Notable British Trials

Trial of Frederick Bywaters and Edith Thompson

1923

Edited Filson Young

 

Introduction by Filson Young

THE TRIAL

Closing Speech for Frederick Bywaters

Closing Speech for Edith Thompson

Closing Speech for The Crown

Charge to the Jury

Verdict

Appeals

 

 

Introduction

Filson Young

 

I.

 

On the midnight of October 3-4, 1922, Mr Percy Thompson, a London shipping clerk, and his wife Edith were walking from Ilford Station along the Belgrave Road towards the street called Kensington Gardens, where they lived. The road along which they were walking was straight and monotonous, and at that hour of the night almost deserted. The people who had come out by the same train had dispersed in different directions, and soon this couple, tired enough, as we may suppose, after a long day’s work and an evening at the theatre, found themselves almost alone. Their relations were not cordial, although they lived outwardly on quite good terms. It is probable, therefore, that they walked for the most part in silence, each occupied with private thoughts, and that the silence of the night was unbroken but for the sound of their footsteps along the paved road divided only by the patches of light that waxed and waned as they passed the successive lamp-posts. But they were not alone. Other footsteps were hurrying after theirs; footsteps of fate indeed; whose overtaking meant the death of the three persons who encountered in that place. The hurrying footsteps were those of Frederick Bywaters, a youth of twenty, home on leave from his work as a ship’s writer on board the S.S. “Morea.” After a few words of altercation he drew a knife and stabbed Percy Thompson to death – or rather, left him in a dying condition sunk against the wall at the side of the road. He then ran away. Edith Thompson, after an attempt to minister to her husband, ran to find help, and met other people, returning home late also, who had been walking some distance behind along the same road. On their return with a doctor they found that Thompson was dead.

 

This is the simplest possible statement of the crime which was the subject of the inquiry set forth in the following pages. I do not propose here to recapitulate in narrative form a story which is fully unfolded in the trial itself. I propose only to discuss some aspects of it which were not, and could not be, the subject of inquiry in a Court of law, but which have some bearing on any dispassionate examination of the case in its relation to general human justice as distinct from technical justice.

 

II.

 

This is a story of passion, and, strange to say, is for that very reason regarded as disreputable in itself by many people. It is, on the contrary, the passion in it which alone invests what would otherwise be a story of sordid crime with any dignity or psychological interest. The crime was essentially sordid and commonplace – the husband stabbed to death by his rival in his wife’s affections in the presence of and (so the prosecution alleged) with the approval of that wife. It would be difficult to imagine any circumstances which would afford a shade of justification or excuse for this extremely primitive proceeding. But the case as a whole was not sordid, because the murder formed such a small part of it, and the emotional antecedents of the act itself, illuminated by a series of the most remarkable letters that have been made public in modern times, lift the whole story out of the commonplace. Nothing is commonplace if we know enough about it. It is commonplace for a jealous man to kill his rival, but it is not commonplace to be able to trace back his emotional history and be aware of the emotional force that ultimately swept him away on its tide.

 

Criminal lawyers have an incorrigible instinct for melodrama; and they are apt to see, or rather to present, every one in the light of martyr, hero, or villain. Some of them seem to have a quaint theory that human nature is divided into two kinds of people: on the one hand, plain, decent people, the stuff of which judges and juries are made, who are shocked and horrified at any transgression of the moral law, and can hardly believe that persons should be found wicked enough to transgress it; on the other hand, blackguards and devils, degraded by such things as passion; guilty, outside the licensed degrees, of a thing called love; and generally and deservedly in trouble of some kind until they are swept within the meshes of the law. The Ilford case was no exception to this rule: The three persons concerned were duly presented in the melodramatic way. The good, patient and unoffending husband; the manly young fellow, corrupted and debauched by the experienced woman of the world; and the black-hearted sorceress, weaving her spells, casting her nets, and bringing ruin on every one connected with her.

 

Now we cannot pretend to know the inner hearts and lives of these three people, but we can get a little nearer the truth than that. The unhappy victim of this savage assassination seems to have been a fairly inoffensive person, and the worst I have heard of him from those who knew him is that he was stupid and vain. But there is ample evidence that in his married life – which was a very unhappy one for him as well as for his wife – he had cultivated the art of being disagreeable with considerable success. The circumstances of the marriage were in themselves not conducive to happiness. Husband and wife earned their living separately. They left the house at a quarter past eight in the morning and did not return until seven in the evening. There were no children, and they had thus practically nothing in common except the dormitory side of existence, which seems to have resolved itself into a chapter of bitter squabblings, and the deeper trouble that underlies the persistent attempts of a husband to take as a right something that should only be given. It is not to be wondered at that a weak character such as Thompson’s expressed itself in this dilemma with acrimony, with meanness, and sometimes with violence. He was the one with the real grievance; and he seems to have made the most of it.

 

It is when we come to the characters of Bywaters and Mrs Thompson that we are at once confronted with an element of the unusual. Neither of these persons was at all like what the general public thinks. Bywaters was not the innocent young lad that his defenders presented to the jury; Edith Thompson was not the corrupt, malignant sorceress portrayed by the prosecution. A great deal of play was made about their respective ages, and it was suggested that she was an experienced woman corrupting a young lad. That is not the way I see it. Bywaters was twenty and she was twenty-eight, but in some ways he was the elder of the two, as he was certainly the more masterful. He was an almost excessively virile, animal type. He had knocked about the world; he had knowledge of life, and an exceptionally strong will. You will read in the course of the trial a great deal about the woman’s influence on him; but I am convinced that his influence upon her was at least as great as hers upon him, and probably greater; and they came upon their undoing because of a certain exaggerated difference between them. Bywaters, as I read his character, was totally devoid of imagination; actions were his only realities. Edith Thompson had an excess of imagination. To her actions were unimportant. Her chief consciousness was hardly ever in what she was doing at the time, but inhabited a world of dreams and make-believe. If this aspect of the characters of the two people concerned be kept in mind, I think it will make many things clear which must otherwise remain obscure.

 

III.

 

But it is not enough to say that Edith Thompson had too much imagination. We must look more closely at her than that; for she is the sole key to this mystery, and without understanding of her the whole story cannot be justly read. There are people to whom everything is common, and to a great, part of the public Mrs Thompson was a common and commonplace woman. But there were people present at the trial who are connoisseurs in women and scholars of their character, and who are able to recognise, behind the most sordid disguises, the presence of that something which lifts a woman out of whatever class she may naturally belong to and sets her in a class apart – the class of influencing, compelling, driving, beckoning women, who have power over men, and, through them, over the world. To such students it was clear that Edith Thompson belonged to that company; and no one who read, for example, Mr James Douglas’s marvellously sensitive, acute, and discerning analyses, written during the course of the trial, can have any doubt as to the power of a personality which, from the dismal decor of the dock, could so act on an intelligence that no experience can de-humanise. She was compact of contrasts and contradictions. She was called a hysterical woman by many people engaged in the case; but through five days of acute trial I saw no sign of hysteria in her. She was remarkable in this way: that quite above her station in life, quite beyond the opportunities of her narrow existence, she had power of a kind that is only exercised by women possessed of a high imaginative talent; she had that peculiar quality of attraction which over-rides beauty and prettiness. She was not what is called a beautiful woman, nor always even pretty; but she had a certain character, certain movements of infinite grace, a head finely poised on a beautiful neck, and the secret of looking like a hundred different women according to the nature of her environment. There is one simple test by which you may judge the kind of woman that Edith Thompson was. No two photographs of her looked like photographs of the same woman; from different angles of view, in different clothes, she appeared like different people. Put her in a housemaid’s dress and she would look like a housemaid; place her in tragic circumstances and she became a tragic actress. She was, to that extent, Everywoman; and she had the secret of the universal woman. The three portraits of her in this book are like portraits of three different people; if you asked me which she was like, I would say she was like none of them, and like them all; but the one which best represents her character is the pencil drawing made of her by a distinguished artist as she sat in the witness-box, and that is not the portrait of a common or commonplace woman. If she had been a Frenchwoman she would have been long ago taken out of her humble working life and been at once the slave and the ruler of some connoisseur in extravagant caprice. Stage, costumes, jewels, and victims would have been provided for her. As it was, a book-keeper in a milliner’s shop, she had to find her own stage, her own empire, her own drama. She had to find her own victims; and in the end she herself was the chief victim of her own tragic personality.

 

IV.

 

Bywaters was a clean-cut, self-possessed, attractive-looking youth of twenty, with a good character and record. At the opening of this drama which developed into a crime passionel he was a ship’s writer or clerk who had become the friend and intimate of Mr and Mrs Thompson. He was nineteen years of age, eight years younger than she. She and her husband did not agree. They were physically incompatible, and saw very little of each other – as little as she could help. The husband had employment in a shipping office, and she was book-keeper in a milliner’s shop in Aldersgate Street. She had no particular home life or duties, and such as she had she sought to avoid as much as possible. Her acquaintance with young Bywaters ripened rapidly into friendship and then love. He was often away at sea for long periods, and during these periods she used to write to him letters of a kind, characterised by Mr Justice Shearman as “gush,” which lovers and friends at a distance love to receive; letters telling him her thoughts as they rose in her head, what she was doing, what she was reading, what she was thinking; and breathing throughout a curious passion, half of the mother, half of the slave-mistress, that gives its supreme interest and power to this correspondence. They also contained a great deal of reference to attempts at the administration of poison to her husband, which belong to the criminal part of the case and which for the moment I will leave aside. But as to the general contents of these letters I would say, paying all respect to the comments of a learned, humane, and impartial judge, that they are true love letters, and that the emotion in them is both deep and true. They contain passages of actual beauty, to find the match for which you would have to look in the love letters of people far above her in poetic and literary attainments. The love they breathed being illegal, was as a matter of course the subject of unsympathetic reference in a Court of law. “Insensate, silly affection,” the judge called it. Love may be unwise, but it can never be silly; and how something that is founded on passion and emotion can be insensate I will leave the legal mind to decide. Lest I be accused of speaking disrespectfully or unreasonably of an eminent and admirable judge, I will quote one passage which seems to me fairly typical of the judicial treatment of emotional matters. “You have been repeatedly told,” he said, “that this was a case of great love, and we have had for days both speeches and questions with reference to this love. Just at the end of the letters comes this passage: ‘He has the right by law to all that you have the right to by nature and love.’ If that nonsense means anything, it means that the love of a husband by his wife means nothing because marriage is acknowledged by law.” Just read again the simple sentence from Mrs Thompson’s letter. Surely it is a brief and exact statement of the position as it existed between these three, and is, therefore, not nonsense. “I have no doubt,” added his lordship, “that the jury and every proper-minded person is filled with disgust by such expressions.” Disgust at what? At the statement itself, or at the suggestion that there can be any right but that of law? It seems to me that love and nature are both things that have very definite rights of their own, although it is the business of the law to restrain them if it can. In any case, the number of judges who can with advantage intercalate their judicial utterances with these little homilies on life and conduct is so inconsiderable as to make the practice, upon the whole, undesirable.

 

V.

 

It is these letters, however, that focus our interest in the sequence of events that led to the death of Thompson. With regard to the incriminating passages in them, in which the strangest descriptions are given of alleged attempts at poisoning the husband, I think the explanation is quite simple. Mrs Thompson’s dramatic sense, aided by her imagination, and quite remarkable fluency in writing, led her, in order to keep her image commandingly before the absent lover, to represent herself as engaged, for his sake, in the dreadful task of poisoning her husband. She wished him to believe that there was nothing she would stop at; though, in fact, she had no intention whatever of running the risks that such attempts would have involved. It is certainly inconsistent with her character, as I conceive it, that if she had really intended to poison her husband she would have philandered with the idea on paper, and written reams of incriminating matter. She would have done it, and said (or written) nothing about it. A Borgia does not write; she acts. With Edith Thompson words took the place of actions. In her words she was speculative, adventurous, indirect; in her actions she was logical, direct, and – even in her transgressions – conventional. She was a woman who could play with ideas to any extent, while her actions remained quite limited and almost normal. She lived two lives; one, this dream life, the life of the heroine of the letters; the other a commonplace routine life of some one who passed daily as in a trance from Ilford to Aldersgate Street, and back from Aldersgate Street to Ilford, and who, sitting at her desk apparently keeping accounts, was really engaged in weaving an imaginative web that should stretch across half the seas of the world, and bind her lover with its gossamer threads.

 

By keeping these letters Bywaters brought ruin to the writer. She kept none of his; she was too loyal for that. It is extremely probable that he entered into this grim and shocking game of correspondence about poisoning meaning it as little as she did; and it is probable that they both found an erotic stimulus in giving full play on paper to their jealousy. And when the letters ceased, and they met again, they had worked themselves up too far; what had been grim play had to become grim earnest; and to avoid anti-climax this jealous lad was forced to the climax of the knife.

 

As the trial proceeded, and all this obvious pretence was exposed and stripped, whatever attraction it may have had for them faded away. As the words, pleading and passionate, were read and re-read until every one in Court was familiar with them, one could see the miserable consciousness growing in both of the accused persons that what she at anyrate had meant to be lovely and happy, all they had dreamed of, hoped for and fought for, had come to terrible nemesis and confusion. Such humiliation, quite apart from any suggestion of guilt, is the inevitable result of dragging emotion into a Court of law. It has no place there; it cuts a pitiful figure there, and that which may have been true and beautiful in its living environment becomes false, horrible, and deadly there.

 

VI.

 

Let us now consider the way in which the legal problem posed before the Criminal Court was dealt with. The trial can hardly be regarded as a classic from a legal point of view. A fastidious jurist might even describe it as slovenly, in that the scheme of the prosecution seemed never to have been either clearly conceived or clearly presented to the jury; while those conducting the defence found themselves in such a dilemma, as a consequence of the strategy adopted, as to leave little opportunity for anything beyond ingenious quibbling on Mr Cecil Whiteley’s part and emotional eloquence on the part of Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett. The Treasury counsel engaged in the prosecution were Mr Travers Humphreys and Mr Roland Oliver, but owing to the nature of the case and the fact that both prisoners were to be tried together, it was decided to send down the new Solicitor-General, Mr (now Sir) Thomas Inskip, K.C. This officer’s practice had largely lain apart from the criminal law, and he was not much at home in the handling of a case like this. It is possible, moreover, that he had very little time in which to study his brief; but whatever may have been the cause, his handling of the case was loose and uncertain. There was a certain irony in the fact that sitting beside him as his junior, and almost idle throughout the case, was Mr Travers Humphreys – a man whose mind seems to me the hardest, brightest, and most exact of those engaged in criminal work for the Treasury. Mr Humphreys had practically nothing to do except occasionally to read the long extracts from the letters which took so many hours. It was a curious occupation for him, thus to be reading aloud these passionate utterances in the presence of the woman who wrote them; and it is to his credit that, much as he disliked the task, his reading of those letters was by no means unsympathetic; and some of their haunting phrases that were repeated so often in Court will remain associated in my memory with the tones of Mr Travers Humphreys.

The legal interest in the case centres round the matter of the letters, and the way in which they were to be used. The question as to the trying of two prisoners together for the commission of one crime, which was made a point of appeal by the defendants, and which took an acute form in the case of the trial of the Seddons,¹See “Trial of the Seddons” in the Notable Trials Series. – Ed. is one on which the existing law is clear, though not satisfactory. The woman was charged with murder, her alleged part in it being that of a principal in the second degree. If a jury were satisfied that she was present, and supported, instigated, assisted or commanded the accomplice by whose actual hand the deed was done, they could find her guilty of murder equally with her accomplice. Whether, in such a case, the two are tried separately or together is a matter entirely in the discretion of the Court before which they are brought; and if any hardship or injustice ensues to one or other of the accused persons through the weight of evidence offered against both pressing unduly against either, the only remedy lies in the Court of Appeal.

 

   In this case there could be no doubt whatever as to who actually committed the murder. The case against Bywaters was as clear as any case of murder could be, and there was practically nothing to be pretended in his defence except that he was the instrument and agent animated by a powerful and compelling influence. And for his counsel to press that defence would have been inevitably to fortify the attack on the woman and embarrass her defence – which he was expressly instructed not to do. What the prosecution desired was to bring the crime home not only to Bywaters but to Mrs Thompson, and the only way in which they could do this was to bring in the letters written by her to Bywaters, and so strangely preserved by him. They were necessary as evidence (a) that she desired Thompson’ s death; (b) that she was for a period of consecutive months engaged in endeavouring to compass that death; (c) that she was in conspiracy with Bywaters right up to the day of the murder to bring that death about; and (d) that she was present when the crime was committed, and knew beforehand that it was to be committed. It was chiefly the way in which the letters were presented that lays the prosecution open to criticism. The letters do not seem to have been carefully enough analysed and the bearings of the really essential passages marshalled into any sort of sequence. The mass of the correspondence was, so to speak, thrown before the Court, and prosecuting counsel browsed through it, taking advantage of anything which seemed likely at the moment to assist the particular aspect of the case which he was presenting. The result was a great deal of confusion, a great waste of time, undue emphasis on certain passages of the letters which would not bear the weight of the construction sought to be placed on them, and the neglect of other passages which, while they would have served the purpose of the prosecution equally well, would have been more helpful and illuminating in discovering the truth. A defect in form of this kind, inherent in the design of the case for the prosecution, affects the form of the proceedings throughout. It confuses the defence, which has to follow the track of the prosecution, and it makes it very difficult for the judge to deliver a clear charge to the jury, since he also has to follow the original wandering course, retrace his steps, and traverse over and over again the same ground as it is approached from different angles and for different purposes. All these defects will be apparent to a student of the trial as it appears set forth in the following pages.

 

VII.

 

But if the defects of the prosecution were serious, the defects of the defence were fatal. As I have already indicated, there was really no case for the defence of Bywaters, and Mr Cecil Whiteley’s final speech is interesting chiefly for its ingenuity, and might serve as a model of what can be done and said in the defence of a murderer who is practically found standing over his victim with the weapon in his hand. But the case of Mrs Thompson was very different. No one suggested that she had committed the murder, and the only evidence that she had ever intended any murder was furnished by herself in a series of letters so fantastic that it should not have been impossible to find an explanation of them that might satisfy a jury. It seems to me that Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett lost one of the opportunities of his lifetime when, after the confused and uncertain opening of the Solicitor-General, he did not for once do what counsel are so often telling juries they are doing, but, in fact, so seldom do – leave the prosecution to prove its case and attempt no positive defence. Let me say at the earliest possible moment that there is no suggestion that Sir Henry was personally responsible for the line of defence or for the consequences. Mrs Thompson insisted upon going into the witness-box and giving evidence. For counsel to give actual advice on such a subject in a matter of life and death is to take a greater responsibility than is, perhaps, right; but I think if I had been in Sir Henry’s place and found that my client was determined to go into the witness-box, I should have asked her to brief another counsel. No one can ever foretell the effect which the evidence of a defendant in a murder charge will have on the case, but an experienced lawyer could have foretold, and must have known, the very great difficulty that the prosecution would have in getting a conviction against Mrs Thompson if she did not herself give evidence, and contented herself by merely denying, through her counsel, that she had anything whatever to do with the killing of Percy Thompson, and throwing upon the prosecution the onus of proof that she had.

 

The dilemma is an acute one. On the one hand there is the adverse comment which the judge in his summing up is entitled to make on the silence of the accused person; the jury are asked to draw the inference that if there was any true story to tell, the accused would be the first to wish to tell it. There is the advantage, in the case of an attractive woman, of the effect of her personality and the appeal to humanity through the pathos of her position; although, in my own opinion of modern juries, the value of that effect should not be put too high. On the other hand, there is the terrible danger of the cross-examination to which the accused giving evidence is subjected; the risk of the one word too much, or the failure of mental endurance at a critical moment, that may turn the scale of opinion against the accused. And, of course, there is always the possibility, if a person who has not given evidence is convicted, of the awful misgiving that if he or she had gone into the witness-box the jury might have found a different verdict. The reasons against Mrs Thompson going into the witness-box were, however, so strong that when she insisted on doing so she threw away her case. There is nothing about which our law is so scrupulous as in seeing that the facts of a case against which no defence is made except that of denial are proved against the prisoner beyond all shadow of doubt. The case for the prosecution on the indictment was that Bywaters and Mrs Thompson, “on the fourth day of October, 1922, in the county of Essex, and within the jurisdiction of the Central Criminal Court, murdered Percy Thompson.” That is what the jury were asked to find. If the defence had said, on behalf of Mrs Thompson, “I did not murder Percy Thompson. I had nothing to do with it; I had no knowledge of it, and I was stunned and horrified when it took place, and I defy the prosecution to introduce any evidence with which that denial is not absolutely compatible,” and had rested on that, I do not think you would have found a British jury to convict her. For all the evidence (apart from the letters, with which I shall deal later) supports the theory that Mrs Thompson did not plan or prepare this murder in any way; that she did not suggest it to Bywaters, and that when it took place it caused her surprise, horror, and dismay. There is the evidence that she had planned the next day to go with her husband to Paddington Station to meet a servant from Cornwall whom they had engaged – the servant who did, in fact, arrive on the afternoon of the very day on which Thompson was killed. There is the evidence of John Webber, of which I think nearly enough was not made in the trial. He lived at 59 De Vere Gardens, Ilford, and at what must have been the moment of the murder, and 30 or 40 yards away from the spot where it was committed he heard a voice raised in the silence of the night – a woman’s voice, crying, “Oh don’t, oh don’t!” in the most piteous manner. He was retiring to bed; but so impressed was he by this cry that he put on his clothes and went out into the street, where he met the little crowd of three hurrying to the spot where Mrs Thompson was holding up her husband. That is evidence, surely, not that Mrs Thompson assisted and approved of the crime, but that she tried to prevent it; yet I think the only bearing of this evidence alluded to by the judge was that it went to prove that Mrs Thompson was present and a witness of the murder. It does not seem to me that that is the true value of this piece of evidence, or that nearly enough weight was given to it as bearing out what I believe to have been the fact: that Mrs Thompson, however much she might have desired that a kind Providence would remove her husband from her path, was just as horrified as any one else when she saw that the furious assault of Bywaters upon him was, in fact, a murderous assault.

 

VIII.

 

But Mrs Thompson did go into the witness-box and tell her story. Roughly, it was the same story as Bywaters had told, with minor discrepancies of detail which are unimportant. They had both, naturally, not knowing how far the police were in possession of the facts, and being desirous not to incriminate one another, made false or incomplete statements on arrest. But when they came before a jury they attempted no denial of the main facts: they attempted to explain them. But remember that they were both trying to explain something which, in the light of an ordinary Court of law, was inexplicable – namely, the meaning of the fantastic passages in their correspondence. With regard to that correspondence, I think the defence made another mistake in not having the whole of the letters put in as evidence instead of that portion of them selected by the prosecution. The effect of this would have been twofold. The proportion of the “poison and glass” passages to the whole correspondence would have been seen to be very small; whereas the jury had the impression that the greater part of Mrs Thompson’s correspondence consisted of discussions as to the best and most convenient method of murdering a husband. In the second place, other matter would have appeared which would inevitably have suggested a very different explanation of many of the passages relating to drugs and poisons. Is it not clear, on a careful study of these letters, that this unhappy woman was on more than one occasion, sometimes with the advice and assistance of Bywaters and sometimes without it, engaged in taking measures to counteract the results of intercourse, either with her husband or with Bywaters? Turn to the passage on page 204, and again to passages in the letters which will be found on pages 220, 221, 222, 224, and 226. There is no doubt in my mind as to the nature of the actions to which these letters refer, and the words “daring” and “risking,” of which so much play was made by prosecuting counsel when they occurred in that final letter – “I am still willing to dare all and risk all if you are” – occur here in quite obvious connection with the other matter. Of course, Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett was aware of all these passages and of the value they might have. But there he was in another dilemma, for if he were to introduce them and put the construction indicated by them on many other passages adduced as evidence of murderous intention, he would have had to present his client to the jury, not only as an adulteress, but as an abortionist; and he no doubt thought that the prejudice created in their minds by that admission would outweigh any advantage to be gained by such explanation of the poison passages as it might afford. There again one may be glad that one had not to make that decision; but the meaning of these passages cannot be ignored by any student of the case, and they throw a very con­siderable light on other passages which, without that light, are obscure or inexplicable.

 

IX.

 

The explanation given by the two accused persons of the incriminating passages in the letters was either that they referred to a suicide compact between them, or to the intention to take what was to Mrs Thompson the extreme step of leaving her husband and going away with Bywaters, or to the various attempts that they undoubtedly made to get Thompson to divorce her. Thin as these explanations sometimes appeared in Court, they are far thinner when read in print. There are, no doubt, passages which are quite truly explained by one or other of these answers; but there are other passages that quite obviously have nothing to do either with suicide or elopement. In my opinion, the real explanation of the passages relating to definite attempts on the husband’s life by means of poison, glass, &c., is that these two people were playing in their letters a very dangerous kind of game, in which Mrs Thompson’s too fertile imagination cast her for the role of that tragic heroine with whose existence in fiction she was very familiar. The most genuine kind of lying in the world is purely fantastic lying, which arises from a desire to escape from the uninteresting actualities of life. In this way children lie, telling you of some marvellous thing which they have seen or done. The fact is merely that the world as they found it at the moment was not sufficiently interesting to satisfy their imaginations, and so they invented a world that was. So with this woman. Her life during the long absences of Bywaters on his voyages was dull compared with the life that she imagined for herself. For remember this about her; she was a woman with a single idea and ambition: the ambition of a happy and open union with the man she loved. If there is one thing that runs like a continuous thread throughout this correspondence, it is that ambition. It was a passion with her; it was the real inspiration of her life at this time. The question naturally occurs to any sane person: why did she not leave Thompson and go and live with Bywaters? The sane person ignores Respectability, which was her god, and Romance, which was her goddess. To indulge the goddess would have been to offend the more powerful god; and there are questions of finance entangled with Respectability which powerfully abet that deity. Yet the woman to whom open disrepute is a deterrent from her dearest wishes would surely be unlikely to substitute murder for it! We are here in the very toils of senti­mentality. The lesson seems to be that a woman who takes Respectability for her god and Romance for her goddess, and enlists a practical young man in their service, may possibly find herself in a morass from which the only extricating agent is a rope.

 

But her passion for a prosperous and respectable union was so great that what she did apart from it, the way in which she spent her days, the way in which she amused herself, was of very little importance to her. She was capable of being a lively and amusing companion, and there are many humorous passages in these letters that suggests her intolerance of dullness, and the rather mischievous pleasure she took in shocking people. There are passages on pages 234 and 238 that are particularly illuminative of this quality. She was a very attractive woman, and in her business life she was extremely capable, and came constantly into contact with a large circle of acquaintances, among them the buyers in large establishments (for she was a very successful saleswoman), and in the course of this independent existence she had many opportunities of amusement of which it is clear that she availed herself. It was a method of passing the time and speeding the hours of what was to her the unreal part of her life, as apart from the real dream-world that she entered when she began to write to her lover. The profound sense of the triviality and unimportance of everything she did apart from him breathes through her accounts of dances, dinners, expeditions.²At one of these, at Henley, she describes herself as being “the guest of an. M.P., Mr Stanley Baldwin.” – Ed. It is this sense of proportion, so lacking in other ways, which gives the light touch to her little thumbnail sketches, full of wit and characterisation, of people that she met.

 

X.

 

There was, of course, every reason for putting Bywaters in the witness-box. He had a story to tell, and he was the only person who could tell it. To tell it in his own words was his only possible chance. But putting Mrs Thompson in the witness-box was quite another thing. Her real case was a mere denial. Instead of that, the defence were forced to make an attempt to disprove the case for the prosecution, instead of leaving them to prove it; and were also forced to try and prove Mrs Thompson’s explanations from the witness-box when they should have been content with resting on denial. You cannot prove a negative. To attempt to do so on oath is to lay yourself open to a damaging cross-examination.

 

Only a study of the letters will reveal the truth about the relationship between these two people. In the matter of influence, I think that in absence hers was the stronger, but when they were together his was obviously the dominating will. “Why will you never do anything that I ask, darling? You still have your own way always.” It is obvious that during his last absence he was becoming less enthusiastic, and attempting to turn the relationship into a platonic one. I believe him to have been a virile degenerate, quite capable of blackmail; and that one reason why he so carefully kept all these letters, while she destroyed his, was that if and when he wanted to get rid of her he would have something to hold over her in the way of threat. At any rate, she was obviously terrified at the thought of losing him, and her last letters revealed this anxiety. But when he returned and they came together the passion flamed out again, and all question of turning it into a platonic friendship vanished in the excitement of their re-union. In the heat of that excitement the mind of Bywaters forged the intention to put to end somehow or other to the existing situation. I believe his account of what happened to be substantially correct, and that it was in a kind of agony of jealousy and despair that he sought Thompson on that night, with the idea of forcing him to come to some arrangement; and that some taunting word fanned his jealous hatred into fury, and that having once struck he struck again, with the will and intention to murder.

 

XI.

 

Having regard to the way in which the case was conducted and to the very definite trend of the judge’s summing up, it became increasingly likely that the jury would find both the prisoners guilty of murder. Nevertheless, the verdict with regard to Mrs Thompson came as a shock to most people who heard it. Even then, after sentence had been passed, few people thought that it would actually be carried out. But things loosely or wrongly done in the beginning have a way of continuing on their course, so that it is very difficult to give them another direction; and although an extensively signed petition was presented to the Home Secretary on behalf of Mrs Thompson, he found himself in the dilemma which was the inevitable sequel to the method of the prosecution and the defence. So much prejudice had been created, the jury had so evidently been allowed to take for granted that Mrs Thompson was the real inspirer and originator of this crime, that to let her escape the consequences, while visiting them upon Bywaters, seemed, in the forced and sentimental atmosphere concerning influence that had been raised, a matter of gross injustice. The recent record of the Home Office with regard to reprieves had not been a fortunate one, and this particular incident happened at a moment when, in order to justify past weaknesses, a little show of “firmness and determination” was indicated. Decent opinion was genuinely shocked and horrified at the thought of Mrs Thompson’s execution; but indecent opinion, which sometimes in matters like this seems to have more voice and more influence, was all for the sensation afforded by the execution of a young and attractive woman whose hands, at anyrate, were innocent of blood.

 

The demeanour of the two tragic protagonists in the terrible interval between the rejection of their appeals to the Court of Criminal Appeal and the day of their death was characteristic of both. Bywaters was dauntless, self-satisfied, matter-of-fact, and, apparently, unmoved and unaffected by any imaginative sense of what was in store for him. A letter written to his mother a few hours before his execution was as firm, precise, and neat in calligraphy, and as conventional and unemotional in content, as that of a banker acknowledging a deposit. As far as I know, he neither desired nor attempted to write to Mrs Thompson, nor she to write to him; at any rate the prison regulations permitted no communication between them. They parted in the dock. They who had shared so much, shared the last awful moments of their ordeal; and thereafter never shared anything more, unless they can be said to have shared the tremendous and simultaneous extinction that awaited them – him at Pentonville, and her half a mile away at Holloway – on the morning of 9th January.

 

Mrs Thompson hardly ever spoke of him, or of anything personal. She lived in prison in the same kind of agonised trance as had enwrapped her through the trial. When her relations visited her she tried to talk of commonplace and impersonal things, as they all did, with the result that there must have been a good deal of unreality and play-acting about these artificially cheerful interviews. Only once, when her mother spoke to her about the letters and said, “How could you write such letters?” did she say something of deep significance in this case – “No one knows what kind of letters he was writing to me.”

 

He went to his death with firmness and assurance; she was taken to hers in a state of collapse, and, I hope, of merciful oblivion. For on the most sober consideration of the case, her execution seems to have been without other than merely legal justification, and to have been the result of a kind of frozen moral inertia which seized those whose business and responsibility it should have been to avoid an act that, although technically justifiable on legal grounds, was, in the considered judgment of sober public opinion, as essentially unjust as it was inexpedient.

 

XII.

 

There was so much false diagnosis about this case that I should like to make one assertion in the name of things as they are, instead of as they might be wished, or ought, to be. This crime was a consequence of frustrated passion. “Guilty passion” the judge and counsel called it. Well, these two people never felt particularly guilty, but they did feel hampered. Life on £4 or £6 a week may afford opportunity for the birth and development of illegal passion; it did not in this case afford much opportunity for the indulgence or satisfaction of it, in more than snatched meetings at a tea shop, walks in municipal parks, and in that romantic intercourse which consists in outpourings of the heart on paper. If they had belonged to another class, where people have leisure and freedom, we should never have heard of them except, perhaps, in the Divorce Court. The sordidness of their case was the killing, not the loving. That part of the story was real, and the long letters from “Peidi,” telling of her thoughts, her hopes, her trials, the books she was reading, all those trivial jottings that are the soul of true and frank correspondence (and it is only a very small part of the letters that contained the criminal matter), were the expression of a true emotion; incomprehensible, perhaps, to people who have forgotten (and how soon we forget!) the power of youthful passion, but really very simple, and possibly pardonable to people who have not forgotten.

 

Age is eternally jealous of youth; impotence is jealous of passion; law is jealous of liberty; those who have found happiness within the pale are apt to look with suspicion and misgiving on those who dare to seek and find happiness without the pale. Intellect affects to despise emotion; yet a real and deep emotion, however wayward, is a more vital thing than are the sterile and negative barriers within which, necessarily, but in vain, the social state tries to confine it. That is why we have Courts of law, for a world ruled only by emotion would be a dreadful place. The lesson of it all surely is never to let emotion escape from its own sphere, to wander into the dreadful wilderness that ends in the Court and the prison house. Mr Justice Shearman frequently referred to Bywaters as “the adulterer,” apparently quite unconscious of the fact that to people of Bywaters’s generation, educated in the ethics of dear labour and cheap pleasure, of commercial sport and the dancing hall, adultery is merely a quaint ecclesiastical term for what seems to them the great romantic adventure of their lives. Adultery to such people may or may not be “sporting,” but its wrongness is not a matter that would trouble them for a moment. Sinai, for them, is wrapped in impenetrable cloud. And if we are not prepared to adapt the laws of Sinai to the principles of the night club and the thé dansant, I see no other alternative but to educate again our young in the eternal verities on which the law is based.

 

THE TRIAL

TRIAL of

FREDERICK BYWATERS

And

EDITH THOMPSON

EDITED BY

FILSON YOUNG

NOTABLE BRITISH TRIALS

1923

WILLIAM HODGE & CO

THE TRIAL 

WITHIN THE

CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURT,

OLD BAILEY, LONDON,

WEDNESDAY, 6th DECEMBER, 1922 .

Judge —

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN.

Counsel for the Crown —

The SOLICITOR-GENERAL.

Mr TRAVERS HUMPHREYS.

Mr ROLAND OLIVER.

(Instructed by the Director of Public Prosecutions.)

Counsel for the Prisoner Frederick Bywaters —

Mr CECIL WHITELEY, K.C.

Mr HUNTLY JENKINS.

Mr MYLES ELLIOTT.

(Instructed by Mr Barrington Matthews.)

Counsel for the Prisoner Edith Thompson— 

Sir HENRY Curtis-Bennett, KC.

Mr WALTER FRAMPTON.

Mr IVOR SNELL.

(Instructed by Mr F. A. S. Stern.)

[Copy Indictment No. 1. *

The King

AGAINST

FREDERICK EDWARD FRANCIS BYWATERS

AND

EDITH JESSIE THOMPSON.

Central Criminal Court.

Presentment of the Grand Jury.

E. F. Bywaters and E. J. Thompson are charged with the following offence : —

STATEMENT OF OFFENCE.

MURDER.

Particulars of Offence.

E. F. BYWATERS and E. J. THOMPSON

on the 4th day of October, 1922, in the County of Essex,

and within the jurisdiction of the Central Criminal Court

murdered Percy Thompson.

[* This is the Indictment upon which there was Conviction.]

[Copy Indictment No. 2 **

The King

AGAINST

FREDERICK EDWARD FRANCIS BYWATERS

AND

EDITH JESSIE THOMPSON.

Central Criminal Court.

Presentment of the Grand Jury. 

E. F. BYWATERS and E. J. THOMPSON are charged with the following offences :

[** The accused were not tried on this.]

FIRST COUNT :

STATEMENT OF OFFENCE.

Conspiracy to Murder contrary to sec. 4 of the Offences against the Person Act, 1861. Particulars of Offence. F. E. F. Bywaters and E. J. Thompson on the 20th day of August, 1921, and on divers days between that date and the 2nd day of October, 1922, in the County of Essex, and within the jurisdiction of the Central Criminal Court, conspired together to murder Percy Thompson.

 

SECOND COUNT :

STATEMENT OF OFFENCE.

Soliciting to Murder contrary to sec. 4 of the Offences against the Person Act, 1861. Particulars of Offence. E. J. THOMPSON on the 10th day of February, 1922, and on divers days between that day and the 1st day of October, 1922, in the County of Essex, and within the jurisdiction of the Central Criminal Court, did solicit and endeavour to persuade and did propose to F. E. F. Bywaters to murder Percy Thompson.

 

THIRD COUNT:

STATEMENT OF OFFENCE.

 

Inciting to commit a misdemeanour. Particulars of Offence. E. J. THOMPSON on the 10th day of February, 1922, and on divers days between that day and the 1st day of October, 1922, in the County of Essex, and within the jurisdiction of the Central Criminal Court, did unlawfully solicit and incite F. E. F. Bywaters unlawfully to conspire with her, the said E. J. Thompson, to murder Percy Thompson.

FOURTH COUNT:

STATEMENT OF OFFENCE.

Administering poison with intent to murder contrary to sec. 11 of the Offences against the Person Act, 1861. Particulars of Offence. E. J. THOMPSON on the 26th day of March, 1922, in the County of Essex, and within the jurisdiction of the Central Criminal Court, did administer to and cause to be taken by Percy Thompson certain poison or other destructive thing unknown with intent to murder the said Percy Thompson.

 

FIFTH COUNT:

STATEMENT OF OFFENCE.

Administering a destructive thing with intent to murder contrary to sec. 11 of the Offences against the Person Act, 1861. Particulars of Offence. E. J. THOMPSON on the 24th day of April, 1922, in the County of Essex, and within the jurisdiction of the Central Criminal Court, did administer to and cause to be taken by Percy Thompson a certain destructive thing, namely, broken glass, with intent to murder the said Percy Thompson.

 

First Day— Wednesday, 6th December, 1922.

 

Mr WHITELEY — My lord, before the prisoners plead to this indictment I have a submission and an application to make, and that is that in the interest of each of these prisoners there should be two separate trials. The first indictment charges them both as principals with the murder of Percy Thompson. I have had an opportunity of reading the depositions and the exhibits. In my submission it is clear that there must be a question of the admissibility of evidence which may be evidence against one prisoner and may not be evidence against the other, and that the introduction of such evidence must of necessity prejudice the case of the other prisoner.

Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — I desire to associate myself with the application of my learned friend.

The SOLICITOR-GENERAL — I hope that your lordship will refuse the application.

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — I can see no ground for granting the application.

The CLERK OF THE COURT — Frederick Edward Francis Bywaters and Edith Jessie Thompson, you are charged together on indictment with the offence of murder, the particulars being that on the 4th October in this year you murdered Percy Thompson. Frederick Edward Francis Bywaters, are you guilty or not guilty?

THE PRISONER BYWATERS — Not guilty.

THE CLERK OF THE COURT — Edith Jessie Thompson, are you guilty or not guilty?

THE PRISONER THOMPSON — Not guilty.

 

(The jury were duly sworn.)

 

Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — My lord, before the Solicitor- General starts to open the case to the jury I have an objection to make to certain evidence that I understand the Solicitor-General desires to mention to the jury in his opening.
Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — The jury will retire and you can make your objection .

 

(The jury retired.)

 

Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — There are two indictments, as your lordship knows; one indictment charges both the defendants with the crime of wilful murder, and then there is the second indictment with a number of counts charging conspiracy to incite murder and other charges. I understand that the indictment which is to be proceeded with is the first indictment. On that indictment I understand the prosecution desire to open to the jury certain letters which were found in the possession of the defendant Bywaters written by the defendant Thompson. I appear for Mrs Thompson and, on behalf of Mrs Thompson, I object to the opening of those letters to the jury or, in fact, to the admissibility of those letters at any time in evidence as against Mrs Thompson upon the first indictment.

The charge in this indictment is a charge of murder, and, no doubt, the Solicitor-General is going to suggest to the jury that the actual blow which was struck was struck by Bywaters. I do not think that he is going to suggest that any blow was struck at all by Mrs Thompson.

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — Struck, as l understand by the evidence, in the presence of Mrs Thompson.

Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — In the presence of Mrs Thompson. Now, the letters that I am taking objection to contain certain passages which make it appear that Mrs Thompson was writing to Bywaters suggesting to him that he should send her certain material for the purpose of giving it to her husband to cause his death, and also suggestions that she was herself administering certain things to her husband. I submit that the admissibility of letters such as those cannot be acceded to until the prosecution have, first of all, showed that Mrs Thompson took some active part in the murder, if it was murder, of her husband.

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — That is for the jury to decide, the matter of conspiracy.

Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — Yes, my lord. If there were some act committed by Mrs Thompson, the prosecution might then argue to your lordship that they were entitled to put these letters in evidence, either to show intent to rebut the defence of accident, or to show a system; but, until some aid, some definite act, is proved by the prosecution as against Mrs Thompson, then I submit that all these letters go to show is that if the letters really mean what they are said to mean, Mrs Thompson is a person who would not be likely to commit the offence which is charged against her.

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN— I wish you would give me a sample, because a great many of the letters contain quite different matters, I mean matters of affection showing the relations between the parties. Do you object to those too?

Sir H. Curtis-Bennett —  In  some letters, where there is matter which I object to, there is also a great deal of matter which I should really welcome, but I cannot, of course, say that part of a letter is evidence and part is not.

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — You are at present arguing on letters which are suggesting a desire to kill this man or give assistance in killing him. Give me an example.

Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — Exhibit 18 is one. “ I took possession of it, and when he missed it and asked me for it I refused to give it him,” &c. (reads). That is a sample. I was submitting that evidence of that sort is only admissible against Mrs Thompson for the purpose of showing either that some act of hers was done with intent, or that that act was part of a system, or to rebut the defence that it was an accidental act on her part. Your lordship will remember, as having been one of the Court, that this matter was fully discussed in the case of The King v. Armstrong which was heard in the Court of Criminal Appeal. The decision was that Armstrong having been in possession of arsenic at a time when his wife, in fact, died, the prosecution were entitled to say, “ You were not in innocent possession, as you say you were, of that arsenic, and we can show that you were not in innocent possession of it because, in the month of October, your wife having died in February, you were using it again for the purpose of trying to kill someone.” That was the decision in that case, but there, of course, there was the evidence that Armstrong was in possession of poison, and it was the defence of Armstrong that he was in innocent possession of such poison, and, therefore, it was necessary to show from the point of view of the prosecution that that defence which Armstrong was putting forward was a defence which was not a true defence upon the evidence which they had available to put before the jury, and so the Court of Criminal Appeal held. Now, in my submission, this is a very different case. I am in this difficulty; I do not know how the Solicitor-General is going to open this case to the jury.

