilson, in 1914, and was particularly happy with her husband. In 1918 Mr Wilson was examining some machinery in a big factory on the Isle of Dogs, when he was caught and torn to pieces by the whirring cogs and wheels which he had been examining.

“when the news of this terrible accident was communicated to the young widow the poor girl broke down so completely that it was necessary for her to go into a nursing home for nearly six months. Fortunately for my sister, her early training and business experience enabled her to obtain a good post immediately she had sufficiently recovered to leave the nursing home, she is at present employed in the capacity of secretary to one of the son o the soap magnate, Lord Leverhulme.

“The most unfortunate trait in the otherwise lovable disposition of Percy was his extreme jealousy where Edith Graydon was concerned. Whenever the girl danced with another man at any of the dances to which he took her Percy could never take his eyes off his sweetheart as she swirled round the floor with her partner. On more than one occasion trouble has arisen through some unsuspecting young fellow asking Edith for a second dance; but despite this rather annoying weakness, Percy was always very good to the girl.

DIFFERENCE OVER ANOTHER MAN. 

“Apart from the quarrel over the theatre, to which I have already referred, there was, curiously enough, only one other serious difference between the two during the whole of their courtship, and that arose through another man.

“As Edith Graydon left her office (Messrs Carlton & Prior) considerably earlier than did Percy, it was, with the exceptions of the days when he got a holiday, impossible for Percy to meet her and take her home as he would have wished. One day, however, he managed to get away earlier than he expected, and hurried down to the Mansion House Station in the hope of catching her.

“Buying his ticket hastily he dashed down to the platform and saw Edith Graydon talking to another man. For some reason or other he refrained from making his presence known until he reached Manor Park Station. Upon arriving there he went up to the man and asked him who he was.

“After some considerable argument Edith Graydon managed to calm Percy and explain that the man was a buyer in her firm, who happened to be travelling in the same direction and had therefore accompanied her. This explanation, however, scarcely satisfied Percy, because when he had seen them at the Manion House Station the man was holding Edith Graydon’s arm.

“It was never quite known what actually happened on this occasion, because Percy sent the girl home and stayed behind to talk things over, as he said, with the other man. There is no doubt in my mind, however, that Manor Park Station was the scene of a violent quarrel on that particular night.

“It was shortly after this that Percy gave Edith a ring, and from that time onward the two young people got along together fairly happily. But I always doubted whether their marriage would turn out for the best. Edith was always a girl who liked to have the last word, and when such a disposition was opposed to the dour character of our Percy one could not help feeling reasonably dubious of the success of such a union. Quarrels were always taking place, and with my brother resolutely refusing to agree to a separation this tragedy came to pass.”

 

Newspaper Article 13

The Sunday Express – 7 January 1923

SHOULD EDITH THOMPSON BE HANGED?

“MISCARRIAGE OF MERCY.”

ANALYSIS OF NEGATIVE EVIDENCE.

By James Douglas

There is no appeal from the decision of the Home Secretary. At nine o’clock on Tuesday morning Edith Jessie Thompson will be hanged in Holloway with the words of the burial service echoing in her ears. Nothing I can say will save her. Mr. Bridgeman’s fiat is final. But law, like morality, is never free from the law of change. We used to hang a man for stealing a sheep. The process of humanising the law continues. The hanging of Mrs. Thompson will accelerate it. Mrs. Thompson is an accessory before the fact. The law as it stands deems her to be guilty of murder in the same degree as the murderer who struck the blow. It is a cruel law, and sooner or later it will be swept away by public opinion.

I think the hanging of Mrs. Thompson is a miscarriage of mercy and justice. It may be said that my protest against it ought to have been made before Mr. Bridgeman announced his decision. My answer is that I was silent because he had before him all the materials necessary to enable him to come to a just conclusion and because I did not wish to be a party to the organisation of any newspaper clamour for the purpose of influencing or affecting his judgment.

THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 

In my view, he has blundered as gravely as Mr. Shortt blundered in the reprieve of Ronald True, a murderer far more guilty than Mrs. Thompson. It is my duty as a responsible publicist to criticise the administrative action of the Home Office. The prerogative of mercy is a part of our criminal law. It provides a means of escape from the technical labyrinth of legality. The jury know it. The judge knows it. The Court of Criminal Appeal know it. That knowledge colours their administration of the law.

Mercy is not within their province or purview. Their minds are governed by legality.  They are bound to do their duty as prescribed by the law without considering the extra-legal or super-legal factors which the Home Secretary is bound by his duty to consider.

Let me say at the outset that:-

1. I believe in the guilt of Mrs. Thompson;
2. I believe in capital punishment; and nevertheless
3. I believe that Mrs. Thompson ought not to be hanged.

Let me take my three beliefs in order.

1. The Guilt of Mrs. Thompson.

I believe she was an adulteress. But we do not hang a woman for adultery. The Mosaic Law stoned the adulteress to death. Our law punishes adultery by divorce, not by death. Therefore, in judging Mrs. Thompson we must not mix up the crime of murder with the sin of adultery. In a court of morality like the Divorce Court she stands condemned. But in a criminal court moral turpitude ought not to load the dice in a charge of wilful murder. Mrs. Thompson’s infidelity ought not to be used to eke out the evidence against her. She ought not to be hanged because she was immoral.

1. The Justice of Capital Punishment.

I believe that capital punishment is the only adequate deterrent against wilful murder. Those who deliberately take the life of a human being ought to forfeit their life. But the extreme penalty ought to be rigorously confined to cases of wilful and deliberate murder. There ought to be no technical extension of the crime of murder to the obscure borderland of motive or intent or incitement. The line ought to be sharply drawn between the act and the intent. Hang the murderer, or murderess, but do not hang the potential murderer or murderess. The shadowland of moral murder cannot be explored by legal formulae. There ought to be free play for mercy in the dim realm of motive and volition.

III. The Innocence of Mrs. Thompson.

 It may seem paradoxical to talk about Mrs. Thompson’s innocence. She was a bad woman. Her letters are savagely pitiless. I put aside the plea of the psychologists who say that her letters were all make-believe and melodrama. Let us assume that she meant every word she wrote. Let us put the harshest interpretation upon the references to poison and powdered glass. Let us grant that there was murder in her heart and that she incited Bywaters to kill her husband. Let us clear our mind of a sentiment about adulterous hate of her husband. Let us pitilessly read the letters at their very vilest and at their very worst as the ferocious utterances of a wicked and depraved adulteress.

WHAT SHE DID NOT DO.

 Let us condemn her as being guilty of all she charges herself with in her letters. Having done so, let us see what she is not guilty of.

1. It was not her hand that struck down her husband.
2. Her husband did not die by poison or powdered glass administered by her hand.
3. There is no evidence that she put poison or glass in his food.
4. There is no evidence that at any time in any way she ever made any attempt on the life of her husband.
5. There is no evidence that she was guilty or premeditated connivance, collusion, or complicity in the actual crime.
6. There is no evidence that she was an accessory before the fact, apart from the incitements in her own letters.
7. There is no evidence that she actually aided and abetted the striking of the fatal blows.
8. There is no evidence of wilful murder against her. Therefore in her case murder is not murder, but merely a legal extension of the legal definition of murder. It is a moral, not a physical, crime. It is a sin of the soul, and not a consummation of sin in the act of slaying.

I might amplify this catalogue of the innocence or non-guiltiness of Mrs. Thompson, but my eight points suffice to drive home my argument that her guilt stopped short of wilful murder if only by a hair’s breadth was a broad abyss separating the will from the deed.

The doctrine of the accessory before the fact is a legal doctrine. Its ambit ought to be jealously narrowed and restricted to such cases as the murder of Sir Henry Wilson. Both murderers fired at him He was killed by one bullet. But both murderers were hanged. The case of Mrs. Thompson is different. There is no evidence that she took any part in the murder either in its design or in its execution. There is the evidence of a credible witness that she cried “Don’t!” in a piteous tone. Whatever her moral culpability, she is not guilty of wilful murder in any non-legal sense or meaning of the words.

REASONED VIEW.

Therefore my reasoned view is that she ought not to be hanged. It follows that the Home Secretary has blundered and that her hanging will be a miscarriage of mercy and a miscarriage of justice in its higher and nobler conception. It is a sentimental blunder provoked by the dilemma of the double trial and the double sentence of death.

One last word. If Mrs. Thompson had not been walking with her husband when he was murdered, would the jury have found her guilty of wilful murder? Why should she be hanged by reason of what may have been the unforeseen accident of her presence?

 

Newspaper Article 14

The Sunday Post – Sunday, 7 January 1923

MY BROTHER’S LUCKLESS WEDDING-DAY

Edith Thompson’s Cool Behaviour During Church Ceremony

Specially Contributed by Richard Thompson

The news that Percy was Percy was about to be married came as a bombshell to us.

‘Dick, old man, I’m going to be married to Edith Graydon in a fortnight’s time, he said to me in January 1916. ‘I should like you to be my best man, if you will’.

‘Surely you don’t mean that, Percy’, I replied, staggered by this sudden change in my brother’s plans. ‘Why, only last week you told me you intended waiting for another eighteen months at least’.

‘I know, old chap’, replied my brother, ‘but I’ve changed my mind. Edith and I have decided that as I have to join the army in a few weeks we should like to get married straight away. I hope you’ll do this for me, old man’.
‘Well, Percy, I don’t want to appear disagreeable about this affair, but you know what I think of Edith Graydon; can’t you get somebody else to take my place?’

‘Don’t talk like that about her, Dick’, said my brother. ‘She’s an awfully decent sort when you get to know her. Of course , if you don’t want to oblige me I could get somebody else, but I much prefer to have you if you will do it.’
‘All right then, Percy’, I replied rather hastily, as I perceived how my words had hurt him, ‘You can count on me.’
It was in this manner that I became an active participant in one of the most tragic marriages that any clergyman has ever solemnised.

THE BRIDEGROOM’S NERVOUSNESS

At the time of which I am writing both Percy and myself lived at home with our mother in Clements Road East Ham; and as can easily be imagined, my next few days after my brother had made the announcement of his intended marriage were rather crowded. Having once taken the responsibility of making arrangements for the ceremony, I had very little time to think of anything. However, I was far from happy when, in the few idle moments which came my way I remembered my dislike for the girl my brother was about to marry.

The first thing that crossed my mind when I began to make the necessary preparations for the ceremony was the publishing of the banns. I spoke to my brother about this and, somewhat to my relief, found that he had seen to this end of the business about a week previously.

I learnt that whereas Edith Graydon’s banns were published at St Barnabas’ Church, East Ham, my brother’s were being called at St Bartholomew’s, Manor Park. I understood that the reason for this was because we happened to live just outside the St Barnabas parish. Percy at this time attended St Bartholomew’s Church regularly every Sunday.

The wedding morning, which fell on a Saturday, found my brother happy but nervous. It was a very cold morning, so in order to give him an opportunity of shaking off his nervousness I suggested that we should leave the carriage to convey my mother and sisters and that he and I should walk to the church. Percy readily agreed to this, and about a quarter past twelve we donned our overcoats and hats and left the house.

AVERSE TO THE UNDERTAKING

I thought that the wait in the church would dispel my brother’s nervousness. It was only a short distance away, and when we arrived at the church we found ourselves to be the first on the scene. The verger was in attendance, and gave us a respectful greeting, after which we strolled around and had a good look at the place.

I must confess I was feeling just a little shaky myself, because it was the first time I had officiated at a wedding. I don’t mind admitting that I did not like the job quite apart from the fact that I did not approve of Percy’s bride.