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — Only in one indictment. It is a very difficult question when evidence becomes admissible in rebuttal of defence. Putting that aside altogether, is not this particular matter evidence of felonious intent? I am putting aside the question which you and I will both take care of; evidence against one prisoner is not evidence against another; that, I think, the jury will fully understand before the case is over. But is not this evidence of a felonious intention of this lady who, it is alleged, was present at the murder?

Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — Not upon this indictment. It would be evidence, I agree, and I should not be able to object to these letters upon the second indictment. Supposing these letters really mean what upon the face of them they look to mean. This letter that I am referring you to (exhibit 18) was in fact written on 24th April of this year. Now, the death of Mr Thompson took place in the early morning of 4th October of this year. Can it be possibly said that a letter written, even if it does mean what it looks to mean on the face of it, upon 24th April of this year can be evidence that upon 4th October Mrs Thompson, who certainly struck no blow, was a party to the killing of her husband six months after? There is surely a locus poenitentiae for everyone, and if a letter is written and is even meant to convey that Mrs Thompson was anxious in April that her husband should die, can it possibly be said to be evidence that she, although present and not striking any blow upon 4th October, was in fact a party, a principal, to the killing of her husband? I submit not.

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — It is conceivable, is it not, that she was not a principal in the first degree, but in the second degree? It makes no difference.

Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — No, my lord. It is conceivable, of course, that the case for the prosecution may be presented either that she was a principal in the second degree, or an accessory before the fact, and I want to deal with it upon that basis, because I assume that that is the way it may be put.

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — An accessory before the fact — you will correct me if I am wrong — in fact becomes a principal in the second degree.

Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — If present she would become a principal in the second degree; if not present and had taken some previous part in the matter, then she would be an accessory before the fact. It is really an academic question, the position of Mrs Thompson. But the fact remains that the prosecution desire to put this letter and other letters of a similar sort, over dates which vary from November, 1921, until August, 1922, before the jury for the purpose, not of showing that something which Mrs Thompson did constituted murder, but of proving, as they suggest, that she was guilty of murder. These letters, in my submission, are the only evidence of murder (if they were evidence) as against Mrs Thompson at all. The whole of the rest of the evidence relating to that night of 3rd October and the early morning of 4th October is absolutely consistent with Mrs Thompson having been taken by surprise in the attack which was made upon her husband, and knowing nothing whatever about it at all. If the prosecution can show some act by Mrs Thompson which has to have light thrown upon it to show whether or not it is an innocent act or a guilty act, then those letters might be admissible; but before they become admissible they have got to show some such intent, and in my submission the writing of those letters months before October is too distant from the date of the alleged crime, and cannot be said to be evidence as to what Mrs Thompson was doing upon 3rd October.

Mr CECIL WHITELEY — On behalf of Bywaters I also wish to object .

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — There are some letters written by him.

Mr CECIL WHITELEY— There are only three letters written by Bywaters, and I have no objections to their admissibility. On the subject that the letters written by Mrs Thompson which were found in the possession of Bywaters ought not to be admitted in evidence in this case my grounds for making the submission are quite shortly these — The fact that they were in his possession is, of course, no answer by the prosecution until the prosecution can show that the contents of those letters really are relevant to the issue which is before the jury. Now, I do not suppose it is going to be suggested that they are being put in on the question of identity. Your lordship will remember the decision in Thompson in the House of Lords. I do not suggest that is the ground on which it is suggested, because there is no question of identity; therefore the only possible ground on which they can be admitted is on the ground of felonious intent.

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — Is your contention at present that they are not evidence against your client, or not evidence at all?

Mr CECIL WHITELEY — They are not evidence against my client or at all, because the effect of those letters by Mrs Thompson in January to May of this year is too remote for there to be any connection between what is said in those letters and the assault on the deceased man in the early morning of 4th October.

The SOLICITOR-GENERAL — My learned friend, Sir H. Curtis-Bennett, has taken two objections, as I understand it. One of them is that the letters are not admissible because they are not evidence against his client; and the second objection is one which I should have thought was more for the jury than your lordship — as to their weight.

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — That is for the jury.

The SOLICITOR-GENERAL — The question is, are they admissible?

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — First of all, are they admissible against the lady?

The SOLICITOR-GENERAL — As regards Mrs Thompson, I submit they arc admissible because she is being charged as a principal in the second degree, and they are admissible to show that she gave the incitement without which we say the murder would not have been committed, and that is the way in which she is brought into the case. She is indicted, as the law permits, as a principal in the murder, although she did not strike the blow. The crime is one where one hand struck the blow, and we want to show by these letters that her mind conceived it and incited it ; the evidence of that is the letters that Mrs Thompson wrote to the man who struck the blow. The case of The King v. Armstrong is, as your lordship said, a very different case indeed. There it was a question as to whether letters or evidence which showed a crime against B had been contemplated was in any way evidence against A, and it was said that a certain foundation ought to be laid before you could bring evidence of the other matters. That is not the case here. Those letters are evidence of the particular crime which is charged, namely, that she prompted the crime and incited the crime, and she is therefore a principal in the second degree. As against Bywaters, the letters are found in his possession ; they are evidence of motive.

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — You will, of course, prove that he received them. You say they are evidence against her; on what ground ?

The SOLICITOR-GENERAL — I say they are evidence against her because he received them; it is then a question as to whether we ought to attach any weight to them, but it is certain he received them and that he kept them ; it is evidence of motive and intention, and the letters may be necessary, and, indeed, in this case are necessary.

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — I think they are evidence of intention and motive. It is a very difficult question.

Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — As I understand, the reason given for the admissibility of this evidence is that these letters show a direct incitement to this crime. Now, the letters may upon the face of them show incitement to the crime of either poisoning or destroying Mr Thompson by means of giving him glass. In my submission, there must be some nexus between those letters and what they contain and the killing as it took place. The killing which is alleged to have been murder took place by a stab, as is alleged, by Bywaters on Mr Thompson. Now, where is the connection between that act of murder and these letters which are written months beforehand ? In my submission, there is no nexus between them at all, and the proper way to deal with these letters is to deal with them under an indictment which actually charges a direct incitement, to use my friend’s words, to murder. Upon that indictment, clearly admissible; upon this indictment, in my submission, not.

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — I think these letters, letters such as the ones to which Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett referred, are admissible as evidence of intention and evidence of motive, and I shall admit them. Objection can be taken in the proper way when they come up. Only one other matter. I do not think you can contest the letters showing the affectionate relations between the parties are not evidence of motive in so far as they show affection.

Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — The letters, as I have pointed out, contain both.

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — You cannot object to them in that way?

Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — I am objecting to them on that ground.

 

(The jury returned into the Court.)

Opening Statement for the Crown.

The SOLICITOR-GENERAL — May it please your lordship, members of the jury — on 4th October, a little after midnight, Percy Thompson was stabbed to death on his way home from Ilford station, near which he lived. He was in a dark part of a road, not over-well lit at the best of times, when he was struck, first of all, apparently, from behind, and then in front, by some assailant. The only person present was his wife, Mrs Thompson, who is now in the dock. She is charged with Bywaters, who is said by the prosecution to have been the assailant, with the murder of Percy Thompson. You will be able to distinguish as to the relevancy of the evidence as between Bywaters and Mrs Thompson. I give you that warning before I come to the facts in order that you may the more closely, if possible, follow the evidence which I shall open, and which shall be given. I ask you to dismiss from your minds any suggestions that you may have heard about the case in other places.

The deceased man, Percy Thompson, aged thirty-two, was a shipping clerk, and had been engaged with the same firm for twelve or thirteen years. He married in January, 1915, Miss Graydon, whose parents were living at Manor Park. There are no children of the marriage. Mr and Mrs Thompson lived at two or three different places after their marriage, and at the time of the incident that I am going to refer to they were residing at 41 Kensington Gardens, Ilford, which they had bought in July, 1920. Mrs Lester, who had occupied the house previously, continued to live there as a lodger. Mrs Thompson was a little younger than her husband — she is twenty-eight years old now — and, perhaps because there were no children, or for other reasons, she was carrying on her employment with a firm of wholesale milliners in Aldersgate Street, being book-keeper and manageress for the firm, and a capable and industrious servant.

The prisoner Bywaters is only twenty years of age. He was engaged for some time in the service of the P. & O. Company on the “ Morea ” as a laundry steward, and his employment necessitated his absence from England for considerable periods. When in this country he lived with his mother, Mrs Bywaters, who at one time resided in Manor Park. At the time of the incident with which we are concerned his mother had removed to Upper Norwood. Bywaters, whose ship came to Tilbury Dock, found it more convenient to live with the Graydons at Manor Park, and in that way, no doubt, he became acquainted with Mrs Thompson. He had also been at school with the Graydons. The acquaintance of Bywaters with the Thompsons became more intimate after a certain date in 1921. In June of that year he accompanied them on a holiday to Shanklin, in the Isle of Wight. He returned with them to their house at Ilford, and continued to stay with them until some date in August, when an incident happened which made him desire to leave, and Mr Thompson to direct that he should leave the house. It appeared that the relations between Mr and Mrs Thompson, formerly happy, had become less happy, and there was a quarrel between them which resulted in Bywaters leaving their house. On 21st September Bywaters left in his ship, returning in the autumn and departing again in November. About this time there were a number of letters written by Mrs Thompson to Bywaters, the origin of which may have been the holiday in 1921. I say that because throughout these letters there is a constant return to a certain date — 27th June, 1921 — mentioned by Mrs Thompson as a date which marked a crisis or change in the relations between her and Bywaters. Whether that was the origin of what happened afterwards or not is not necessary for you to decide. The fact of importance for the moment is that during his absence there was a passionate and ardent correspondence between these two persons which showed that they were engaged, or intended to engage, in an intrigue. Of course, Mrs Thompson still lived with her husband, but the letters, as I have said, were of a passionate nature. All these letters were found in the possession of Bywaters by the police, and taken from his pocket or from his room where he lived with his mother on the day or day after the murder, or found in a “ ditty box ” on the ship. There is one letter which I wish to read. It bears no date, and it refers to one incident in connection with racing which enables the prosecution to fix an approximate date. It appears to have been written to Bywaters when he was some distance from the United Kingdom. It was written, as the prosecution know from the racing incident referred to, after the running of the November Handicap, which was on 26^th November, 1921, and the internal evidence letter shows that it was written before Christmas. In that letter (exhibit 27) there appears the following : —

‘It is the man who has no right, who generally comforts the woman who has wrongs.’ This is also right darlint isn’t it? as things are, but darlint, it’s not always going to be is it ? You will have the right soon won’t you? Say yes. 

There is a more significant passage in the letter, the first of many such, indicative of the intention or desire on the part of the writer to take active measures. It is for you, members of the jury, to say what this passage means —

The time goes slowly enough in all conscience — I don’t seem to care who spends the money, as long as it helps me to dance through the hours. I had the wrong Porridge to-day, but I dont suppose it will matter, I dont seem to care much either way. You’ll probably say I’m careless and I admit I am, but I dont care — do you? 

The unexpectedness of the passage, the inappropriateness of that passage as it stands, is startling. It will be for you to say whether the line of thought that was in Mrs Thompson’s mind was that the existence of her husband was a bar to the happiness she thought she could attain.

I turn now to a letter of 3rd January (exhibit 13), in which Mrs Thompson says —

Immediately I have received a second letter, I have destroyed the first and when I got the third I destroyed the second and so on, now the only one I have is the “ Dear Edie ” one written to 41. 

Let me here explain that 41 is the number of the house in Kensington Gardens, Ilford, where Mrs Thompson lived. I should add that she sometimes received letters at Aldersgate Street.

The only one I have is the ‘ Dear Edie’  one written to 41, which I am going to keep. It may be useful, who knows? …. I’ve surrendered to him unconditionally now — do you understand me? I think it the best way to disarm any suspicion, in fact he has several times asked me if I am happy now, and I’ve said ‘ Yes quite ’ but you know that’s not the truth, dont you. 

When she says “ surrendered to him”  she is undoubtedly referring to her husband. In another part of the letter she says, “ You won’t always be ‘the man with no right’, will you — tell me you won’t.” Some of the passages are indicative of nothing more than guilty passion between the parties, but the letters are important when you come to decide the question as to whether Mrs Thompson had any reason to get rid of her husband.

Bywaters was at home on 7th January, and left again on the 20th. While he was at home no letters, so far as is known, passed between the parties. Soon after he left the letters began again. I read now from the letter of 10th February (exhibit 15) —

Darlint — You must do something this time — I’m not really impatient — but, opportunities come and go by— they have to — because I’m helpless and I think and think and think — perhaps — it will never come again . . . On Wednesday we had words — in bed — Oh you know darlint — over that same old subject and he said — it was all through you I’d altered . . . About 2 a.m. he woke me up and asked for water as he felt ill. I got it for him and asked him what the matter was and this is what he told me — whether its the truth I dont know or whether he did it to frighten me, anyway it didn’t. He said — someone he knows in town (not the man I previously told you about) had given him a prescription for a draught for insomnia and he’d had it made up and taken it and it made him ill. He certainly looked ill and his eyes were glassy. I’ve hunted for the said prescription everywhere and cant find it and asked him what he had done with it and he said the chemist kept it. I told Avis about the incident only I told her as if it frightened and worried me as I thought perhaps it might be useful at some future time that I had told somebody. What do you think, darlint. 

The passage is perhaps dark, but light is thrown on it by a later paragraph, which reads —

It would be so easy darlint — if I had things — I do hope I shall. 

One of the features of the case is the number and character of the newspaper cuttings that have been found. They are cuttings of a very great variety.

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — Sent to Bywaters?

The SOLICITOR- GENERAL — Yes. Along with the letter dated 10th February there was a newspaper cutting referring to the poisoning of a curate and his household by hyoscine. In the same letter there was another newspaper cutting headed “ Poisoned chocolates for University Chief. Deadly powder posted to Oxford Chancellor. Ground glass in box.” I ask you to notice the latter phrase. Another letter contained a cutting, “ Beautiful Dancer Drugged. Visit to Chinese Restaurant,” giving an account of the poisoning of a woman by cocaine who was suspected of having had cyanide of potassium administered to her. I ask you carefully to note that in her letter of 22nd February (exhibit 16) she writes —

I suppose it isn’t possible for you to send it to me — not at all possible, I do so chafe at wasting time darlint. 

What “ it ” refers to is entirely for you, and whether it has any significance I leave to your determination. You will distinguish between expressions of devotion and those which appear to indicate an intention to get rid of the husband. That is the letter containing the cutting about the death of a “ Beautiful Dancer.”

On 14th March she writes again, exhibit 20 —

I ask you again to think out all the plans and methods for me, I wait and wait so anxiously now — for the time when we’ll be with each other even though it is only once— for ‘ one little hour.’ 

With this letter there was enclosed a newspaper cutting which had reference to another poisoning case. It will be for you to say what she indicated. In March Bywaters returned to this country and sailed again at the end of the month. The letters then indicated the strength of the desire and a greater determination on the part of Mrs Thompson to take action against her husband. On 31st March, the day Bywaters sailed, when you might expect passion to be at its height, she wrote (exhibit 50) —

After tonight I am going to die . . . not really . . . but put on the mask again darlint until the 26th May— doesn’t it seem years and years away? It does to me and I’ll hope and hope all the time that I’ll never have to wear the mask any more after this time. . . . This time really will be the last you will go away — like things are, won’t it? We said it before darlint I know and we failed . . but there will be no failure this next time darlint, there mustn’t be — I’m telling you — if things are the same again then I am going with you — wherever it is — if its to sea — I am coming too and if it is to nowhere — I’m also coming darlint. You’ll never leave me behind again, never, unless things are different. 

In that letter two possibilities are presented. I suggest that the phrase “ if things are the same again ” means “ if my husband is still alive, and I cannot be with you except by leaving him, I will go with you.” In the other case how were things to be different except by the destruction of her husband’s life?

The next letter is a long and ardent one, and it contains passages of great importance. I refer to the letter of 1st April, exhibit 17, where the following appears: —

Don’t keep this piece. About the Marconigram — do you mean one saying Yes or No, because I shant send it darlint I’m not going to try any more until you come back. I made up my mind about this last Thursday. He was telling his mother etc. the circumstances of my  ‘Sunday morning escapade’ and he puts great stress on the fact of the tea tasting bitter ‘as if something had been put in it’ he says. Now I think whatever else I try it in again will still taste bitter — he will recognise it and be more suspicious still and if the quantity is still not successful it will injure any chance I may have of trying when you come home. Do you understand? I thought a lot about what you said of Dan. Darlint, don’t trust him — I don’t mean don’t tell him anything because I know you never would—What I mean is don’t let him be suspicious of you regarding that— because if we were successful in the action — darlint circumstances may afterwards make us want many friends — or helpers and we must have no enemies— or even people that know a little too much. Remember the saying ‘ A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.’ Darlint we’ll have no one to help us in the world now and we mustn’t make enemies unnecessarily. He says — to his people— he fought and fought with himself to keep conscious — ‘ I’ll never die, except naturally — I’m like a cat with nine lives’ he said and detailed to them an occasion when he was young and nearly suffocated by gas fumes. I wish we had not got electric light— it would be easy. I’m going to try the glass again occasionally — when it is safe. I’ve got an electric light globe this time. 

In the letter of 24th April, exhibit 18, Mrs Thompson writes —

I used the “ light bulb ’ three times, but the third time — he found a piece — so I have given it up- -until you come home. 

That is the suggestion carried into effect. You are not being asked to say whether she attempted to poison her husband; all you are asked to consider is whether Mrs Thompson incited Bywaters to kill her husband, and the letters are important from that point of view. They are important to show that she so worked and preyed on the mind of this young man by her suggestions that, although it was his hand that struck the blow, it was her mind that conceived the crime.

On 1st May she wrote to Bywaters at Port Said, exhibit 19 —

I don’t think we’re failures in other things and we musn’t be in this. We musn’t give up as we said. No, we shall have to wait if we fail again. Darlint, Fate can’t always turn against us and if it is we must fight it — You and I are strong now. We must be stronger. We must learn to be patient. . . . You said it was enough for an elephant. Perhaps it was. But you don’t allow for the taste making only a small quantity to be taken. It sounded like a reproach was it meant to be? Darlint I tried hard — you won’t know how hard — because you weren’t there to see and I can’t tell you all — but I did — I do want you to believe I did for both of us. . . . I was buoyed up with the hope of the “ light bulb” and I used a lot — big pieces too — not powdered — and it has no effect — I quite expected to be able to send that cable — but no- nothing has happened from it and now your letter tells me about the bitter taste again. Oh, darlint, I do feel so down and unhappy. Wouldn’t the stuff make small pills coated together with soap and dipped in liquorice powder like Beechams — try while you’re away. Our Boy had to have his thumb operated on because he had a piece of glass in it that’s what made that method again — but I suppose as you say he is not normal. I know I feel I shall never get him to take a sufficient quantity of anything bitter. No I haven’t forgotten the key I told you before. . . . If  ever we are lucky enough to be happy darling I’ll love you such a lot. I always show you how much I love you for all you do for me. . . . All that lying and scheming and subterfuge to obtain one little hour in each day — when by light of nature and our love we should be together the twenty-four in every day. 

What effect would letters of this sort have on a young man whose affections she was engaging? On 18th May (exhibit 22) she makes yet another of the almost innumerable suggestions to encompass her husband’s death. This time the suggestion comes from a book that members of the jury may possibly have read, written by Robert Hichens, “ Bella Donna.” She quotes the following from it : —

It must be remembered that digitalin is a cumulative poison and that the same dose harmless if taken once, yet frequently repeated, becomes deadly. 

The letter goes on — Is it any use?” She refers constantly to this book and the lesson it is to teach to them as a possible method of taking her husband’s life. On 23rd May (exhibit 23) she says —

I’d like you to read “ Bella Donna ” first you may learn something from it to help us, then you can read “The Fruitful Vine’’ 

On 9th June Bywaters went away and did not return until the following September. On 13th June she writes (exhibit 24) about an apparent illness of her husband —

Darlingest Boy — I’m trying very hard — very very hard to B.B.[be brave]  I know my pal wants me to. On Thursday — he was on the ottoman at the foot of the bed and said he was dying and wanted to — he had another heart attack — thro me. Darlint I had to laugh at this because I knew it couldn’t be a heart attack. When he saw this had no effect on me— he got up and stormed I said exactly what you told me to and he replied that he knew that’s what I wanted and he wasnt going to give it to me — it would make things far too easy for both of you (meaning you and me). 

It may be suggested that there is nothing to show any want of harmony between Mr and Mrs Thompson except natural quarrels. After reading that passage it does appear that there was a bitter antagonism. There is a postscript to Mrs Thompson’s letter of 4th July (exhibit 26 ) — “ Have you studied bichloride of mercury,” which I am told is a deadly poison.” There is another letter in which there is reference to a passage in “ Romance ” where she says — * ‘

Then we were pals — this year we seem no further advanced. Why should you not send me something? You still have your own way always. If I do not mind the risk why should you. 

There is in that connection a more significant passage in which it appears that she was the dominating influence in the crime. She was 28, and the man was only 20. The letter in question contains the following : —

From then onwards everything has gone well with our lives : Darlint I should not mind if I could feel some day I could make up to you for some of the unhappiness I have cost you — I feel it shall come right but there is no conviction in it, why cannot we see into the future. 

I suggest that through the correspondence it becomes clear that it was Mrs Thompson who was urging Bywaters on to commit the crime in some way or other in order to secure the happiness upon which her passion was set. He may have been reluctant or not, but can you, members of the jury, have any doubt after hearing these letters that she was not reluctant? The time comes when apparently she is determined that there shall be a culmination of the whole idea. It appeared that the man was cooling in his affection, or passion, or his readiness to commit the crime. He was approaching this country and in a letter (exhibit 28) she says, “ I think I am fearfully disappointed about you not getting in on Friday.” She also refers to it being 109 days since she has seen him. Further on in that letter she says —

Darlingest boy, — I dont quite understand you about “ Pals.” You say “ Can we be Pals only, Peidi, it will make it easier.” Do you mean for always? because if you do, No, No, a thousand times. We can’t be “ pals ” only for always darlint its impossible physically and mentally. … It must be still “ the hope of all ” or “ the finish of all.” If you still only mean for a certain time and you think it best, darlint it shall be so — I don’t see how it will be easier myself. . . . You sound very despondent when you say about “Time passes and with it some of the pain — Fate ordained our lot to be hard.” Does some of the pain you feel pass with time? Perhaps it does — things seem so much easier to forget with a man — his environment is always different — but with a woman it’s always the same. Darlint my pain gets less and less bearable — it hurts more and more every day, every hour really. . . . No, I don’t think the man who mistook me for ” Romance ” was decent darlint, but I do think he was quite genuine in mistaking me, I don’t think it was a ruse on his part. Yes, darlint you are jealous of him — but I want you to be — he has the right by law to all that you have the right to by nature and love — yes darlint be jealous, so much that you will do something desperate. 

Bywaters’ ship arrives at Tilbury on 23rd September, and she sends him a telegram, “ Can you meet Peidi Broadway 4 p.m.” That she was not content even then to leave the man alone appears from another newspaper extract dated 20th September, headed ” Chicken Broth death. Rat poison consumed by fowl kills woman.” This was a reference to the death of a woman who was said to have taken poison in chicken broth. There is no doubt that Mrs Thompson and Bywaters did meet on 25th September and the death of Percy Thompson took place on 4th October. They met outside the premises where Mrs Thompson was employed. Bywaters was seen by a Mrs Vellender outside the premises and they were seen afterwards in Fuller’s shop. It seems that on the Sunday or Monday before the crime Mrs Thompson wrote to Bywaters. The letter (exhibit 60) is undated, and it commences —

Darlingest lover of mine, thank you, thank you, oh thank you a thousand times for Friday – it was  lovely – it is always lovely to go out with you. And then Saturday – yes I did feel happy . . . All Saturday evening I was thinking about you …. I tried so hard to find a way out of to-night darlingest but he was suspicions and still is— I suppose we must make a study of this deceit for some time longer. I hate it. . . Don’t forget what we talked of in the Tea Room, I’ll still risk and try if you will — we only have 3 ¾ years left darlingest. 

That is a rather cryptic reference to a period that Mrs Thompson mentions more than once. She speaks sometimes of four years; then fifteen months have passed, and now she says there are three and three-quarter years. I ask — what did they talk about in the tearoom? I put it that there was a long course of suggestion resulting in a desire to escape from the position, and a fresh suggestion was made in the tearoom. On 2nd October, in the morning, Bywaters was rung up by a woman. Mrs Bywaters answered the telephone and Bywaters was summoned to it. He left the house that morning, and was seen with Mrs Thompson in the afternoon. On 3rd October Bywaters was again rung up on the telephone. He left the house, wearing a grey overcoat, and was seen with Mrs Thompson at Fuller’s between four o’clock and 5.15, at which hour they left the shop together. He spent the evening at the Graydons’ house while Mr and Mrs Thompson went to a theatre with a Mr and Mrs Laxton, Mr Laxton being an uncle of Mrs Thompson. Mr and Mrs Thompson went back to Ilford after the performance. (The Solicitor-General described the circumstances of the attack on Mr Thompson and pointed out that there were no signs of a struggle.) Other theatre-goers were attracted to the spot and heard Mrs Thompson exclaim, “ Oh, my God, will you help me? My husband is dying.”

Referring to the occasion when at Ilford police station Mrs Thompson saw Bywaters, the Solicitor-General said — She was much agitated and exclaimed “ My God, what can I do? Why did he do it? I did not want him to do it. I must tell the truth. I saw my husband struggling with Freddy Bywaters.” Bywaters at first declared that he knew nothing about the matter, but when told that Mrs Thompson was being charged with him, he said “Why Mrs Thompson? She was not aware of my movements. I met Mr and Mrs Thompson in the road. I said to him, ‘You have got to separate from your wife.’ He said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Yes.’ We struggled, and I took my knife from my pocket. We fought and he got the worst, of it. She must have been spellbound as I never saw her move. The reason I fought Thompson is because he never acted like a man to his wife. I could not go on seeing her live like she did. I did not intend to kill but only to injure him.”

A post-mortem examination showed that there were practically no traces of any poison. There was a trace of morphine, but the presence of that might be due to other reasons, and it has no significance in the case. Nor was there any trace of glass in the body.

(The Solicitor General read the statements by the accused.) I suggest to you, members of the jury, that you will have to consider whether the hand that struck the blow was moved, was incited, to the crime by Mrs Thompson. It is no answer that the whole of the incitement should come from Mrs Thompson. It may be that the passion of the young man may have led him in that direction. There is the undoubted evidence in the letters upon which you can find that there was a preconcerted meeting between Mrs Thompson and Bywaters at the place; but supposing you were not wholly satisfied that there was a conspiracy made to effect the murder at this place and time, if you are satisfied that Mrs Thompson incited the murder and that, incited and directed by her controlling hand, Bywaters committed the murder, then it will be my duty to ask you, after hearing the evidence, to find her who incited and proposed the murder as guilty as Bywaters who committed it.

Evidence for the Prosecution.

JOHN AMBROSE HENRY LAXTON, examined by Mr TRAVERS HUMPHREYS — I live at South Tottenham. The deceased Percy Thompson was my nephew by marriage. From time to time I met him and his wife, the prisoner Thompson. On Tuesday, 3rd October, I met them both by arrangement at the Criterion Theatre; I think the arrangement was made by my wife about a week or a fortnight beforehand. After the performance was over we left Mr and Mrs Thompson at the Piccadilly Tube station, about quarter to eleven or eleven o’clock. They were going to Liverpool Street, and went down a different lift from what we did.

Cross-examined by Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — I had gone on several occasions before to the theatre with Mr and Mrs Thompson. So far as I could see, they appeared to be on good terms. The party upon the particular evening to which I have spoken was an ordinary happy theatre party, and when Mr and Mrs Thompson left us at the tube station they appeared to be upon their usual terms.

ROBERT TAYLOR, examined by Mr ROLAND OLIVER — I am a police constable of the K Division, and am accustomed to making plans. I have prepared a plan of the neighbourhood of Belgrave Road and Kensington Gardens, Ilford, which is now produced. I have shown by dots the actual scene of the crime, nearly half-way between Endsleigh Gardens and Kensington Gardens. I also show the street lamps in the neighbourhood. The place where the actual killing was done is a dark part of the road at night. The spot I have marked on the plan as the scene of killing is only 54 yards from Thompson’s house, 41 Kensington Gardens. At this point the pavement is 7 feet wide, and the roadway is 20 feet wide.

DORA FINCH PITTARD, examined by Mr TRAVERS HUMPHREYS — I live at 59 Endsleigh Gardens, Ilford. A few minutes before midnight on 3rd October I arrived with some friends of mine at Ilford station, and I proceeded to walk home by Belgrave Road. When I was between De Vere Gardens and Endsleigh Gardens I saw a woman running towards me — the prisoner, Mrs Thompson. She cried out, “ Oh, my God! Will you help me; my husband is ill, he is bleeding.” I asked her where he was, and she said he was on the pavement. I took Mrs Thompson to the house of Dr. Maudsley, at the corner of Courtland Avenue, and then I went back to Kensington Gardens, Mrs Thompson being just in front of me. Finding a man lying on the pavement, I asked Mrs Thompson what had happened to her husband, and she said, “ Oh, don’t ask me, I don’t know. Somebody flew past, and when I turned to speak to him blood was pouring out of his mouth.” Mrs Thompson was very agitated and incoherent.

Cross-examined by Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — When I first saw Mrs Thompson she was running hard in my direction.

It was quite clear to you that at that time she was in a hysterical condition? — Yes, she was very agitated.

It was quite obvious to you that what she wanted was to get help for her husband? — Yes, I suppose so.

PERCY EDWARD CLEVELEY, examined by Mr TRAVERS HUMPHREYS —I live at 62 Mayfair Avenue, Ilford. I was one of the party which included the last witness, Miss Pittard. While walking through Belgrave Road we met the prisoner, Mrs Thompson, who seemed to come out of the darkness, as it were. She spoke about her husband having fallen down, that he was ill, and she wanted help, and she asked where we could find a doctor. We went to Dr. Maudsley’s house, and, on returning, we found the deceased lying on the pavement with his back propped up against the wall. I asked Mrs Thompson how it had happened, and she said she could not say — “Something brushed past,” or “ flew past,” or words to that effect, “ and he fell down.”

Cross-examined by Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — When Mrs Thompson first came up, was not the first thing she said, “ Do you know a doctor, do you know a doctor ? ” — No, I think the first thing was that she asked for help. She asked for a doctor, and said that her husband had fallen down. On the way back from Dr. Maudsley’s Mrs Thompson ran on in front of us to get back to her husband. When we got there we found her kneeling down with him.

When you asked her what had happened, was she in a very agitated condition? — Yes, she was certainly very excited and agitated.

And hysterical and incoherent in her statements? — Yes.

JOHN WEBBER, examined by Mr ROLAND OLIVER — I am a sales manager, and live at 59 De Vere Gardens, Ilford. About 12.30 in the morning of 4th October, just as I was about to retire to bed, I heard a woman’s voice saying, “ Oh, don’t; oh, don’t,” in a most piteous manner. On hearing that I went out into the street, and I saw two ladies and a gentleman coming towards me in the direction of Dr. Maudsley’s house. One of the ladies was running in front of the other two. After they had passed me I saw a match being struck, and I went up to the place and found a man sitting against the wall. Mrs Thompson was there alone with him, and I asked her if the man had had a fall, but she said she did not know. I asked her if I could be of any assistance to him, and she said, “ Don’t touch him, don’t touch him, a lady and a gentleman have gone off for a doctor.” After that Dr. Maudsley came with Miss Pittard and Mr Cleveley. I helped the doctor to undress the man. I heard the doctor ask Mrs Thompson if he had been ill, and where they had come from. She told him that he had not been ill, and that they had come from the Criterion Theatre.

Cross-examined by Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — I have no doubt whatever that the voice I heard, “ Oh, don’t; oh, don’t,” was the voice of Mrs Thompson. It was about three or five minutes afterwards that I saw the three persons coming towards me. Mrs Thompson, who was in front, was sobbing and running hard. When I went across to where Mr Thompson was sitting on the pavement I found Mrs Thompson there, evidently waiting for assistance. I asked her if he had had a fall, and she said ” Yes — no — I don’t know.”

It was quite evident, was it not, that she was in a very agitated state at that time? — I should say she was almost hysterical.

Dr. NOEL MAUDSLEY, examined by Mr TRAVERS HUMPHREYS — I live at 62 Courtland Avenue, Ilford, which is at the corner of Belgrave Road. I was called up by Miss Pittard in the early morning of 4th October, and I went to a spot about half-way between Kensington Gardens and Endsleigh Gardens. I there saw a man lying on the pavement, with Mrs Thompson standing by his side. I struck a match and made an examination of the man. I first examined his pulse, and found that he was dead. I should think about five or eight minutes would elapse from the time I was first called to the time I actually got to the body. When I examined the man I should say he had been dead somewhere about ten minutes. Mrs Thompson was in a confused condition, hysterical and agitated. I asked her if her husband had been taken ill coming home in the train or coming along the road, and she said no. When I told her that her husband was dead she said, “ Why did you not come sooner and save him? ” I saw no wounds; there were no bleeding points to observe, but the blood was welling out of his mouth. I did not see any indications of a struggle having taken place.

Cross-examined by Mr CECIL WHITELEY — I never directed my attention at all to the wounds from which this man was suffering; I made no examination.

WALTER GRIMES, examined by Mr TRAVERS HUMPHREYS — I am a sergeant of the K Division of the Metropolitan Police. About 3 a.m. on 4th October I went to Mrs Thompson’s house and asked her if she could explain to me what had happened on the road home from the station. She said, “ I don’t know, I can’t say; I only know that my husband suddenly dropped down and screamed out,  ‘Oh.’ I then rushed across the road and saw a lady and gentleman, and asked them if they would help me, and they went with me to the doctor.” Later on in the morning I asked her if she was carrying a knife in her handbag at the time, and she replied, “ No.” I then asked her if she or her husband saw or spoke to any person when they were coming through Belgrave Road, and she replied, “ No, I did not notice any one.”

Cross-examined by Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — I was along with Sergeant Mew when this conversation took place with Mrs Thompson at three o’clock in the morning. At that time she appeared to be very distressed and inclined to be hysterical. Sergeant Mew asked her, “ Can you account for the cuts on your husband’s neck?” Mrs Thompson said, “ No. We were walking along; my husband said, ‘Oh.’ I said, ‘Bear up’, thinking he had one of his attacks. He then fell on me and walked a little further ; he then fell up against the wall, and then on to the ground.” Sergeant Mew then asked her if her husband carried a knife.

WALTER MEW, examined by Mr TRAVERS HUMPHREYS — I am a police sergeant. I went to Belgrave Road shortly after 1 a.m. on 4th October. Mrs Thompson was there beside the body of her husband. After the body was removed by some other officers I went with her to her home, 41 Kensington Gardens, which was quite close by. On the way there she said, “ Will he come back? ” and I replied, “ Yes.” She then said, “ They will blame me for this.” At three o’clock on that same morning I returned to 41 Kensington Gardens and saw Mrs Thompson again. I asked her, “ Can you account for the cuts on your husband’s neck? ” She replied, “ No. We were walking along and my husband said, ‘ Oh.’ I said, ‘Bear up’, thinking he had one of his attacks. He then fell on me, and walked a little further. He then fell up against the wall, and then on to the ground.” I asked her, “ Did he have a knife? ” And she replied, “ No, I did not see a knife or anything.” I noticed that her coat and her clothes and face had signs of blood on them, which would be natural if she had been holding up her husband or anybody else who was bleeding.

Cross-examined by Mr CECIL WHITELEY — I went to the mortuary to which the body was taken, and I saw the clothes taken off the deceased man’s body. He was wearing a blue suit. There was a hip pocket on the right-hand side of the trousers.

Cross-examined by Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — The upper part of Mr Thompson’s clothing was saturated with blood. The blood which I saw on the clothes of Mrs Thompson was quite consistent with her having assisted her husband and having propped him up against the wall in the position in which he was found.

By Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — When she said, “Will he come back,” I thought she meant would they bring her husband’s body back.

Cross-examination continued — I do not think she realised at the time that her husband was dead.

RICHARD HALLIDAY THOMPSON, examined by Mr TRAVERS HUMPHREYS — I live at 49 Seymour Gardens, Ilford. The deceased, Percy Thompson, was my brother. He was thirty-two years of age at the time of his death. I last saw him alive on the night of 2nd October. At that time he appeared to be in good health. His wife and he had been living at 41 Kensington Gardens, Ilford, for something over two years. I was called in the early morning of 4th October to go to 41 Kensington Gardens, and I got there between quarter to two and two o’clock. I had been told that my brother had had a seizure and was dead. When I got to the house I found my sister-in-law there; she was in a very agitated condition. I asked her if she could give me a rough idea of what had happened and how my brother had met with his death. She stated that he was walking along and suddenly came over queer, fell against the wall, and slid down saying “ Oh.” She told me that her husband had been complaining of pains in his leg on the way from the station. She went to get the nearest doctor, and on her way she met a lady and gentleman, and asked them to obtain assistance for her. I understood then that they went with her to the doctor’s, and he was rather a long time coming, and she complained about it. When the doctor arrived her husband was dead. I understood her to say that the doctor said he had died from haemorrhage. I do not think I asked her any other questions.

Cross-examined by Mr CECIL WHITELEY — My sister-in-law was a Miss Graydon ; I have known her for many years. My brother and his wife frequently visited the Graydons at 231 Shakespeare Crescent. I think they usually went there on a Friday. I have never met the prisoner Bywaters at the Graydon s’ house.

Cross-examined by Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — My brother joined the London Scottish in 1916, and was discharged because he was suffering from heart trouble and was totally unfit for service.

CYRIL GEAL, examined by Mr TRAVERS HUMPHREYS — I am a police constable. At 12.30 am on 4^th October I, with the assistance of another constable, took the body of the deceased man Thompson to the Ilford mortuary and assisted to undress the body. I did not find a knife or any other weapon in the possession of the deceased man. Except for the cuts in the clothing caused by a knife, I did not find that the clothing had been torn at all.

Dr. PERCY JAMES DROUGHT, examined by the SOLICITOR-GENERAL — I am divisional surgeon to the Ilford Police Division. On 5th October I made, by direction of the Coroner, a post-mortem examination of the body of Percy Thompson. I found on the body, on the left side below the ribs, four slight cuts on the skin. I also found on the front of the chin two slight cuts parallel to one another, two slight cuts on the right side of the lower jaw, and on the inner side of the right arm, at the elbow, there was a cut 3 ^3/4 inches long. I then found a stab in the back of the neck 2 inches deep and 1^1/4 inches wide; that was above the clothing. Then there was a stab at the back of the neck slightly to the right 2^1/2 inches deep and 1^1/2 inches wide, passing upwards towards the right ear.

By Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — These were two separate stabs.

Examination continued — The result of the second stab was that there was about half a pint of blood in the stomach which had come from the artery in the neck, the carotid artery, which had been severed. I should say that the wounds at the back and round the neck required a considerable force. Those at the front were superficial, and did not require so much force. I came to the conclusion from the bloodstains that the assailant was on the footpath when the blows were struck. With regard to the slight wound at the front, the assailant must have been in front and then got round to the back with the deeper ones. The stab that cut his carotid artery is more likely to have been struck from the back than from the front. It would have been possible for the man to walk after the blow that severed the artery was struck, but not for very long. I do not think he would be able to speak very much. I should think that the man would die in about a couple of minutes after the severe stab was delivered. The wounds which I saw could have been inflicted by the knife which is now produced.

Cross- examined by Mr CECIL WHITELEY — In my opinion, the wound on the neck, the fatal wound, was received from behind.

But it is doubtful? — It is doubtful. I am quite clear that the fatal wound was the last blow that was inflicted.

Mrs LILIAN BYWATERS, examined by Mr ROLAND OLIVER — I am a widow, and reside at 11 Westow Street, Upper Norwood. The prisoner Bywaters is my son. He was twenty on 27^th June of this year. For some years past he has been employed as a ship’s writer by the P. & O. Company. When the ship was in port and his duties did not necessitate his staying with the ship he used to live with me. Once in the summer of last year he stayed away for about a fortnight. He told me that he had been staying with Mr and Mrs Thompson at Ilford, and that he had gone with them to the Isle of Wight for a holiday. I believe this was in July of last year, but I could not say for certain. For the last year or more he has been on the P. & O. ship “ Morea.” When she was in port she was generally at Tilbury, and my son always stayed with me except on the one occasion I have spoken to. I believe he sometimes slept on board. I know the Graydon boys through their going to school with my son. I believe that he once stayed for a short time with the Graydons at Manor Park, but I could not say for certain. I know Mrs Graydon slightly, and have been in her company once or twice at the outside. The last time I saw her before this affair was early this year, but I did not speak to her then.

Coming to the last time that my son came home from sea, the “Morea ” got in on 23^rd September, and my son remained with the ship, working there for some days, but sleeping at home. I think he stopped working on the ship on Friday, 29^th September. That day he just went up to town, as far as I know, and came back home to sleep sometime after nine o’clock in the evening. On the Saturday morning he went up to town and came back to tea. On Sunday, 1^st October, he stayed at home all day. On the Monday morning he went up to town. Before he went out there was a telephone message. I answered the telephone and spoke to a woman. I do not know whose voice it was. As the result of speaking to that woman my son came downstairs from his bedroom and spoke through the telephone. He went up to town just after eleven o’ clock, I think, and he came back at night with the 11.5 train from Victoria. I had been in town myself that day, and I came back in the same train. Our station is Gipsy Hill. On the Tuesday the telephone rang just before nine o’clock, and my son answered it. I do not know whether it was a man or a woman who rang up. My son left the house a little before twelve. I went to bed about half-past ten that evening; my son had not returned then. Later on the front-door bell rang. I could not say what time it was ; I think I was sleeping when the bell rang. I called out, “ Is that you, Mick? ” and he answered, “ Yes, Mum.” Next morning I said to him, ” You were late last night, were you not? ” and he said, “ Yes.” I asked him, “Did you go to sleep in the train? ” and he said, “ Yes, and went on to Norwood Junction,” two or three stations further down the line. He did not say how he had got back from there. On the next day, Wednesday the 4th, I went up to London with my son, and left him at the corner of Cheapside, just past Nicholson’s, between half-past two and three o’clock in the afternoon. That was the last time I saw him before he was in custody. About eleven o’clock that evening I saw Inspector Pago when I got home, and l took him to my son’s bedroom. I saw him take some letters out of a suitcase, and also two pieces of paper out of my son’s coat.

By Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — I believe the last train to our station leaves Victoria at ten minutes past twelve, but I could not say for certain.

Cross-examined by Mr CECIL WHITELEY — My husband was a ship’s clerk also. He joined the Army in December, 1914, and was killed in the war. After my husband was killed I started a milliner’s business in Upper Norwood. My boy has been with me always except at the time he has been at sea and the time he was staying with the Thompsons. When he was at school he got a splendid character, every report was marked “ Excellent.” After leaving school he went to some shipping agents in Leadenhall Street, and remained with them for about nine months. He left there with an excellent character, and went to another firm of shipping agents, with whom he remained until February, 1918, when he joined the merchant service as a writer. Since then he has been at sea most of the time, with intervals of about a fortnight, and his certificate of discharge at the end of each voyage shows that his character for ability was very good and for general conduct also very good. He has been practically all over the world. I have two daughters as well as my son [and a younger son called ‘Frankie’]. When he came back the last time his ship arrived on 23^rd September, and he came straight back that day to my house at Westow Hill. Although he was working on the ship until 29th September, he always slept at home. On Saturday, 30th, he came home to tea about four o’clock, and he did not go out again until about eleven o’clock on the Monday morning. I was not aware until I heard recently that he visited the Graydons’ house on the evening of 2nd October, nor was I aware that he visited the Graydons again on the Tuesday evening. On the following day, 4th October, he was with me in London until after two o’clock, when he left me at St. Paul’s Churchyard .

Has he always been an excellent son ? — One of the best that a mother could have.

WILLIAM EUSTACE GRAYDON, examined by Mr TRAVERS HUMPHREYS — I reside at 231 Shakespeare Crescent, Manor Park. The female prisoner is my daughter. She was married to Mr Thompson on 15th January, 1915 [1916], and she will be twenty-nine years of age on Christmas Day. There are no children of the marriage. She has been living for the last two years at 41 Kensington Gardens, Ilford, and I saw both her and her husband there from time to time. I have known the prisoner Bywaters for two and a half or three years to the best of my recollection. When he was at home between his voyages he used to come to our house from time to time, and he stayed for a period with us while he was waiting for a ship. I think that would be in the summer of 1921. When he returned from his voyage on 23rd September of this year he visited us on several occasions. He was at our house on Monday, 2nd October, about 6.45 or seven o’clock in the evening, and left about ten, or possibly a little later. He came about the same time on Tuesday, 3rd, and left about the same time. I remember my unmarried daughter, Avis, saying in the course of that evening and in the presence of Bywaters that the Thompsons had gone to a theatre, but he made no comment. I saw Bywaters again at our house next evening, the 4th, about seven o’clock. He had a copy of the Evening News, and he asked me if I had seen the paper. I said, “No.” Then he said, “ This is a terrible thing if it is true.” I surmised what he was referring to, and said, “ I am afraid it is only too true.”

Did you know at that time that Mr Thompson had been killed by somebody? — I knew Mr Thompson was dead. While Bywaters was at my house that evening some police officers came and took him away.

Cross-examined by Mr CECIL WHITELEY — My daughter and her husband were weekly visitors at our house; they practically always came on a Friday. Bywaters was known to me and my family for some considerable time, and he was a frequent visitor at our house. He came back from his last voyage on 23rd September, but he did not come to see us until Monday, 2nd October, when he came round about 7.30 in the evening. It is quite probable that he would stay talking to me and my family until about 10 or 10.30 — perhaps not quite so late. My son Newenham was there, but he may have gone out during the evening. Bywaters spoke to me that evening about some tobacco that I had agreed to get for him. He came again about seven o’clock in the evening of Tuesday, 3rd October, and he remained until ten or thereabouts. During the whole time he was talking to me and to my wife and my daughter Avis. I cannot recollect Mrs Thompson’s name coming up during that conversation. I have no recollection of any comment being made upon the tobacco pouch that he had. I was not present in the room during the whole time that he was there, and it is possible that something may have been said about the tobacco pouch when I was not in the room.

Was he exactly the same on that evening as he had always been on previous evenings? — Quite.

Nothing unusual about him? — Nothing whatever.

Cross-examined by Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — I knew my son-in- law for about seven years before his marriage.

During the whole of the time you knew him had he complained of heart attacks? — He had complained of various attacks, generally his heart. I have never seen him myself in a heart attack.

I show you an enclosure (exhibit 15a), which was in a letter written by your daughter to Bywaters. It is a cutting from the Daily Sketch of 9th February, 1922, and it is headed “ Curate’s household of three. Mystery of his death still unsolved. Wife and doctor. Woman asked to leave the Court during man’s evidence.” Have you got that? — Yes, I see that that report refers to a Dr. Preston Wallis, who was my doctor since about 1900.

From 1900 until 1915, when your daughter got married, Dr. Preston Wallis would have been her doctor? — He would. Exhibit 15b is apparently a continuation of the same report — “Poisoned curate. Resumed inquest to-day following analyst’s investigation.” Bywaters lived for some time at Manor Park, up to 1916 or thereabouts. I could not say whether Dr. Preston Wallis was also the Bywaters’ doctor. Exhibit No. 24, which is now shown me, is in my daughter’s handwriting, and is dated 13th June, 1922 —

I rang Avis yesterday and she said he came down there in a rage and told Dad everything — about all the rows we have had over you — but she did not mention he said anything about the first real one on August 1st — so I suppose he kept that back to suit his own ends. Dad said it was a disgraceful thing that you should come between husband and wife and I ought to be ashamed. Darlint I told you this is how they would look at it — they dont understand and they never will any of them. 

Thompson never came to me and made any complaint as to the conduct of Bywaters with my daughter ; that is the purest imagination —

Dad was going to talk to me Avis said — but I went down and nothing whatever was said by any of them. I told Avis I I’d tell them off if they said anything to me. I didn’t go whining to my people when he did things I didn’t approve of and I didn’t expect him to — but however nothing was said at all. Dad said to them ‘What a scandal if it should get in the papers’ so evidently he suggested drastic measures to them. 

There is no truth whatever in those two paragraphs. As a matter of fact, I had no idea that my daughter and her husband were not on good terms. Whenever I saw them together they always appeared to be quite happy and fond of each other.

Re-examined by the SOLICITOR-GENERAL — I cannot remember any particular theatre being mentioned when my daughter mentioned the fact that the Thompsons had gone to the theatre or were going to the theatre on the night of 3rd October. It would not be necessary or convenient for Bywaters to go through Ilford in order to get from my house in Manor Park to Upper Norwood.

By Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — The ordinary way would be by the District Railway from East Ham to Victoria.

Re-examination continued — There is no route that I know of that would take him through or near Belgrave Road in order to get to Upper Norwood. I had no knowledge of Dr. Farnell, the Vice- Chancellor of Oxford University. He is quite a stranger to me.

By Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — I had never heard of any trouble about Bywaters coming between Thompson and my daughter.

ERNEST FOSTER, examined by Mr TRAVERS HUMPHREYS — I am a detective constable. In the evening of 4th October I went to Mr Graydons’ house in Manor Park, and I there saw the prisoner Bywaters. I said to him, “ We are police officers. Is your name Frederick Bywaters? ” and he said, “ Yes.” I said, “ I wish you to accompany us to Ilford police station for the purpose of being interviewed in connection with the Ilford murder.” He made no reply, and I conveyed him to Ilford police station, where he was detained.

Cross-examined by Mr CECIL WHITELEY — Sergeant Williams, Mr Graydon, and, I think, Mr Newenham Graydon were present in the room when I said I wanted Bywaters to go to the Ilford police station. It is possible that Bywaters may have said, “ Certainly,” but I did not hear him. I did not hear him say “ Certainly, I will do anything I can to help you.”

By Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — At any rate, he went quietly ? — Yes

Mrs FANNY MARIA LESTER, examined by Mr TRAVERS HUMPHREYS — I live at 41 Kensington Gardens, Ilford. I lived at that house before Mr and Mrs Thompson came about two years ago. Mr Thompson bought the house, and I became their tenant of part of the house, Mr and Mrs Thompson occupying the two rooms upstairs and some rooms downstairs. Both Mr and Mrs Thompson used to go to their business in London, leaving about quarter-past eight in the morning. Generally Mrs Thompson came back to the house first, about quarter to seven, or perhaps before that. Sometimes Mr Thompson was very late in getting home, about ten or eleven. I remember their going for a holiday to the Isle of Wight in June of last year. When they came back from their holiday they brought the prisoner Bywaters with them, and he remained for some time, but I could not say whether it was as a paying guest. He left on the Tuesday after the August Bank Holiday. Mr Thompson had his breakfast in bed that morning, and Bywaters and Mrs Thompson had their breakfast downstairs. Bywaters went away for good after Mr and Mrs Thompson had gone out. Mrs Thompson showed me her arm; it was black from the shoulder to the elbow. When she showed me her arm I asked her what was wrong, and she said, “ Mr Thompson and Mr Bywaters were having a few words and I interfered, and he pushed me on one side — shoved me up against the table.” I think Bywaters left the house within a day or so after that, and he did not come back again.

By Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — He came back to the house once again on a Saturday afternoon, but I could not say when, and he saw both Mr and Mrs Thompson.

Examination continued — I would not say that Mr and Mrs Thompson were on very good terms at any time. I used to hear them having very high words at times. I remember Saturday, 30th September. Mr and Mrs Thompson went away together in the morning and Mrs Thompson returned about half-past ten. She stayed in for a time and then went out again. She came back in the middle of the day and cooked Mr Thompson’s dinner. He came home to dinner. On Sunday, 1st October, Mrs Thompson was in during the day and cooked their dinner. They went out together with some friends, I think, in the afternoon. On Monday morning, 2nd, they both went away the same as usual and they came back about seven o’clock. On Tuesday they both went away as usual, and the next time I saw Mrs Thompson was when she was brought back after midnight. When she was brought back she only said that they would not let her go with him, or they would not let her bring him home — they had taken him away from her and if they would let her go to him she would make him better. The Thompsons’ rooms are lighted by electric light. They did not keep a servant; Mrs Thompson cooked the food. A servant came on this day, 4th October, for the first time.

Cross-examined by Mr CECIL WHITELEY — I am quite clear that Mrs Thompson came back about twenty minutes past ten on the Saturday forenoon after having gone out with her husband. She remained in the house for about twenty minutes and she was back again at one o’clock. From that time to the Monday morning she and her husband were together as far as I know.

Cross-examined by Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — Mrs Thompson complained to me that the housework was too much for her, and she told me that she was going to get a servant. The servant actually arrived to take up her situation on the evening after the death of Mr Thompson. When Mrs Thompson was brought back to the house in the early morning of 4th October she was in a very prostrate condition.

As far as you could form an opinion did you come to the conclusion that she did not realise that her husband was dead? — Yes, she said so.

You did come to the conclusion that she did not realise that her husband was dead? — Yes. The words she used were “ They have taken him away from me; if they would let me go to him I could make him better.”

It looked clearly as if she thought he was still alive? — Yes. I never prepared any of the food for Mr and Mrs Thompson. Mrs Thompson prepared all the meals that they had at home.

FRANK EDWARD MYHILL, examined by Mr TRAVERS HUMPHREYS — I am employed as a clerk under the Board of Trade in the (General Register of Shipping and Seamen, Towerhill. I produce exhibit 32, a certificate relating to the British ship ‘‘ Orvieto,” and exhibit 33, a similar certificate relating to the British ship “ Morea.” Exhibit 34 is a log of the “ Orvieto ” and exhibit 35 is a certified extract showing the ports of call on the voyage. Exhibit 36 is a special log of the “ Morea ” on a journey between 9th September, 1921, and 29th October, 1921, and exhibit 37 is an extract showing the ports of call. Exhibits 38 and 39 are the log and extract showing the ports of call on the voyage which started on llth November, 1921, and finished on 6^th January, 1922. Exhibits 40 and 41 are the log of the “ Morea ” and a certified extract showing the ports of call on the voyage which started on 20^th January, 1922, and ended on 16 March; exhibits 42 and 43 relate to a voyage of the “Morea ” beginning on 31st March and ending on 25th May, 1922; exhibits 44 and 45 relate to a voyage of the same ship beginning on 9th June, 1922, and ending on 23rd September. Exhibit 40 shows the beginning and end of these various voyages and also the rating of the prisoner Bywaters. On the first voyage he was rated as mess room steward; on the next a writer; the next a writer; and the last a laundry steward.

Cross-examined by Mr CECIL WHITELEY — Bywaters was for three fortnights in London this year. The records show on each voyage his ability and conduct as very good.

Mrs MARIA FANNY LESTER, recalled, further cross-examined by Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — My husband died in the beginning of May of this year. Up to that time I prepared porridge for my husband’s breakfast, and Mr Thompson used to take a plate of porridge out of it as I made enough for two. Mr Thompson had a gas fire put in the drawing room.

Re-examined by Mr CECIL WHITELEY — Sometimes Mrs Thompson would have the porridge as well as her husband.

ARTHUR NEWBURY, examined by Mr TRAVERS HUMPHREYS— I am chief clerk in the pursers’ department of the P. & O. Steamship Company. I have seen the prisoner Bywaters. After the arrival of the steamship “ Morea ” at Tilbury on 23rd February of this year, he, as ship’s writer, had to be in attendance during the day, but he would not sleep on board while the ship was in dock. He left the ship on 28th September and his leave started from the morning of the 29th. He was due on board on 5th October, but he would not be supposed to sleep on board until the night before the ship left dock.  She left on 13th October.

HERBERT CARLTON, examined by Mr ROLAND OLIVER — I carry on business under the name of Carlton & Prior as a wholesale milliner at 168 Aldersgate Street. The prisoner Mrs Thompson was in the employment of my firm. I should think she has been with me for about eight or ten years. She acted as book-keeper and manageress, and she was a very capable woman. During the time she was with me she was earning £6 a week, and then I gave her a bonus at holiday and Christmas times. Her hours were from 9 to 5, and on Saturdays from 9 to 12.15. I have seen the prisoner Bywaters on two occasions, the first time being when he was with Mrs Thompson in our showroom about eighteen months ago. The next time I saw him was on the Friday before the death of Mr Thompson. I saw him in the porchway of our house about half past four or quarter to five. I was downstairs in the basement; Mrs Thompson called down about ten minutes to five that she was leaving, and I allowed her to go. I was aware that she was married and that her name was Mrs Thompson, but in business she used her maiden name, Miss Graydon. In fact, she was in our employ before she was married. She did not come to work on Saturday, 30th September, as she had asked for the day off and I gave it to her. She came on Monday, 2nd October, and Tuesday, 3rd October, and left at the ordinary time. I did not see her again until after she was in custody. I have seen one or two registered letters for Mrs Thompson addressed to my firm. I could not say whether they came from abroad. I handed them to her. I am quite familiar with Mrs Thompson’s handwriting, and I have had an opportunity of examining the original exhibits in this case. Exhibit 65 is a list of the documents which are in her handwriting.

Cross-examined by Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — There was no question at all of Mrs Thompson leaving my employment. She was the sort of lady who with her business capacity would probably be able to get employment anywhere quite easily.

Mrs LILIAN VELLENDER, examined by Mr ROLAND OLIVER — I work at Carlton & Prior’s and I know the prisoner, Mrs Thompson. I also know the prisoner Bywaters. The first time I met him was at Shanklin in the Isle of Wight in June, 1921. He was staying there with Mr and Mrs Thompson and Mrs Thompson’s sister. The next time I saw him was last summer near our premises in Aldersgate Street, about five o’clock in the evening. I saw him again that week in Aldersgate Street. I did not see him after that until Monday, 25th September. Mrs Thompson told me that he was outside, and I went across the road to Fuller’s shop and had coffee with him. This would be about five o’clock. Mrs Thompson came over afterwards and I left the two of them in Fuller’s. I saw him again on 29th September in Fuller’s but Mrs Thompson was not with him. When I came back to the office she was dressed ready to leave.

 

Second Day— Thursday, 7th December, 1922.

EDITH ANNIE BROWN, examined by Mr ROLAND OLIVER — I am employed at Fuller’s, Limited, confectioners, 42 Aldersgate Street, which is just about opposite Carlton & Prior’s. I know both the prisoners by sight, and I have seen them together in our teashop. On 29th September Bywaters came to our shop alone, and was joined by the witness Miss Vellender, and later by Mrs Thompson. I next saw Bywaters at our shop on Monday, 2nd October; Mrs Thompson was not there on that day. On Tuesday, 3rd, I saw them both together in our shop. They left together about quarter past five. One day a woman brought Bywaters a note; I think it was on the Friday, but I cannot be certain.

Cross-examined by Mr CECIL WHITELEY — There used to be two employees at Fuller’s shop ; now there are three. The busiest time is between twelve and two. We do not have very many customers in at tea-time.

AMELIA AUGUSTA LEE, examined by Mr ROLAND OLIVER — I am a waitress at Fuller’s, in Aldersgate Street. I remember the prisoner Bywaters, but not the female prisoner. I remember seeing the male prisoner in the tearoom during a week in the early part of the year. I also saw him in the tearoom on the Friday previous to the Ilford murder. He came into the shop alone, and then later on he was joined by Miss Vellender, I saw him again on the following Monday along with a lady. I also saw him on the Tuesday. After he had been in for about an hour a lady came and joined him — not the same lady who had coffee with him on the Monday. I should think that this would be between four and five o’clock. They went out together.

ROSE JACOBS, examined by Mr ROLAND OLIVER — I am employed at Carlton & Prior’s, in Aldersgate Street, and I know the prisoner Mrs Thompson. I also know the prisoner Bywaters. I have seen him twice, in our place at Aldersgate Street. (Being referred to exhibit No. 9) — That is a note written in my presence by Mrs Thompson on the firm’s paper, “Come in for me in half an hour. — Peidi.” Mrs Thompson asked me to take that note over to Bywaters, who was sitting in Fuller’s tearoom, and I did so. As far as I can remember, this was between four and half-past four o’clock, and it was on Friday, 29th September, although the note is dated 30th September. After Mrs Thompson was arrested I found exhibit No. 11, a box, on her desk. It was locked when I found it. It was opened by Inspector Hall in my presence, and it contained some letters and cards which he took possession of.

CHARLES HIGGINS, examined by Mr ROLAND OLIVER — I am a porter employed by Carlton & Prior. (Shown exhibit No. 10— “Wait till one; he’s come, Peidi “) — I remember Mrs Thompson, on Monday, the day before the crime, asking me to take that note to a man in a blue overcoat who would be outside Aldersgate Street station. There was another note about quarter of an hour afterwards.

MRS LILIAN BYWATERS, recalled, further cross-examined by Mr CECIL WHITELEY — I remember in August, 1921, my son coming home and having a conversation with me about Mrs Thompson. He told me that Mrs Thompson led a very unhappy life with her husband, and he asked me if I could tell him how she could get a separation from her husband. I said I could not tell him how to get a separation, but that there was no law to compel her to live with a man if she was unhappy with him.

By the SOLICITOR-GENERAL — I believe that was after my son had been living with Mr and Mrs Thompson.

FRANK PAGE, examined by Mr TRAVERS HUMPHREYS — I am a detective inspector at. New Scotland Yard. On 4th October I went to 11 Westow Street, Norwood, the house of Mrs Bywaters, the mother of the prisoner Bywaters. I saw her in the evening, and in her presence I searched the bedroom occupied by the prisoner Bywaters. In a case in the bedroom I found the two notes (exhibits 9 and 10). In a suitcase in the bedroom I found some letters from Mrs Thompson (exhibits 28, 47, 54, 58, and 60). I also found the telegram (exhibit. 58). Exhibit 59 appears to be the original telegram of which 58 is a delivered copy.

Cross-examined by Mr CECIL WHITELEY — I do not know how many of Mrs Thompson’s letters were found in the possession of Bywaters.

ALFRED SCHOLES, examined by Mr TRAVERS HUMPHREYS — I am a detective inspector of police employed by the Port of London Authority. On 12th October I went to the s.s. “ Morea,” which was then lying at Tilbury Docks. I went into a cabin and took a locked box (exhibit No. 8), which I eventually handed over to Sergeant James. That box was opened in my presence. It contained a number of letters which were taken away by Sergeant James. It also contained a photograph of Mrs Thompson.

PERCY JAMES, examined by Mr TRAVERS HUMPHREYS — On 12th October I received some keys from Inspector Hall. With one of those keys I opened the box which is exhibit 8, locked it again, took it away, and handed it to Inspector Hall

JOHN HANCOCK, examined by Mr TRAVERS HUMPHREYS. — I am a detective constable. I received a number of letters from Inspector Hall, which I examined and had copied. There were also a number of newspaper cuttings in some of the letters. On 9th October I found a knife (exhibit No. 1) in a drain on the north side of Seymour Gardens, Ilford, about 250 yards from Kensington Gardens, Ilford. I handed it to Inspector Hall. I did not find any sheath. It is an English knife. I received three letters from the witness Miss Jacobs (exhibits 14, 30, and 51). These letters are signed by Bywaters. I searched the house at 41 Kensington Gardens, and I found a bottle (exhibit 61) in a small drawer in Mr and Mrs Thompson’s bedroom. It has a label, “ Aromatic tincture of opium.” I handed the bottle to Mr Webster, the analyst.

Cross-examined by Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — Altogether I found 62 letters, including telegrams, and of these 32 have been put in as exhibits in this case. In the different letters there were some 60 enclosures, cuttings from newspapers, referring to a variety of subjects. Of those cuttings about ten referred to cases which were more or less in the public eye at the time. I have with me a list of the names of the cuttings. It includes the following : —

The Poisoned Curate. Curate’s Household of Three. Helping the Doctor. Women who Hate all Men. Do Men like Red Haired Women ? Drugs for Brother in Hospital. Event of the Season. Two Women. Battle of Calves and Ankles. Patient killed by Overdose. Girl’s Drug Injection. Fuel Control and Love-making. Holiday Death Pact. My Sweet Offer. Flat Mystery. Their Married Life. Rather the Devil for a Father. Defence in Disputed Baby Case. Crimes against Love. Chicken Broth Death. Poisoned Chocolates.The Best Wines that I have drunk. Do Women Dislike the Truth? Does Courtship Cost too Much ? Do Women Fail as Friends? Advent of Loveless Women. University Mystery.False Friendship. An Ideal Love Letter. Women on the Rack. Women who Always Act.Girl’s Death Riddle. Men and Marriage. Masterful men. Winning Her; Winning Him.Asking her twice. July Marriages. The Wedding Season. Keeping Her. What does She Do with Him ? Do not Marry a Genius. Dangerous Women. Woman the Consoler.The Ideal Dance Partner.

The little bottle which has been produced, containing aromatic tincture of opium, was found by me in the small drawer in the chest of drawers in the bedroom which was occupied by both Mr and Mrs. Thompson. I did not see any of Mr Thompson’s collars and ties in that drawer. It contained envelopes, notepaper, photographs, and gloves. I could not say whether it was his drawer or her drawer.

FRANCIS HALL examined by Mr TRAVERS HUMPHREYS —

[ * not ‘Richard Sellars’ as Filson Young writes. Somehow Young must have wrongly collated the papers on his desk, hence the confusion of Hall and Sellars. Richard Sellars was a clerk at the General Post Office. Under oath he states ‘I am employed in the Accountants’ Department. I produce an original telegram of 23rd September 1922, exhibit 47. I have seen what purports to be a delivered copy of this telegram. It is exhibit 48. The date printed in this copy is incorrect’.]

I am a divisional detective inspector of police, K Division. At 11 a.m. on 4th October I saw Mrs Thompson at her house, 41 Kensington Gardens, Ilford. I said to her, “ I am an inspector of police. I understand you were with your husband early this morning in Belgrave Road. I am satisfied he was assaulted and stabbed several times.” She said, “ We were coming along Belgrave Road, and just past the corner of Endsleigh Gardens, when I heard him call out, ‘ Oh-er,’ and he fell up against me. I put out my arms to save him, and found blood, which I thought was coming from his mouth. I tried to help him up. He staggered for several yards towards Kensington Gardens, and then fell against the wall and slid down; he did not speak to me. I cannot say if I spoke to him. I felt him, and found his clothing wet with blood. He never moved after he fell. We had no quarrel on the way; we were quite happy together. Immediately I saw blood I ran across the road to a doctor’s. I appealed to a lady and gentleman who were passing, and the gentleman also went to the doctor’s. The doctor came, and told me my husband was dead. Just before he fell down I was walking on his right-hand side, on the inside of the pavement, nearest the wall. We were side by side. I did not see anybody about at the time. My husband and I were talking about going to a dance”. At that time Mrs Thompson was in an agitated condition. About 7 p.m. on the same day I saw the prisoner Bywaters at the Ilford police station, and took possession of the overcoat he was wearing, which is the one now produced. I saw Mrs Thompson again a little later in the same evening, after she had made her first statement to me, and I afterwards took her to the Ilford police station. I spoke to her again on the next day, 5th October, and asked her if she would give me any further information regarding her husband’s assailant. She said, “ I will tell you if I possibly can,” and she made a voluntary statement which was typewritten, read, and signed (exhibit No. 3). That statement is as follows : —

Edith Jessie Thompson, 41 Kensington Gardens, Ilford, age 28, married, states —

My husband’s name is Percy Thompson. He is a shipping clerk employed by Messrs. O. J. Parker & Co., Peel House, Eastcheap, E.C.

I am employed by Carlton & Prior, millinery manufacturers, 168 Aldersgate Street, E.C., as a book-keeper. We have been married six years and have no family. We were married in the beginning of the year 1916. In that year my husband joined the London Scottish Regiment, he was discharged as medically unfit a few months later and did no foreign service. I have always been on affectionate terms with my husband, I remember Tuesday, 3rd October, 1922. We both went to our respective businesses that day. I met my husband by appointment at a quarter to six, in Aldersgate Street, that day, we went to the Criterion Theatre, we there met my uncle and aunt, Mr and Mrs J. Laxton, we left the Theatre about 11 p.m., we all four went to the Piccadilly Circus Tube, we there separated, my husband and I went to Liverpool Street, and we caught the 11.30 train to Ilford, we arrived at Ilford about 12 o’clock, we then proceeded along York Road, Belgrave Road and when we got between De Vere and Endsleigh Gardens, (we were walking on the right hand side) my husband suddenly went into the roadway, I went after him, and he fell up against me, and called out ”oo-er.” He was staggering, he was bleeding, and I thought that the blood was coming from his mouth. I cannot remember whether I saw anyone else there or not. I know there was none there when he staggered up against me. I got hold of my husband with both hands and assisted him to get up against the wall. He stood there for about a minute or two and then slid down on to the footway, he never spoke, I fell on the ground with him, I cannot remember if I shouted out, or not. I got up off the ground and ran along to Courtland Avenue, with the intention of calling Dr. Maudsley, but on the way I met a lady and a gentleman and I said to them something to this effect, “ Can I get a doctor or help me, my husband is ill.” The gentleman said, “ I will go for the doctor.” Dr. Maudsley arrived shortly after, although it seemed a long time. The doctor examined my husband and said that he was dead. An ambulance was sent for and the body was removed. I was accompanied to my home by two Police Officers.

I know Freddy Bywaters, I have known him for several years ; we were at school together, at least I wasn’t but my two brothers were. He is residing with his widowed mother at 11 Westow St., Norwood. He is a ship’s writer and periodically goes away to sea. He has been for a very long time on visiting terms with my family. In June, 1921, Bywaters came to reside with my husband and myself at No. 41 Kensington Gardens. He came as a paying guest. I think he paid 25s. or 27s. 6d. per week. He was with us up to the beginning of August, 1921. I remember August Bank Holiday, 1921. My husband and I quarrelled about something, he struck me. I knocked a chair over. Freddy came in and interfered on my behalf. I left the room and I do not know what transpired between them. As far as my recollection goes, Freddy left on the following Friday, but before he left my husband and he were friends again. We have been in the habit of corresponding with one another. His letters to me and mine to him were couched in affectionate terms. I am not in possession of any letters he writes to me. I have destroyed all as is customary with me with all my correspondence. The letters shown to me by Inspector Hall and addressed to Mr F. Bywaters are some of the letters that I wrote to Freddy, and were written to him without my husband’s consent. When he was at home in England, we were in the habit of going out occasionally together without my husband’s knowledge

This statement has been read over to me. It is voluntary and it is true.

(Sgd.) EDITH THOMPSON

After making that statement, Mrs Thompson and I left the room; I took her to the matron’s room. In doing so we passed the library where Bywaters was detained. She saw him as she passed, and she said, “ Oh, God; oh, God, what can I do? Why did he do it? I did not want him to do it.” She further said almost immediately after, “ I must tell the truth.” She was a little hysterical and I said, “ You realise what you are saying; what you might say may be used in evidence.” She then proceeded to make a statement, which again was written down and signed (exhibit No. 4). It is as follows : —

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

After taking Bywaters’ coat from him, it was examined by Dr. Drought, and after he had examined it I said to Bywaters, “ We shall detain you and retain possession of your overcoat.” He said, “ Why, I know nothing about it.” He commenced to speak further, and I said, “ If you wish to make a statement, it will be better to put it in writing.” I cautioned him, and he made a statement which he signed in my presence (exhibit No. 5).

4th October, 1922.

FREDERICK EDWARD FRANCIS BYWATERS, 11 Westow Street, Upper Norwood, aged 20, Laundry Steward, states —

I have known Mr Percy Thompson for about four years and his wife, Edith, for about 7 years. Mr Thompson is a shipping clerk ; his wife is in a millinery business, and they reside at 41 Kensington Gardens, Ilford. I stayed with them from June 18th, 1921 to the 1st August, 1921. The first week that I was there, I was there as their guest and the remaining weeks I paid 25s. per week. The cause of my leaving was that Mr Thompson quarrelled with Mrs Thompson and threw her across the room. I thought it was a very unmanly thing to do and I interfered. We had a quarrel and he asked me to leave, and I left. I had always been exceedingly good friends with Mrs Thompson. I was also on visiting terms with the mother of Mrs Thompson, a Mrs Graydon, who resides with her husband and family at 231 Shakespeare Crescent, Manor Park. After I left Mrs Thompson I went back to reside with my mother at my present address. On the 7th September, 1921, I got a position as writer on board the s.s. “ Morea.” I sailed on the 9th September and returned to England the end of the following month. Shortly after I came back from the voyage I called on Mr and Mrs Thompson at their address. Mrs Thompson received me quite friendly, Mr Thompson a little coldly, but we parted as friends. The same evening I called on Mrs Graydon and I there again saw Mr and Mrs Thompson, who were visiting her. I have never called upon Mr and Mrs Thompson since that time. I have met them once or twice at Mrs Graydon’s since, the last time being in June last. Since that date I have never seen Mr Thompson. I have met Mrs Thompson. On several occasions since and always by appointment. They were verbal appointments. On Monday last I met her by appointment at 12.30 at Aldersgate Street. We went to lunch at the Queen Anne’s Restaurant, Cheapside. After lunch she returned to business and I have not seen her since. Mr Thompson was not aware of all our meetings, but some of them he was. I have known for a very long time past that she had led a very unhappy life with him. This is also known to members of Mrs Thompson’s family. I have written to her on two occasions. I signed the letters Freddy and I addressed her as “ Dear Edie.” On the evening of Monday, 2nd October, I called on Miss Graydon and stayed there till about 10 o’clock. I never mentioned the fact that I had lunched with Mrs Thompson that day, and as far as I know Mr Thompson was not aware of it. I left my home yesterday morning about a quarter to twelve. I was dressed in the same clothes that I am now wearing. I went up West and remained there until the evening. I was alone and never met anyone that I knew. I then went to Mrs Graydon’s, arriving there about 7. I left about 11 o’clock, my impression is that it had gone 11 . Before leaving I remember Mrs Graydon’s daughter Avis saying that Percy (Mr Thompson) had ’phoned her up, and I gathered from the observations she made that he was taking his wife to a theatre that night and that there was other members of the family going. When I left the house I went through Browning Road, into Sibley Glove, to East Ham Railway Station. I booked to Victoria which is my usual custom. I caught a train at 11.30 p.m. and I arrived at Victoria about 12 30 a. m. I then discovered that the last train to Gypsy Hill had gone; it leaves at 12.10 a.m. I had a few pounds in money with me but I decided to walk. I went by way of Vauxhall Road, and Vauxhall Bridge, Kennington, Brixton, turning to the left into Dulwich, and then on to the Crystal Palace, and from there to my address at Upper Norwood, arriving there about 3 a.m. I never noticed either ’bus or tram going in my direction. On arriving home I let myself in with a latchkey and went straight to my bedroom. My mother called out to me. She said, “ Is that you, Mick?” I replied, “ Yes,” and then went to bed. I got up about 9 a.m. and about 12 I left home with my mother. I left my mother in Paternoster Row about half past two. I stayed in the City till about 5. I then went by train from Mark Lane to East Ham, and from there went on to Mrs Graydon’s, arriving there about six. The first time that I learned that Mr Thompson had been killed was when I bought a newspaper in Mark Lane before I got into the train to go to East Ham. I am never in the habit of carrying a knife. In fact I have never had one. I never met a single person that I knew from the time that I left Mrs Graydon’s house until I arrived home. Mrs Thompson has written to me two or three times. I might have received one letter from her at home. The others I have received on board ship. I have destroyed these letters. She used to address me as “ Dear Freddy “ and signed herself  “ Peidi.” I occupy the back bedroom on the top floor at my address, and that is where I keep all my clothing. When I said that I was dressed in precisely the same clothing yesterday as I am to-day, I meant it to include my undergarments, with the exception of my collar and handkerchief, which are at home.

This statement has been read over to me, is voluntary and is true.

(Sgd.) FREDERICK E. F. BYWATERS

Having made some further inquiries, I again saw Bywaters on the evening of 5th October, and said to him, “ I am going charge you and Mrs Thompson with the wilful murder of Percy Thompson. ” He said, “ Why her? Mrs Thompson was not aware of my movements.” I said, “ If you wish to say anything, I will take it down in writing.” I again cautioned him. He made a statement, which I read to him, and which he signed. It is exhibit No. 6, and it is dated 5th October —

FREDERICK BYWATERS states—

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

Later the two prisoners were charged with the murder of Percy Thompson. When the charge was made Thompson made no reply, while Bywaters said, “ It is wrong, it is wrong.” On 12th October I received a ditty box (exhibit No. 8), from Sergeant James. The prisoner Bywaters gave me the key which opened the box. I received from Inspector Page, of New Scotland Yard, and also from Sergeant Hancock a number of letters. Inspector Hall also handed to me three letters written by Bywaters. I have seen Bywaters write, and to the best of my belief exhibits Nos. 14, 30, and 31 are in his handwriting.

Cross-examined by Mr CECIL WHITELEY — Bywaters was taken to the Ilford police station on the evening of 4th October.

Were you in sole charge of this case, or was there any other officer concerned? — Superintendent Wensley came down, but I was practically in sole charge of it. He was not present with me at every interview I had with Bywaters. He was present with me when Bywaters gave the long statement (exhibit No. 5). He was not present when I took the statement No. 6. When Bywaters was brought to the station in the evening of the 4^th  Superintendent Wensley and I were there, and we both saw him. We were in the company of Bywaters that evening for about an hour and a half. Practically the whole of that period was occupied by the taking of the statement. There was a typist present in the room.

You do not suggest that this was a statement dictated by Bywaters? — Practically. He wished to make a statement, and I said we would take it down in writing.

No questions asked? — Yes.

Is it not clear from the statement itself that questions were put to him and his answers are incorporated in that statement? — Not wholly, practically. Both Superintendent Wensley and I asked the questions. We left Bywaters about nine o’clock. I do not think either of us saw him again that evening; I do not remember seeing him. I believe he slept in the library that evening. On the next day, 5th October, about 3 pm., I took a statement from Mrs Thompson (exhibit No.4) The second statement of Mrs Thompson (exhibit No. 1) was taken about half past four or quarter to five.

Was it before those two statements that Mrs Thompson saw Bywaters and said, “ Why did he do it ; I did not want him to do it”? — Yes, after she was returning from the room where she was taken. Superintendent Wensley was not present when she said that. No steps were taken by the police to prevent Mrs Thompson and Bywaters seeing each other.

It was after Mrs Thompson had seen Bywaters and after she had made the statement (exhibit No 4) that you went back into Bywaters’ room and the statement (exhibit No. 6) was taken? — Yes, I wrote it down myself. Before that statement was taken I told him that I was going to charge him and Mrs Thompson with this crime.

By Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — Did you know by that time that he had seen that she was there too? — Yes.

You told us that she caught sight of him, but nobody has told us that he caught sight of her. Do you know if he did? — I could not say, because my attention was centred on her.

Cross examination continued — I certainly think that Bywaters did see Mrs Thompson, but I cannot say positively.

No doubt they had seen one another, and the very first thing he said, directly you said that both of them were going to be charged, was, “Why her ? Mrs Thompson was not aware of my movements ” ? — Yes.

And when you charged them both together that evening Bywaters said, “ It is wrong; it is wrong ”? — Yes

Cross-examined by Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — I first of all saw Mrs Thompson at 11 a. m. on 4^th October, the morning that Mr Thompson died, and at that time she made a statement which I noted in my notebook. At that time she had no knowledge, as far as I know, that any inquiries were being made as regards Bywaters. She did not say anything about anybody having knocked her or pushed her aside. After making that statement I asked her to come to the police office, and she was kept there from twelve o’clock on the 4th until the afternoon of the 5th, when I took from her the long statement (exhibit No. 3).

At that time, as far as you know, she had no knowledge that Bywaters was at the station? — I could not say, but I should not think so.

Nobody had told her as far as you know? — No, but I gleaned that she did on account of the letters.

What ? — I gleaned that she did on account of the letters. The letters were on the table where we took the statement, and she must have known on account of Bywaters’ letters.

By Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — She identified her own letters to Bvwaters.

Cross examination continued — She identified him in the statement (exhibit No. 3). That statement took about an hour and a half. After the statement was taken she had to pass the room where Bywaters was being detained in order to get to the matron’s room. Directly she saw Bywaters there she said this, “ Oh, God, oh, God, what can I do? Why did he do it? I did not want him to do it”; and then almost immediately afterwards, “ I must tell the truth ”? — Yes.

And then it was that, having said “ I must tell the truth, ” you cautioned her, and then she said, “ When we got near Endsleigh Gardens a man rushed out from the gardens and knocked me away, pushed me away, from my husband. When I recovered I saw my husband scuffling with a man. The man, who I knew as Freddy Bywaters, was running away. He was wearing a blue overcoat and a grey hat. I knew it was him, although I did not see his face.” That is right? — Correct.

So that directly she had in fact seen Bywaters was at the station she made this second statement? — Yes.

LEONARD WILLIAMS, examined by Mr ROLAND OLIVER — I am a detective of K Division. On 6 October I took the prisoner Bywaters and certain property from Ilford to Stratford Police Court. When at the Court he said, pointing to the property, “ Have you a knife there? ” I said, “ No.” He said, “ Have they found it? ” I said, “ I do not think so.” He said, “ I told them I ran up Endsleigh Gardens, but coming to think of it after I did it I ran forward along Belgrave Road towards Wanstead Park, turning up a road to the right. I am not sure whether it was Kensington Gardens where they lived or the next road. I then crossed over to the left side of the road, and just before I got to the top of Cranbrook Road end I put the knife down a drain; it should be easily found.”

HENRY WILLIAM FORSTER, examined by Mr ROLAND OLIVER — I am a director of Osborne & Co., tool merchants, 165-166 Aldersgate Street. (Shown knife, exhibit No. 1). We sell at our shop knives identical with that, the price being 6s. We call them hunting knives, and they are sold in leather sheaths.

Cross-examined by Mr CECIL WHITELEY — We have carried on business in Aldersgate Street for about seventeen years, and during all that time we have been selling knives similar to that.

CHARLES CALDWELL TAYLOR, examined by Mr ROLAND OLIVER — I am a detective sergeant of the Salford Police. I attended the Manchester November Handicap on 26th November, 1921. A horse called “ Welsh Woman ” was running on that date.

JOHN WEBSTER , examined by Mr TRAVERS HUMPHREYS — I am senior official analyst to the Home Office. On 11th October I received Bywaters’ overcoat (exhibit No. 29), and examined it for the presence of blood. I found a large number of stains of human blood on the right and left sleeves of the coat. I also examined the knife (exhibit No. 1), and found that there were several areas which gave reactions for blood both on the handle and on the blade. The traces wore not sufficient for me to say whether it was human blood or not. On 4th November I received from Dr. Spilsbury some bottles and jars containing some of the organs of the deceased Mr. Thompson. In the liver and kidneys I found a small trace of an alkaloid giving a reaction for morphine. The bottle labelled “ aromatic tincture of opium ” (exhibit No. 61) contains morphine. It would be used as a sedative for killing pain, and it is a thing that anyone might properly have in use. Assuming that the deceased used it a day or two before his death, it is possible that a minute trace would be found.

I want to ask you with regard to some matters which are mentioned in the letters. Is hyoscine a poison? — Yes.

Cocaine, potassium cyanide, sodium antimony,  tartarate, bichloride of mercury, and digitalin — are these all poisons? — Yes.

Cross examined by Sir HENRY Curtis-Bennett — Aromatic tincture of opium is quite an ordinary thing. Up till twelve months ago it could be purchased at any chemist’s, but now it is necessary to have a medical prescription. It is something akin to chlorodyne. If a person suffered with the heart, chlorodyne or tincture of opium would produce relief. Chlorodyne contains traces of morphine.

Dr. BERNARD HENRY SPILSBURY, examined by the SOLICITOR-GENERAL — I am senior pathologist to the Home Office. I made a post-mortem examination of the exhumed body of Percy Thompson on 3rd November. Dr. Drought, a divisional police surgeon was present. The body was that of a well-nourished man. I found cuts in the neck and in the throat. The skull and the coverings of the blood vessels were normal, but the heart was slightly enlarged. So far as I could tell at the time, the other organs of the body were healthy.

By Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — The cuts which I found were stabs, with the exception of one on the right arm, which was a cut.