My mother came by herself in a private car, while my two sisters, Margaret and Lilian, also drove up separately. The first of the Graydon family to arrive were Mrs Graydon; Avis, the sister of Edith; her three brothers, Newnham, Will, and Harold, and then a number of relations of the family, including Mr and Mrs Laxton.

Edith herself arrived late in company with her father, quietly dressed in a blue costume and carrying a small bouquet. She seemed to take everything quite as a matter of course.

The assistant curate, the Rev. Kendrick Sibley, performed the ceremony. He was a tall aesthetic-looking man, with a deep cultured voice, a typical Oxford man. After consulting with the verger we were informed that all was ready and the bridal pair lined up at the steps leading to the altar. Mr Eustace Graydon was there to give his daughter away, and the bridesmaid was Avis, Edith Graydon’s sister.

I had the wedding ring ready in my pocket; it was a small but elegant ring, and had been purchased a few days previously by my brother and his bride-to-be.

EDITH GRAYDON FLAUNTS AN OLD SUPERSTITION

I felt very uncomfortable during the time the ceremony was being performed. There is an old superstition that an intending bride and bridegroom must not speak to each other before they meet at the altar, and if they do that the marriage is certain to turn out unhappily.

Percy and I were sitting in the front pew awaiting the arrival of the bride, and as she entered the church we all stood up, as is the usual custom. She came calmly down the aisle, an upon reaching the front pew greeted my brother with the words ‘Hullo, Percy dear, here I am.’

‘O, Edie’, cried Mrs Graydon in horror, ‘you must not speak to him until you are married. It’s dreadful bad luck to say anything to the bridegroom on entering the church.’

I don’t think Edith Graydon was at all affected by superstition; anyhow she laughed merrily at her mother’s warning and remained easily the most self-possessed person in the church.

THE BRIDE’S REMARKABLE SELF-POSSESSION

As we took our position at the steps leading to the altar – the bridesmaid, Avis Graydon and her father standing behind the bride and I behind my brother – the sun shone through the stained-glass windows and threw a beam of golden light upon those assembled at the steps. It shone upon the bride and bridegroom, and we recalled the old adage ‘Happy is the bride that the sun shines on.’

With a murmured ‘Good morning’, the Rev. Kendrick Sibley commenced the ceremony. That feeling of awe which even the most indifferent cannot help experiencing in solemn moments came over me, as I listened to the clergyman murmuring the words of the marriage service.

PERCY’S SISTERS REFUSE TO JOIN THE WEDDING FEAST.

My thoughts were taking a curious turn during the progress of the ceremony. I wondered if the time would ever come when my brother would regret the step he had taken.

My thoughts were far away indeed and it was as in a dream that I could hear the clergyman almost whispering ‘Those whom God hath joined let no man put asunder’.

Well, it was all over at last, and Percy Thompson and Edith Graydon were man and wife. There was no choral service, nor even was the organ played. The whole affair had been hurriedly arranged, and apart from this it was the wish of both the bride and bridegroom that expense should be saved as far as possible.

We moved into the vestry where, after the bride and bridegroom had signed, Mrs Graydon, Avis, myself, and my sister Margaret, signed the register. After settling the fees we were free to depart, and moved off to the front of the church where cars were waiting to take us back to the Graydon house, in Shakespeare Crescent, Manor Park.

My two sisters would not go on with the wedding party. They did not like Edith, and had only attended the ceremony by the express wish of Percy. Nor was my poor old mother any more anxious to take part in the festivities. She too also felt that no good would come of the marriage, but by the wish of the Graydons she consented to come along with us for a few minutes.

There was no confetti, no rice, none of the customary emblems such as one usually sees at a wedding. Nor, to the best of my recollection, was there even a white bow tied to the cars we drove away in. Of course we thought nothing about the matter at the time.

The Graydons’ house was packed to suffocation when we got back there about half past one. The wedding breakfast had been provided by the Graydons, with plenty to eat and drink, and I could not help noticing that the bride was not slow in helping herself to some wine.