Examination continued  — I did not find any signs of poisoning, nor did I find any scars in the intestines. I am aware that glass has been mentioned in this case and in the letters as possibly being administered to Percy Thompson. If glass had been administered I would not necessarily expect to find indications in the organs. The administration of glass, broken or ground, would produce different results. Large fragments of glass if given might produce injury by cutting the wall of the gullet, or the stomach, or the intestines, and if those injuries did not prove fatal a scar or scars might be found on the walls afterwards. If given in a powdered form the immediate effect of the powder would be to produce innumerable minute injuries to the delicate membranes lining the stomach and intestines, in all probability setting up an acute illness ; but if that did not occur, or if recovery followed, the glass would disappear entirely from the system, with the possible exception of that small portion known as the appendix in which it might lodge and remain for a long time.

In this case did you find any indications of powdered glass in the abdomen? — No, there were none. I found no indication of the presence of glass either in large pieces or in powdered particles.

Is the negative result of your examination consistent with glass having been administered? —

Some time previously, yes.  It is possible that glass in large pieces could have passed through the system without such injury as to leave any signs behind. It would pass away in the food and in the excrement. What I found as the negative result of my examination is consistent also with particles of glass having been passed through the system. As to other poisons, I would not expect necessarily to find indications of poisons if they had been administered some considerable time before. Some poisons would leave no traces at any time even if death occurred shortly after administration. Others would produce effects which would last for a few days, and in the case of a few poisons a few weeks, but after the end of that time there are very few poisons which would leave any indications, except poisons which were corrosive or which were markedly irritant poisons. Neither hyoscine or cocaine is markedly irritant. Cyanide of potassium is an irritant ; it would either kill quickly or recovery would occur within a short time. Sodium antimonyl tartarate is an irritant poison, and I think it probably would be difficult to detect any traces after ten days or a fortnight. Bichloride of mercury is an intense irritant poison and it might show traces for a very long time ; in the kidneys and bowel there might be evidence of it after certainly some weeks and possibly some months after its administration. Digitalin has no irritant effect.

By Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — Used in small quantities it is a stimulant.

Examination continued — Morphine would not leave any traces.

Cross-examined by Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — Does it all come to this that there has been no trace whatever in the post-mortem of any glass having been administered, either in large pieces or powdered? — That is so.

And as far as poisons are concerned, there is no trace whatever of any poison ever having been administered, except of morphine, which I have dealt with? — That is so.

No trace of any poison being present and no changes suggestive of previous attempts to poison? — Quite. Glass if taken would pass through the gullet into the stomach, and then through the duodenum, and so on through the intestines to the caecum. Off the caecum is the appendix.

On its journey through those parts of the body would not a large piece of glass tend to leave a scar? — It would tend to cut or to pierce the wall. The scar would come afterwards.

You would find a scar remaining afterwards, would you not? — You might do so. I made a very careful examination to see if there was any scar anywhere and I could not find any. There is no outlet from the appendix except the one opening into the bowel. I made a careful examination of the appendix and found no trace at all of glass of any sort, powdered or otherwise. If any of the poisons mentioned in my examination had been given in appreciable doses, illness would have resulted, the degree of illness depending upon the amount. There are not many of the poisons which have been put to me today which would leave any permanent effect at all. Some, of course, would leave a trace for a time.

At any rate there was no trace, either post-mortem or by analysis, of any poison ever having been given? — No.

(see https://edithjessiethompson.org/primary-source-texts/Autopsy-Report-Percy-Thompson)

Mr TRAVERS HUMPHREYS— I have been consulting my learned friends in order to see if they desire us to call the remainder of the witnesses, Edgar Edwards, Robert Gilham, William Mould, Henry Palmer and Detective-Inspector Rixon.

The SOLICITOR-GENERAL — That will be the case for the Crown.

[The letters, exhibits Nos 49, 12, 62, 27, 13, 15, 16, 20, 50, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 51, 23, 66, 67, 68, 24, 53, 25, 69, 26, 52, 63, 54, 28, 55, 47, 48, 58, 59, 9, 60, 10, 64, 14, 30, 31 were read.]

Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — The jury, of course, will understand that, in addition to those letters there are 33 other ones on which the prosecution do not rely and which are not put in. 

Evidence for the Prisoner Bywaters. 

FREDERICK EDWARD FRANCIS BYWATERS (prisoner on oath), examined by Mr CECIL WHITELEY — When I arrived from my last voyage I went to stay with my mother at Westow Street, Norwood. My mother had been living there about two and a half years, and previous to that she was living in Manor Park. The Graydons were also living in Manor Park, I met the Graydon boys at school and got to know the family in that way. I have been on good terms ever since with the Graydon family. Between 26^th  February and 4th June last year I was away on a voyage to Australia. I arrived at Tilbury on 4th June, and I went for a holiday to the Isle of Wight. Mr and Mrs Thompson and Avis Graydon were also taking a holiday there, and we met friends, Mr and Mrs Vellender, who has been a witness in this case. I was in the Isle of Wight for one week. On 18th June I went to stay with the Thompsons at 41 Kensington Gardens, on Mr Thompson’s invitation, and I stayed with them in their house until 5th August.

How did you come to leave? — There was a quarrel on 1st August, the Bank Holiday, between Mr Thompson and his wife over a very trivial matter; it was a pin that caused the trouble. Mr Thompson threw his wife across the morning room and on her passage across the room she overturned a chair. I was standing outside and heard the bang and ran inside.

By Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — Then you did not hear the quarrel. I thought you said you heard the quarrel? — The quarrel started in the garden.

Examination continued — Mrs Thompson, who was sewing, said, “ I want a pin,” and I said, “ I will go and get you one.” I went inside and got the pin, and when I came outside again into the garden they were arguing. The argument dropped for the time being and we went inside to tea. Thompson came in and created bother trouble, and then there was a struggle.

Had you been taking Mrs Thompson about? — No.

You had been out with her? — With Mr Thompson. As the result of the row I left at Mr Thompson’s request and my own inclination. I was in London between 5th August and 9th September.

Just tell us at once, Bywaters, were you taking Mrs Thompson out during that time? — I was meeting her occasionally.

What was the state of your feelings to her and hers to you? — We were friends. I think her husband knew that we were meeting. Had you then fallen in love with her ? — I was fond of her. I had never mentioned it to her, though.

When was it first that you were in love with one another? — Well, I suppose it was just before I went away in September. I was away from 9th September to 29th October, and during that time I got letters from Mrs Thompson and I replied to them.

I do not want to go into any detail, but were you writing to one another love letters? — Yes. When I came back on 29th October I remained in London for just a fortnight, until 11th November. During that time I saw Mrs Thompson practically every day.

I ought to have asked you this before: before you left in August did you have any conversation with Mr Thompson in the presence of Mrs Thompson as to separation or divorce? — Yes, on this day of the trouble, 1st August, there was a conversation between the three of us about a separation. Mr Thompson said to his wife, “We will come to an agreement and have a separation”, and she said, “ Yes, I should like that, but you make a statement and then whine back to me and retract that statement; you have done that, before.” When I came back in October Mrs Thompson and I spoke about the desirability of her getting a separation from her husband. I said to her, “ Can you not come to any amicable understanding or agreement with your husband to get a separation,” and she replied, “ I keep on asking, but it seems no good at all.” On that visit home in the end of October and the beginning of November I went to Kensington Gardens on a Saturday afternoon and made a request to him that he should have a separation. I had taken Mrs Thompson out previously ; apparently he had been waiting at the station for her and he had seen the two of us together. He made a statement to Mrs Thompson, “ He is not a man or else he would ask my permission to take you out”, and she related that statement to me the following day. In consequence of that I went and saw Mr Thompson, and as he had said that I had run away from him, I told him that I did not see him at the station. Mrs Thompson was present part of the time.

At that time was anything discussed between you and Mr Thompson about a separation or divorce?’ — Yes, that, was the theme of the conversation. I said, “ Why do you not come to an amicable agreement; either have a separation or you can get a divorce, and he hummed and hawed about it. He was undecided and said, “ Yes — No — I don’t see it concerns you.” I said, “You are making Edie’s life a hell. You know she is not happy with you.”  He replied, “ Well, I have got her and I will keep her.” Eventually I extracted a promise from him that he would not knock her about any more and that he would not beat her, but I could get no understanding with regard to a separation or divorce. I met him again on Saturday evening at the Graydons. I left with my ship on 11th November and I was away until 7th January.

Look now at the letter (exhibit 62) and at this passage —

All I could think about last night was that compact we made. Shall we have to carry it thro? Don’t let us darlint.

What was the compact? — Suicide.

Who suggested that? — Mrs Thompson had suggested it.

Did you ever make any agreement that you should commit suicide? — Well, I suggested it as a way of calming her, but I never intended to carry it out. Then the letter goes on —

I’d like to live and be happy — not for a little while, but for all the while you still love me. Death seemed horrible last night — when you think about it darlint, it does seem a horrible thing to die, when you have never been happy, really happy, for one little minute.

I am going to ask you at once, Bywaters, at any time was there any agreement between you and Mrs Thompson to poison her husband? — Never; there was never such an agreement.

Was there any agreement that any violence should be used against her husband? — No, the greatest violence was separation.

As far as you could tell, reading these letters, did you ever believe in your own mind that she herself had ever given any poison to her husband? — No, it never entered my head at all. She had been reading books.

Had you some quinine on board? — Yes, I used it myself. It was in the form of 5 grain tablets, white.

Did you ever give any of that quinine to Mrs Thompson? — I did.

Apart from that quinine, did you ever give her any other drug? — No, I did not.

Did you ever give her any poison of any sort or description? — No, nothing at all. The quinine has a most bitter taste, very unpleasant. There were other two letters which I got before I came back on 7th January, one of them being exhibit 27, with which Mrs Thompson enclosed a number of cuttings. That was a habit of hers — instead of sending a newspaper she would send cuttings that appeared to be interesting. The cuttings were with regard to cases of all sorts which I was interested in reading. I got back from my voyage on 7th January, and I was on leave until the 20th. During that fortnight I saw Mrs Thompson frequently, and the question of getting a separation or a divorce was discussed between us. She still complained of being ill-treated; she said, “ Things are just the same; they get no better.” She said that the chances of getting a separation were very small, that Thompson would never agree to it. I was away again from the 20th January to 17th March. During that time I got the letter (exhibit No. 15) —

Darlint — you must do something this time — I’m not really impatient — but opportunities come and go by — they have to — because I’m helpless and I think and think and think — perhaps — it will never come again.

I hardly know what that refers to.

“ You must do something.” What was it she had been wanting you to do? — Take her away.

It is suggested by the prosecution that that means that you “were going to do something” in connection with her husband. Is there anything in that? — It is entirely wrong.

Did she ask you more than once to take her away? — Oh, yes.

Tell us about it. Was it a genuine demand by her or not? — Well, she appeared to want to go away, but she used to get very hysterical. She was of a highly strung nature.

By Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN. — Did she ask you to take her away or not? — Oh, yes.

Examination continued — When she said, “ Try and help me,” in what way was it she had asked you to help her? — In regard to getting a separation.

On 14th March she writes you the letter (exhibit No. 20) in which there is the following passage: —

I am not going to talk to you any more — I can’t and I don’t think I’ve shirked have I? Except darlint to ask you again to think out all the plans and methods for me and wait and wait so anxiously now — for the time when we will be with each other — even tho’ it’s only once.

What were the “ plans and methods ” which she had asked you to think out? — going away together, or the separation.

Was there any discussion as to when she was to go abroad?— She would go abroad to a millinery business. My wages were about £4 a week. I was visiting various countries and various cities, and Mrs Thompson was writing to me at these various countries and various places. I was to make inquiries as to the prospects of her obtaining situations in these places. Bombay was mentioned, also Australia, where there might be an opening for her. She also mentioned Marseilles to me. I came back on 17^th March and was at home for a fortnight. It would be at that time that I gave Mrs Thompson the quinine. I was seeing her constantly then. When I went away on 31^st March she wrote me the letter (exhibit 50) in which she said

— This time really will be the last you will go away— like things are won’t it? We said it before, darlint I know, and we failed — but there will be no failure this next time darlint, there mustn’t be.

What “ failure” had there been? — The failure to get a separation — failure to take her abroad.

You will never leave me behind again, never, unless things are different.

What does that mean? — That means unless she could get a separation I would not go to sea any more alone. I would not leave her again unless I took her with me — go with me, you see.

In Mrs Thompson’s letter, dated 1st April (exhibit 17), she talks about an electric light bulb. Did you pay any attention to that at all? — No, I think she was trying to put herself in the same place as Bella Donna in the book “ Bella Donna.”

Did you attach any importance to it at all? — No, I thought if was mere melodrama.

Then in the letter of 24th April (exhibit 18) she says, “ I used the ‘light bulb’ three times.” Then look at the letter of 1st May (exhibit 19), “ We shall have to wait if we fail again.” What does that mean? — Another attempt to get a separation.

Look at this passage —

We’ll wait eh darlint, and you’ll try and get some money and then we can go away and not worry about anybody or anything. You said it was enough for an elephant. Perhaps it was. But you don’t allow for the taste making only a small quantity to be taken. It sounded like a reproach was it meant to be?

Just tell what the reference to the elephant and the quinine is? — Thirty grains of quinine taken by Mrs Thompson. I told her it was enough for an elephant. I used to take 10 grains when I was bad with malaria.

Look now at the letter of 18th May (exhibit 22), which starts with a quotation from “ Bella Donna.” Did you attach any importance to that? — That it came from a book, that is all; it is a quotation. I arrived home on 20th May.

After the date of arriving home did you pay any attention at all to what she had said in these letters to you received on that voyage between March and May?— No, nothing at all. I was at home for a fortnight between 20th May and 9th June, and I was seeing Mrs Thompson constantly then. We were always discussing the question of a separation or divorce. I went away on 9th June, and did not come back until 23rd September. During the whole of that time I was getting the various letters which have been produced.

Did you correspond with her as much on this voyage as you had done previously? — No, I did not. The reason was I thought that if I ceased to correspond with her, her life would not be so hard. The references in the various letters about my not writing to her just refer to the fact that I had not written much from various ports. The letters which I did write to her were similar to the three which have been produced (exhibits 14, 30, and 31).

Did you ever write a letter suggesting violence or poison? — No, never.

Look at Mrs Thompson’s letter of 23rd May (exhibit 23) —

I’ll try to be patient darling. You talk about that cage you are in— that’s how I feel— only worse if it can be so.

Had you written to her telling her to be patient? — Yes; oh, yes.

Look at the letter of 13th June (exhibit 24) — Darlingest Boy, I’m trying very hard — very very hard to B.B.  Does that mean “ be brave ” ? — That means be brave. I had written her a letter and told her to be brave.

Then it goes on —

When he saw this had no effect on me he got up and stormed — I said exactly what you told me to and he replied that he knew that’s what I wanted and he wasn’t going to give it to me — it would make things far too easy for both of you (meaning you and me) especially for you he said.

What had you told her to tell him? — A separation, and if she could not get a separation suggest a divorce, and she would provide him with the evidence — she would go to that extent. I told her to say that, and that is what she is referring to.

In the letter of 20th June (exhibit 25) she says, “ I wish you had taken me with you, darlint.”

There was a suggestion that we should go away the following year, 1923, and I had partly made arrangements in Australia.

When she says, “ When you are not near, darlint, I wish we had taken the easiest way,” she is referring to suicide, as that was the easiest way out of it.

Later on in the letter she says, “ What an utterly absurd thing to say to me, ‘ Don’t be too dis- appointed.’ ” I had written to her saying that I had started to make arrangements in Australia, or that I was going to make arrangements, but she could not expect too much yet, and was not to be too much disappointed.

Come now to the letter of 4th July (exhibit 26)— In one part of it [she is referring to a letter to you] you say you are going to still write to me because it will help, in another part you say — perhaps I shan’t write to you from some ports — because I want to help you. You had written to her to that effect? — Yes, that I was not going to write.

Why arn’t you sending me something — I wanted you to — you never do what I ask you darlint — you still have your own way always — If I don’t mind the risk why should you? Whatever happens cannot be any worse than this existence — looking forward to nothing and gaining only ashes and dust and bitterness.

What was it she had asked you to send her? — More letters.

Where did the risk come with regard to these letters? — The risk was people seeing them; she did not want anyone to see them; that was all. There was always the difficulty as to where these letters should be sent to.

Look at the letter of 14th July (exhibit 52), where she says — You do say silly things to me — ‘ try a little bit every day not to think about me.’ Is that what you had been telling her to do? — That is what I said.

Sometimes I think and think until my brain goes round and round. ‘Shall I always be able to keep you.’ Eight years is such a long time.

What was she referring to there? — Her age and mine. She was eight years older than me, and she felt it.

Look at exhibit 63, which was written on 28th August —

Darlingest boy, today is the 27th and it’s on a Sunday, so I am writing this in the bathroom, I always like to send you greetings on the day — not the day before or the day after.

What was that the anniversary of? — The 27th June 1921, my birthday.

By Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — But this is August? — Yes, it was.

Examination continued — I will read the rest of the letter —

Fourteen whole months have gone by now, darlint, it’s so terribly long.

Was it the day in the month that it was an anniversary of? — Yes, the 27th is the anniversary.

Neither you nor I thought we should have to wait all that long time, did we? Altho’ I said I would wait live years— and I will darlint — it’s only three years and ten months now.

What was the waiting five years? — On 27th June, 1921, Mrs Thompson told me she was unhappy, and I said, “ Let me be a pal to you, let me help you if I can.” This was after we had come back from the Isle of Wight, and while I was staying in Thompson’s house. Mrs Thompson and I had been having an argument, and she suddenly burst into tears, and I advised her to wait, not to give up hope, and not commit suicide.

But what was to happen at the end of the five years? — Well, there was hardly anything definite. It was just an arrangement to put off anything — her committing suicide. I extracted a promise from her to wait five years, so that she should not commit suicide.

During that five years was there to be any suggestion of a separation or a divorce? — Yes, five years to try and get it.

And if there was no divorce or separation in five years, what then did she suggest? — Either going away entirely, the two of us going away, or suicide.

Look now at the letter of 12th September (exhibit 54). This is one of the last letters she wrote to you before you got home —

I’ve got nothing to talk to you about — I can’t think about anything at all— I can’t even look forward to seeing you. … I don’t hear from you much. You don’t talk to me by letter and help me and I don’t even know if I am going to see you.

Will you tell us how she came to write that? — I had ceased corresponding with her. I had said I would not see her when I came to England, as it would not be so hard for her to bear ; her life would be easier, perhaps, if I did not see her or correspond with her. I was doing that for her sake, as I wanted to help her.

In the letter (exhibit 28), she says — ‘You say  “can we be pals only, Peidi, it will make it easier.”’ I had suggested that to her.

Further on in the same letter she says — ‘Have you lost heart and given up hope? Tell me if you have darlint.’ That was the result of the letter I had written. I arrived in this country on 23rd September, and Mrs Thompson wired to me to meet her.

At that date had there been any agreement that any act of violence should be done to her husband either by her or by you? — No, nothing at all.

In these letters that have been read, was there anything which incited you to do any act of violence to Mr Thompson? — Nothing whatever.

Had it any effect on your mind at all, so far as Mr Thompson was concerned? — No, I never considered them much.

 

The Court adjourned.

 

Third Day— Friday, 8th December, 1922.

 

FREDERICK EDWARD FRANCIS BYWATERS, recalled, further examined by Mr CECIL WHITELEY — My ship arrived at Gravesend on Saturday, 23rd September, and I went to my mother’s that evening, and continued to reside there. I first met Mrs Thompson after my return on Monday, the 25th. I also met her on the next three days at quarter to six in the evening at Fenchurch Street station, and I left her at quarter to seven. Those were the only times I was with her during those days. On Friday, 29th, I met Mrs Thompson about mid-day and took her to lunch, and then she went back to her business. I went to Fuller’s teashop between three and four that afternoon, and I got the letter which Miss Jacobs handed to me. I was in the teashop when Mrs Vellender came in. Later on Mrs Thompson came in. I left her that evening in Ilford about quarter to seven, and then I went home to my mother’s. On the Saturday morning, about nine o’clock, I took her for a walk in Wanstead Park, and left her in the park about one o’clock. I went home to my mother’s about tea-time, and I stayed there for the rest of the day, and for the whole of the Sunday until the Monday. On the Monday morning Mrs Thompson telephoned to me (which was quite a usual thing when I was at home), and I took her for lunch. After lunch she went back to her work, and in the afternoon I went to Fuller’s teashop. That was the day on which Higgins gave me exhibit 10, “ Wait till one, he’s come. — Peidi.” Mrs Thompson came into the teashop, and I left her at about quarter to seven, the usual time. I then went to Mr Graydon’s, 231 Shakespeare Crescent, Manor Park. I had been there on the previous Monday with a message from Mr Graydon’s son in Australia. I was on very friendly terms with that family. On that Monday evening I stayed with them up till about 10.30. That evening I asked Mr Graydon if he would get me some tobacco, and he said that he would.

Up to that time had there been any agreement between you and Mrs Thompson with reference to her husband in any way? — Only the usual agreement of trying to get a separation or divorce.

Had the position been changed in any way from what it had been on your previous leave? — No, nothing at all; if anything, we were both trying to get more resigned to it.

Come now to Tuesday, 3rd October. Had you a knife in your possession? — Yes, I had a knife with a leathern sheath, which I bought in November 1921, and which I took with me when I went abroad. I always carried it in my overcoat pocket, and it was in my pocket on 3rd October. Mrs Thompson telephoned to me as usual that morning, and I took her to lunch at the Queen Anne. After lunch she went back to her business, and in the afternoon I went to Fuller’s teashop. Mrs Thompson joined me there at about ten minutes past five; she came to the door, and I got up and went outside with her, and left her at Aldersgate Street station about half-past five. The conversation I had with her was making arrangements for the following day. She asked me if I would be in town the following day as usual.

Was that the arrangement that was come to between you?— Yes. She said she was going to a theatre with Percy and her uncle and aunt from Stamford Hill, and Miss Avis Graydon was supposed to go too, and she added, “ I wish I was going with you.” After leaving her at Aldersgate Street station I went to Mr Graydon’s house at Manor Park, and arrived there between six and half-past six. I went there in order to get the tobacco that we had spoken about, and I remained till eleven o’clock, sitting in the same room all the time. Mr and Mrs Graydon, Newenham Graydon, and Avis were in the room with me at different times. I had a pouch with me which Mrs Thompson had given me as a present on the Monday. Both Mrs and Miss Graydon noticed it. Mrs Graydon said to me, “ You have got a new pouch, Freddy. Was it a present? ” and I said, “ Yes.” She said, “ From a girl, I expect? ” and I said, “ Yes.” She said, “ I expect the same girl gave you that as gave you the watch? ” (I had got a present of a watch from Mrs Thompson two voyages previously.) I said, “ Yes, the same girl gave it me,” and she said, “ I know who it is, but I am not going to say. Never mind, we won’t argue about it. She is one of the best.” I said, “ There is none better.”

Bywaters, I know it is difficult, but I want you to tell us in your own way what your feelings were towards Mrs Thompson? — After that conversation, which happened just before I left , I was naturally thinking of Mrs Thompson. I was thinking how unhappy she was, and I wished I could help her in some manner. That was the trend of my thoughts all the way to East Ham station. When I arrived at East Ham station I thought, “ I don’t want to go home; I feel too miserable. I want to see Mrs Thompson ; I want to see if I can help her.” I turned round from East Ham station and walked in the direction of Ilford. I knew Mr and Mrs Thompson would be together, and I thought perhaps if I were to see them I might be able to make things a bit better. I had spoken to Mr Thompson about this on two previous occasions only, in August and September of the previous year.

What was your object in going to Ilford? — I went to see Thompson to come to an amicable understanding for a separation or divorce.

Until that moment, had you had any intention of going to Ilford at all that night? — Oh, no. It kind of came across me all of a sudden. I arrived at Ilford station and crossed over the railway bridge, turning down York Road into Belgrave Road. When I got into Belgrave Road I walked for some time, and some distance ahead I saw Mr and Mrs Thompson, their backs turned to me. They were walking along Belgrave Road towards Kensington Gardens, and Mrs Thompson was on the inside of the pavement. I overtook them and pushed Mrs Thompson with my right hand like that (describing). With my left hand I held Thompson and caught him by the back of his coat and pushed him along the street, swinging him round. After I swung him round I said to him, “ Why don’t you get a divorce or separation, you cad? ”

Where were your hands when you said that? — By my side; I had let go of him. He said, “ I know that is what you want, but I am not going to give it you; it would make it too pleasant for both of you.” I said, “ You take a delight in making Edie’s life a hell.” Then he said, ” I’ve got her. I’ll keep her, and I’ll shoot you.” As he said that he punched me in the chest with his left fist, and I said, “ Oh, will you? ” and drew a knife and put it in his arm.

Did he do anything before you took the knife out? — Yes, he punched me with his left hand and said, “ I’ll shoot you,” going at the same time like that with his right hand (describing).

Why did you draw your knife? — Because I thought I was going to be killed. After I put my knife into his arm there was a struggle. All the time struggling, I thought he was going to kill me. I thought he was going to shoot me if he had an opportunity, and I tried to stop him.

We know of the wounds he received. Have you any recollection at all as to how the wounds at the back of the neck occurred? — I have not any exact recollection, but all I can say is I had the knife in my left hand, and they got there somehow.

During all this time after you had brushed Mrs Thompson away did you see her again? — I did not. She might have been 10 miles away for all I saw of her. After the struggle I suppose I ran away. I don’t remember it definitely but that is what happened.

At that time did you realise that he was dead? — No, he was standing up when I left him. I then made my way home. Next day I did some shopping with my mother and came to London with her. In the afternoon I went to the city, and afterwards I went to visit Mr and Miss Avis Graydon at Manor Park, as there had been an arrangement made on the Tuesday that she should come out with me that night.

With Mrs Thompson? — No, not with Mrs Thompson. I bought a copy of the Evening News at Mark Lane station (the station for Manor Park), and I read there an account of what had happened.

Was that the first knowledge you had that Mr Thompson was dead? — It was. I could hardly believe it then. I have heard the evidence that Mr Graydon has given in this Court; it is quite true. The police officers came and asked me to go to Ilford police station, and I went. I saw Superintendent Wensley, Inspector Hall, and a typist in the police station that evening, and I signed my first statement (exhibit 5) in their presence.

Did you yourself dictate that statement? — No, I did not; I was asked to oblige Superintendent Wensley.

Was it done in the form of questions and answers? — Yes.

You say nothing in that statement as to the meeting with Mrs Thompson by the wall ? — No.

That is right, is it not? — That is correct. I did not know what happened really. I knew Mrs Thompson was in custody, and I wanted to help her. I was kept at the police station all night, and the following evening I signed the statement (exhibit No. 6). Before signing that statement I had been taken to Mrs Thompson. I was taken from the library to the C.I.D. office.

You were taken past her? — No, in her presence.

Where was it? — In the C.I.D. office. I afterwards made the statement (exhibit No. 6). [This is an example of the confusion arising from the bad acoustics of the Central Criminal Court. The witness’ meaning as to his seeing of Mrs Thompson was never made clear to the Court. — Ed.]

Did you hear what Mrs Thompson said? — No, I saw her statement.

By Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — Do you mean her written statement (exhibit No. 4)? — Yes.

Examination continued — I have no idea what happened to the sheath of my knife. The knife was found five days afterwards.

Cross-examined by the SOLICITOR-GENERAL — From February, 1921, to June, 1921, I was with the “ Orvieto.” From June until September I was at home. When I came home in June, 1921, I was eighteen years of age.

Had your acquaintance with Mrs Thompson before that been simply as a friend of her brother? — I was a friend of Mrs Thompson as well.

A friend of the family without any particular affection for her? — Oh, no, that is not so. Mrs Thompson and I were always very good friends.

Was it on the holiday which you spent with her and her husband at Shanklin when you first fell in love with her? — No.

Did she declare any particular affection for you? — She did not.

Nor you for her? — No.

Are you sure of that? — I am positive.

Did you and her husband remain perfectly good friends during that holiday? — Yes.

When do you say you first felt or declared your affection for her? — I first told her just before I went away in September, 1921. That was after I had left her husband’s house.

Do you suggest that that was the first time you and she had declared yourselves to each other ? — Yes, as mutual affection.

As being in love with each other? — Yes.

Did it go as far as that at that time? — Yes.

Look at Mrs Thompson’s letter to you of 20th June, 1922 (exhibit No. 25), and turn to the fourth paragraph. Was 20th June, 1921, spent with the Thompsons at Shanklin? — No. We were not at Shanklin then. We were at Kensington Gardens.

Look at the fourth paragraph —

It’s Friday now darlint nearly time to go, I am wondering if you remember what your answer was to me in reply to my ‘ What’s the matter ’ to-night of last year. I remember quite well. ‘ You know what’s the matter, I love you ’ . . . but you didn’t then darlint, because you do now and it’s different now, isn’t it? From then onwards everything has gone wrong with our lives — I don’t mean to say it was right before — at least mine wasn’t right — but I was quite indifferent to it being either right or wrong and you darlint — you hadn’t any of the troubles — or the worries you have now — you were quite free in mind and body.

Was that a true or an untrue statement, that a year ago, in June, 1921, you and she had declared your love for each other? — That is not right.

That is untrue? — That is untrue.

Can you suggest how this woman, who was in love with you, had invented an imaginary beginning for this amazing passion? — I don’t quite understand you.

By Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — To come down to the simpler question — did you on that day say, “ I love you ”? — No.

Cross-examination continued — Look at Mrs Thompson’s letter of 11th August, 1921 (exhibit 49) —

Darlingest, — Will you please take these letters back now? I have nowhere to keep them, except a small cash box, I have just bought and I want that for my own letters only and I feel scared to death in case anybody else should read them. All the wishes I can possibly send for the very best of luck today, from Peidi.

That letter was in fact written a few days after you had left their house at Kensington Gardens? — That is so.

Does that satisfy you that your evidence is wrong as to the date you told her you loved her? — No.

Then on 20th August, 1921 (exhibit 12), she writes — ‘Come and see me Monday lunch time, please darlint. He suspects.’ Peidi.

Do you remember when you met her? — I suppose I went on the Monday, but I don’t remember.

Do you remember then as to whether you and Mrs Thompson had conversations as to suspicions of her husband about you? — He was naturally jealous of Mrs Thompson’s friends.

Did you and Mrs Thompson have conversations about the time, or just after, you left her husband’s house as to her husband being suspicious of you? — No.

Did you and Mrs Thompson at that time desire that she should be separated from her husband? — Oh, yes.

Was she anxious for it? — Yes.

I think in your evidence-in-chief you said that you and Mr and Mrs Thompson discussed a separation? —

They discussed it; I listened.

Were you involved in that conversation as the lover of Mrs Thompson ? — No.

I may take it you did not declare yourself at any time in the conversation? — Oh, no.

Were you anxious to declare yourself, or were you anxious to prevent the husband from being suspicious ? — I had not those feelings then.

Then I may take it that at that time you had no intention of taking Mrs Thompson away with you, or no thought of it? — I had thought of helping Mrs Thompson; I should like to help her to be more happy.

Had you any thought at that time of going away with her, taking her to live with you? — No.

Had you thought of that before you departed on your voyage in September, 1921? — Yes.

Had you suggested that to her? — Not exactly that. I had suggested she should get a divorce or separation, and, failing that, we should go away together. That was just a few days before I left in September, 1921. I saw Mr Thompson again after the interview at which he and his wife discussed separation — I saw him while I was in the house, and I saw him again when I came home in November.

Up till that time in November, so far as you know, had the husband any suspicions of you? — No.

Were you and he perfectly good friends? — No, I cannot say that we were good friends.

Were you on friendly terms? — We were acquaintances.

When you met him in November did you meet as friends and part as friends? — As acquaintances. We shook hands when we went; we were not bosom chums.

Did you mention the question of a separation to him again on that occasion in November? — Yes.

Was he angry about it? — No, I cannot say he was.

Was he pleased about it? — Well, he was not exactly pleased.

Did he turn you out of the house? — Oh, no.

He discussed it in an amicable way? — Yes.

Did you then tell him that you were in love with his wife? — No.

Did you suggest any grounds upon which either she or he was to obtain a divorce? — No.

Was divorce mentioned? — Divorce or separation was mentioned.

Were you not at this time attempting to keep back from him all suspicion as to your relations with Mrs Thompson? — No, I was not attempting to keep it back.

Did you ever tell him up to that time ? — No.

Had you and Mrs Thompson at that time spoken about suicide? — Yes.

Do you remember when that proposal was abandoned? — Abandoned ?

Yes. Was it abandoned? — Yes, the pact of suicide was abandoned. It is referred to in exhibit No. 62, the letter of 18th November, 1921- ‘All I could think about last night was that compact we made. Shall we have to carry it thro’?

Was that pact of suicide abandoned after that letter? — I never really considered it seriously.

May we take it from that time forward there was no more thought of the suicide pact? — Oh yes, there was; it was mentioned.

But not really entertained by you? — No.

Do you say from that time forward the only idea in your mind or hers was divorce or separation? — Or suicide on her part.

But the suicide, I put to you, after that letter was not seriously entertained? — Not by me, but by her it was.

Except for the suicide on her part you say that you or she only contemplated separation or divorce? — That is true, or me to take her away.

Was the removal of her husband ever mentioned by her to you? — No.

Never ? — Never .

Did it ever occur to you that that was a way in which you and she might come together? — No.

Did her letters suggest it to you? — No.

Did you tell your learned counsel that you read her letters as melodrama ? — Some.

What was it you understand as melodrama? — She had a vivid way of declaring herself ; she would read a book and imagine herself as the character in the book.

Do you mean that you read her references to poison as melodrama? — Some as melodrama; some as general knowledge.

General knowledge ? — Yes.

I don’t understand that.

What did you understand when she mentioned a particular poison? — To what are you referring?

Are you aware, or do you remember, that she mentioned several times a poison in her letters? — Yes.

Did that suggest to you a dose of poison might kill her husband ? — No.

It did not occur to you? — No. Did you not read those letters as meaning that the idea was in her mind? — No.

Did she ever make an actual proposal to you that you and she might go off together? — Yes.

When did she first make it? — I suppose it was about the November when I came home.

Did you agree to the proposal or did you reject it? — I said, “Wait and see what happens.”

What were you going to wait for? — To see if she could get a separation or divorce.

And how long were you going to wait? — A period of five years.

Did you ever mean to do anything to make a divorce possible? — No.

You had no intention of taking any action? — No.

Will you turn to the letter of 1st April, exhibit No. 17. “I thought a lot about what you said of Dan?” — I had told Mrs Thompson about a friend of mine named Dan.

That is all you had told her? — I told her of some of his business that he had told me. I had not told him anything about myself and Mrs Thompson.

Then will you follow while I read —

Darlint, don’t trust him — I don’t mean don’t tell him anything because I know you never would — what I mean is don’t let him be suspicious of you regarding that — because if we were successful in the action — darlint circumstances may afterwards make us want many friends — or helpers and we must have no enemies — or even people that know a little too much. Remember the saying ‘ A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. ’

What was “ the action ” that she there refers to? — Suicide, as far as I remember.

But, Bywaters, read it again. What does “ the action ” mean? — Mrs Thompson had proposed to me that she did not want to make my life as unhappy as hers. She said she would sooner kill herself.

Do you really suggest that “ the action ” means suicide? — As far as I remember, yes, it means suicide.

Are you quite clear it does not mean crime? — I am positive of that.

I am coming back to that letter. Look now at exhibit No. 60. This is written before 31st March and you had been home for about a fortnight at the end of January and again for a few days at the end of March? — Yes.

Read what Mrs Thompson says in that letter —

This time really will be the last time you will go away — like things are, won’t it? We said it before darlint I know and we failed — but there will be no failure this next time darlint, there mustn’t be.

Had there been a failure? — Yes.

What had you tried that had failed? — Separation or divorce.

Does it occur to you what was the best way to get a divorce if that was all you wanted? — Yes, I know the best way of getting a divorce.

What was the best way of getting a divorce for Mrs Thompson from her husband? — To provide Mr Thompson with the information he needed.

Why did you not try? — Because he would not accept.

Did you provide him with the information? — She had.

Had she provided him with the information to enable him to get a divorce? — She said she would provide him with the information to get a divorce.

Had she tried to give him the information to get a divorce? — She said she would do it.

My question was had she tried to get a divorce from her husband? — She had suggested to him she wanted a divorce, and she would provide him with the information he required if he would come to terms.

I suggest to you that “ failure” there refers to the same thing as  “action ” in the other letter — that Mrs Thompson had tried to poison her husband and had failed? — And I say that that is not true.

What you say is that it refers to information or a statement she had thought of making to her husband to make him divorce her?— Yes, or separation.

Were you and she really anxious that he should know that you and Mrs Thompson were lovers? — He did know.

From what time did he know ? — I do not know he exactly knew we were lovers. He knew we were fond of each other.

Did you not do your best to keep it from him from start to finish? — Oh no.

Will you turn to the letter of 3rd January, 1922, exhibit No.

Immediately I have received a second letter, I have destroyed the first and when I got the third I destroyed the second and so on, now the only one I have is the “ Dear Edie ” one written to 41, which I’m going to keep. It may be useful, who knows?

Was that the letter of 1st December, exhibit 14, beginning “Dear Edie ” and signed “ Yours very sincerely, Freddy ” ? — Yes.

Was that the customary way in which you wrote to Mrs Thompson at that time? — No.

Was that letter written in that form in order to disarm suspicion ? — No.

Did you understand from the passage I have just read from the letter of 3rd January that she was going to use that letter to disarm suspicion ? — No.

Did you understand what was meant when she said “ It may be useful — who knows ” ? — I do not know.

Would the letter be any use to get a divorce or separation? — I think that she is referring to the latter.

I take it you would agree with me the letter would not be useful for that purpose? — I do not agree with you. I never said that. You do not follow me.

You agree with me that that letter which says “Dear Edie” and finishes “ Yours very sincerely ” would be of no use to enable either her or you to get a divorce? — That letter was not meant to be a means of getting a divorce. It was a letter conveying Christmas greetings.

Did you understand what she meant when she said “ This letter may be useful; I will keep it?” — She may have kept this to show to her sister Avis ; that was one of the reasons that I wrote it.

Then you did write it to blind somebody? — Oh yes.

Did the subject of poisons ever occur in your conversations with her when you were at home? — Sometimes.

In what connection? — General conversation; knowledge.

Who mentioned poisons? — If she had been reading anything and poison was mentioned, and any matter that she would not understand, she would ask me what it meant.

Did you know anything about poison? — I did not know very much.

Did she appear to be interested in poison? — No, not particularly.

Did it ever strike you it occupied a prominent place in her mind? — No more than other things.

Did you take an interest in poison? — I was fond of chemistry when I was at school.

But chemistry and poison are two different things? — Poisons deal with chemistry. Poisons come in chemistry.

Did you take any interest in poisons as poisons? — No.

Did you keep up your interest which you say you had in chemistry? — No, I did not.

She knew of that interest, though; her brother used to join me.

Do you suggest then that the mention of poison in your conversation and in your letters was due to the fact that she knew you were interested in chemistry? Is that your explanation? — No, my explanation is this : if she had been reading something and it occurred to her, if I had been in her presence she would have asked me what it was. If I was not there, she put it in writing.

Do you remember a document which you wrote out containing the troy weights, exhibit 57? “ 60 milligrams =1 grain, 18 grains = 1 gramme, 30 grammes = 1 oz.” Is that your handwriting? — Yes.

When did you write it? — I could not say.

Why did you keep it? — Because it is useful in general knowledge.

Had that any connection with the request she made to you to experiment with pills? — Oh no.

Turn back to the letter of 1st April, exhibit No. 17, and listen to this paragraph —

He was telling his Mother etc. the circumstances of my ‘Sunday morning escapade’ and he puts great stress on the fact of the tea tasting bitter  ‘as if something had been put in it ’ he says. Now I think whatever else I try it in again will still taste bitter — he will recognise it and be more suspicious still and if the quantity is still not successful it will injure any chance I may have of trying when you come home. Do you understand?

What did you understand about that passage? — That she had taken the quinine and it tasted bitter.

Look at it again — he puts great stress on the fact of the tea tasting bitter ‘ as if something had been put in it ’ he says.

To whom did it taste bitter? — Mrs Thompson.

Do you suggest that, Bywaters ? — I do.

Do you suggest that is how you understood the letter when you received it? — I do.

Now I think whatever else I try it in again will still taste bitter — he will recognise it and be more suspicious still.

Do you still adhere to what you say, that she is speaking of her taste? — Yes.

What did you understand him to be suspicious of? — That she was attempting to commit suicide.

Did you understand her to mean that she would tell him that her tea tasted bitter and she was about to commit suicide? — Possibly she would.

Is that your understanding of that passage? — That is.

Look at the letter of 1st May (exhibit 39) — I don’t think we’re failures in other things and we mustn’t be in this.

Did you understand what that referred to? — Yes.

What? — Well, if you read further, “ We mustn’t give up as we said.”

What was that? — Give up trying for a separation or divorce. We must learn to be patient.

We must have each other darlint. It’s meant to be I know I feel it is because I love you such a lot — such a love was not meant to be in vain. It will come right I know one day, if not by our efforts some other way. We’ll wait eh darlint, and you’ll try and get some money and then we can go away and not worry about anybody or anything. You said it was enough for an elephant.

Do you remember saying that? — Yes.

Did you say that in writing or in speech? — In speech.

Are you clear about that ? Did you say it in a letter or in a conversation when you were at home? — I really do not remember whether it was in conversation or in a letter.

And what was it you said was enough for an elephant? — The quinine I had given Mrs Thompson.

For what had you given her quinine? — She had been wanting me to get her something with which to commit suicide, as she did not want to make my life as unhappy as hers. To satisfy her craving I said I would get her something, and I gave her quinine.

It is your suggestion that in May, 1922, you were lending your assistance to her desire to commit suicide? — Her suggestion.

You say you gave her this quinine because she wanted something with which to commit suicide. Is that right? — Yes, that is so.

Did you give her quinine with that object? — I did.

Were you therefore willing to help her to commit suicide? — No, I knew she could not hurt herself with quinine.

You were playing with her ideas? — I was pulling her leg.

You said it was enough for an elephant. Perhaps it was. But you don’t allow for the taste making only a small quantity to be taken. It sounded like a reproach was it meant to be?

That is your explanation, that you were playing a joke upon her? — That is so.

She goes on —

Darlint I tried hard — you won’t know how hard — because you weren’t there to see and I can’t tell you all — but I did — I do want you to believe I did for both of us. . . . I was buoyed up with the hope of the ‘ light bulb’ and I used a lot.

Did you understand that as referring to a dose she herself took of broken glass? — Possibly, yes. She was trying to persuade me to give her something with which to commit suicide, and I refrained. I gave her this quinine so that she would not take anything herself.

But in the next passage that I have called your attention to she refers to another specific — “ I was buoyed up with the hope of the ‘ light bulb’ and I used a lot — big pieces too. Did you understand that to mean that she had taken glass ? — I understood that to be a lie from her to me.

You understood, even if it was a lie, that what it was a lie about was what she had taken herself? — Oh, yes.

By Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — Look at it. Was she lying about what her husband had taken or what she had taken herself? — I say she was lying about what she had taken herself.

Cross-examination continued — Look at the next sentence — ‘I quite expected to be able to send that cable.’ Do you suggest that after she had taken the dose that would kill her she was expecting to send you that cable? — No, I do not suggest that.

What do you suggest ? — That she would have sent me a cable if she had been successful in getting a divorce or an agreement of separation.

By Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — Had you arranged with her if anything happened she should cable you? — Yes, if she was successful in getting an agreement for separation.

Cross-examination continued — ‘I quite expected to be able to send that cable — but no — nothing has happened from it.’

That is the glass? — No.

What was it? — The approach of Thompson to get this separation.

Now your letter tells me about the bitter taste again. Oh darlint, I do feel so down and unhappy. Wouldn’t the stuff make small pills coated together with soap and dipped in liquorice powder — like Beechams? — try while you are away.

Is that why you were interested in Troy weights? — No.

Our boy had to have his thumb operated on because he had a piece of glass in it that’s what made me try that method again — but I suppose as you say he is not normal.

Who is “he ”? Read the next sentence if you are in doubt —

I know I feel I shall never get him to take a sufficient quantity of anything bitter.

Have you any doubt that you understood that to mean the husband? — I did not understand that.

To whom did you understand it referred? — Perhaps she had made a mistake in the words.

And meant “me”? — Yes.

“ I know I feel I shall never get ‘ myself ’ to take a sufficient quantity of anything bitter.” Is that how you read it? — That is right; she did not like the taste of quinine.

Was there any reason why she should be concerned as to leaving traces of what she was doing? Read the next sentence —

Darlint, two heads are better than one is such a true saying. You tell me not to leave finger marks on the box — do you know I did not think of the box but I did think of the glass or cup whatever was used. I wish I wish oh I wish I could do something.

You understood that to mean at the time, “ I wish, I wish, oh I wish I could kill myself.” Is that it? — Yes.

Turn now to the letter of 18th May, 1922 (exhibit No. 22), the “ Bella Donna ” letter —

It must be remembered that digitalin is a cumulative poison, and that the same dose harmless if taken once, yet frequently repeated, becomes deadly.’ Darlingest boy, the above passage I’ve just come across in a book I am reading “Bella Donna ” by Robert Hichens. Is it any use?

Did you answer her question? — No, I did not answer it.

Did you attach any importance to the question? — I thought it was another manner in which she was trying to get something with which to commit suicide.

You were devotedly attached to Mrs Thompson at this time? — Yes.

Did it excite no apprehension in your mind when she made these repeated proposals to you to commit suicide? — I told her if she really wanted it I would get it for her; I would get her something to commit suicide.

Did you understand this was a proposal that digitalin should help her to commit suicide? — Yes, I understood her to mean that would be more pleasant than quinine or the glass.

What was the object of having the cumulative poison if she was going to commit suicide? — I did not see the object of having a cumulative poison, but it was not unpleasant.

Did she expect you to help her to commit suicide, do you know? — I do not know that she really did expect it, but she often mentioned it.

In the long letter I have already referred you to (exhibit 19) she says —

Do experiment with the pills while you are away — please darlint. No, we two — two halves — have not come to the end of our tether. Don’t let us.

Do you still suggest that was suicide? — Yes.

Look at the letter of 4th July (exhibit No. 26), “ Have you studied bichloride of mercury? ” Had you studied it? — I had not.

Did you study it ? — I did not.

Did the question surprise you? — No.

Did you refer to it in your correspondence? — I did not.

Did you connect it again with suicide? — No.

What did you connect it with? — A general or common or garden question.

Did you still think at that time that she was pretending or contemplating to commit suicide? — No, not apparently then. Just follow.

In May she was writing letters to you which you say you understood meant suicide? — Yes.

In July she was writing to you about poison when you were in Freemantle, in Australia? — Yes.

Did you understand her to have abandoned suicide or to be still thinking of it? — I did not understand her to mean anything except that was a question. I expect she had read that somewhere, and did not know what it was, and asked me if I knew.

Did you ever rebuke her about the suicide talk? — Well, I tried to pacify her.

When you were in Australia, did you tell her that you had made arrangements, or had begun to make arrangements, for living in Australia with her? — Yes.

That was at this time, on this trip? — Yes.

Was it the arrangement which you began to make in Australia with a view to her running away from her husband? — Yes, failing separation or divorce.

Look at the letter of 24th April (exhibit No. 18), which apparently reached you at Aden on 7th May —

I used the ‘light bulb ’ three times but the third time — he found a piece — so I’ve given it up — until you come home.

What did you understand by that passage? — She had been lying to me again.

She had been what? — Lying to me, lying.

What did you understand the lie was? — It was melodrama on her part, trying to persuade me that she had taken broken glass. “ I used the ‘ light bulb ’ three times but the third time — he found a piece.”

You understood she meant her husband had detected her in an attempt to commit suicide? — Yes.

“ So I have given it up until you come home.” Do you suggest that she was going to wait for your arrival home in order that you might co-operate with her in committing suicide? — I might give her something more, some quinine.

That would be a strange idea to you, Bywaters, if that is right? — Yes; I do not know her idea.

In any conversation, did you ever speak about the risks you and she were running? Did she tell you she was running a risk ? — Yes.

Can you tell me what risk she was running? — Whenever she mentioned to her husband separation or divorce there was always trouble.

What was the risk? — Of her being unhappy, her life being made more unhappy.

Did she say, “ I am prepared to run a risk if you are ?” — If I would let her, if I was agreeable.

The risk she was running? — Of being knocked about.

Did she tell you in her letters that, so far as she could make her husband believe it, her husband thought she was a happy woman again, or something of that sort? — No, she told me in her letters that was the only way she could obtain a little peace.

Now I come to September. Were you anxious to break off or to alter the relations between you and Mrs Thompson? — I thought, if I did not see her, or did not correspond with her, her life would not seem so hard.

You thought if you did not write to her it would make her life easy? — Yes.

You got the letter (exhibit No. 28) sometime about September. Look at this passage —

Darlingest Boy, — I don’t quite understand you about ‘Pals.’ You say ‘ Can we be Pals only, Peidi, it will make it easier.’

Had you said that? — Yes.

Meaning no longer lovers? — If we could stifle our feelings would it be easier for her.

Do you mean for always? because if you do. No, no, a thousand times. We can’t be ‘ pals ’ only for always darlint — its impossible physically and mentally. Last time we had a long talk — I said ‘Go away this time and forget all about me, forget you ever knew me, it will be easier — and better for you.’ Do you remember — and you refused, so now I’m refusing darlint — it must be still ‘the hope of all ’ or ‘ the finish of all.’

By Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — You understand this letter as entreating you still to be her lover? — No, it was not entreating; it was stating facts; that was all.

Cross-examination continued —

If you still only mean for a certain time and you think it best, darlint it shall be so — I don’t see how it will be easier myself — but it shall be as you say and wish, we won’t be our natural selves tho’ I know — we’ll be putting a kerb on ourselves the whole time— like an iron band that won’t expand. Please don’t let what I have written deter you from any decision darlint — I don’t want to do that— truly I’d like to do what you think best. I don’t sleep much better now — the nights seem so long — I sleep for an hour and lie awake for 2 and go to sleep again for another hour — right thro the night. A doctor can’t do me any good darlint— no good at all — even the most clever in the land — unless that doctor is you and it can’t be, so I’m not going to waste any more money on them. I want you for my doctor — my pal — my lover — my everything — just all and the whole world would be changed.

Then at the end of the letter — ‘Yes, darlint, you are jealous of him.’ Who was “ him” ? Did you understand him to be the husband? — Yes. I understood the husband, but I made the statement first. Mrs Thompson related to me he had taken a lady out to tea, and I made the remark “ All people’s tastes are alike.”

Do you think by this that I am jealous of him?  Yes, darlint, you are jealous of him ! — Yes. “ But I want you to be — he has the right by law to all that you have the right to by nature and love — yes darlint be jealous, so much that you will do something desperate ” ! —

But I was not jealous.

She was appealing to you to be jealous and do something desperate? — No.

“ Desperate ” was to take her away? — That is how I read it.

Why did you not take her away? — Financial reasons.

Had you at that time ever thought of marrying her? — No.

Had you ever asked her to go with you? — There had been suggestions.

Did you ever ask her as a man to a woman to go away with you and leave her husband? — I don’t know that I had asked; it was more of a mutual kind of arrangement.

You had never made a definite kind of arrangement? — No, she would not take it; she would prefer a divorce or separation.

Exhibit No. 55 is an undated letter —

Darlint Pal, please try and use — pour moi, and don’t buy a pouch, je vais pour vous one of these days.

Was that the note which was given to you when she gave you the pouch? — No.

Was the pouch given to you on 1st October? — Yes.

What does this letter refer to? — It refers to a pipe.

Was it written after you had gone home? — I had it when I was in England, yes.

With it did the next document come, a cutting from the Daily Sketch of 20th September, 1922 — “ Chicken Broth Death. Rat poison consumed by fowl kills woman ” ? — Yes.

At that time you were able to read English newspapers for yourself? — No, not when this was written.

I thought you said it was given to you, or handed to you, after you reached England? — I said I received it when I was in England. I received it in Plymouth on my homeward journey. When I reached Tilbury I received the telegram of 25th September (exhibit 58), “ Must catch 5.49 Fenchurch reply if can manage.”

You met Mrs Thompson from time to time without her husband’s knowledge ? — Yes.

Did you speak to her of the risk that you and she were running? — Not any risk that I was running.

Look at the letter written on 1st October (exhibit No. 60) at the end —

Don’t forget what we talked in the Tea Room, I’ll still risk and try if you will — we only have 3 ¾  years left darlingest.

What did you understand the risk was that she was prepared to run? — The risk of being knocked about when she was asking for separation or divorce.

What was the risk that you were to run, “ I will still risk and try if you will ”? — “ If you will let me.” How was she going to run the risk of being knocked about by telling her husband she was going with you? — No, by asking for a divorce or separation.

Then you did in fact meet her and never went near her husband? — I kept away; I did not want further trouble.

You met her at Fuller’s in the afternoon of 3rd October? — Yes,

Did you have any conversation about her husband? — No.

Did you not refer to him? — Only that she was going to the theatre.

She did tell you that she was going to the theatre? — Yes. And she told you which theatre? — Yes.

After you left her I understand you went straight to the Graydons ? — Yes.

Were you carrying your knife when you went there? — I was.

Did you carry that knife everywhere while in England? — Yes.

Did you ever use it for anything? — Cutting string or cutting things handy.

Is that the purpose for which you carried it? — I bought that — it may be handy at any time.

A knife of that size and character? — Yes, handy at sea.

Handy at sea, but was it handy at home? — Yes.

As you told us you knew before you went to the Graydons that they were going to the theatre? — Yes.

When you made your statement of 4th October (exhibit 5) did you say this — Before leaving, I remember Mrs Graydon’s daughter Avis saying that Percy (Mr Thompson) had phoned her up, and I gathered from the observations she made that he was taking his wife to a theatre that night, and that there were other members of the family going. You meant by that that you had heard for the first time that at the Graydons? — I did not say that.

Did you mean that ? — No, I meant what I say.

Do you agree with me that the meaning of that paragraph is that you gathered it for the first time from conversation? — No.

Just before that you say in your statement — I left my home yesterday morning about quarter to twelve. I was dressed in the same clothes that I am now wearing. I went up west and remained there till the evening. I was alone and never met anyone that I knew.

That was untrue? — That was untrue. I objected to a lot of Superintendent Wensley’s questions — I resented his questions.

You mean by “ resented his questions ” that you told a falsehood? — Yes, I wanted to help Mrs Thompson.

Did you tell falsehoods in order to shield yourself in that statement ? — No.

It was your one idea to shield Mrs Thompson ? — That is so.

Why did you not stick to your first statement? Why did you alter your statement? — I was told Mrs Thompson would be released if I made that statement.

And you made the second statement? — I did.

Was the second statement any more true than the first ? — Yes.

Did you say anything as to your meeting Mrs Thompson in your second statement? — I don’t know. What did I say?

“ Mrs Edith Thompson was not aware of my movements on Tuesday night, 3rd October.” At any rate, whether you intended it or not, you did not correct your previous statement that you had not seen her on that day? — No.

Why did you not put into your statement of 5th October anything about the incident of the attack which you have told us today? Had you forgotten that? — No.

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

So you omitted that part of your story which was concerned with the threat to shoot and the struggle? — I did. That was my main object ; I wanted to help her.

Can you suggest how it helped her, to omit that important fact? — She would have been released. I did not trouble about details or anything like that. I had questions put to me and I said, “ Yes, you say it.”

You said “ Yes ” to anything suggested? — Practically anything.

May I say that that statement there was no more true in substance than the other statement was, or that you did not care whether it was true? — Oh, yes, it is true; part of it I said myself.

Was it true, as you said in your statement, that you waited for Mrs Thompson and her husband? — No. That was untrue. I had that put to me.

What you actually did was to catch them up? — Yes, I overtook them.

Are you a right-handed or a left-handed man? — Right.

Did you strike the first blow from behind? — I struck the first blow in front, his right arm.

Did the struggle take place at one spot, or was he moving forward? — I could not say whether we moved. I do not imagine we stood still.

Did you say you remembered striking one blow at his throat? — I did not say that.

Do you remember striking a blow at his throat ? — I do not.

And you do not remember anything, do you say, after you pushed Mrs Thompson away? — I remember pushing Thompson up the street, and the conversation between us, and the subsequent events.

Did you not discuss in the tearoom that afternoon the possibility of meeting them that night? — We did not stay in the tearoom. She did not come into the tearoom; I left it to join her.

Did you not discuss with her something desperate? — I did not.

Did you not refer to her husband except in connection with the theatre party? — That is the only way we referred to him.

Did she tell you she had abandoned the idea of suicide? — No.

Did she make any reference to poison, or force, or violence? — She did not.

And your story is that you went out from the Graydons never intending to use violence to Mr Thompson? — I never intended to see them when I first went out. [He had in fact arranged to go and get some cigarettes which Mr Graydon had promised to have ready for him on the evening of the 3rd. —Ed.]

You formed the idea on your way from the station at West Ham? — East Ham.

Is this true in your second statement, “ I only meant to injure him”? — It is hardly true. I meant to stop him from killing me.

“ I did not intend to kill him; I only meant to injure him.”  Was that true, that you went there to injure him? — No, it is not. “ I gave him the opportunity of standing up to me as a man, but he would not.”

Was that true? — When I said that I referred to a back occasion, not to this occasion.

Did you on this occasion give him an opportunity of standing up to you as a man? — No, I did not suggest any violence or fisticuffs at all.

Do you mean to suggest that he made the first assault upon you? — Yes, he did.

And that you then drew your knife? — I did.

Is it the fact that you never saw any revolver or any gun at that moment? — I never saw it, no.

Did you continue to stab him in the expectation of seeing one at any moment? — I did not know I was stabbing him. I tried to stop him from shooting me; that is all.

Re-examined by Mr CECIL WHITELEY — Although I never saw a revolver I believed that he had one, otherwise I would not have drawn my knife. I was in fear of my life.

At any time have you had any intention to murder Mr Thompson? — I have not.

Your attention has been directed to the first statement which you made (exhibit 5). Did you ever suggest in this statement or any other that the first time you heard about the theatre was at the Graydons? — No, I did not suggest that. I did not wish Superintendent Wensley to know that Mrs Thompson and I were meeting each other.

Were you thinking of anybody else except Mrs Thompson when that statement (exhibit 5) was taken from you? — No.

Look at the letter of 11th August (exhibit 49), “ Darlingest, will you please take these letters back now? ” I want you to tell the Court what those letters were? — Those letters are now in the possession of the police. They are letters written to me by a lady in Australia which I had given to Mrs Thompson to read.

Are the two letters written by you (exhibits ‘50 and 31) in similar terms to all the other letters which you wrote to Mrs Thompson when you were abroad? — Not all the letters — some.

Love letters? — Yes.

Did you ever in any letter to Mrs Thompson say anything with regard to giving poison to her husband, or anything of that sort? — I did not.

Mr WHITELEY — That is our case.

Evidence for the Prisoner Thompson.

Mrs EDITH JESSIE THOMPSON (prisoner on oath), examined by Mr WALTER FRAMPTON — I was married to Percy Thompson on 15th February, 1915. At the time of my marriage and for some years before I was employed by Messrs. Carlton & Prior, and I continued in that employment after my marriage.

Was your marriage a happy one? — No, not particularly so. I think I was never really happy with my husband, but for perhaps two years it was better than it had been.

After a lapse of two years were there constant differences and troubles between you? — There were. My husband and I very often discussed the question of separation, long before June of 1921. I had known the family of Bywaters for some years before 1921. I cannot say that my husband knew them well, but he knew them, he had met them often. In June, 1921, I went with my husband and some friends to the Isle of Wight for a holiday. The prisoner Bywaters accompanied us, at the invitation of my husband. We remained there a week, and then we returned to our house in Ilford, along with Bywaters, who remained there, living with my husband and myself, until 5th August.

During that holiday in the Isle of Wight, and while Bywaters was at your house, had you conceived an affection for him? — No. The 1st of August of that year was a Monday. I had some trouble with my husband that day; I think it originated over a pin, but eventually it was brought to a head by my sister not appearing at tea when she said she would. I wanted to wait for her, but my husband objected, and said a lot of things to me about my family that I resented. He then struck me several times, and eventually threw me across the room. Bywaters was in the garden at this time, and in the course of the disturbance he came into the room and stopped my husband. Later on that day there was a discussion about a separation. I cannot remember exactly what was said, except that I wanted a separation, and Bywaters entreated my husband to separate from me, but he said what he usually said, that he would not. At first he said he would, and then I said to him, “You always tell me that when I mention the subject, and later, when it actually comes, you refuse to grant it to me.” I do not remember any further discussion with my husband about separation between the Monday, 1st August, and the Friday, when Bywaters left. I occasionally saw Bywaters after he left the house.

Have you at any time from your marriage until the death of your husband ever done anything to injure him physically? — Never.

Have you ever been in possession of poison? — Not to my knowledge. Have you ever administered any poison to your husband? — No.

Have you ever given him ground glass in his food or in any form? — Never. Have you ever broken up an electric light bulb and given him that? — Never.

Come now to the letters. Look first at the letter dated 11th August, 1921 (exhibit 49) —

Darlingest, — Will you please take these letters back now? I have nowhere to keep them except a small cash box, I have just bought and I want that for my own letters only and I feel scared to death in case anybody else should read them.

What were those letters? — They were letters written to him. I understand, by a girl in Australia.

What sort of letters were they that were written by the lady in Australia to Bywaters? Were they what would be called love letters? — You would hardly call them love letters — personal letters. They were not letters of mine. I do not think I had corresponded with Bywaters before this date, but I really cannot remember.

The next letter I want you to look at is the one dated 20th August, 1921 (exhibit 12) —

Come and see me Monday lunch time, please darlint. He suspects.

What did you mean by “ he suspects ”? — I meant that my husband suspected I had seen Bywaters; I think it was on the Friday previous to that date. I usually saw him on Fridays, and I continued to see him until he sailed on 9th September. He came back in the end of October, and remained in this country until 11th November. After he sailed I corresponded with him, and among other letters I wrote exhibit 62, which is undated.

All I could think about last night was that compact we made. Shall we have to carry it thro’? Don’t let us darlint. I’d like to live and be happy — not for a little while, but for all the while you still love me. Death seemed horrible last night — when you think about it darlint, it does seem a horrible thing to die, when you have never been happy really happy for one little minute.

What compact were you referring to in that letter to Bywaters? — The compact of suicide. We had discussed the question of suicide some time previous to the writing of this letter; I cannot state when.

What was said about it? — That nothing was worth living for, and that it would be far easier to be dead.

Had you discussed any particular means of committing suicide? — I believe we had.

After Bywaters had sailed on that voyage did you send him from time to time cuttings out of the papers? — I did. They were generally cuttings of sensational matters appearing at the time. Amongst the cuttings that I sent there was an account of an inquest upon a girl, Freda Kempton, who had died through taking an overdose of cocaine.

In your letter of 14th March, 1922 (exhibit 20), you say —

Enclosed are some cuttings that may be interesting. I think the ‘red hair ’ one is true in parts — you tell me which parts darlint. The Kempton cutting may be interesting if it’s to be the same method.

What were you referring to there? — Our compact of suicide.

Look at the letter (exhibit 27) where you say —

I had the wrong Porridge to-day, but I don’t suppose it will matter, I don’t seem to care much either way. You’ll probably say I’m careless and I admit I am, but I don’t care — do you?

What were you referring to? — I really cannot explain.

The suggestion here is that you had from time to time put things into your husband’s porridge, glass, for instance? — I had not done so.

Can you give us any explanation of what you had in your mind when you said you had the wrong porridge? — Except we had suggested or talked about that sort of thing and I had previously said, “Oh yes, I will give him something one of these days.”

By Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — Do you mean that you had talked about poison? — I did not mean anything in particular.

Examination continued — We had talked about, making my husband ill.

How had you come to talk about making your husband ill? — We were discussing my unhappiness.

Did that include your husband’s treatment of you? — Yes.

Now you say you probably said that you would give him something? — I did.

Did you ever give him anything: — Nothing whatever. My husband took porridge in the mornings. It was always prepared by Mrs Lester, and never by me.

Further on in that same letter (exhibit ‘27). you say —

You know darlint I am beginning to think I have gone wrong in the way I manage this affair. I think perhaps it would have been better had I acquiesced in everything he said and did or wanted to do. At least it would have disarmed any suspicion he might have and that would have been better if we have to use drastic measures.

What were you meaning by the “drastic measures” you might have to use? — Leaving England with Bywaters.

Look now at the letter of 3rd January, 1922 (exhibit 13), where you say —

Immediately I have received a second letter, I have destroyed the first and when I got the third I destroyed the second and so on, now the only one I have is the “ Dear Edie ” one written to 41 which I am going to keep. It may be useful, who knows?

Why were you keeping that letter? — I wanted to show it to my people if I were asked if I had heard from Mr Bywaters for Christmas. It was a letter wishing me all good wishes for Christmas and my people were certain to ask if I had heard from him. Otherwise I did not keep Bywaters’ letters, it being a habit of mine to destroy letters that I had received.

You go on to say —

Darlint, I’ve surrendered to him unconditionally now — do you understand me? I think it the best way to disarm any suspicion, in fact he has several times asked me if I am happy now and I’ve said “Yes quite” but you know that’s not the truth, don’t you.

What is the meaning of that paragraph! — When I wrote that letter I was expecting Mr Bywaters home in a few days, and I knew if my husband had any suspicion he was coming home he would try to prevent me from seeing him.

Further on you say —

Thanking you for those greetings darlint, but you won’t always be ‘the man with no right’ will you?

What does that refer to? — I had hopes of obtaining a divorce from my husband and that Bywaters would marry me.

Turn now to your letter of 10th February (exhibit 15) —

Darlint – You must do something this time — I’m not really impatient — but opportunities come and go by — they have to — because I’m helpless and I think and think and think — perhaps — it will never come again.

What did you mean by “You must do something this time”? — I meant he must find me some sort of situation or take me away altogether without one. I had discussed the question of Bywaters finding me a situation and also the place where he was to look for one for me — in Bombay, Marseilles, Australia — in fact, really anywhere where he heard of anything

 I want, to tell you about this. On Wednesday we had words — in bed —Oh you know darlint. — over that same old subject and he said — it was all through you I’d altered. I told him if he ever again blamed you to me for any difference there might be in me, I’d leave the house that minute and this is not an idle threat. He said lots of other things and I bit my lip — so that I shouldn’t answer — eventually went to sleep. About 2 a.m. he woke me up and asked for water as he felt ill. I got it for him and asked him what the matter was and this is what be told me — whether it is the truth I don’t know or whether he did it to frighten me, anyway it didn’t. He said — someone he knows in town (not the man I previously told you about) had given him a prescription for a draught for insomnia and he’d had it made up and taken it and it made him ill. He certainly looked ill and his eyes were glassy. I’ve hunted for the said prescription everywhere and can’t find it and asked him what he had done with it and he said the chemist kept it.

Is that, a true account of something that happened to your husband? — Absolutely true, he suffered from insomnia and from his heart, and he took medicines for both.

Were you in any way responsible for that condition that you describe in this letter? — None whatever.

You go on —

I told Avis about the incident only I told her as if it frightened and worried me as I thought perhaps it might be useful at some future time that I had told somebody. What do you think, darlint. His sister Maggie came in last night and he told her, so now there are two witnesses, altho’ I wish he hadn’t told her— but left me to do it. It would be so easy darlint — if I had things — I do hope I shall.

What is the meaning of that paragraph? — I wrote that to let Bywaters think I was willing to do anything to help him, to retain his affections.

Look at. your letter of 22nd February (exhibit 16), where you write —

I suppose it isn’t possible for you to send it to me — not at all possible, I do so chafe at wasting time darlint.

What were you referring to there when you wrote that? — Mr Bywaters had told me he was bringing me something and I suggested to send it to me, to allow him to think I was eager for him to send me something to do what was suggested. I wanted him to think I was eager to help him, to bind him closer to me, to retain his affections. I had no idea what “it” was.

This thing that I am going to do for both of us will it ever — at all, make any difference between us, darlint, do you understand what I mean. Will you ever think any the less of me — not now, I know darlint — but later on— perhaps some years hence — do you think you will feel any different — because of this thing that I shall do. Darlint— if I thought you would I’d not do it, no not even so that we could be happy for one day even one hour, I’m not hesitating darlint— through fear of any consequences of the action, don’t think that but I’d sooner go on in the old way for years and years and retain your love and respect. I would like you to write me darlint and talk to me about this.

What was the thing that you were going to do for both you and Bywaters? — I was to go away and live with him without being married to him.

Come now to exhibit 50 —

This time really will be the last you will go away — like things are won’t it? We said it before darlint I know and we failed — but there will be no failure this next time darlint, there mustn’t be — I’m telling you — if things are the same again then I am going with you— wherever it is — if it is to sea — I’m coming too and if it’s to nowhere — I’m also coming darlint. You’ll never leave me behind again, never, unless things are different.

What is the meaning of that paragraph? — That referred to my constant requests to my husband for a divorce. That is what I meant when I said we had failed before. We had tried to get a divorce or get him to accede to one, but I meant if I had not got his consent the next time I was going away with Mr Bywaters at whatever cost and whatever it meant.

Do I understand the failure was a failure to induce your husband to divorce you? — That is so.

And if you were not able to persuade him to take the steps, then you were going away, at whatever cost, with Bywaters? — That is so.

The next letter I have to trouble you with is the one dated 1st April (exhibit 17) —

He was telling his mother etc. the circumstances of my ‘Sunday morning escapade’ and he puts great stress on the fact of the tea tasting bitter.

Was there ever any time when your husband complained to his mother about the tea tasting bitter? — Not to my knowledge.

Was this an imaginary incident then that you were recording? — Yes. My husband’s mother is still alive.

Now I think whatever else I try it in again will still taste bitter — he will recognise it and be more suspicious still and if the quantity is still not successful — it will injure any chance I may have of trying when you come home. Do you understand?

Had you at that time or any time put anything into your husband’s tea? — No.

Had he ever at any time made complaint that his tea tasted bitter? — No.

I’m going to try the glass again occasionally — when it is safe — I’ve got an electric light globe this time.

What did you mean Bywaters to understand by that? — That I was willing to help him in whatever he wanted me to do or suggested I should do or we should do. There were electric lights in the house.

Had you got an electric light bulb for any purpose of this description? — I had not.

Did you over intend to use one? — I did not.

Did you ever at any time use one? — Never.

Look at your letter of 7th May, exhibit No. 18 —

Mother and Dad came over to me to dinner — I had plenty to do. On Monday Mr and Mrs Birnage came to tea and we all went to the Hippodrome in the evening. By the way — what is “Aromatic tincture of opium.” — Avis drew my attention to a bottle of this sealed in the medicine chest in your room. I took possession of it and when he missed it and asked me for it — I refused to give it him — he refuses to tell me where he got it and for what reason he wants it — so I shall keep it till I hear from you.

Had your sister Avis found the bottle of aromatic tincture of opium? — Yes. I had no idea it was in the house before she found it. I did not know whether my husband was using it or not. I had no idea what it was, beyond the name, and in my letter I am asking Bywaters what it is. My husband missed it and asked me about it. I believe my sister Avis took possession of the bottle and threw the contents down the sink and then threw the bottle away. The bottle which is now shown to me (exhibit 61) is similar, but I cannot say whether it is the same.

I used the ‘light bulb’ three times but the third time — he found a piece — so I’ve given it up — until you come home.

Is there any truth in that statement? — None whatever.

Did you at this time or any time use the light bulb? — Never at all.

Was there ever an occasion when your husband found a piece of glass in his food or anywhere? — Never.

I see in that letter you go on to refer to, and give extracts from, books you were reading. Were you in the habit of doing that? — Yes. I described in detail the characters in novels I was reading and I asked Bywaters his opinion and views upon these various characters. Among other books I read [were] “Maria”, “The Guarded Flame,” “The Common Law,” “The Fruitful Vine,” “The Business of Life,” Bella Donna,” and “The Way of this Woman.”

Look now at your letter of 1st May (exhibit 19) —

It will come right I know one day, if not by our efforts some other way. We’ll wait eh darlint, and you’ll try and get some money and then we can go away and not worry about anybody or anything. You said it was enough for an elephant. Perhaps it was. But you don’t allow for the taste making only a small quantity to be taken. It sounded like a reproach, was it meant to be?

What was it that, you were referring to there as being enough for an elephant.? — Some quinine that Mr Bywaters had given me in a small bottle before he went on his voyage.

Had you given some of it to your husband? — No.

Did you at any time give anything out of the ordinary to your husband? — No, never.

In that paragraph you refer to the fact that you will wait until he gets some money. Was the want of money a hindrance to you both going away at that time? — It was.

Further on in that letter you say —

I was buoyed up with the hope of the ‘light bulb’ and I used a lot — big pieces too – not powdered— and it has no effect — I quite expected to be able to send that cable — but no — nothing has happened from it and now your letter tells me about the bitter taste again. O darlint, I do feel so down and unhappy.

Had you administered any glass fragments of light bulbs to your husband, either in large or small pieces? — Never at all.

Had you arranged to send a cable to Bywaters about anything? Yes, principally about if I was successful in getting a divorce from my husband.

When you say “Your letter tells me about the bitter taste again,” what had that reference to? — Something Mr Bywaters had said to me about a bitter taste, I suppose.

Bitter taste of what? — Of the stuff I had in the bottle.

Then you proceed —

Wouldn’t the stuff make small pills coated together with soap and dipped in liquorice powder — like Beechams — try while you are away.

What did you wish Bywaters to understand by that? — I wanted him to understand that I was willing to do anything he expected me to do or asked me to do— to agree with him. I wanted him to think I would do anything for him to keep him to me.

Turn now to your letter of 18th May (exhibit 22). You commence that letter with a quotation about digitalin and you say you have taken the passage from a book by Robert Hichens that you are reading. Did you know what digitalin was? — I had no idea.

Why did you write and ask Bywaters “Is it any use?”? — For the same reason; I wanted him to feel that I was willing to help him, to keep him to me. I have never had digitalin in my possession to my knowledge. My first knowledge of the existence of such a thing was from reading “Bella Donna.” Further on in that letter, when I say “ Hurry up and take me away — to Egypt — if you like, but anywhere where it is warm,” I just mean what I say — I wanted him to take me away at any cost; it would not matter what happened.

Was that the thought in your mind at this time, that you should go away with him? — The uppermost. I have already explained that I had been asking Bywaters to find a situation for me abroad, and in one of my letters I had said that I was going whether I had a situation or not. In my letter of 23rd May (exhibit 23) I say —

Your news about — from Bombay — and waiting till next trip made me feel very bad and down-hearted — it will be awful waiting all that time, 3 months will it be — I can’t wait — yes, I can — I will, I must — I’ll make myself somehow — I’ll try to be patient darlint.

The news from Bombay that I was referring to there was that he had tried to find me a position to go to and had failed.

In that letter you tell Bywaters that you would like him to read “Bella Donna”, as he might learn something from it to help you. What were you referring to in “Bella Donna” which you wished him to read which might help you both? — The book was really about Egypt, and I thought he might learn something in it about Egypt.

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — I should like to clear this up. Is not the main point of it that the lady killed her husband with slow poisoning?

The SOLICITOR-GENERAL — I was going to deal with it in cross- examination

Examination continued — Do you recollect in that book any particular part or character that you wished to call Bywaters’ attention to? — No, not particularly.

Look at your letter of 14th July, 1922 (exhibit 52) —

About Bella Donna — no I don’t agree with you about her darlint — I hate her — hate to think of her — I don’t think other people made her what she was — that sensual pleasure loving greedy Bella Donna was always there. If she had originally been different — a good man like Nigel would have altered her darlint— she never knew what it was to be denied any- thing — she never knew ‘goodness’ as you and I know it — she was never interested in a good man — or any man unless he could appease her sensual nature. I don’t think she could have been happy with nothing — except Baroudi on a desert island she liked — no loved and lived for his money or what it could give her — the luxury of his yacht, the secrecy with which he acted all bought with his money — that’s what she liked. Yes she was clever — I admire the cleverness — but she was cunning, there is a difference darlint, I don’t admire that — I certainly don’t think she would ever have killed Nigel with her hands — she would have been found out — she didn’t like that did she? being found out — it was that secret cunning in Baroudi that she admired so much — the cunning that matched her own. If she had loved Baroudi enough she could have gone to him — but she liked the security of being Nigel’s wife — for the monetary assets it held. She doesn’t seem a woman to me — she seems abnormal — a monster utterly selfish and self-loving. Darlint this is where we differ about women.

Was that your true opinion about the character in that book you were referring to? — Absolutely.

Turn now to your letter of 13th June (exhibit 24). Do you remember the day of that month that Bywaters returned to sea? — I fancy it was the 9th.

You are writing on the Tuesday following his departure—

I’m trying very hard — very very hard to B.B. I know my pal wants me to. On Thursday — he was on the ottoman at the foot of the bed and said he was dying and wanted to — he had another heart attack — thro me. Darlint I had to laugh at this because I knew it couldn’t be a heart attack.

On that Thursday (the day before Bywaters sailed) had there been a scene between you and your husband? — Yes, in the evening Mr Bywaters had taken me out to dinner. I arrived home later than I usually do, and my husband made a scene. He was on the ottoman.

Did he appear to have a heart attack? — Not to me, because I knew when he had a heart attack; it was entirely different. In the course of that scene he said he was dying and wanted to die. That scene which took place on the night before Bywaters sailed was entirely due to the fact that I had been out that night and did not return till late.

That is what you mean when you say “he had another heart attack — thro’ me”? — Yes, he said it was through me. Then you go on —

When he saw this had no effect on me — he got up and stormed — I said exactly what you told me to and he replied that he knew that’s what I wanted and he was not going to give it to me — it would make things far too easy for both of you (meaning you and me) especially for you he said.

What had you said to him while this storm was going on? — I asked him to give me my freedom, and I even went so far as to tell him I would give him the information to get it.

Look at your letter of 14th June (exhibit 53). You have told us that you were asking Bywaters in your letters what was aromatic tincture of opium and what was digitalin. In this letter you ask him —

Darlint, how can you get ptomaine poisoning from a tin of salmon? One of our boys’ mother has died with it after being ill only three days.

Had you anything sinister in your mind? — It was partly curiosity, and I was stating a fact about our boy’s mother.

In your letter of 20th June (exhibit 25) you say —

When you are not near darlint I wish we had taken the easiest way.

What was the “easiest way ” that you were referring to there? — Suicide.

Look now at your letter of 4th July (exhibit 26) —

Why arnt you sending me something — I wanted you to — you never do what I ask you darlint, you still have your own way always — if I don’t mind the risk why should you? Whatever happens can’t be any worse than this existence — looking forward to nothing and gaining only ashes and dust and bitterness.

What were you wishing Bywaters to understand by that paragraph? — I was asking him to send instead of bring something as he suggested.

Had you any particular thing in your mind? — Nothing at all.

In the postscript to that letter you say, “Have you studied bichloride of mercury? What had you in your mind when you wrote that? — Some days previously my husband had discussed with me a conversation that he had with his chemist friend about bichloride of mercury. He told me the chemist had given it to a girl in mistake, and had made her ill. Until my husband had discussed this with me I had never heard of bichloride of mercury, nor did I know any- thing about it.

Your husband having related this to you, you asked Bywaters whether he had studied it?— Out of curiosity I did. I never had any bichloride of mercury in my possession to my knowledge

Turn now to your letter of 28th August (exhibit 63) —

Darlingest boy, today is the 27th and it’s on a Sunday, so I am writing this in the bathroom. I always like to send you greetings on the day — not the day before or the day after. Fourteen whole months have gone by now, darlint, it’s so terribly long. Neither you nor I thought we should have to wait all that long time did we? altho’ I said I would wait 5 years — and I will darlint — it’s only 3 years and ten months now.

What did you mean by that — it is only three years and ten months to what? — To wait.

For what? — To live with Mr Bywaters or go away with him, or be with him only.

Had you made arrangement with Bywaters to wait for five years? —Yes.

What was to happen at the end of five years? — If he was not in a successful position to take me away or had not in the meantime found me something to go to — well, we should part.

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — The other witness’s story was that they wanted to commit suicide, and he said, “Put it off five years”, which seems to be the one sensible thing I have heard.

(To Witness) — Was that discussed when you wanted to commit suicide together, that you should put it off and wait. five years to see how he was getting on? — We might have discussed that, but I do not remember about it.

Examination continued — I was quite prepared to wait five years.

Will you turn to exhibit 28, where you say —

Yes, darlint you are jealous of him — but I want you to be — he has the right by law to all that you have the right to by nature and love — yes darlint be jealous, so much that you will do something desperate.

What do you mean by doing something desperate? — To take me away at any cost, to do anything to get me away from England.

Look at exhibit 60. Do you remember the day on which you wrote that letter? — I think it was probably on the Monday, 2nd October. I saw Bywaters on the Monday, but I could not be certain whether it was before or after the writing of the letter. On the Saturday I had told him of my engagement to go to the theatre on the Tuesday. It is quite probable that that engagement was made a fortnight before.

In that letter you say—

Darlint — do something tomorrow night will you? something to make you forget. I’ll be hurt I know, but I want you to hurt me— I do really— the bargain now seems so one-sided — so unfair — but how can I alter it.

“Tomorrow night ” was the night you were going to the theatre. What had Bywaters to forget?— That. I was going somewhere with my husband.

What was he to do to make him forget that? — I wanted him to take my sister Avis out.

You say, “I will be hurt, I know.” What did that mean? — I should have been hurt by Bywaters being with a lady other than myself.

In that letter you also say —

Darlingest find me a job abroad. I’ll go tomorrow and not say I was going to a soul and not have one little regret.

Did that really represent your feelings at that time, that you were prepared to go abroad with him at once? — Yes. We had discussed it on the Saturday.

Look at the end of that letter —

Don’t forget what we talked in the Tea Room, I’ll still risk and try if you will.

What had you discussed in the tearoom? — My freedom.

Had you at any time from the month of June, 1921, to the month of October of this year any desire for Bywaters to commit any injury on your husband? — None whatever. Bywaters returned from his last voyage on 23rd September, but I did not see him until Monday, the 25th. I saw him again during that week and at nine o’clock on Saturday, the 30th. I left him to do some shopping, and then I rejoined him and was with him until mid-day. We spent the morning in Wanstead Park. I did not see him again on the Saturday or the Sunday. I saw him on Monday, 2nd October, I think at 2.15, outside 168 Aldersgate Street, and we lunched together. After lunch I returned to business. I saw him again in Fuller’s about five o’clock that afternoon, and I believe I had a coffee with him. I stayed with him until about quarter to seven, when I returned home. I did not see him again that night.

During the time you were with Bywaters on the Saturday and the Monday, apart from discussing a separation, did you discuss your husband at all? — No, I did not.

Was there any mention or any indication of a possible assault being committed on him? — None whatever. On Tuesday, 3rd October, I went to business as usual, and I saw Bywaters about 12.30, when we lunched together. I saw him again about quarter-past five, and was with him for about quarter of an hour. After leaving him I met my husband in Aldersgate Street, and we went straight west — about quarter to six I think it was. We had a slight meal together before going to the theatre.

Did you anticipate, or had you any reason to think, that you would see Bywaters again that day or not? — None whatever. I had made arrangements to see him on the following day at lunch time at 168 Aldersgate Street.

Did you know where he was going to spend the evening of Tuesday, the 3rd? — Yes, with my people at Shakespeare Crescent, Manor Park.

Was your husband going to do anything the next day, the 4th? — Yes, we had arranged to meet a maid who was coming up from St. Ives, at Paddington station. That was a maid who was to come to relieve me of domestic duties, because I was working all day.

Had anything been said at all at your meetings with Bywaters on the 3rd about seeing him again that night? — Nothing at all.

Had he made any reference to your husband at all? — None at all. I spent the evening at the theatre, and came away with my husband. Leaving Ilford station with the 11.30 train from Liverpool Street, we walked along Belgrave Road. My husband and I were discussing going to a dance. I was trying to persuade him to take me to a dance a fortnight hence. When we got to Endsleigh Gardens a man rushed at me and knocked me aside. I was dazed. I do not remember anything about it, only being knocked aside. When I came to my senses I looked round for my husband, and I saw him some distance down the road. He seemed to be scuffling with someone, and he fell up against me and said “Oo’er.”

Did you take that to be an exclamation of pain from your husband? — I did. I helped him along by the side of the wall, and I think he slid down the wall on to the pavement. I looked at him and thought he was hurt.

Did you notice any blood coming from him? — Yes, from his mouth. I went to get a doctor, and going along the road I met a lady and gentleman coming towards me. I do not remember what I said to them, but I know that we went to a doctor, and then I came back to my husband with them. The doctor was a long time in coming, an awful long time.

You mean it seemed a long time to you? — It seemed a long time to me. When the doctor came I asked him if he could get my husband home, and he said, “He is dead.” I could not believe it, and I still entreated him to let me take him home. I cannot remember what else I said to him.