I might say that I had not availed myself of the best man’s privilege of claiming the first kiss from the bride. To be quite frank. I did not like her any better than any of the other members of my family, and although she made a great fuss of me during the the afternoon when the festivities were in progress I was somewhat reluctant to respond.

FULLY UNDERSTOOD ONE ANOTHER

We had the usual speechmaking on such occasions. The bride’s father led off, and said a good deal to the effect that Percy had taken away his favourite daughter, that she was a good girl, and would make him a good wife. He was a very lucky man if he only knew it, and he hoped that they would live happily and enjoy each other’s companionship for many years to come.

Percy was not much of a talker at any time, and his response was quite brief. He thanked everybody for their good wishes and for the presents he and his bride had received. He said that he had known his bride for a good many years, and that they fully understood each other. Poor Percy. The tears come into my eyes as I think of the words he spoke that day and what might have been.

All through the Saturday afternoon the festivities went on with piano-playing and singing. I stayed for about three hours and then went off, after having wished the newly-wedded couple the best of luck. Percy thanked me for what I had done, and told me that he thought everything would turn out all right.

‘I hope it will for your sake, old chap’, I said.

Edith was in a vastly excited state by this time. My brother was practically teetotaller and I noticed once or twice during the afternoon that he was trying to restrain her from partaking too liberally of the wine.

The Graydons had provided a bridal cake covered with white icing which crumbled badly when Edith cut it. Everybody present had a piece, including the bride’s young brothers. I took my piece away with me and kept it for some time, until it disappeared in some mysterious manner.

In keeping with the quietness of the wedding, it was arranged that the honeymoon should consist of a weekend in Westcliff where rooms had been engaged for them at 28 Retreat Road. I might say that it was from this road that they named the house in Kensington Gardens, Ilford, where they were living at the time of Percy’s death.

BRIDEGROOM CALLED TO THE COLOURS

Nothing could have been more modest than the way the bride and bridegroom took their departure from Shakespeare Crescent on their honeymoon. East Ham Station, from which they could get direct to Westcliff, was only a short distance away, and the newly-married couple, each carrying a bag, walked out of the Graydon household without even the customary old shoe being thrown after them.

The arrangements were that they should stay at Westcliff from the Saturday until the Monday and then come back to the Graydons to live. Although Percy was in a position to start housekeeping if he wished, the uncertainty attaching to his affairs made it inadvisable that he should incur any unnecessary expense. He had already attested under the Derby Scheme, and as events turned out it was just as well that he did not attempt to set up a home of his own, because about a fortnight after they had been married he was called to join the colours and his bride was heartbroken.

She was a different girl in those days, and had it not been for the influence of the war I have no doubt my brother would still be alive. They were genuinely fond of each other. Of that I am certain and looking back on what took place in 1916 I am sure that if Percy had been able to take his wife away and mould her character on the lines he wished she would never have done the dreadful thing she afterwards did.

WHERE MY UNFORTUNATE BROTHER FAILED

Her great trouble in life was the manner in which she allowed herself to be led away by vain flattery. My brother was too level-headed to indulge in meaningless love-making, and perhaps it was his reluctance to play up to this side of his wife’s character which brought about so much mischief.

That kind of love-making which it was not in his nature to give was the thing her very soul cried out for. There is no denying the fact that she was melodramatic to a degree. The emotional material in popular novels was the very food of her being, I think.

Percy on the other hand, as all I have written of him conveys, was exactly the opposite, as matter-of-fact as man could be. He regarded his wife’s sensational tendencies much as an indulgent father would think of his child’s craving for sweetmeats. But he was no actor. Sincere to his finger-tips I could not imagine him playing up to her mood in the way which would probably have satisfied her emotional needs and saved us the tragic misfortune under which we now labour.

But on that January afternoon who were we to see all this, to look into the future, and to discover the true meaning of the dark forebodings that in an indistinct fashion already menaced us. It is my only regret that I had not strength of will to dissuade my brother when he came to me with his request that I should assist at is wedding. But probably that would have been an impossible task. I suppose it was my unfortunate brother’s destiny, and no more can be said.