He did not come home that night? — No, they took him away.

We know from the evidence of Mrs Lester that you told her if they would have let you go with him you could have helped him? — Yes.

Did you still think after you had gone home that your husband was alive? — Yes, I could not realise he was dead.

Had you any idea at that time that your husband had been stabbed? — None whatever.

And the doctor does not seem to have noticed that when he came? — He did not tell me anything except that he was dead.

Had Bywaters ever at any time said anything to even suggest that he was likely to stab your husband? — Never. I did not know that he was possessed of a knife; I had never seen it until it was produced in these proceedings. On the morning of 4th October I was seen by Detective-Inspector Hall, first about eleven o’clock and then about twelve o’clock. I was asked to go to the station, and I went, and there I made a statement, which is exhibit 3, as the result of questions put to me and answers given by me.

Had you noticed the previous night the person with whom your husband was scuffling? — No, I had not.

After the scuffle did you see him running away? — I saw somebody running away, and I recognised the coat and hat.

Was that the coat and hat of the prisoner Bywaters? — Mr Bywaters. In my first statement (exhibit 3) I made no reference to Bywaters, because I was not asked about him. I remained at Ilford police station throughout the day of the 4th and the night. My mother was with me. On Thursday, 5th, I saw the prisoner Bywaters there. He was brought into the C.I.D. room where I was.* [*Filson Young annotates: ‘As usual, there is considerable contradiction and obscurity as to the exact methods of the police and the circumstances in which these important statements were obtained.] After that I made my second statement.

Why did you tell the officer you had not seen any one about in Belgrave Road? — I was very agitated, and I did not want to say anything against Mr Bywaters; I wanted to shield him.

Was it when you saw him at the police station that you detailed the full story? — No. I made my second statement, which is the true statement (exhibit 4) after Inspector Wensley had said to me, “It is no use your saying he did not do it; he has already told us he has.” The inspector then said to me, “Go back to the C.I.D. room and think about it, and I will come for you in half an hour.” When at the end of that half-hour Inspector Hall came to me I made my statement (exhibit 4).

You have told us when you were walking with your husband a man rushed at you and pushed you aside. Did you fall at all? — I think I must have done so. I have a recollection of getting up when I went to my husband. I had a large bump on my head, on the right side of my ear. That bruise was seen both by my mother and the matron at the police station. My mother remained with me at the police station until nine o’clock on the Thursday evening.

Had you the remotest idea that any attack was going to be made on your husband that night? — None whatever.

Or at any time? — Never at any time.

Cross-examined by the SOLICITOR-GENERAL — Have you any clear recollection now of what happened when your husband was killed? — Except what I have said; I was dazed.

Is exhibit 4, the short statement, everything you remember, and is it true? — It is true.

Was the statement you made to the police, which I will read to you, your recollection at the time, or was it deliberately untrue —

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

Now, did you intend to tell an untruth then about the incident? — Yes.

Was that to shield Bywaters? — It was.

In your statement you say —

We were coming along Belgrave Road and just past the corner of Endsleigh Gardens when I heard him call out ‘Oo’er’ and he fell up against me.

Does that not suggest that he was taken ill, and that nobody was present? — Yes.

Did you intend, when you said that, to tell an untruth? — It was an untruth.

And you intended it to be an untruth? — I did, but I do not mean it was an untruth that he said “Oo’er” and fell up against me.

It is an untruth in so far as it suggests that that was the first thing that happened? — That is so.

Was that again to shield Bywaters? — It was.

At the time you made this statement to the police you knew that it was Bywaters who had done it? — I did. I do not know what you mean by “done it.” I did not know then that anything was actually done. When I say I knew it was Bywaters, I mean that I recognised his coat and his hat going away.

Then you left out the truth in order to shield Bywaters? — Yes, that is so.

You knew if you told the truth Bywaters would be suspected ? — I did.

In your statement (exhibit 4) you say —

I was dazed for a moment. When I recovered I saw my husband scuffling with a man.

Is that the truth? — It is.

Then did you watch your husband and Bywaters scuffling together? — I did not watch them; I saw them. When I say “scuffling” I mean that I saw my husband swaying, moving about.

And the man there with him? — There was somebody with him; they were some distance ahead of me.

And the two were in contest or pushing? — That is so.

Or fighting? — That is so.

Did you see them fighting? — Scuffling. That is my explanation, moving about.

By Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — Did you see either of them strike a blow? — It was dark; I could not.

Cross-examination continued — Was it all over in a moment?— As far as I can recollect.

Then it would not be right to say that you watched them? — Oh, I did not. I mean that I saw the two men together, and it was over.

The next sentence in your statement (exhibit 4) is —

The man who I know as Freddy Bywaters was running away. He was wearing a blue overcoat and a grey hat. I knew it was him although I did not see his face.

Do you mean by that that you recognised this man whom you only saw at a distance in the dark in front of you — that you only recognised him by his overcoat and his hat? — I did, by his back.

Do you really suggest that? — I do.

Did you not know at the beginning, as soon as something happened, that it was Bywaters? — I had no idea.

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — There is her statement to the doctor, she said somebody had flashed by.

Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — It was to Miss Pittard and Mr Cleveley.

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — “Someone flew past and when I went to speak to my husband.” “Someone flew past” was the expression, and Cleveley’s words were “someone flew past and he fell down.”

Cross-examination continued — Supposing these two witnesses are correctly repeating what you said to them, is that a correct impression, that “somebody flew past”? — I have no recollection of saying that. I was in a dazed condition.

Is that a correct impression on your mind, that someone flew past? — No.

All you say is that when you recovered your senses and saw someone in front of you, you knew it was Bywaters? — I did when he started to move away.

Had you any doubt when you were asked by the police about it that it was Bywaters who was there and was the man? — No, I had not.

May I take it that when you made the long statement (exhibit 3) you left out Bywaters’ name in order to shield him? — I did so.

Did you also say this in the statement: “I have always been on affectionate terms with my husband”? – I cannot say that I actually said that. The statement was made as question and answer.

I think it was read over to you and you signed it? – It might have been, yes.

At any rate, is the statement true or untrue? — It is untrue.

If you left Bywaters out of that statement in order to shield him, were you afraid that if you brought his name into it he would be suspected? — I was not afraid of anything. I left it out entirely.

Why? What were you afraid of if you did not know your husband had been stabbed? — I was not afraid of anything.

What were you going to shield him from? — To have his name brought into it.

Were you not going to shield him from a charge of having murdered your husband? — I did not know my husband was murdered.

Did you not know that your husband had been assaulted and murdered? — The inspector told me, but I did not realise even at that time that he was dead.

Inspector Hall had told you then that your husband was dead? – He had.

When you told those untruths and left out Bywaters, were you not attempting to shield him from a charge of having murdered your husband? — I did not even know my husband had been murdered. When I say that I did not know, I mean that I did not realise it.

I will ask you again, what were you attempting to shield Bywaters from? — From being connected with me — his name being brought into anything.

Now, Mrs Thompson, is it not the fact that you knew that Bywaters was going to do something on this evening and that these two false statements were an attempt to prevent the police getting wind of it? — That is not so.

Now I will go back to the early stages of your relationship with Bywaters. Do you agree with me that it was in June of 1921 that you first fell in love with Bywaters? — No, I did not.

Do you put it in November? — September, I said.

Look at your letter of 28th August, 1922 (exhibit 63), where you say —

Fourteen whole months have gone by now, darlint, it’s so terribly long. Neither you nor I thought we should have to wait all that long time.

Does that not satisfy you that you and Bywaters declared love to each other in June, 1921? — Not at all.

You deny that? — Yes.

When did you first begin to address him as your lover? — It is just what you mean by “your lover.”

The terms in which a woman does not write to any man except her husband? — I cannot remember.

Did you from the first time you realised you were in love with Bywaters take an aversion to your husband? — For the first time, did you say?

Did you ever take an aversion to your husband? — I did.

Can you tell me the date? — I think it was in 1918.

Then both before and after you and Bywaters fell in love with each other you hated — is that too strong a word — your husband? — It is too strong.

Did your aversion to him become greater when you fell in love with Bywaters? — I think not.

Were you happy with him after you fell in love with Bywaters? — I never was happy with him.

Did you behave to him as if you were happy? — On occasions, yes.

Did your husband repeatedly ask you if you were happy? — He did.

And did you tell him you were happy? — I did.

Was that to deceive him? — It was to satisfy him more than to deceive him.

Did you seriously at that time intend to leave your husband or to give him cause for divorce? — I did.

Did you ever tell him you had given him cause for divorce? — I did.

When, for the first time? — I cannot remember.

Were you afraid your husband would find out anything between you and Bywaters? — What do you mean by “anything”?

Were you frightened that your husband would find out anything between you and Bywaters? — Except that we were meeting and he might come and prevent us meeting.

But if you had told your husband that you had given him ground for divorce, what were you afraid of beyond that? — I was afraid of my husband coming to my place of business and making scenes as he had threatened.

You had told your husband that you had been unfaithful to him, or would be unfaithful to him, and given him grounds for divorce? — I did.

Had he made scenes at your business when you told him that? — No, he did not, but he had threatened to do so.

What was the risk you were running, the risk you so often mentioned to Bywaters? Look at your letter of 4th July (exhibit 26). —

Why arnt you sending me something — I wanted you to — you never do what I ask you darlint — you still have your own way always — If I don’t mind the risk why should you?

What risk? — That was the risk of Mr Bywaters sending me something instead of bringing something.

Why was that a risk? — Well, it would be a risk for me to receive anything.

Not a risk to receive a letter? — I did not say a letter.

What was it? — Whatever Mr Bywaters suggested.

Why should you think there was a risk in his sending you something? — I did not know that I should personally receive it.

Why should there be a risk in a friend or even a lover sending you a letter or a present? — I did not say it was a letter.

What was it? — Something Mr Bywaters suggested.

Did he suggest it was a dangerous thing? — No.

Why did you think it was a dangerous thing? — I did not think it was a dangerous thing.

Why did you think there was a risk? — There was a risk to anything he sent me that did not come to my hands first.

Did you think it was because somebody would think there was a liaison going on between you and him? — No, only you would not like anything private being opened by somebody previous to yourself.

You were afraid somebody might have thought there were improper relations between you and him. Is that what you are ‘ referring to? — No.

I understand you did not mind your husband knowing you and Mr Bywaters were lovers? — We wanted him to realise it.

The more it came to the knowledge of your husband the more likely you were to achieve your design of divorce or separation; is that the fact? — No, that is not so. The more it came to his knowledge the more he would refuse to give it me; he had told me that.

In the passage I have read you were asking Bywaters to send something which he had said, according to you, he was going to bring? — That is so.

What was it? — I have no idea.

Have you no idea? —

Except what he told me.

What did he tell you? — He would bring me something.

Did he not say what the something was? — No, he did not mention anything.

What did he lead you to think it was? — That it was something for me to give my husband.

With a view to poisoning your husband? — That was not the idea, that was not what I expected.

Something to give your husband that would hurt him? — To make him ill.

And it was a risk for your lover to send, and for you to receive, something of that sort? — It was a risk for him to send me anything he did not know came to my hands first.

And a special risk to send you something to make your husband ill. You appreciate that? — Yes, I suppose it was.

You were urging Bywaters to send it instead of bringing it? — That is so.

Was that in order that it might be used more quickly? — I wrote that in order to make him think I was willing to do anything he might suggest, to enable me to retain his affections.

Mrs Thompson, is that quite a frank explanation of this urging him to send instead of bring? — It is, absolutely. I wanted him to think I was eager to help him.

By Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — Eager to do what? — Eager to help him in doing anything he suggested.

That does not answer the question, you know.

Cross-examination continued — He suggested giving your husband something to hurt him? — He had given me something.

Given you something to give your husband ? — That is so.

Did the suggestion then come from Bywaters? — It did.

Did the suggestion come in a letter or in a conversation? — I cannot remember.

Did you welcome it when it came? — I read it.

What? — I read it and I studied it.

Did you welcome the suggestion that something should be given to your husband to make him ill? — I did not.

Did you object to it? — I was astonished about it.

Did you object to it? — I did, at the time.

And although you objected to it you urged Bywaters to send it more quickly than he intended ? — I objected at the time. Afterwards I acquiesced.

From the time you acquiesced did you do all you could to assist Bywaters to find something which would make your husband ill? — I did not.

Did you try to prevent him from finding something to make your husband ill? — I could not prevent him; he was not in England.

Did you try? — I do not see how I could have tried.

Did you discourage him? — I did, at first.

And afterwards did you encourage him? — No.

Look at your letter of 1st April (exhibit 17). What is the meaning of the injunction in that letter, “Don’t keep this piece”? — I cannot remember now.

Shall I help you to remember, if you read the next passage? — It may not have referred to that piece.

Look at the original letter. You see that that injunction is written on the top of a new page? — Yes.

Did you intend Bywaters not to keep that piece of paper? — No.

“Don’t keep this piece”? — I think you will see there has been something attached to that piece of paper. There are distinctly two pin marks there.

You dispute my suggestion to you that “Don’t keep this paper ” refers to the piece on which the following is written? — I do.

Look at the next paragraph. It is about giving your husband something bitter. I think you told your learned counsel that was an imaginary incident? — Yes.

Do you mean that you imagined it, or that your husband did? — I imagined it. Do you mean you invented the incident altogether for Bywaters’ information? — I did .

Can you tell me what the object of that was? — Still to make him think I had done what he suggested.

By Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — Had done what? Given your husband something? — Yes.

Cross-examination continued — Was it with the same object that you wrote the paragraph lower down, “Don’t tell Dan.” You say —

What I mean is don’t let him be suspicious of you regarding that — because if we were successful in the action —

Does that refer to the proposal that Bywaters had made, that you should make your husband ill? — I think not.

What do you think it refers to? — The action of my going away to live with him unmarried.

I’m going to try the glass again occasionally — when it is safe. I’ve got an electric light globe this time.

When was it likely to be safe? — There was no question of it being safe; I was not going to try it.

Why did you tell Bywaters you were going to try it when it was safe? — Still to let him think I was willing to do what he wanted.

You are representing that this young man was seriously suggesting to you that you should poison and kill your husband? — I did not suggest it.

I thought that was the suggestion? — I did not suggest that.

What was your suggestion? — He said he would give him something.

By Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — Give him something in his food; you answered my question a little while ago that it was to give him something to make him ill? — That is what I surmised, that I should give him something so that when he had a heart attack he would not be able to resist it.

You are suggesting now that it was Bywaters who was suggesting that to you? — Yes.

And you did not do it? — No, never.

Cross-examination continued — Why were you urging Bywaters to do something if the suggestion really came from him? In your letter of 10th February (exhibit 15) your first sentence is, “You must do something this time” ? — I was not referring to that at all. I was referring to him getting me something to do, a position of some sort abroad.

Let us see what the rest of the letter was. The fourth paragraph is the one that relates to the incident of your husband waking up and asking you for water as he was feeling ill. Was that a true incident? — Absolutely true.

Why did you hunt for the prescription? Was that to prevent a similar incident? — Probably. I did not think it was wise for him to do those things.

Was your anxiety so that you should get hold of the prescription and avert the catastrophe of taking an overdose? — Yes.

Do you mean you were really frightened about your husband’s overdose? — I was.

Then can you explain to me the meaning of the next sentence —

I told Avis about the incident only I told her as if it frightened and worried me as I thought perhaps it might be useful at some future time that I had told somebody.

Was it true that you were frightened and worried, or was it acting? — No, that was true.

You were frightened and worried? — I was.

Why did you take special pains to tell Avis as if you were frightened and worried? — I was worried and frightened and told my sister.

Why was it likely to be useful to pretend that you were frightened and worried? — If anything had happened to my husband it would have been much better for somebody else to know besides myself.

And you thought it would have been much better for you, if you poisoned your husband, if you professed anxiety to Avis previously? — I had no intention of ever poisoning my husband.

Look at the next paragraph —

What do you think, darlint. His sister Maggie came in last night and he told her [I suppose “he” is your husband?] so now there are two witnesses, although I wish he hadn’t told her but left me to do it.

Now, that is to say you wanted again to create the impression that you were frightened by your husband’s attacks? — I did not want to create the impression. I was frightened.

It would be so easy darlint — if I had things— I do hope I shall.

What would be easy? — I was asking or saying it would be better if I had things as Mr Bywaters suggested I should have.

What would be easy? — To administer them as he suggested.

“I do hope I shall.” Was that acting or was that real? — That was acting for him.

You were acting to Bywaters that you wished to destroy your husband’s life? — I was.

By Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — One moment, I do not want to be mistaken. Did I take you down rightly as saying, “I wanted him to think I was willing to take my husband’s life” ? — I wanted him to think I was willing to do what he suggested.

That is to take your husband’s life? — Not necessarily.

Cross-examination continued — To injure your husband at any rate? — To make him ill.

What was the object of making him ill? — I had not discussed the special object.

What was in your heart the object of making him ill? So that he should not recover from his heart attacks? — Yes, that was certainly the impression, yes.

 

The Court adjourned.

 

Fourth Day— Saturday, 9th December, 1922.

Mrs EDITH JESSIE THOMPSON (prisoner on oath), recalled, cross-examination continued — Be good enough to turn to your letter of 14th March (exhibit 20), and look at this passage—

The mail came in 12 noon, and I thought I would be able to talk to you after then — but I don’t think I can. Will you do all the thinking and planning for me darlint — for this thing — be ready with every little detail when I see you — because you know more about this thing than I, and I am relying on you for all plans and instructions — only just the act I’m not. I’m wanting that man to lean on now darlint, and I shall lean hard — so be prepared.

You told me yesterday that you were anxious to let Bywaters know that you were prepared to do anything for him? — Yes.

And that he was lying to you, or you thought he was lying to you, suggesting harming your husband? — Yes.

And you were writing back to him letting him think that you agreed with him. When you say in the letter, “Will you do all the thinking and planning for me, darlint — for this thing,” you meant the poisoning which Bywaters had suggested? — I did not.

What was “this thing” ? — The thing I referred to was my going away with him.

Did “the act” that you refer to mean leaving your husband? — “The act” meant actually going with him. I wanted him to make the arrangements regarding the passage, and all the details that would be entailed in my leaving England.

At any rate, it does not mean suicide? — No, it does not mean that. It means what I have just told you.

Further on you say, “Why not go to 231, darlint?” That is your old home? — That is my mother’s house.

I think you ought to go as usual, it would be suspicious later if you stopped away without a reason known to them and there is not a reason is there?

Why would it be suspicious if he stayed away from your mother’s house? — Because he was in the habit of going there when he came home.

But if you were to leave your husband, discovery would be inevitable? — Discovery, not necessarily with him though — to leave my husband with him.

Do you mean you were going to leave your husband and try and keep from your people and everybody else that you had gone away with Bywaters ? — That was my intention; that is what I thought about.

Now, the next sentence but one — “Darlint, about making money— yes, we must somehow, and what does it matter how — when we have accomplished that one thing.” What was “that one thing”? — To get away from England.

At any rate, whatever “that one thing” means, it had been a subject of discussion between you and Bywaters? — Yes, my leaving England.

You agree that you and he had discussed this “one thing”? — Yes. That letter was written on 14th March, and addressed to Plymouth.

Bywaters arrived in England on 17th March? — Yes.

Do you remember whether you discussed with him when he came the same thing that that letter refers to? — Probably I did. It was the subject of discussion always.

When he was at home, did that incident happen which you speak of as “the Sunday morning escapade” in your letter of 1st April (exhibit 17), written to Bywaters at Bombay? He had left this country, if I may remind you, on 31st March. While he was at home, between 17th and 31st March, did that incident happen when your husband spoke about tea tasting bitter? — My husband never spoke of tea tasting bitter.

Do you adhere to your statement that this is an invention? — Absolutely.

Do you notice that you put it in inverted commas,  “ Sunday morning escapade ”? — Yes.

Why did you put those words in inverted commas if Bywaters did not know what they meant? — Well, that is what I called it — that is why I used inverted commas.

Were you not referring in that paragraph to something which you and Bywaters had discussed and which had happened while he was at home? — Nothing had happened.

At the end of the paragraph you say’ —

Now I think whatever else I try it in again will still taste bitter — he will recognise it and be more suspicions still and if the quantity is still not successful it will injure any chance I may have of trying when you come home.

Does that mean trying to poison your husband? — That is what I wanted him to infer.

You were wanting him to entertain the hope that when he next came home you would try again to poison your husband? — I wanted to convey that impression to his mind by the letter, although I never intended to do such a thing.

Is it the fact that, whether that incident is an actual incident or not, what you were speaking of in that paragraph as something you were going to try had been discussed between you and him when you were together? — Yes.

Turn to your letter of 1st May (exhibit 19), and look at this sentence —

You said it was enough for an elephant. Perhaps it was. But you don’t allow for the taste making only a small quantity to be taken.It sounded like a reproach; was it meant to be?

Had he in his letter to which that was an answer again referred to this plan of poisoning your husband? — He probably had. That was in answer to his question.

Had he also told you that you must be very careful in anything you did not to leave any traces, any finger marks, on the boxes? — Yes, he did.

Had he also written to you again about the bitter taste? In a paragraph further down you say

Now your letter tells me about the bitter taste again.

That sentence speaks for itself. Then lower down —

Our Boy had to have his thumb operated on because he had a piece of glass in it that’s what made me try that method again — but I suppose as you say he is not normal.

Was not this proposal of poisoning your husband mentioned in every letter that Bywaters wrote you? — I think not.

In many letters? — I will not say how many; I don’t remember.

In some? — Probably.

Was it not also mentioned between you and him whenever he came back to England? — I cannot say that for certain; I don’t remember.

Do you not ever remember that he spoke to you about it? — Perhaps on one occasion. On several occasions? — I cannot say how many.

Was it you who first mentioned the book “Bella Donna” to Bywaters? — I had read that book, but I cannot say who mentioned it first. We had discussed books we were going to read and had read.

Is the story of “Bella Donna” about a woman who married her husband and went out to Egypt? — Yes.

When they were going out to Egypt on the ship, did they meet a man called Baroudi? — They did.

Did the woman, Mrs Chepstow, in that story feel attracted by the comfort and the pleasures that Baroudi could give her? — I believe she did.

Did she arrange a plot to poison her husband by slow doses, in order that she might get away to Baroudi? — I cannot say if she arranged it.

There was a plot right at the end of the book. There is a plot, which is really the plot of the story, to poison her husband, without anybody finding out what she was doing?— It is a matter of opinion whether that is absolutely the plot, is it not?

Anyway, that is an important incident in the book? — At the end, yes.

Did she almost accomplish that plot or design of poisoning her husband, until it was discovered at the end by an old friend? — I really cannot remember.

At any rate, you do remember that it was an important incident in the book, that Mrs Chepstow should get rid of her husband so that she might go to another man? — I do not know if it mentions that she should get rid of him to go to another man. I do not remember that being mentioned in the book.

Look at your letter of 18th May (exhibit 22), where you write this extract from “Bella Donna” — “ ‘It must be remembered that digitalin is a cumulative poison and that the same dose harmless if taken once, yet frequently repeated, becomes deadly.’ The above passage I’ve just come across in a book I am reading “Bella Donna” by Robert Hichens. Is it any use?” You agree with me that that was a suggestion which you thought of to make to Bywaters? — I wanted him to think by that that I was still agreeing to fall in with the plan which he suggested.

Were you going to undeceive Bywaters and let him realise that you were not anxious to poison your husband? — I never was anxious to poison my husband.

When were you going to undeceive Bywaters? — I never studied it — I never thought about it.

Did you deceive Bywaters right up to his last visit to England? — I had never any intention whatever of poisoning my husband.

I will take that from you for the moment.

What I was asking you was this: you told me that you deceived Bywaters because you wanted to keep his love? — That is so.

You deceived him into thinking that you wanted to poison your husband? — Yes.

Did you continue that deception right up to his visit to England a few days before the murder? — I had never told him.

Did you continue to let him think that you were prepared to poison your husband? — I never mentioned the subject. I suppose he thought I was still wanting to do so.

Turn to your, letter (exhibit 60) (about 1st October), the last sentence —

Don’t forget what we talked in the Tea Room, I’ll still risk and try if you will.

Was that in connection with the same matter, the idea of poisoning your husband? — No, that was not. What we talked of in the tea-room was getting me a post abroad.

Look at the sentence immediately above that where you say “He’s still well.” Is “he” your husband? — No. That refers to a bronze monkey I have. He’s going to gaze all day long at you in your temporary home — after Wednesday.

Wednesday was 4th October? — Yes. The temporary home was a sketch of the ship “Morea” which I was having framed.

Thursday, 5th October, was the day when Bywaters’ leave ended? — I do not know. “After Wednesday” meant when I had received the sketch of the “Morea” framed. It was to be finished on the Wednesday.

At any rate I suggest to you that your statement, “ I will still risk and try if you will,” referred to the same matter which you had mentioned so often in the letters, the risk of using poison or force to your husband? — I had never mentioned force to my husband.

But you had mentioned it to Bywaters? — Mentioned what?

Using force, something to hurt your husband? — I never mentioned the word “force.”

Did you not mention the subject to Bywaters ? — I do not understand what you mean.

Did you never mention in conversation with Bywaters at these tearoom visits, on 29th September, 2nd October, and 9th October [sic, but must be 3rd October?], the proposal of hurting your husband or of poisoning him? — I had not done so.

Did Bywaters never refer to all these letters that had passed between you and him containing that proposal? — I cannot say that he did. He probably did not; we did not discuss the letters when he was at home.

The SOLICITOR-GENERAL — That is all I have to ask.

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — Do you cross-examine, Mr Whiteley?

Mr CECIL WHITELEY — No, my lord, I ask no question.

Mr JUSTICE SHEA R MAN — You know you have the right to cross- examine.

Mr CECIL WHITELEY — Yes, my lord.

Re-examined by Sir HENRY Curtis-Bennett — The little bronze monkey stands on my desk and is referred to in several of my letters.

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — “He’s still well” means the monkey?

Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — Yes. (To Witness) —

He’s still well. He is going to gaze all day long at you in your temporary home —

that is the picture of the ship “Morea” which when framed was going to stand upon your desk where the monkey was? — Yes.

You have been asked some questions about Robert Hichens’ “ Bella Donna.” Was Baroudi in that book a wealthy man or a poor man? — A very wealthy man.

Was Nigel, the husband of Bella Donna, a wealthy man or a poor man? — I believe he was a wealthy man.

As far as you know had Bywaters any money outside his pay? — None at all.

Did you know how much that was? — I had a rough idea — about £200 a year, I think.

Was your husband a better off man than that? — Not very much better. I believe he got about £6 a week.

Did you support yourself? — I did, absolutely.

If you had run away with Bywaters would you have been able to remain at Carlton & Priors? Or was it your intention to get employment elsewhere? — Yes. I had been for many years with Carlton & Prior and my remuneration was a substantial one — £6 a week and bonuses.

That being the position of you, Bywaters, and your husband, as compared with Bella Donna, Baroudi and Mrs Chepstow’s husband, I again put to you your description of the woman Bella Donna in your letter of 14th July (exhibit 52) — “She doesn’t seem a woman to me — she seems abnormal — a monster utterly selfish and self -living.” Is that your true idea of that woman? — Absolutely.

So much for “Bella Donna.” You have been asked some questions as to a paragraph which appears in your letter of 14th March (exhibit 20) — “ Why not go to 231 darlint, I think you ought to go as usual, it would be suspicious later if you stopped away without a reason known to them and there is not a reason is there? As far as you knew had your parents or family any suspicion that you were in love with Bywaters or he with you? — Not as far as I knew.

Until you finally left with him, if you ever did run away with him, did you want your parents to know of this affection or this love between you? — I did not want them to know.

So in this letter you are telling him to keep visiting 231? — That is so.

You were also asked some questions about a paragraph in your letter of 10th February (exhibit 15), referring to an illness of your husband. You were asked whether you were genuinely frightened and worried about your husband’s illness, and you said that you were. Apropos of that I want to ask you a question about the aromatic tincture of opium. Who was it that found the bottle of aromatic tincture of opium? — My sister.

Were you present when that was destroyed? — Yes.

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — She said yesterday that she did not know what had become of the bottle.

Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — The contents were destroyed. (To Witness) — Was it with your concurrence that that was destroyed? — It was.

When Bywaters was away from 9th June until 23rd September of this year, were you getting as many letters from him as previously? —No.

What did you think from that? — I thought he was gradually drifting away from me.

Did you still love him very much? — I did.

Where were the letters which you received from Bywaters addressed to? — 168 Aldersgate Street, my place of business.

For how long were they written there? — Right up till the beginning of the last voyage, I think.

Where else were they written to? — The G.P.O. in the name of Miss P. Fisher.

Why did you not want them written to your home address? — I did not want my husband to see them.

Whenever Bywaters’ name was mentioned, or whenever your husband found that you had been meeting Bywaters, what happened as far as he was concerned? — There was usually a scene.

And to prevent the risk of such a scene the letters were sent to these other places? — That is so.

Now, one or two questions about the night of 3rd October and the early morning of the 4th. You told my learned friend that you were pushed aside and you think you fell down? — Yes.

When you fell down did you receive any injury that you found out afterwards? — I had a large bump on the right-hand side of my head.

That would be the side where the wall was, where you were walking? — Yes.

Have you any idea how long you were upon the ground? — Not the faintest.

Then you told my learned friend that when you looked down the street some little distance you saw your husband scuffling with some one? — That is so.

When you saw him scuffling with someone at that time did you recognise who the other person was? — I did not.

Did you ever on that night see the face of the person who was scuffling with your husband? — Never.

When was the first time that night that you saw something about that person who had been scuffling with your husband which made you think who it was? — He was going away.

After he had separated from your husband? — Yes.

He was going away from your husband and away from you? — Yes. It was the coat and hat that I recognised.

Had you any idea that night or early morning that your husband had been stabbed? — None at all.

As far as you could, from the moment you got up to your husband, did you do everything you could for him? — Everything I possibly could.

AVIS ETHEL GRAYDON, examined by Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — I am the sister of the prisoner Mrs Thompson, and I live with my parents at 231 Shakespeare Crescent, Manor Park. On Easter Monday of this year we were knocking apart a grand piano case in Mr Thompson’s garden. Mr Thompson hit his first finger and said to me, “Will you go up to my room, to my medicine chest, and get me a bottle of New Skin.” I went up, and I saw something in the medicine chest that attracted my attention — a large bottle of tincture of opium. (Shown bottle, exhibit 6l). It was a larger bottle than that, about half a pint. I did not touch it. I came down with the New Skin, and I went into the morning room and said to my sister, who was sitting by the fire, “There is a bottle of opium in Percy’s medicine chest. Nip up and get it.” I then went out and put the New Skin on my brother-in-law’s finger. He told me to take it back, which I did, and I then found that the bottle of opium had gone. I came downstairs again and asked my sister, “Have you taken that bottle of opium as I asked you?” and she said “Yes.” I asked her where it was, and she said, “On the side there — on the sideboard.” I said, “I will do away with this, so there can be no more trouble,” and I took the bottle and went to the scullery and poured the contents of the bottle down the sink. I then put the bottle in the fire in the morning room.

I want to draw your attention to a letter which has been read — Mrs Thompson’s letter of 13th June (exhibit 24) —

I rang Avis yesterday and she said he had come down there in a rage and told Dad everything — about all the rows we have had over you — but she did not mention he said anything about the first real one on August 1st — so I suppose he kept that back to suit his own ends. Dad said it was a disgraceful thing that you should come between husband and wife and I ought to be ashamed. Darlint I told you this is how they would look at it — they don’t understand and they never will any of them. Dad was going to talk to me, Avis said — but I went down and nothing whatever was said by any of them. I told Avis I shd tell them off if they said anything to me. I didn’t go whining to my people when he did things I didnt approve of, and I didn’t expect him to — but however nothing was said at all. Dad said to them ‘What a scandal if it should get in the papers’, so evidently he suggested drastic measures to them.

Is there any truth in that at all? — There is none whatever.

Did you ever tell her anything like that at all? — I did not.

Did it ever happen?— It did not.

My Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — It follows therefore that your sister invented the whole of this? — Yes, it is pure imagination on my sister’s part.

Examination continued — I remember the evening of 3rd October, the night when Mr Thompson died. Mr Bywaters was at my father and mother’s house that evening, and I was at home. I should think he left about ten minutes to eleven or eleven o’clock. I had known Mr Bywaters for roughly four years. As I was letting him out of the door on that Tuesday night he said to me, “I will be down to take you to the pictures tomorrow evening.” That arrangement was made by him just as I was letting him out of the door. My brother-in-law told me that he and my sister were to meet their maid from Cornwall at Paddington station at five o’clock on the Wednesday evening, the next evening. The name of the maid was Ethel Vernon White, and in fact she arrived the next night.

Mrs ETHEL JESSIE GRAYDON, examined by Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — The prisoner Mrs Thompson is my daughter. I live at 231 Shakespeare Crescent, Manor Park. During the the whole of the day of the 4th October I was with my daughter at the police station. I was also with her on 3th October until she was charged. She complained to me then, two or three times, about a bump on her head. I put my hand over the place where she told me it was, and I felt a bump there.

Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — That is the case for Mrs Thompson.

Closing Speech for the Prisoner Bywaters

Mr CECIL WHITELEY — May it please your lordship; Members of the jury, the time has now arrived for me to perform the last part of the duty that has been assigned to me in presenting to you the defence to this charge of wilful murder against Frederick Bywaters. Members of the jury, I do so with considerable and with deeply felt anxiety. That anxiety is not caused from any feeling, nor have I any doubt, that you and each one of you are determined to see that, so far as he is concerned, so far as the other prisoner is concerned, justice will be done. The anxiety arises rather from the unprecedented and extraordinary way in which the case has been presented by the prosecution, so that you must have great difficulty, when you come to consider the whole of this case, in dealing with the evidence that the prosecution has seen fit to present to you.

There is no dispute, and ever since the evening of 5th October there has been no dispute, that Percy Thompson met his death owing to a blow inflicted on him by Frederick Bywaters. That being the case, and there having been the evidence with regard to the event on that night, it is one of those cases which, if brought under ordinary circumstances, would have been left to the hands of the junior counsel for the prosecution, my learned friend, Mr Roland Oliver. The case is straight and simple. The facts of the death proved, the whole question for the jury would have been whether they were justified from those facts in finding a verdict of wilful murder, or of manslaughter, or some other verdict. But no. In this case the prosecution has seen fit to introduce, so far as Bywaters is concerned, a mass of evidence which I submit is really irrelevant.

Is it the case for the prosecution here to-day that Mrs Thompson administered poison to her husband? Is it the case for the prosecution that Mrs Thompson administered broken glass to her husband? Is it the case for the prosecution that Mrs Thompson had incited Frederick Bywaters to murder her husband? If so, why not try those issues? Why not bring such evidence as they have on those issues and let there be a straightforward issue between the Crown and Mrs Thompson? Perhaps you will be surprised to hear that in this Court to-day there was another indictment in which charges were made against Mrs Thompson, one of the counts including a charge of conspiring with Bywaters to murder her husband, and the other charging her with the particular offence. Having regard to the evidence that you have heard and the Home Office report that must have been in the hands of the prosecution when the indictment was brought forward, one can perhaps understand why those two charges were not entered into against Mrs Thompson. I ask, why were not those counts proceeded with? The reason is that the Court of Appeal have to decide an issue of life or death, and in a case so serious as murder their attention would be drawn to the evidence. Why was it done? In order to convict Frederick Bywaters of murder the prosecution had to satisfy the jury that when that blow was struck Bywaters had an intent to kill, an intent preceding the act. This presumption is rebutted by the facts before you. In this case what the prosecution have done is this — having found their difficulty in proving those counts in the other indictment, they decided to introduce her into this indictment and charge her as a principal in the alleged murder committed by Frederick Bywaters, and in order to induce you to convict her they decided to bring the whole of that evidence, but they considered that would be useless to them until they could show she was acting in concert with Bywaters. The Court of Criminal Appeal have decided that a case of murder is so serious that the attention of the jury should be drawn to that fact, and that fact alone. What a farce! In spite of the decision of the prosecution regarding those counts the prosecution are willing to wound and yet afraid to strike. Knowing what their case was against Mrs Thompson, they put in a mass of correspondence which is entirely irrelevant to the issue, and in that way they associate Mrs Thompson with the other prisoner. They have tried, by introducing evidence relating, as I submit, to counts in the other indictment, to make her equally guilty of the death of Thompson, but they cannot do that unless they satisfy you that Bywaters was acting in concert with her. The case for the prosecution, so far as she is concerned, is that she was present when the alleged murder took place, and that she aided, abetted, and assisted Bywaters in that murder, and that she counselled, procured, and commanded him to commit it. Of course, if they succeed in satisfying you, members of the jury, on evidence that you can accept in law, then she is equally responsible for the murder.

Members of the jury, the tragedy in this case, the poignant tragedy so far as Bywaters is concerned, is that there is sitting next to him in that box one who is charged jointly with him, one who is dearer to him than his own life. One would have thought that the position of an accused man on a charge of murder was quite difficult enough without it being thought necessary in the interests of public justice that at the same time of his trial the woman should have been charged with him. You may have noticed that I asked no question of Mrs Thompson, although I was entitled to do so. Why did I not? For this simple reason: my instructions, and those given to my learned friend, were that neither by word nor deed, in conducting this case on behalf of this man, should a word be said by us, or any action taken by us, which would in any way hamper the defence of Mrs Thompson. That was the position when Bywaters was called into the witness-box. That being the state of his mind, it was an anxiety that nothing he should say should in any way hurt Mrs Thompson. Yet he had to go through the torture of being cross-examined, the whole object being, in some way or other, to get evidence to connect these two together before the fatal evening of 3rd October. Happily for Mrs Thompson, and it is a matter of satisfaction to Bywaters, she is in the able hands of my learned friend, Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett. I hope that nothing I say will hamper him in the way he is putting her case before you.

In my submission to you, the first, and perhaps the most important, question you have to decide is this — was there or was there not any agreement between Mrs Thompson and Frederick Bywaters to murder Percy Thompson on the evening of 3rd October? Was it a preconcerted meeting, or was it not? I shall next ask you to try to eliminate from your minds altogether the facts and the evidence as to what happened that evening. The prosecution are asking you to say that before these events there was a cruel conspiracy between these two persons for which they could have been prosecuted in this Court. What evidence is there of that agreement and conspiracy? What evidence is there that Bywaters was a party to any such agreement?

Just consider the difference between the personalities of these two people sitting in the box. On the one hand you have Mrs Thompson, a woman who, at the time that she met Bywaters in the Isle of Wight, last June, had lieen married for no less than seven years — an emotional, hysterical woman, a woman with a vivid imagination, and one who for some years had been living very unhappily with her husband. She becomes infatuated with a young man no less than eight years her junior. On the other hand you have a young man who at that time was nineteen years old, on the threshold of a life that had every prospect of being successful. These two are drawn together. This man — this boy — full of life, falls in love with the woman. My learned friend, the Solicitor- General, made use of the expression that there was a guilty passion between these two persons. This is not a Court of morals, and whatever view may be taken of the relationship between them from a sexual point of view is absolutely irrelevant. These two persons fall in love and declare their love with one another. On the one hand there is a married woman, whose husband is unwilling to divorce her, and on the other hand a young man whose duty takes him to sea the greater part of the year. I do not suppose it will be suggested that when he went away on 9th September, or again on 11th November, or in June, there was any conspiracy between the two. I submit that the letters between February and March do not suggest that Bywaters was lending himself to any suggestion that Mrs Thompson’s husband should be injured in any way, or poisoned. Fortunately, two of Bywaters’ letters have been pre- served, and you will assume that these letters are typical of those he had already written to Mrs Thompson. The prosecution may argue that the destroying of the letters goes in their favour, but you should remember that the destroying of the letters was the only thing that the woman would do in the circumstances — she destroyed them because she did not want her husband to see them. I challenge the prosecution to show that in any of his letters Bywaters incited Mrs Thompson to any act against her husband.

 

Bywaters saw Mrs Thompson constantly when at home, and he saw Mr Thompson twice. But, when he realised that it was hopeless, and that there was no chance of Mrs Thompson having a separation from her husband, the prosecution cannot suggest, that he ever did anything else. The prosecution are bound to prove that, when this boy was receiving these letters he was making himself a party to what was contained in them. How have they attempted to do it? By putting in these hysterical, emotional letters of Mrs Thompson, written under all sorts of circumstances. I ask you to distinguish in the letters fact from fiction. Mrs Thompson wanted to retain the affection of Bywaters. Her object in writing the letters was to show to Bywaters, who might be going out of her life at any moment, that her affection for him was so great, her love for him so deep, that there was nothing she would stop at in order to free herself and join him. If that be the view that you take, is it unreasonable to suppose that that was the view which Bywaters also took? I ask you to try, if you can, to take out of those letters what is fact and what is fiction, what is imaginary and what is real. The prosecution must satisfy you that Bywaters was agreeing to it all. We now know that although there have been only thirty-two letters produced, there were in fact found in the possession of Bywaters no fewer than sixty-five. As I say, the letters simply conveyed to Bywaters the impression that Mrs Thompson was extremely anxious to retain his affection. Where is the evidence that Bywaters really entered into any conspiracy? What did Bywaters do when he came home? Those letters had been written for some weeks, but when he returned he did nothing.He took Mrs Thompson out, as he had done on former occasions.He was on friendly terms with the family of Mrs Thompson. He showed no hostility or violence towards Mrs Thompson’s husband. Bywaters had been away from this country after 13th June for a period of three months, and it was fully four months since he received these letters upon which the prosecution rely. Far from there being any conspiracy or intention in Bywaters’ mind from 6th June onwards to injure Mrs Thompson’s husband, you can see clearly from every page in those letters of hers that he was trying to break away from the entanglement, and there had not been a great deal of enjoyment in it for Bywaters except when he was at home on leave. He saw the impossibility of the situation, and he was gradually trying to break away; but, unfortunately for him, Mrs Thompson was determined that it should not be so, and so she wrote those letters complaining of her life, and always holding out the hope that they might be able to join each other. The letters should be read from the point of view of the recipient, and not of the writer, and in that light you must come to the conclusion that, whatever her intentions may have been, whatever, in fact, she may have been doing, Frederick Bywaters was no party to it. I go on to inquire if Bywaters became a party to any such agreement after 23rd September. I contend that the whole case for the prosecution shows that he did not.

I should refer in a word or two to the excellent record of Bywaters. We do not have in the dock here a man who has been charged over and over again with crimes of violence, or a man of evil reputation. We have a man of spotless reputation and good character, and yet it is suggested that he made himself a party to a conspiracy to murder the husband. Bywaters’ case to-day is that it was not until he left the Graydons’ house about eleven o’clock on 3rd October that he had any intention of seeing Mrs Thompson again that night or of interviewing her husband. If you come to the conclusion, as I submit you must, that Bywaters up to that evening had never any intention whatsoever to injure Mrs Thompson’s husband, and that he, on his side, had never agreed with Mrs Thompson that any violence or anything else should be done to Thompson, then your verdict, so far as Mrs Thompson is concerned, is ‘Not Guilty’, and you will have to deal with the case as it affects Bywaters.

I proceed now to deal with what is the real issue for you, and I shall detail the events of 3rd October. Bywaters has said that he left the house on the evening of 3rd October feeling very miserable. He was thinking of Mrs Thompson, and of the complaints made to him when he came from abroad. He says that an irresistible impulse came over him that he must see her, that he must try to help her, and the only way of helping her was to see again whether he could not come to some arrangement with regard to her. She is miserable: this cannot go on: he will see once more if he cannot do something. That impulse coming over him, he walked quietly towards Belgrave Road. As to the details of what happened, the only evidence you have is that of Bywaters himself. His lordship will direct you with regard to the law concerning the various possible verdicts,

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — You want me to leave these questions to the jury — (1) Justifiable homicide; (2) manslaughter; (3) murder?

Mr WHITELEY — Yes. I read the report of Bywaters’ evidence of what happened when Thompson met his death. [Reads report of evidence.] How did the knife come to be in Bywaters’ possession? It has been said, and there is evidence to support it, that he bought the knife in Aldersgate Street in November of last year. It is not a strange thing that Bywaters should purchase such a knife, a sea- faring man, visiting seaports in foreign countries? He has told us that he was accustomed to carry it in his greatcoat pocket. There are few sailors* who do not possess a knife. (* Bywaters was not a “sailor” in the technical sense. He was a clerk on board a ship, and had more use for a fountain pen than for a knife. — Ed.) If you accept that, away goes the case for the prosecution that it was purchased for the express purpose of committing a dastardly murder. If you accept Bywaters’ evidence, then you should come to the following conclusions: —

That the object Bywaters had in going to meet the Thompsons on that night was in order to make some arrangement with him, and not in order to kill him.

That when he arrived at Belgrave Road he had no intention of using the knife.

That Thompson struck him a blow on the chest and said, “I will shoot you,” at the same time putting his right hand into his hip pocket. What was it that would flash through the mind of a man accustomed to visiting foreign countries when he heard the threat “I will shoot you” and saw a hand turned to the hip pocket? It does not matter, I submit, whether there was a revolver or not. The question for the jury is, “What did this man believe at that time”? If you come to the conclusion that Bywaters thought that Thompson intended to shoot him and had a revolver at the time, and that in self-defence he took out his knife and stabbed him, having reasonable apprehension that his life was in immediate danger, then the only verdict is one of Not Guilty, as being excusable homicide.

With regard to the second verdict — if you come to the conclusion that Bywaters did not start the fight with the intention of using his knife, and that he used it in the heat of passion in consequence of an attack made on him by Thompson, you are entitled to reduce this crime from murder to manslaughter.

Or, again, if you are satisfied that Thompson struck him a blow on the chest, followed by the words “I will shoot you,” and by a movement of his hand to his pocket, then there would be such provocation as would enable you to reduce the crime from murder to manslaughter.

In considering the statement made by Bywaters I think it is necessary for you to realise that from beginning to end in this case the one thing always in Bywaters’ mind was the position of Mrs Thompson and how she was suffering. When he left the scene that night he did not know that Thompson was dead. He did not discover it until the next day, when he bought a newspaper. The time has come when there should be some alteration in the way in which persons are dealt with at police stations. I am not blaming the police. Superintendent Wensley is one of the most efficient officials there have over been at Scotland Yard, and if was his duty to ascertain who committed the crime and to make all necessary inquiries. What I am complaining of is that when a statement was taken in the circumstances in which it was it should be solemnly produced in this Court as if it were a voluntary statement to be used in evidence against Bywaters. The thoughts of Bywaters when he made the first voluntary statement were concerned as to what had happened to Mrs Thompson. I ask you to put aside altogether the statements, having regard to the circumstances in which they were made, and deal with the evidence of Bywaters as he has given it.

All the time that I have been addressing you I have been conscious of a feeling that, whatever arguments I may use, the Solicitor-General has the right to the final address. It is a curious position. In an ordinary case in this Court where a prisoner gives evidence and calls no other evidence as to facts, his counsel has the right of addressing the last word to the jury. Owing to the fact that a law officer of the Crown has been engaged to prosecute in this case, I am deprived of that privilege. Apparently the privilege was considered so important by those conducting the prosecution that the services of the Solicitor-General were engaged. So long ago as thirty years, defending in a criminal case, one of the most famous advocates, still alive, commented on this curious and anomalous privilege, remarking, “I hope an Attorney-General may be found some day, unless the law is altered as it should be, to abandon the exercise of a right which does not appear to me to be defensible.” Of course, I know that the Solicitor-General will endeavour to be as fair in his reply as he was in his opening of the case, but I am conscious that the interests of Bywaters may suffer from the fact that the Crown has the last word.

I again challenge the prosecution to point to one stable piece of evidence, to any evidence, on which you can rely, on which you can say that that man had agreed with Mrs Thompson to do some harm or some violence to Percy Thompson. Judge this young man as you yourselves would be judged. One life has already been sacrificed in this sordid and horrible drama. Is there to be yet another? Frederick Bywaters makes his last appeal to you through me, and he says to you, “It is true, only too true, that I have been weak, extremely weak. It is true, only too true, that I allowed myself to drift into this dishonourable entanglement and intrigue with a married woman living with her husband. It is true that I had not the moral courage to cut myself adrift from it and end it all. It is true, only too true, that she confided in me, that I was flattered that she should come to me, a young man of nineteen, and confide in me. It is true that I pitied her, and that my pity turned to love. I did not realise, I did not know, I had not enough experience in this life to know, that true love must mean self-sacrifice. All this is true,” he says, “but I ask you to believe, and by your verdict to proclaim to the whole world that in all this history I am not an assassin. I am no murderer.”

Closing Speech for the Prisoner Thompson

Sir HENRY Curtis-Bennett — May it please your lordship, members of the jury — at last I have an opportunity of putting Mrs Thompson’s case to you. It was only at the end of four days, andnear the end of the case, that the defence had an opportunity of showing to you the other side of the picture already put before you by the prosecution. It is important that you should realise what you are trying. You are trying one of two indictments. The prosecu- tion have chosen to proceed upon the first, which charges the prisoners with murder. There was another indictment which might be tried by you or some other jury against both the prisoners, and it is important that you should know what that second indictment was. It contained five counts. It charged them with on divers dates between 20th August 1921 and 2nd October of this year conspiring together to murder Percy Thompson;

That between 10th February of this year and 1st October Mrs Thompson did solicit, endeavour to persuade, and propose to Bywaters to murder Thompson;

That between the same dates she did unlawfully solicit and incite Bywaters to conspire with her to murder Thompson;

That on 26th March (I don’t know why that date was chosen) she administered and caused to be taken by Thompson certain poisons or other destructive things with intent to murder; and

That on 20th April she did administer and cause to be taken by Thompson a certain destructive thing, namely, broken glass.

It is quite clear from the sections of the Act of Parliament in question (Offences Against the Person Act) what the law is in relation to the second indictment. Any person who shall confederate or agree to murder any person whomsoever, or shall solicit, encourage, persuade or endeavour to persuade, or shall propose to any person to murder any other person — that person shall be guilty of misdemeanour, and, if convicted thereof, shall be liable to penal servitude for ten years. The first three allegations in that indict- ment are under that section of the Act of Parliament. It is not murder, but an offence whereby they can receive a substantial term of penal servitude. The last two charges of the indictment are framed under another section of the same Act, under which a person administering or causing to be administered to any other person, or to be taken by him, certain poisons, shall be guilty of felony, and liable to penal servitude.

For some reason — you, members of the jury, may possibly understand the reason; I don’t pretend to — the prosecution here have elected to put these two people into the dock together and charge them with murder. As far as I know, there is no other case in which a jury have been empanelled to try either man or woman with murder where it could not be alleged by the prosecution that that person did any act when the murder, if it were murder, was committed.* [*Cf. “The Trial of the Seddons.” Notable British Trials. – Ed] By the prosecution it is stated that Mrs Thompson was what is known in the law as a principal in the second degree, namely, a person who “aids, abets, or assists a murderer when he is committing a murder.”

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — That is not exclusive; If two people contrive a murder they are guilty of murder, even though one was not there.

Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — Yes, he is an accessory.

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — You say he is not guilty of murder if he did not actually take part in it.

Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — I am not going to shirk any issue. It is no good when representing somebody to try and put before the jury some story which does not meet the case at all. It cannot be alleged that anything further might be charged against her.

Mr Justice Shearman — Of course a person might be regarded as an accessory before the fact.

Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — If the case as suggested by the prosecution were that Mrs Thompson knew what was going to happen that night, and that she took the person who was to be murdered to the spot where he was murdered, then I would welcome that case. The jury would see that the whole of the evidence was to the contrary in such a case. If you come to the conclusion that she conspired with Bywaters to murder her husband on that night, then you will convict her on that indictment if you come to the conclusion that she was urging on Bywaters. At this moment, however, she sits in the dock charged with being a murderess on the night of 3rd October, and it is for the prosecution to satisfy you that she is guilty. I suppose that the case for the prosecution is founded upon nothing but those letters written over a period of time, and founded, outside that, on nothing but guesswork, contradicted when you come to test it. I suppose the case is that there was an arrangement upon that night that Thompson should be murdered, that Mrs Thompson was a party to it, and that Mrs Thompson knew quite well as she was walking down the road near her home that at any moment her husband was going to be taken from her side and murdered in cold blood. I contend that every single action of Mrs Thompson upon the night when the killing took place shows that she knew nothing of what was going to happen.

You have got to get into the atmosphere of this case. This is no ordinary case you are trying. These are not ordinary people that you are trying. This is not an ordinary charge of murder. This is not an ordinary charge against ordinary people. It is very difficult to get into the atmosphere of a play or opera, but you have to do it in this case. Am I right or wrong in saying that this woman is one of the most extraordinary personalities that you or I have ever met? Bywaters truly described her, did he not, as a woman who lived a sort of life I don’t suppose any of you live in — an extraordinary life of make-believe, and in an atmosphere which was created by something which had left its impression on her brain. She reads a book and then imagines herself one of the characters of the book. She is always living an extraordinary life of novels. She reads a book, and although the man to whom she is writing is at the other end of the wide world — in Bombay, Australia, the Suez Canal — she wants his views regarding the characters in the books she has just read. You have read her letters. Have you ever read, mixed up with criticisms of books, mixed up with all sorts of references with which I shall have to deal, more beautiful language of love? Such things have been very seldom put by pen upon paper. This is the woman you have to deal with, not some ordinary woman. She is one of those striking personalities met with from time to time who stand out for some reason or another.

I desire to point out now that the only thing you are trying on this indictment — as to the actual alleged murder — is whether the prosecution have proved that Mrs Thompson was in fact taking a real part in what happened on the night of 3rd October. As the facts have come out in the case, as far as Mrs Thompson is concerned there are two verdicts on the indictment that you can find against her. She is either guilty of murder or she is not guilty. I ask you again to get into the atmosphere of the life of Mrs Thompson. I do not care whether it is described as an “amazing passion”, to use the expression of the Solicitor-General, or as an adulterous intercourse. Thank God, this is not a Court of morals, because if everybody immoral was brought here I would never be out of it, nor would you. Whatever name is given to it, it was certainly a great love that existed between these two people. We read about love at first sight. But, after all, we are men and women of the world here. Don’t you think it was a gradual process as regards these two people — friendship first of all, gradually leading into love? There has been much questioning by the prosecution as to the exact time of the two declaring each other’s love, but that is beside the point. I suggest that the time was August Bank Holiday last year, on 1st August when an incident arose out of absolutely nothing — “sending for a pin” — and Mr Thompson lost his temper and threw his wife across the room. There was unhappiness, and the comforter was at hand. The man was ready to take her part, and he became from the friend the lover. You will remember the evidence as to the husband saying to the wife, “I am not going to give you up. You are my wife. You are mine. I am not going to let you go.” Full of human nature, is it not? The two lovers agreed to wait for five years. Can you say that such a wait is the arrangement of murderers, of people who have made up their minds upon a certain date or dates to murder a man? The very last letter, which was made so much of by the prosecution, stated, “There are only three and three-quarters years left.” Yet it is said that the person who was writing that letter on 1st or 2nd October was a murderess, by inference, not because she struck any blow as a murderess, but because she was planning murder the very next night.

Dealing with the letters, I ask you not to forget that although they have been combed and combed to find anything to suggest that Mrs Thompson is a murderess, 33 out of 65 have not been put before you. In one of the letters there is this phrase — ” All I could think about last night was that compact we made … it seems so horrible to-day.” Is it not palpable that the explanation they have given is the true one, that they had entered into some foolish compact to commit suicide, and not that they had contrived to murder the woman’s husband? She talks there of death for herself and not for any other person. There is nothing in the letters to show anything but that Mrs Thompson was desirous of impressing on Bywaters that she was prepared to go any length to retain his affection. It is so easy to take bits out of letters in opening a case and to put them before the jury without their context and without the mentality of the prisoner being put before the jury, and say, “ What does that mean?” and to take the next reference and say again, “Oh! there is this, too.” It is scarcely fair. If you take the letters and read them through, as I was so anxious you should do, what does it come to? At the most it might possibly make that woman guilty of one of the charges in the second indictment. They certainly do not make her a principal in the killing of Thompson on the night of 3rd October. In her letter of December, 1921 (exhibit 27), she says — “It is the man who has no right, who generally comforts the woman who has wrongs … You will have the right soon, won’t you? Say yes.” That is put before you, picked out as some evidence of murder in their minds. Is it not absolutely consistent with innocence? We all know if a thing is equally consistent with innocence then you will find it of an innocent description. What it means is this — “Thank goodness I shall be taken away and live with you either as your wife, if I am divorced, or as your mistress, if there is no divorce. You will then have the right.” Referring to the porridge incident, I again quote the passage which has been read before — “I had the wrong porridge to-day, but I do not suppose it will matter, I do not seem to care much either way. You will probably say I am careless and I admit I am, but I do not care, do you?” You will remember that the evidence was that the porridge was prepared by Mrs Lester, and that Mrs Thompson occasionally had it, but her husband more often took it. One would have thought there was nothing in the reference to the wrong porridge, but in the witness-box yesterday when asked about it Mrs Thompson said, “I put that in with an object.” Now this is the first time in this correspondence that you come to this extraordinary way of trying to keep the love of a man and trying to impress upon him that it is a love which will not die. It was an extraordinary way of showing, “I am prepared to go to any extreme to keep your love.”

The prosecution thought that the only way for them to prove whether those statements in the letters were true or untrue was to have the body of Thompson exhumed. What did they find? They found no possible trace of any sort or kind of poison. They found no trace of glass having been administered in that body. They found just what I hope they will find in my body and yours if ever we are exhumed. And having found that the result of the post-mortem examination was consistent with the suggestion I am now putting before you, that the statements were absolutely untrue that she had administered anything, I do complain that the prosecution are not generous enough to say, “We will let you have the whole benefit of that. It is true there is no sort of corroboration that you ever gave poison or glass to your husband.” What would you think if you were sitting in the dock instead of in the jury box if nothing had been found that was not consistent with your innocence? When Dr Spilsbury was in the witness-box the prosecution got him to give an answer to a question which was obvious to all before he said it. “Oh, of course, it may be that poison was given and disappeared. There are certain poisons that do not leave any trace.” How is one going to deal with a case if it is going to be put in that sort of way?

The real truth about Mrs Thompson, as borne out by her letters, was that she was a woman who would go on telling any lies so long as she could keep her lover Bywaters. You are men of the world and you must know that where there is a liaison which includes someone who is married, it will be part of the desire of that person to keep secret the relations from the other partner. It is not the sort of thing that they would bring to the knowledge of their partner for life. Happily, members of the jury, your body includes a member of the other sex, so that you will be able to discuss the matter from both points of view.

I come now to the “You must do something this time” letter. The prosecution start with the idea that a man has been murdered, and then going back seven or eight months they find that written in a letter and they suggest that it refers to murdering a man. But is not a passage like that exactly what you would expect to find written from one lover to another when it was a case of a woman going away and living with him? As to the sleeping draught illness, there is not the slightest suggestion that Mr Thompson was poisoned. The woman who is supposed to be wishing for her husband’s death searched amongst his belongings for the medicine and destroyed it. As his lordship has said, it is a very long cry from wishing somebody is dead to becoming a murderess. This woman was eight years older than the man, and she realised that she might be losing the man. Listen to the following sentence which she writes — “It was a lie — I would tell heaps and heaps to help you, but darling do you think I like telling them?” I ask you whether in that passage you do not get to the real heart of the woman. Again I read another sentence — “This thing I am going to do for both of us will it make a difference?” Is not that exactly the sort of thing you read in a divorce court correspondence? Although through this woman’s great love for the man she was prepared to leave her husband and risk everything, still at the same time, at the back of her mind and in her heart of hearts she felt — will the time ever come when he will bring it up against me and twit me with it, saying, “Well, you ran away to live with a man”? Is not that what the letter means? I submit that these things were not endeavouring to persuade to murder, but were a thousand miles from it. Dealing with the correspondence up to March, I ask, would you convict anybody of even some small offence on that evidence? Would you not say that the evidence was much more consistent up to then with innocence than with guilt? You would not send any one to prison for a month on that evidence. With regard to the giving of quinine to Mrs Thompson, it may be that Bywaters thought she was a woman to be pandered to. He knew the sort of woman she was, and he has described her to you as living in books and melodramatic. It is suggested that in the letters there are references to the death of Mr Thompson. Unfortunately, there is a lot of loose talk amongst us all. We often hear the expression, “He should be shot,” or “I would like to poison him,” even in ordinary conversation. This was loose talk by Bywaters, and it was the sort of language a man who had an intrigue with a married woman might use. He may have said of the husband, “I wish he would die,” but he did not mean it. Mrs Thompson, wishing to show him that she would back him up, because she loved him, so wrote the letters that she did write. If you get a woman like Mrs Thompson, she may easily say, “ I will back him up.” You can test whether she was putting on paper facts or fiction by the evidence of Dr. Spilsbury and Mr Webster, which was to the effect that she was not giving her husband poison or glass.

You will remember the references to “Bella Donna ” in the letters. I hope that most of you gentlemen of the jury who have read the book have seen the play.

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — Are you going to put in the book? If you do, the jury will have to read the whole of it.

Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — I do not wish to do that. I think your lordship gave a description of the book. I will if necessary put in the book.

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — Surely not. I don’t think that is necessary. I hope not — I hope you will not put it in. You can deal with anything that has been given in evidence about it.

Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — It has been suggested that the whole theme of the book is the slow poisoning of a husband in order that the wife ‘may live with a wealthy man’. Fortunately we have Mrs Thompson’s view of “Bella Donna.” If it is to be suggested that the reference to digitalis means, “Is it any use for poisoning her husband,” then you must look at her view of the woman in the book. She has described her as a monster. Is it suggested that Mrs Thompson was slowly poisoning her husband? There is no evidence of it. Is it suggested that any one at her instigation was doing it so that she might go off with Bywaters? There is no evidence of it. With regard to the phrase, “ You will never leave me behind again unless things are different,” I submit that means that, unless the next time Bywaters comes home she has got a separation or divorce — unless she is his, and can be left behind as his wife or mistress — she will not be left at home at all; they will go away, they will take the risk, and she will go anywhere. With regard to the passage, “I am not going to try it any more until you come back,” and the reference to “the tea tasting bitter” — it is suggested that those statements mean, “Murder him.” Our answer is that it is “fiction,” just as much fiction as “Bella Donna.” Turning to the subject of the aromatic tincture of opium found at Thompson’s house, it is an amazing thing if this woman was desirous of her husband dying that when he was found in possession of something it was taken away from him and she refused to return it.

I again read the phrase, “The third time he found a piece,” in reference to the alleged administration of glass, and I ask you to imagine what effect such a piece of glass would have in passing through the intestines. Did she ever use it three times? The evidence is that there is no trace of anybody ever having administered anything of the sort to Mr Thompson.

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — Before the Court rises for the day I wish to offer you, members of the jury, this advice. Of course, you will not make up your minds until you have heard the whole case. The only other thing is, having regard to the surroundings for so many days, by all means look at the atmosphere and try to understand what the letters mean, but you should not forget that you are in a Court of justice trying a vulgar and common crime. You are not listening to a play from the stalls of a theatre. When you are thinking it over, you should think it over in that way.

 

The Court adjourned.

 

 

Fifth Day — Monday, 11th December, 1922.

 

Closing Speech for the Prisoner Thompson (continued).

 

Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — When we adjourned on Saturday I had almost finished dealing with the letters. I wish to refer now to the letter of 28th August (exhibit 63), which contains this passage —

Fourteen whole months have gone by now, darlint, it’s so terribly long. Neither you nor I thought we should have to wait all that long time did we? altho’ I said I would wait 5 years — and I will darlint — it’s only 3 years and ten months now.

That letter, I submit, is a very important one indeed, because it shows what the mind of Mrs Thompson was upon that date, 28th August. She was then saying to her lover, “We arranged five years; I am prepared to wait five years, and there are only three years and ten months to pass.”

I next deal with the letter written on 12th September in which Mrs Thompson refers to the fact that Bywaters is nearing England, and expresses the view that —

This time everything seems different. I don’t hear from you much you don’t talk to me by letter and help me and I don’t even know if I am going to see you.

Does that not show, what I have been putting before you, that on 12th September Mrs Thompson had in her mind that Bywaters was not so fond of her as he had been, and she was anxious to show him that she would go to any extreme to keep his love? Look now at the letter of 20th September (exhibit 28) —

You say ‘Can we be Pals only, Peidi, it will make it easier.’ Do you mean for always? because if you do, No, No a thousand times. We can’t be ‘pals’ only for always darlint- it’s impossible physically and mentally . . . If you still only mean for a certain time and you think it best, darlint, it shall be so . . We won’t be our natural selves tho’ I know — we’ll be putting a curb on ourselves the whole time — like an iron band that won’t expand.

That is the woman writing on 20th September a letter which, of course, she had no idea would ever be used against her in this light, writing what she is really feeling a fortnight before the tragedy. It is suggested by the prosecution that there was not only a conspiracy, but that she was a principal in the tragedy which took place on the night of 3rd October. I submit that these last letters, one after another, show quite clearly that this charge which has been made is ill-founded. Of course, the letters are prejudicial to the writer, all of them, but you have to be very careful that you do not allow prejudice to be turned into proof. These last letters do not prove at all what the prosecution seek to make them prove. In fact, they show that the submission I am making is the true one. In the same letter of 20th September there is this passage —

You are jealous of him — but I want you to be — he has the right by law to all that you have the right to by nature and love — yes darlint be jealous, so much that you will do something desperate.

Start at the end of the story with the death and work back to that, and you can make what is an absolutely innocent expression in a letter appear to be a guilty one. Work back, as the prosecution have done, from the tragedy, and come to a letter written a fortnight before, and, because in that letter there is this phrase, “ do something desperate,” that means that the woman was trying to make the man return to England to murder her husband. Surely, if you look at the letters and all these references, they are absolutely consistent with the story that both Mrs Thompson and Bywaters have told. They are consistent with, “ Take me away, I care not where.” Are you, because of the prejudice created by the reading of the extracts from these letters, going to say there is any evidence from them that this woman was a principal a fortnight afterwards in the murder of her husband? I come now to the letter (exhibit 60) which is said to have been written by Mrs Thompson on 2nd October. That letter is one of the strongest documents that you could have against the suggestion that these two persons made a prior agreement, before 3rd October that Thompson should be murdered. It is of the greatest importance to see what it was that was being written by Mrs Thompson to Bywaters on the very day before the tragedy took place.

Darlingest lover of mine, thank you, thank you, oh thank you a thousand times for Friday — it was lovely — it’s always lovely to go out with you. And then Saturday — yes I did feel happy — I didn’t think a teeny bit about anything in this world, except being with you— and all Saturday evening I was thinking about you …. I tried so hard to find a way out  tonight darlingest but he was suspicious and still is – I suppose we must make a study of this deceit for some time longer. I hate it. I hate every lie I have to tell to see you — because lies seem such small mean things. . . . There would be scenes and he would come to 168 and interfere and I couldn’t bear that. . . Until we have funds we can do nothing.

Do the prosecution say that this letter, written on 2nd October, is evidence that these two people were intending murder next day, or the day after, or the week after ? This woman is saying on 2nd October, “It is funds we want, and until we have funds we can do nothing.” They did not want funds for murder, but it was essential that they should have funds for the purpose of living together. Mrs Thompson said that if she were to run away with Bywaters, as she wanted to do, she would have to leave her business. “Darlingest, find me a job abroad.” “Murderess!” say the prosecution. “I will go tomorrow if you will find me a job, and shall not have one little regret. . . . Help me to forget.” And then the last letter written before the crime was committed — I should like to draw your attention to what was said by the Solicitor-General in cross-examining Mrs Thompson on this letter on Saturday morning. I do not wish to make any remark which in any way can be considered to be improper about the cross- examination, because my learned friend was absolutely fair in dealing with both of the accused persons in the witness-box, but when the prosecution have to come down to a suggestion such as was made upon the last two paragraphs of that letter on Saturday morning, it is for you to say whether you think they have got a case which can be relied upon or not. The Solicitor-General put this passage to Mrs Thompson, “He is still well, he is going to gaze all day long at you in your temporary home after Wednesday.” The suggestion behind that, of course, was that Thompson was still well. Does that not show the danger of guesswork when people’s letters are being looked at? When we come to see what the passage really meant, we find that it meant that the pathetic little bronze monkey was still sitting upon her desk, and that opposite was the photograph of the ship that Bywaters had been on.

The next passage in the letter is “Don’t forget what we talked in the tearoom. I’ll still risk and try if you will.” The suggestion of the prosecution — and they have no evidence at all of it — is that in that tearoom in Aldersgate Street these two people were plotting murder. There is not one scrap of evidence. But having put all those letters before you, and having created the prejudice those letters must create when first read without an explanation, the prosecution then say, “The night of 3rd October Thompson dies: and ‘Don’t forget what we talked about in the tearoom’” – and  you, members of the jury, are urged to believe that they were talking about murder. Both the prisoners have been in the witness-box and have told you how the conversation was the same old story as to taking Mrs Thompson away, as to her leaving her husband and risking all her future with Bywaters. Is it not shown that that is the way to look at the sentence when the last words of the letter read, “We only have three and three-quarter years left, darlingest; try and help Peidi”? It is almost inconceivable that it can be suggested on that letter, or to think that seriously the prosecution can say that it shows that these two people were plotting murder. The words show quite the contrary. Do you imagine that a woman who at that time, according to the prosecution, had got to the degree of having incited this man to the extent that the murder is imminent, would be writing, “We have only three and three-quarter years left”? If the story put before you by the prosecution be true, do you not think that you would find in these letters some references egging on, inciting, soliciting Bywaters to commit this murder? Yet you find, in my submission, exactly the opposite. There is not one reference in these letters which any one in this country dare say shows that the suggestion made by the prosecution is true.

I proceed now to deal with the night of the murder, and I contend that everything points to the killing of Thompson being an unpremeditated act by Bywaters. It was an act by Bywaters, committed according to his own story because he was in fear of his own life — an act which he had not the slightest intention of committing one minute before it was committed. The letters provide the only evidence upon which the charge of murder is framed against Mrs Thompson. Everything that was done and said by her on that night shows as strongly as it can that not only did she not know the murder was going to be committed, but that she was horrified when she found her husband was killed. On 3rd October there was a family theatre party. The evidence is that Mr and Mrs Thompson were at the Criterion Theatre with Mr and Mrs Laxton, and, according to Mr Laxton, were happy and normal. Do you believe that that woman could have sat with her husband and the Laxtons the whole evening, happy and in normal condition, if there was to her knowledge going to happen the tragedy which did happen to her husband? I suppose the suggestion of the prosecution is that on the journey home Mrs Thompson knew that at some spot her husband was to be attacked and murdered. I must deal in the most serious way with such a suggestion. I venture to point out that there is not a bit of evidence to show that she knew anything of the sort. The evidence is that she had made an arrangement to go with her husband the next night to meet her maid at Paddington. Is that true or not true? Test it. The maid did arrive the next night, and did go to the house. Do you think this woman, if she was doing what the prosecution suggest, would have made that arrangement? The prosecution declared that the tragedy took place at a dark spot; but as a matter of fact the spot was similarly lighted to the neighbourhood around. It was the proper and the best way home that the Thompsons took after coming from the theatre. She did not lure her husband into some dark by-way where a murder could be committed. I ask you to consider Bywaters’ position. Was he going out to murder? He was at the Graydons for the purpose of getting his tobacco, and the last thing he did was to make an arrangement with Miss Graydon to take her to the pictures on the next night. Are you going to cast those facts aside and say that they are of no importance, and that there are those “awful letters”? Where is the evidence that this was the result of a conspiracy between the two, and that she was a party that night to what happened, or in leading her husband to the spot, knowing what was going to happen? I suggest that Bywaters made up his mind suddenly to see Thompson and settle the question of his leaving his wife. You all know how matters of that sort suddenly strike people; there is nothing extraordinary about it. Mrs Thompson’s story that she was pushed aside and stunned is corroborated by her mother, who had felt the bruise.

Members of the jury, every step in this case, when you really come to look at it in the light of the evidence, is only consistent with the story of the defence being the true one. If Bywaters was acting in self-defence, then you need not consider the case against Mrs Thompson. If you even come to the conclusion that he is guilty of manslaughter, you need not consider the case against Mrs Thompson. It is only if you come to the conclusion, and are satisfied of it upon the evidence, that Bywaters is guilty of murder, that you have to consider whether Mrs Thompson was a party to that murder. The piteous plea of Mrs Thompson, “ Don’t, don’t”; her cry to the doctor, “Why did you not come sooner and save him?” and her statement to Mrs Lester, “ If they allow him to come home I will make him better,” are all consistent with the story of the defence. Every act of Mrs Thompson on that occasion was not only consistent with her story that she did not know that the murder was going to be committed, but that she was horrified when she found that her husband had been killed. Test the evidence; don’t be satisfied with guesswork. It is quite clear that in her first statement to the police Mrs Thompson did conceal Bywaters’ name, but I would remind you that you have to deal with human nature. One is apt to be high-minded in a Court of justice; but we have, after all, to deal with human nature. Mrs Thompson knew that her lover had attacked her husband. She did not know he had killed him, and in my submission, although it might be improper, any one of us would, if in the same position, do what has been done here. Of course, Bvwaters protected Mrs Thompson, and, of course, Mrs Thompson protected Bywaters. Of course, one should always tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; but when in a murder case two people are sitting in the dock awaiting your verdict, is there anything in the fact that both keep from the police until a certain moment information about the other? Bywaters would not have been a man if he had not tried to shield the woman. Mrs Thompson would not have been a woman if she had not tried to shield her lover.

Mrs Thompson was taken to the police station and another statement was taken from her. A statement was taken from Bywaters, and next day, the 5th, a statement in writing. Still a denial by Bywaters of Mrs Thompson, and still a denial by Mrs Thompson that Bywaters was the man, and by an extraordinary chance, if the story of the prosecution is to be believed, when Mrs Thompson was being taken back to the C.I.D. room she happened to pass the very room where Bywaters was standing, and she saw him. That is one story. The other story is that Mrs Thompson was actually taken into the room where Bywaters was, and they were confronted with one another. The woman said, “ Oh God, oh God, what can I do? Why did you do it? I did not want him to do it. I must tell the truth.” Is that the statement of a woman who was a party to the killing, or is it the statement of a woman who had protected her lover as far as she could from the police — the statement of an innocent person, who, having protected her lover, realised that the time for protection had passed and that she must tell the truth ? The statement that Mrs Thompson then made to the police was exactly what she states to-day. A little later both these persons were charged. Bywaters, when charged, said, “ Why her? She was not aware of my movements.” And where is the evidence in the case that she did know his movements on that night? It is all founded upon the suggestion that they had tea together, and that they may have there discussed the murder. All the evidence is to the contrary — that she did not know he was coming back that night. The statement of Bywaters himself was “I made up my mind at the last moment.”

It will be for you to say whether the arguments I have put forward for your consideration are well founded or not. It will be for you to say, when you have heard the Solicitor-General address you again on behalf of the Crown, whether the prosecution have proved that either of these people is guilty of murder. I am only concerned with Mrs Thompson. It will be for you to say whether she is guilty of murder, or whether all the prosecution have done is to show you a cloud of prejudice, and whether it may or may not be that upon some other indictment she may be found guilty. I have submitted as plainly as I can that upon this indictment, not only have the prosecution not proved she is guilty, but if you go through these letters and discuss them you will see they are quite consistent with the view I have put before you, and much more consistent, because there are many more references to running away and spending time together in the future, and waiting those three or five years; that all these letters are consistent with the innocence of both the people in this trial. As far as Mrs Thompson is concerned, you do not have to consider the case against her until you are satisfied beyond all reasonable doubt that Bywaters is guilty of murder, a decision which, in my submission to you, you will never come to when you consider your verdict. I am loath to leave this discussion, because I am anxious to feel and know that I have dealt with the whole case as it is put against Mrs Thompson. I know I have risked your displeasure in taking up your time at such length, but you do not grudge a few hours one way or the other spent on something which means eternity. Of course, I cannot see what is in your minds, because I cannot tell whether the matters I have been discussing are matters that you don’t want to discuss because you have made up your minds. But in asking this question I know one thing: I shall get your answer, and the answer to the question I have put is the answer that Mrs Thompson is not guilty.

Closing Speech for the Prosecution

The SOLICITOR-GENERAL — Members of the jury, you have listened to impressive and powerful appeals from my learned friends. Everything that devotion to the interests of their clients can suggest and every argument or plea that skilled advocacy can think of have been used, and I know that you will consider them with care and weigh every argument that has been put forward. I do not ask you to close your hearts to a single plea. But it is my duty to consider the case less passionately than the way my learned friends put it to you. It is no part of my duty to use a single word or to turn a single phrase that would divert your attention from the real facts of the case or to attempt to wrest your verdict by the interpretation or misinterpretation of a single letter or incident. But my learned friends have gone a little beyond an appeal to you which it is their duty to make. They have criticised and reproached me and my learned friends for our conduct or presentation of the case. They have suggested that counsel for the Crown, to use Mr Whiteley’s phrase, have laid before you a mass of irrelevant evidence, and presented it in an unprecedented and extraordinary way. Perhaps the first observation I should make is that, from some points of view, this is an unprecedented case; from others it is a very ordinary case. I think the real comment on their criticism is this — they have been good enough to say that we have laid the case before you fairly, and they have not taken a single objection either to the substance or the form of a single question we have asked. Their criticism is of the interpretation which we have thought it our duty to suggest is the right one of the letters. That is a matter so entirely for you that I shall say no more about it now. Mr Whiteley also referred to my right of addressing you last. Was he afraid that his eloquence would be submerged by mine? If so, he may put his anxiety away, for after everything I have to say there will be the cooling influence of my lord.

I ask you to treat the case as an ordinary one. It is indisputable that Mr Thompson was killed that night by Bywaters, that Bywaters chose a spot a great distance from his own home, and went there deliberately. It was not an accidental meeting. He chose an hour after midnight, which was about the most unsuitable hour anybody could have selected for a discussion, as he suggested it was his desire to have, with Mr Thompson. Bvwaters chose a place which in itself was a suitable one for such a crime, in the sense that there would not likely be many persons about. The whole of the circumstances in which he attacked Thompson suggest, at first sight, a case of deliberate murder. It will be for you to consider whether any of the arguments that have been put before you justify you in finding a less verdict than murder. It is said that Bywaters was acting, not in pursuance of any intention to kill, that he had no motive which would move him to do that, and that, therefore, the verdict of the jury ought to be one of manslaughter. It is suggested to us still further that this is a case of justifiable homicide on the part of Bywaters, which means that he acted in self-defence. That suggestion was made by Bywaters in the witness-box, but it does not appear in either of his statements. It is a suggestion that requires for foundation the sort of evidence he gave in the witness-box as to the apprehension he felt that Thompson was about to produce a revolver, and it must occur to you that if that was Bywaters’ real defence, then it would have appeared long before the hour at which he produced it or suggested it in the witness-box. I ask you, is there any evidence upon which you can reasonably or possibly come to the conclusion that he was acting in self-defence when he killed Thompson? In his own statement Bywaters does not even tell the truth. Referring to the actual struggle he says —

The reason I fought that night was because he never acted like a man to his wife; he always seemed several degrees lower than a snake. I loved her and I could not go on seeing her living that life. I did not intend to kill him, but only to injure him. I gave him an opportunity of standing up to me as a man but he would not.

I suggest to you that there can only be a verdict of murder in this case. At least four or five deep and probably fatal blows were inflicted. One of the blows was delivered 14 feet from the place where the attack began. Probably any one of them would have disabled Thompson. They were delivered with a weapon which could hardly be used by a violent man without running the grievous risk of immediate death on the part of the other man, and they were delivered with a force which was quite inconsistent with any other action than the intention to kill the man against whom they were delivered.

How does the case stand against Mrs Thompson? I suggest that if she and Bywaters agreed to kill Mr Thompson, and the husband was killed in pursuance of that agreement, then there must be a verdict of murder against Mrs Thompson as well as against Bywaters. Again, if Mrs Thompson incited Bywaters to murder Thompson, and if, in consequence of that incitement, Bywaters did murder Thompson, similarly Mrs Thompson is guilty of murder. I contend that if you find that in consequence of the instigation or even command of Mrs Thompson the murder was committed, then she is guilty.

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — It is necessary, of course, to be careful of words, and I do not feel inclined to take the matter at large.

The SOLICITOR-GENERAL — I am not going to suggest to the jury that merely because some foolish or wild expressions were used in letters it is sufficient for you to say that in consequence of that the murder was committed and Mrs Thompson is guilty. I agree with my learned friends for the defence, that in order for you to arrive at a verdict of murder against Mrs Thompson you must be satisfied that the persuasion lasted right up to — not the moment of the murder, but substantially right up to the murder, and was the continuing cause in consequence of which the murder was committed by Bywaters. If you think that the persuasion had no real connection with the murder, and that the expressions, however criminal and foolish, were not really the cause of the murder, then of course it is not a case of murder against Mrs Thompson. What I ask you to consider is the progress of the idea found in the letters and to see how it was pressed by Mrs Thompson on Bywaters, and how the idea continued right up to the very last moment. When you get to the time at which the two accused were in the tearoom together on 3rd October one would no longer expect to find correspondence passing between them, and if you find from the correspondence that the direction was continuing substantially up to the time of the murder, it is my duty to submit to you that that amounts to murder. It is suggested that the letters are consistent with something different from murder. Bywaters in the witness-box suggested over and over again that the statements in the letters all referred to a proposal to commit suicide. I do not suppose you will have much difficulty in dismissing that suggestion. My learned friend, Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett, suggested over and over again that what was passing in the minds of those two persons was divorce or separation in order that she might go with Bywaters, and that all the other expressions were hysterical and extravagant utterances on the part of this woman. The view I suggest that you should consider is that there is no determination on the part of Mrs Thompson to leave her husband or give him cause for divorce. For some reason or other they both seem to have put that out of the range of possibility. It may be that that was not a thing that Mrs Thompson or Bywaters could contemplate, because if she left her husband she would not be able to continue in her employment, and neither she nor Bywaters had means. Mrs Thompson seems from first to last to have done all she could to keep her connection with Bywaters from her husband. I do not find in the letters, when they are properly read, any real foundation for the suggestion that she was repeatedly trying to get her husband to divorce her, and did everything she could to convince him that it would be the best thing to get rid of her. That suggestion, like the suicide suggestion, does not seem to have been present in their minds. Right up to the very end the proposal in the letters is that her husband should be removed by poison. You will remember that in her examination-in-chief Mrs Thompson did not disguise that a certain expression did refer to a proposal, either made in a moment of hysteria or perhaps almost as a joke, that her husband should be poisoned. At any rate the reference was to poison, however it began. In her letter she says, “ I acquiesced in everything he said or did or wants to do. At least it will disarm any suspicion he might have if we have to take any drastic measures.” It has been suggested that the drastic measures meant leaving her husband, but you, gentlemen, must be the judges of that.

It is important to remember the visits home of Bywaters, because you have only her letters; Bywaters’ letters have all been destroyed, and the correspondence was interrupted by his visits home, and what happened when he was at home you can only judge from the correspondence subsequently resumed. The first letter after he left home was that of 10th February, which you will remember begins “ You must do something this time.” That letter was written to Aden, and Bywaters received it somewhere about March. If it is suggested that “You must do something this time” referred to the making of plans for running away with her, it is curious that the next paragraph refers to something not connected with divorce. It is the paragraph in which she relates her attempt to discover the prescription. “ I told Avis about the incident only I told her as if it frightened and worried me.” That can only mean that she wanted to create evidence at that time which might be useful in the case of something happening which might throw suspicion on somebody as having poisoned her husband. That part of the letter shows that Mrs Thompson was interested in disarming suspicion, but if you have any doubt it will be dispelled after reading the last part. — ” It would be so easy darlint — if I had things — I do hope I shall. How about cigarettes?” To suggest that all those passages are a question of hysteria or fun is a suggestion that you can exclude. If it is not all hysteria or fun, then you must come to the conclusion that she was proposing to him — arising, perhaps, out of a proposal from him — that poison should be administered. In a later letter there is a definite suggestion of some drug, medicine, or something. “ I suppose it is not possible for you to send it to me — not at all possible — I do so chafe at wasting time.” That word “ it ” undoubtedly refers to something which was to injure her husband’s health. On 14^th March, as Bywaters was approaching this country, she wrote, “ I don’t think I have shirked, have I? Except, darlint, to ask you again to think out all the plans and methods for me.” Shirked what, if not the enterprise they had entered into to poison her husband? Then she writes, “ This will be the last time you will go away unless things are different. There will be no failure this time. If things are the same again I am going with you — if it is to sea I am coming too — and if it is to nowhere I am coming.” You must consider whether that passage throws any light on whether there had been any discussion between Bywaters and Mrs Thompson as to what was going to happen between herself and her husband, and if you think it does throw any light then you will give it its proper weight.

Then there is the letter containing the phrase, “Don’t keep this piece.” It is suggested that that was because it might come into her husband’s possession. I am bound to say to you that this letter of 1st April is one that deals entirely with this idea now occupying so much of her attention, that her husband must be got rid of. The passage is full of crime. There is no other interpretation which can fairly be placed upon it. It is inconsistent with any other view than that she was proposing at this time an injury to her husband, not only to make him ill but eventually to make him so ill that, as she puts it herself, after he had a heart attack he would die under it. I suggest that these letters were being destroyed because his, like hers, referred to the subject of poisoning. In the next letter she has given up something “ till you come home”. I suggest that this was the idea of administering something to her husband. In her letter of 28th April she writes, “I used the light bulb three times.” Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett has poured ridicule on that and has said that it must be the imagination of a hysterical woman, because the use of glass would have left indications on the gullet or organs of the body. It was exactly with reference to that that Dr. Spilsbury was called. I called him as much to assist the defence as the Crown. It is complained that it was elicited that the administration of glass, even in large pieces, would not necessarily have left an indication in the organs of the body. I venture to say that that was a piece of evidence that the jury will think it desirable Dr. Spilsbury should have given. It may not carry the case any further, but it would have been wrong to have left you with the impression that an injury must necessarily have been found if glass was used.

Next comes the letter of 1st May (exhibit 19). It is quite plain that Bywaters had been writing, and, I submit, making observations to her about some drug which he had sent or suggested. Bywaters said it referred to quinine which he knew could not hurt, and which he had sent to pacify her in connection with the suicide proposal. There is a significant passage in the middle of the letter. “I quite expected to be able to send that cable — but no — nothing has happened. … I do feel so down and unhappy.” Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett said that this referred to a divorce or to adultery, but I submit that that letter is full of proposals as to the method in which her husband might be harmed.

The next letter, 18th May (exhibit 22), sets out an extract from “Bella Donna” referring to the administration of cumulative poison and asks, “Is it any use?” That was a very important question for Bywaters to consider. Then she says, “ Everything is destroyed— I don’t even wait for the next arrival now.” So dreadful were the suggestions contained in these letters, whatever they referred to, that she no longer thought it safe to keep any of them. They cannot have referred to their guilty relationship because it is their own case that they were repeatedly impressing on the husband that he should divorce her for adultery. I suggest that these letters were being destroyed because his, like hers, referred to the subject of poisoning. Then there is the letter in which Mrs Thompson alludes to some weakness on her husband’s part. Thompson fell ill on the ottoman at the foot of the bed and stated that he had another attack. Mrs Thompson says, “I had to laugh at this, because I knew it could not be a heart attack.” How could she know that? On 23rd May Mrs Thompson sends Bywaters a book, “ Bella Donna,” saying in her letter, “ You may learn something from it to help us.” She would not send the book to Plymouth merely to give him something to read.

Bywaters went to sea again on 6th June. It is at this time that she starts having her letters sent to the General Post Office in the name of Miss Fisher. On 4th July she writes to Bywaters — “ Why are not you sending me something … if I don’t mind the risk why should you?” Mrs Thompson admitted to me in cross-examination that “ something ” was something to injure her husband — she was referring to something which Bywaters had suggested to her to which she first objected and in which she afterwards acquiesced. It is a serious piece of evidence against Bywaters if her statement is accepted, because she seems to have thought that the only way in which she could keep the love of Bywaters was by falling in with these suggestions that poison should be administered to her husband. Why did she think that this would keep Bywaters’ love? Was it not because Bywaters was proposing this to her as the only way in which she could be his wife or live with him? From whatever point of view it is regarded this is a matter of the utmost importance. If the suggestion to give her husband something to make him ill came from Bywaters, she not only responded to his suggestion and dotted the I’s and crossed the T’s of the idea he had mentioned, but she concluded a letter which I must describe as being of the utmost importance with the startling postscript, “Have you studied bichloride of mercury?” Does a laundry steward in a ship, even one interested in chemistry, study bichloride of mercury? What did she mean? I suggest that that passage throws a little light upon the suggestion of Mrs Thompson, that all that she was doing was to humour the whims of her lover.

I would remind you that the letter of 20th September (exhibit 28), in which she says “ Be jealous so much that you will do something desperate,” met Bywaters when he landed at Plymouth. As soon as he landed she telegraphed to him and got into touch with him on every occasion that she could right up to 3rd October. On 2nd October she writes to him, and at the end of the letter there appears a sentence which repeated a phrase that had already appeared and which Mrs Thompson admitted in the witness-box meant what has been suggested it did — “ Don’t forget what we talked in the tearoom, I will still risk and try if you will — we have only three and three-quarter years left darlingest.” When you review these letters you are driven to the conclusion that right up to the end she was acquiescing in Bywaters’ suggestions. She allowed him to think that she was prepared to co-operate with him in poisoning her husband right up to the end. She never undeceived him. In trying to reconstruct the conversation between Bywaters and Mrs Thompson, you can only draw inferences which can fairly be drawn by giving Mrs Thompson and Bywaters the benefit of any doubt there may be. Nothing I have said should give you reason to think that I wish to impress a single phrase, a single letter, beyond its proper importance. But when Mrs Thompson says she left Bywaters under the impression that she acquiesced in giving her husband something to make him ill, it is very significant. Is it possible that the anxiety Bywaters had evinced would evaporate when she came in fresh contact with her lover? Is it possible that the proposal to poison her husband was not discussed? I suggest that if the anxiety to injure her husband evaporated with the last letter Mrs Thompson wrote to Bywaters on his homeward journey, it will be your duty to say that Mrs Thompson is not guilty. These matters, however, are for the jury to decide. My duty is to suggest that on a fair reading of the letters and a fair construction of the meetings it is only possible to come to a conclusion that the same idea was present in their minds, that the same question was discussed then, and I am going to ask you to say that the discussions resulted in an agreement, the consequence of which was that Mr Thompson was killed.

Let us come to the day of the crime itself. I do not think it is relevant to consider what arrangements had been made by the Thompsons for 4th August. Of course, Mr Thompson would not know that he was going to be assaulted, and so would not break an engagement to meet the maid at Paddington. Nor does it throw much light on the matter that Bywaters made arrangements to take Mrs Thompson’s sister to the pictures. He would not expose his guilt; he would be more likely to cover his guilt. It is rather inconsistent with his story that he had in his pocket that dreadful weapon with which the crime was committed. You have seen it, and you can say whether it was a handy or convenient thing to carry about. Not a single witness has been called to say that Bywaters was in the habit of carrying it. It is difficult to imagine that it would not have been the subject of jocular conversation if he had. I suggest that Bywaters’ story about the knife has not been corroborated. Mrs Thompson has said in a statement that she knows nothing about the actual killing except that she was pushed aside. Her evidence now is not altogether inconsistent with the second statement she made to the police, but certainly it is not consistent with her first statement. Nor is the evidence given by Bywaters consistent with any of his statements.

The case for the Crown is that there was an agreement between these two persons to get rid of Mr Thompson, or that, if there was not an actual agreement in terms, there was an instigation by Mrs Thompson to get rid of him, on which Bywaters acted so as to kill him. Bywaters’ case should be considered apart from the letters. Consider, first of all, whether he went there to kill Mr Thompson in which case it is murder. Then you will consider Mrs Thompson’s position. Take her admissions as to what she intended, what she proposed to Bywaters, her acquiescence in Bywaters’ suggestion, and weighing everything carefully, as you will do on behalf of the prisoner, say whether she is not guilty of murder. You have an anxious task. The prosecution are under no duty to press anything beyond its fair value, but it is my duty to ask you not to shirk for one moment to give a reasonable construction of those letters and to every incident in the case, even though it results in your returning a verdict of guilty of wilful murder against the woman as well as the man.

Charge to the Jury

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — Members of the jury, there are several indictments in this case, only one of which has been presented, only one of which is before you, and that is the indictment of this man and this woman for wilful murder. The first case which you have to consider is as to the man, and I will come to that before I ask you to consider the case of the woman. The case presented is that these two by arrangement between each other agreed to murder this man, and the murder was effected by the man. Unless you are satisfied of that, namely, that they did it by arrangement in the way I shall explain to you, there would be no case against the woman. But with regard to the man, if you are satisfied that, without any arrangement with the woman, he intended to murder, then, of course, you can find him guilty of that, and that is why I am asking you to consider the case of the man first. But before I do that there are one or two observations I wish to make as to your duty. Of course, when a jury are summoned to try a case for murder, it is always an anxious time; it is as anxious for the judge as it is for the jury. But, whether it be a case of murder, or whether it be a case of petty theft, your duty is the same, and I want to explain to you what it is. In a phrase, you are there to convict the guilty and acquit the innocent. That means that you have two duties, you have got to look very carefully, patiently and sensibly, and acquit unless you are satisfied that the case is proved. On the other hand, if you are satisfied that the case is proved, it just so much your duty, and an equally important duty, to convict because if crime is not detected and conviction does not follow detection, crime flourishes. You have two duties; one is to protect the public by always convicting if you are satisfied that there is crime, and the other is to protect the accused by always acquitting if you think the evidence is unsatisfactory. I have only one word which I hope you will excuse me saying, it may be quite unnecessary — perhaps there are two things I should say to you. Of course we all of us in the last three or four days have been carrying on this work in a rather unnatural and unreal atmosphere. We are in a Court of justice, and Courts of justice in this country very properly are open to the public; it is the right of the public to come to a Court of justice and listen to the proceedings. Cases do arise where large numbers of the public want to come in, and they do come. It is inevitable that you should have been surrounded by a different atmosphere from that which prevails in the ordinary humdrum of the Courts, and you must throw that aside, try to escape from that, because this charge really is — I am not saying whether it is proved — a common or ordinary charge of a wife and an adulterer murdering the husband. That is the charge; I am not saying for a moment it is proved. We heard of flights of imagination in this case, and there was one that I cannot help alluding to. The whole of this case has very properly been conducted with studious moderation by the prosecution, which is quite usual and proper, and more fervently by the counsel for the defence, and that again, is quite usual and proper. When one heard the statement made that never before in the history of crime had anybody ever been charged with a murder when it was not suggested that that person had taken a hand in actually inflicting the blow, I sat amazed. These cases are not uncommon; I am not saying they are common cases. If the learned counsel who said so had been in this Court a few months ago he would have seen me sitting and trying one.

I do not say that cases like this are very usual, but there are cases of husbands who, in order to marry someone else, want to get rid of a wife, and of wives who want to get rid of the husband. Let us say in the interest of the fair sex that they are more often on the other side, but such things are known and they are not unusual. Now, I have only one other observation about Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett; he said, and, indeed, I am afraid it has become now a precedent in these Courts, that, he “ thanked God that you had to decide and he had not.” If that remark is intended to frighten you I hope it will not. We are dealing with law and justice here and I do not like invocations to the Deity. This case, we have no doubt, is as anxious a case as other murder cases. You will apply the ordinary principles of common sense, and I will tell you exactly when there is any law. You may take it from me, that unless I mention there is any law, you will understand that I am talking merely about facts.

There is only one other observation I am going to make, and it has nothing whatever to do with counsel. You are told that this is a case of a “ great love”. I am only using it as a phrase. Take one of the letters as a test. We have had for days an atmosphere, both in speeches and in questions, of this kind. Just at the end of a letter I shall have to allude to again comes this ; “He has the right by law to all that you have the right to by nature and love.” Gentlemen, if that nonsense means anything it means that the love of a husband for his wife is something improper because marriage is acknowledged by the law, and that the love of a woman for her lover, illicit and clandestine, is something great and noble. I am certain that you, like any other right-minded persons, will be filled with disgust at such a notion. Let us get rid of all that atmosphere, and try this case in an ordinary common sense way.

Now, what is murder? You will take the law from me. Murder is the intentional killing of a human being. You sometimes hear the words “malice aforethought.” That does not mean it need be premeditated over a long time; all it means is that it is intentional. Did the person charged  intentionally kill? In one of the statements made by the male prisoner he said, “ I only intended to injure him and not to kill him.” This much, however, is clear and this you may take from me; I do not think it will arise because the case made is that he went out to kill him, not to injure him. The law is clear that if a person goes out to injure anybody else with a deadly weapon (you have seen the knife) which any reasonable man would know might kill, then he is responsible for murder whether it was in his mind actually to kill or not, because a person is taken to know the reasonable consequences of his own actions. That is all you have got to know about the law upon that. I shall say something more to you when I am dealing with the case of the woman, which you have got to take into consideration as a question of law, but I will deal with that presently because I am asking you now to deal with the case of the man. I am not going to deal at length with the letters, and I have only one other point of law to put to you. Gentlemen, you know the facts of this case are extremely short and simple, the only length in the matter comes from the letters. As I told you, you will remember, in the case of statements made in the letters or the statements made by one not in the presence of the other, which they had nothing to do with, they are not evidence at all against the other person, and the statements by the lady in her letters that she administered glass or something are not evidence against him. But when people go into the witness-box and admit that they received letters and answered them, anything said by the man is evidence against the woman, and anything said by the woman is evidence against the man, because they are represented by separate counsel who could have cross-examined them. You have noticed, I daresay, in the course of the case that where the woman made statements they are mostly something excusing her and implicating the man, but in some of them, when the man is making statements, they are always exculpating the woman. It is said that is chivalry and that is why he is doing it. What either of them says on oath is evidence against the other, but apart from that I am going to say very little about these matters, except that there are certain things that one has to take with regard to him (and you are now considering the case of the man alone). The man admits he gave her something ; he says it was quinine ; and the woman says in the witness-box — “ He gave me something, and I do not know what it was.” Certainly the woman says that the man wrote to her saying that it was  “enough to give to an elephant” and the woman says yes, she did give something to the man. If that meant to poison him or to make him die because he was unable to resist it in a heart attack, it is common sense to say that would be murder, just as much as the longest and strongest dose of poison. It is useless to say that because he has got a weak heart I can give him a smaller dose and then it will be partly from his heart and partly from the dose. A man with a weak heart is entitled to be protected from poison as well as anybody else. She does say that he had given her something to give to the man and she admits, although I do not know that he does — I have not got it in my note — she admits that he did write to her saying, “ Be careful not to leave any marks on the glass.’

Now, what were the relations between the parties at that time? Let us go back and think of it again with plain common sense. The Thompsons had been married for some years, and in June of 1921 this young lad went with them to the Isle of Wight. I think it was attempted to be suggested to you that the man was merely friendly with the woman, that there was no love between them. In one of the letters she sent to him (I think it is on 14th June, 1921), she says that she is writing this on this day because one year ago they had their first kiss when they were on a charabanc ride in the Isle of Wight, so it is pretty obvious that there were relations between them then. There is another one in which she said she had had a quarrel with her husband over the old subject; “ he was jealous of you.” One thing, I think, is perfectly clear, at any rate, from the moment when he left the house, as he says, by his own wish, as well as with the wish of the husband, their relations were affectionate; and they were clandestine from beginning to end, if one looks at the correspondence. The first letter you have is exhibit 12, “ Come and see me lunch time please darlint, he suspects ” ; that is in August. The next, the telegram, exhibit 10, “Wait, till one, he’s come,” which is a note. The husband is here so you must wait. There is a letter, the last letter of all, I think, which is written one or two days before this man met his death, exhibit 60, “ I tried so hard to find a way out tonight darlingest, but he was suspicious and still is — I suppose we must make a study of this deceit for some time longer.” Now, gentlemen, the first thing you have got to make up your mind about — because this has a direct bearing upon the case put by him as well as by the woman — if it was clandestine how can you believe evidence that they were always talking to him and saying, “ Give her up,” and he said, “ No, I will not give her up ” ? I think that, being the relation between the parties you will have to ask yourselves what it means and why it was clandestine. It is said, you know, all they were writing about and a good many of the things they were saying were merely about going off together. Nothing prevents nowadays in this country a woman going away with another man except the divorce Court, and what else? The trouble, as is said in one of the letters, of ways and means. This man was in a respectable occupation, the woman was in a respectable occupation; if they were going off with one another, even if they stayed in the same place, it might end in their losing their positions and having nothing to live upon. If it does not lead to that, it means it leads to scandal. It is part of the case that both said, “ We are going to keep this quiet because we cannot afford to risk our positions and our place in society; we must keep it dark,” and the whole of the evidence is that from the moment he came back they saw each other every day except when the husband was at home, and it would have been suspicious if she had gone out. Those being the general circumstances of the case you will, of course, bear in mind whether you should believe the evidence, particularly the evidence this man has given, that she was always asking Thompson to grant a divorce and let them go off.

He comes home from his last voyage and, as I say, every day, except when it is impossible without the husband knowing, they meet one another. Of course, as I have said before, these letters do show on the face of them — and you will hear more of that later — that whether he thought it melodrama or not, the lady was writing suggesting that she was poisoning her husband. On this particular day, by an arrangement made with her husband and other people, she goes to the theatre. She sees Bywaters. The two meet at 5.30. At six o’clock she tells us she had got to meet her husband and so goes off. At about seven o’clock he presents himself at Shakespeare Crescent, about two miles from the scene of where this unfortunate man met his death. He has a knife in his pocket; you must take the knife and see it. It would be in a leather sheath, which has disappeared; I do not know what has become of it, but, as you know, his evidence was that he always carried it about with him. It is a little difficult to put into any kind of pocket, except the side pocket. He said he always carried it in his overcoat pocket. It is pointed out that no other person had seen it. It is suggested by the prosecution that when he arrived, as he undoubtedly did — there is no dispute about that — at Shakespeare Crescent, two miles off the scene of the crime (if it was a crime) — the scene of this death — he had got this in his overcoat pocket. It is not suggested he showed it to anybody. There was possibly no reason he should if he had got it. It is suggested by the prosecution that the only reasonable inference is that he put it in his pocket for the purpose he had in view. He was there till eleven o’clock, or after eleven. I will read you presently his own statement, you know practically what it is; he was suddenly seized with an impulse to talk to this husband because he was so miserable about the wife ; to talk to him about a separation or a divorce — sudden impulse. It is said by the prosecution, nothing of the sort ; he went out to lie in wait for the husband, and knew where he was coming. You have his own statement which I will read to you at length eventually. But what did happen, on evidence which is not contradicted, was this — It is a quiet road at half-past twelve at night, the husband and wife are coming down, she is next to the wall, her husband outside coming down on the pavement. In one of his statements Bywaters said he waited for them ; in his sworn evidence he said he came up from behind. You will consider when coming up behind at that hour of night, if he were coming up — I am putting plain common sense considerations before you — do you think they would have heard him before he came up to them or do you think the blows were struck before they heard him? Whichever it was, the man is struck, as one sees from the bloodstains, and struck again, probably in the front, because there is more blood there: but he has gone a certain number of feet down the road ; it is obvious he has got into the road then, where there is a lot of blood, which spurts out ; he goes back and staggers and wobbles towards the wall and sinks down with his back against the wall. He went 46 or 47 feet in all, judging by the spots of blood; that is the way of it.

What is found on his body? There is found one blow, a wound which comes in behind the neck ; administered, it is suggested, by this weapon, and is driven with such force into him that it comes out into his mouth. There is another one, driven with such force into the back that it reaches down to the spine. There is a third wound. It is suggested by counsel for the defence that it was inflicted from the front ; but there it is, it might be, and very likely it was, inflicted from behind, and it cuts — not slashes, you recollect, but stabs — the gullet and cuts the carotid artery on the right, side. From that blood gushes out with enormous force and renders death inevitable in a few minutes. I am putting aside the evidence of the man and the woman because you may think the whole of it is made up. I do not say you will think it is made up, but you might. All human evidence, particularly of people who are defending themselves, is liable, if they have an interest, to be uncertain, so that the evidence of anybody who has an interest is to be scrutinised, and the evidence of the bloodstains cannot be disputed.

Now, what happens afterwards? I am not going into the woman’s case at all, except to the fact of her interest in the husband. I will deal with her evidence in detail later. The man goes away. The man who was killed sinks down, and even the doctor who comes up is under the impression — I will say something about it presently – that he has not been stabbed but it was a broken blood vessel or something of that sort, blood welling out from his mouth; it was an illness. Eventually the police come up and when the body is taken away the wounds are discovered. What does the man do? His  evidence is that he ran away. A number of people come up and all their evidence deals entirely with the woman, so I am not saying a word about that with regard to the man, because, again, statements made in evidence by other people with regard to the woman do not affect the man. So far the husband is killed, admittedly ; and now the only two people present, the wife and the lover, give evidence to show whether one or the other had inflicted the blow, or some third person or some entirely independent person had inflicted the blow. The police come upon the scene and these are his statements. The first one is admittedly now a tissue of lies. The police get the letters and have a suspicion of him and they get him to make a statement: “ I have known Mr Percy Thompson for about four years, ” &c. (Reads statement, exhibit 5, page 37.) “ After lunch she returned to business and I have not seen her since.” That is to say, it was a concealment of facts. “ Mr Thompson was not aware of all our meetings, but some of them he was.” Do you think that is candid? “ I have known for a very long time past that she had led a very unhappy life with him. This is also known to members of Mrs Thompson’s family.” That does not seem to be accurate. “ I have written to her on two occasions. I signed the letters Freddie and I addressed her as ‘ Dear Edie.’ ” I think it is obvious, as was suggested by Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett or Mr Whiteley, that that took the form of question and answer. Then he goes on, ” On the evening of Monday, 2nd October, I called on Mrs Graydon.” (Continues reading.) “ Before leaving I remember Mrs Graydon’s daughter, Avis, saying that Percy (Mr Thompson) had ’phoned her up, and I gathered from the observations she made that he was taking his wife to a theatre that night and that there were other members of the family going.” You notice that he had heard the same evening from Mrs Thompson — ” When I left the house I went through Browning Road, into Sibley Grove, to East Ham Railway Station.” (Continues reading.) “ This statement has been read over to me, is voluntary and is true.” It is not suggested that this was anything else but an intention to deceive the police. Later on he finds out she is there, whether actually they are both together or he sees her there I do not know — there seems to be a conflict of evidence about that ; it does not seem to me to make any difference. Then he says, “ I wish to make a voluntary statement ” — that is on the 5th October, the next day. (Reads statement, exhibit 6, page 39) “ I loved her and I couldn’t go on seeing her leading that life. I did not intend to kill him. I only meant to injure him.” I have already commented on that; if he stabbed him without any excuse or provocation then he is guilty. “ I gave him an opportunity of standing up to me as a man but he wouldn’t.” In other words, he declined to fight. His statement was — it may not be true or parts of it — he would not fight. “ I gave him an opportunity of standing up to me as a man but he wouldn’t. I have had the knife some time; it was a sheath knife. I threw it down a drain when I was running through Endsleigh Gardens.” Then I think there is only one other statement of any importance, to Detective Williams, on 6th October. He asked Williams: “ Have you a knife there! Have they found it? I told them I ran up Endsleigh Gardens, but coming to think of it, after I did it I ran forward towards the Wanstead Park along Belgrave Road, turned up a road to the right. I am not sure whether it was Kensington Gardens (where they lived) or the next road. I then crossed over to the left side of the road, and just before I got to the top of the Cranbrook Road end I put the knife down a drain. It should easily be found.” The importance of it is that he is admitting that his was the knife, and not the woman’s, that did it. He again uses the expression, “ When I did it.”

Now, let us come to his evidence in the witness-box. It is fair, I think, that I should read it to you. The part I am going to read to you there is no dispute about. There are several meetings I pass by altogether, but Mr Whiteley did read it to you quite properly, but as that was last week I had better read it to you again. He says he bought the knife in November, 1921. As I say, gentlemen, all this as to the knife is entirely a question for you. It is pointed out that a sailor may have a knife of this sort ; it is suggested that no reasonable man living in London carries a knife like that about in his pocket, and it is suggested that the mere presence of the knife is very strong evidence of his intention, a knife of that description: I think you have seen it, but you may as well take it. He says, “ I bought that in November, 1921; it had a leather sheath; I took it when I went abroad ; I carried it in my inside right-hand overcoat pocket which I was wearing during October.” She telephoned him on the morning of 3rd October, they went to Queen Anne’s Restaurant to lunch and he met her at Fuller’s shop at five o’clock. “ I parted with her at Aldersgate Street Station at 5.30. I then went to Mrs Graydon’s at Manor Park and I got there at half-past six to seven. I was in the same room all the time till I left about eleven o’clock. There were four members of the Graydon family there. I had a pouch with me which was a present from Mrs Thompson.” Then there is a long discussion ; I do not think I need read it to you. And then he goes on suggesting that Mrs Graydon knew the pouch had been given him by Mrs Thompson, and Mrs Graydon said, “ We won’t argue about it; she’s one of the best”, and he replied, ” There is none better.” That was introduced as showing that they were talking about Mrs Thompson. After that I was naturally thinking of Mrs Thompson, I was thinking she was unhappy: I wished I could help her.” (Continues reading evidence of Bywaters, page 54.)

Now, gentlemen, that is his case and that is the whole of the evidence with regard to it. Nobody questions that he inflicted those wounds, and now I think with regard to him you will have quite a simple task to arrive at your decision. First of all, it is the law that if you intentionally kill — intentionally — you are guilty of murder, but if you kill a person in legitimate self-defence, that is what is called “ justifiable homicide.” It is said by the prosecution that this story, that Thompson attempted to shoot Bywaters, is quite untrue. As a matter of fact, the policeman Geal said there was no weapon or pistol of any kind on the husband when his body was brought in. All of them say — all of the witnesses who were called — that, except for the stabs and the cuts there were no signs of a struggle on Mr Thompson’s clothing. It is said on behalf of the prosecution, this story of the reason for their meeting and of the threat of the pistol is just a tale like other tales that are put up by prisoners in any crime. The prosecution say it is a story which no reasonable jury would think of believing; it is contradicted by the facts of the wounds themselves; it never appears at all till he is put in the witness-box, and it is such a story that you are entitled to reject entirely. If you think that is the truth you are entitled to acquit him altogether. He says that Thompson hit him and, if you believe that Thompson made an unprovoked attack upon him, and he only inflicted these stabs in self-defence, you will acquit him altogether. If you think it is a fabrication from beginning to end you will reject it. I will not say anything more about it.

There is something which requires a little consideration. I am telling you the law, you may take it from me. I am not speaking of facts, that is for you to decide and not for me. It is the law, that if a man, although intentionally, in the heat of blood kills somebody when he has had provocation, then the jury may, if they think that this provocation was the only thing that, started the murderous impulse, reduce it to manslaughter. A man may flog you with a whip and, if you happen to have a pistol, and you take it out and shoot him, the jury may say the provocation was made; you never intended to shoot him. But that is a matter which you have to regard with great consideration. First of all, it is inconceivable that it would be any provocation for a man to say, “ I will not allow you to run away with my wife.” Provocation means blows or violence. But, then, in the middle of this story, he says, he hit me on the chest and then he put his hand behind ; he provoked me.” I have dealt with the question of self-defence, but was there a blow at all? Is there any injury to this man or to his clothing? His own story is, “ I wanted to fight him, I waited for him ” — he has got a knife, as we know, in his pocket — “ I waited for him and he would not fight ” ; and then, in his second statement, where he says he looked upon him as a snake — “ The reason why I fought with Thompson was because he never acted like a man to his wife. He always seemed several degrees lower than a snake. I loved her and I could not go on seeing her leading that life.” Now, gentlemen, what is said by the prosecution is that there never was any provocation at all. It is said that the true story is that he came at him from behind, whether he waited for him or whether he caught him up from behind. As regards Mrs Thompson’s story, you are entitled to take that into consideration ; it does not help him very much. And there is one other thing that I also wish to mention to you as regards him. Mrs Thompson says she was pushed aside and fainted and became senseless. I am going to deal with that when I deal with her, but she says when she did recover she saw a scuffle going on, which is equally consistent with a man who was defending himself — I mean if the story is true at all. She does not say in the least that there was any conversation. Here, again, in fact, her evidence that she was pushed violently aside does not look like what Bywaters said, that he went up there to have an amicable discussion with him about divorce. It is very odd, if they were to have an amicable discussion, that he pushed the lady so violently as to knock her head against the wall and render her, according to her view, senseless. There is, I think, only one other person who can throw any light on the matter and he is a man who was called, and he lived at a house somewhere opposite, and it was five minutes before he came out, and he heard Mrs Thompson in a piteous tone say, “ Oh, don’t, oh, don’t.” We will deal with that when we come to Mrs Thompson’s case. It seems to me, one cannot help saying, rather to contradict the story. Mrs Thompson was rather contradicting the story that she did not see what was going on. But, if you believe it, and if Mrs Thompson was looking on, it does not help the prisoner, and you may think it rather points to her seeing the murder. That is the story for the prosecution, but it is entirely for you ; and that is the whole of the evidence.

Now, may I just add this: if you think that he really did this because he quite innocently had the knife and never thought of doing anything until he got there, or he did it because of this story which appears in the witness-box, he thought he was going to be shot, and he did it in reasonable self-protection and he inflicted these stabs — if you think that then you will acquit him altogether. You will consider this matter very carefully if you think it was an intentional murder. If you think there is any foundation whatever for the story that there was an assault and provocation, that is, a blow struck by the husband not in self-defence of himself, and that, there was provocation in that way, you might find a verdict of manslaughter, but if you think that is a mere defence put up in order to escape retribution for what he had done and dismiss that story, then you will find him guilty of murder.

I have only one other matter to say to you with regard to this and, of course, it is my duty to say so at some time, and I will say it now. Of course, you know this is a man of good character. Sometimes evidence of this sort is put up — I am saying it quite frankly — because it is said “ here is a young man; we are sorry for him; let us do something for him.” Gentlemen, you know perfectly well, if you find him guilty of murder, what sentence I must pronounce, I never keep it back from the jury. You know as well as I do that the prerogative of mercy, which is in other hands, does not rest with me nor with you, and even if you really think him a young and honest person, and that he lost his head altogether, if you think that he was inflamed by sexual impulses and that the real truth of the matter is that he went out with the knife, put it in his pocket in order to kill this man — went out and did kill this man and struck him from behind, as said by the prosecution, without any provocation whatever — if you are satisfied of it, then, however unpleasant your duty is, you must give effect to it. That is the only way I can help you with regard to him, and, after the adjournment, I will deal with the case of the female prisoner.

 

Adjourned for a short time (Bailiffs being sworn).

 

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — Gentlemen, I now turn to the case of Mrs Thompson, a case which I have no doubt you will carefully and conscientiously consider, being desirous of doing real justice. Of course, if you should find that, this was not a murder at all, there is an end of the matter. If there never was any intention by the man to do it or if he never premeditated it, in the sense that he only did it because he was provoked by a blow — if you believe the story that he was struck by a blow and that so excited him that he did something that he had no thought of doing before and did not come there to do in fact, it is a manslaughter, not murder, and there is an end of the matter, because the lady cannot be convicted of doing something which was done under provocation and never designed. If you think it is a murder, then comes the question, is this lady a party to it?

Now, I am going to ask you to consider only one question in your deliberations, and that is, was it an arranged thing between the woman and the man? I quite accept the law of the learned Solicitor-General that if you hire an assassin and say, “ Here is money,” and there is a bargain between them that the assassin shall go out and murder the man when he can, the person who hires the assassin is guilty of the murder — it is plain common sense. I also accept the proposition that if a woman says to a man, “ I want this man murdered; you promise me to do it,” and he then promises her (she believing that he is going to keep his promise as soon as he gets an opportunity) and goes out and murders some one, then she also is guilty of murder. She is just as much guilty of murder if she sets loose an assassin as if she fires an arrow at a distance which pierces somebody’s heart. But I do not think that is quite the case you have got to consider here. At half-past five she leaves him, telling him where she is going, and that she is coming back with her husband in the evening. If you think it was no surprise to her when she saw him that evening, and if you think that when she saw him there that evening he came there under her direction, under her information that she would be there about that time, and that he was waiting there for their arrival under her direction and information that she had given him as to where she would be about that time — if you think she knew perfectly well as soon as she set eyes on him he was there to murder, she is guilty of the murder too, because he was doing it under her direction with the hand that she was guiding. If you think he had that knife in his pocket intending to murder — of course, this question only arises if you think he had that knife in his pocket intending to murder that man that evening — and if you think she knew that he had it, I think it necessarily follows she would know that he was going to do it that evening. That is what I submit to you. Therefore, I think the only case I am going to ask you to consider is this, was she a party already to the murder in that sense, that she was aiding and abetting it? The words are pretty plain. “ Aiding and abetting ” means giving a help to the murderer, if it actually took place.

And here it is that what I may call the necessary absence of evidence makes these letters of so much importance. Of course, you will understand that if two people agree to murder anybody, they do not make that agreement when anybody is listening. If they agree to murder, the crime will not take place if there is anybody looking on, and therefore it follows that when it is committed — if you think it has been committed — there should be no witnesses present. It necessarily further follows that in every case of such a description you have to infer from what is called circumstantial evidence, and you cannot have anything else. It rarely happens by accident — except by a fortunate accident in the course of justice — that a murder is committed when anybody is there to see it, and you have to gather from the evidence — and the short case for the prosecution is this — it really is a short case: that for months these people had been corresponding, and for months this lady — we are only considering her case — had been writing to this man, inciting him to murder. I will deal with the letters, and deal with her explanation later on. It was suggested that she was always writing to him, and when he came back, the moment he came back, there were these frequent clandestine meetings — I am not going to remind you of what I said about these meetings being clandestine meetings, it is for you to judge, but I have given you a view which you may or may not accept, but I repeat, and must repeat in regard to her explanation, that she had been frequently talking to him about separation or divorce. If you think these letters are genuine, they mean that she is involved in a continual practice of deceit; concealing the fact of her connection with Bywaters, and not reiterating it with requests for her husband to let her go. That is for you, and not for me. I must also repeat what I say about the surrounding circumstances. Probably you will think that it is the fact that if she ran away with Bywaters she thought she might lose her position, and, having lost her position, there was nothing to live upon. The only question is, was that what they were talking about in these letters? It is clear that if Providence should have removed the husband by a heart attack then they could have married and they could have kept their positions, and the way was clear. The prosecution say that that was of enormous weight and one of the things that they were from time to time discussing, and it is said that they discussed it backwards and forwards in their letters. I am just going to refer you to some of those letters in which they discussed it. If you think that it is certain that they discussed it when he came back, and talked of what they would do in the future, it is said those letters not only throw a light upon the motive of the man and upon the motive of the woman, but they also throw a light upon the intention of their actions on the particular day, and particularly the intention of her actions.

Now, let us turn to the letters. Again, I am sure you will not think that I am taking any side in this matter; if you think I am taking any side in this matter, as I said, you know as well as I do you can disagree with me without giving offence to me or anybody else; it is entirely a matter for you. I am anxious not to take a side, but if you think any of my opinions jump out in anything that I say, you will be perfectly at liberty to disregard them, because it is for you to decide it, because you are much better judges than I am. I do not want you to think, if I go into portions of the letters, that I am asking you to disregard the explanation of the letters. You will consider them very carefully. You will not consider that I am giving all the arguments on one side or the other.

I am going to read you certain extracts from the letters. All his letters — the letters from him — only breathe this insensate silly affection; they do not seem to help us very much that way. We are not now considering his case, but all these letters are written by her, and therefore they are evidence against her. It is said by the prosecution that from beginning to end of these letters she is seriously considering and inciting the man to assist her to poison her husband, and if she did that, and if you find that within a week or two after he came back the poisoning is considered no longer possible, he has no longer studied or has not studied bichloride of mercury, but has read “ Bella Donna ” without seeing how “ Bella Donna ” can be of any use to him, they would naturally turn to some other means of effecting their object, and it is said to you they naturally would, when you find them meeting day after day, parting at half-past five, meeting the husband at six, and she telling him where they were going, and he immediately, as soon as he gets an opportunity, if you believe he waited for them coming back, and knew they were there — gentlemen, you may say here are circumstances following the long-studied incitement for him to help her to poison. He walks with her to the station and parts with her half an hour before she meets her husband, and she then goes off with her husband He clearly was waiting for the 11.30 train to Ilford — that is not disputed. He is there looking for them, knowing when they are coming. The evidence, so far as it goes as to what was said at the house, is that they were out at the theatre, and no more. He knew what train they were coming down by, although it is probably the natural train for anybody going to the theatre and returning to Ilford, and it is suggested when you find that is followed by a meeting within five or six hours of their parting, and the man, if you believe it, assassinated — then you are entitled to assume that she sped him on his errand, that when she saw him at any rate she knew he was coming and knew what he was after; that she, as soon as it was done — it is said by the prosecution — steadily told lies and concealed the whole of the facts. It is on that you are asked to draw the conclusion that she was a party to the act of Bywaters in killing her husband at that time and place. You will not draw it unless you are satisfied, and if you are satisfied you will draw it; and there is the whole matter.

Now, let us look at the letters. I am sure you know them and you recollect the whole of them. In exhibit 62 you find this, “ Yesterday I met a woman who had lost three husbands in eleven years, and not through the war; two were drowned and one committed suicide and some people I know  cannot lose one. How unfair everything is.” And then she breaks off. In exhibit 27 — I am not going to comment, I am only going to call your attention to the facts; “ I had the wrong porridge today but I don’t suppose it will matter, I don’t seem to care much either way. You’ll probably say I am careless and I admit I am, but I don’t care, do you. I gave way this week to him.” Of course, you know these letters, as was quite properly pointed out, are full of the outpourings of a silly but, at the same time, wicked affection. There are all sorts of things in the letters other than alluding to poison and many other things which I am not going to refer to, but, mostly cases of affection and love — or other matters that I have already commented on which I believe to be matters of that description. In the same letter (exhibit 27) there is: ” You know darlint I am beginning to think I have gone wrong in the way I manage this affair. I think perhaps it would have been better had I acquiesced in everything he said and did or wanted to do. At least it would have disarmed any suspicion he might have and that would have been better if we have to use drastic measures darlint — understand? Anyway so much for him. I’ll talk about someone else.” Is that talking about divorce or is that talking about drastic measures — measures for removing him?

Then in exhibit 15 there is this incident about his taking too much of some medicine. “ Someone he knows in town (not the man I previously told you about) had given him a prescription for a draught for insomnia and he’d had it made up and taken it and it made him ill. He certainly looked ill and his eyes were glassy. I’ve hunted for the said prescription everywhere and can’t find it and asked him what he had done with it and he said the chemist kept it.” Of course, it is suggested she wanted to get hold of the prescription. “ I told Avis about the incident only I told her ” (look at these words) — “as if it f lightened and worried me ” — not that it had frightened her, but she pretended it to convey that; and you will have to consider in a good many of these things whether she was genuine or acting. “ I told Avis about the incident, only I told her as if it frightened and worried me as I thought perhaps it might be useful at some future time that I had told somebody.” It is said she is already preparing for witnesses in case there should be a murder case; that is what is said. Then “ It would be so easy darlint — if I had things — I do hope I shall. How about cigarettes? ” Then the next is an extract: “ Death from hyoscine poisoning, but how it was administered there is no sufficient evidence to show.” Then there is another extract: “ Ground glass in box ” — I only allude to it because somebody else alluded to it.

Exhibit 16 — “ However for that glorious state of existence I suppose we must wait for another three or four months. Darlint, I am glad you succeeded, oh so glad I can’t explain, when your note came I didn’t know how to work at all — all I kept thinking of was your success — and my ultimate success I hope. I suppose it isn’t possible for you to send it to me — not at all possible.” Now, it is suggested he had written to her, you know — at any rate she understood he had written to her saying, “ I have got something that would poison him or make him ill.” “I suppose it is impossible for you to send it to me.” She in her answer, you will recollect, says: “He was to send something to make him ill, and I never intended to do it, although I said that to him.” He said in his answer it meant “letters.” Then she continues: “Darlingest boy, this thing that I am going to do for both of us will it ever — at all, make any difference between us, darlint, do you understand what I mean. Will you ever think any the less of me, — not now, I know darlint — but later on — perhaps some years hence — do you think you will feel any different — because of this thing that I shall do.” The meaning of that is for you to judge; you will fully understand it is not for me to tell you what the letters mean; you are the judges of that, not I ; there is no law about it whatever. It is said the meaning of that is, “ If I poison him is it going to make any difference to you afterwards ”; that is what is suggested is the plain meaning of the words.

Exhibit 20 — “ Why do you say to me ‘ never run away, face things and argue and beat everybody.’ Do I ever run away? Have I ever run away? and do you think I should be likely to now? That’s twice this trip, something you have said has hurt. You will have to kiss all that hurt away — ’cos it does really hurt — it’s not sham darlint. I’m not going to talk to you any more — I can’t and I don’t think I have shirked have I? except darlint to ask you again to think out all the plans and methods for me and wait and wait so anxiously now — for the time when we’ll be with each other — even tho’ it’s only once — for ‘one little hour,’ — our kind of hour, not the song kind. And just to tell you Peidi loves you always.” Then she is referring to a lot of books you will see in the list: “I think the ‘red hair ’ one is true in parts — you tell me which parts darlint. The Kempton cutting may be interesting if it is to be the same method.” Then, “ Will you be ready with every little detail when I see you — because you know more about this thing than I, and I am relying on you for all plans and instructions — only just the act I am not. . . . Why not go to 231 darlint, I think you ought to go as usual, it would be suspicious later if you stopped away without a reason known to them, and there is not a reason is there? You have not fallen out with Bill have you? What about Dr. Wallis’s case, — you said it was interesting but you did not discuss it with me. Darlint, about making money — yes we must somehow, and what does it matter how, — when we have accomplished that one thing — we are going to live entirely for ourselves and not study anyone except ourselves.”

Exhibit 50 — “ This time really will be the last you will go away — like things are, won’t it? We said it before darlint I know and we failed — but there will be no failure this next time darlint, there mustn’t be — I’m telling you — wherever it is — if it’s to sea — I’m coming too, and if it’s to nowhere — I’m also coming darlint. You’ll never leave me behind again, never, unless things are different.” Now, it is said that the meaning of that is, “ If we get married you can go on your voyage and leave me behind, but if he is still alive I am coming away with you.”

Exhibit 17 — “ Don’t keep this piece ” — that is at the top — “ About the marconigram, — do you mean one saying Yes or No, because I shan’t send it darlint I’m not going to try any more until you come back.” What does that mean? “ I made up my mind about this last Thursday. He was telling his mother &c., the circumstances of my ‘ Sunday morning escapade ’ and he puts great stress on the fact of the tea tasting bitter, ‘ as if something had been put in it ’ he says. Now I think whatever else I try it in again will still taste bitter — he will recognise it and be more suspicious still and if the quantity is still not successful it will injure any chance I may have of trying when you come home.” ; The date of that letter, if you look at it again, is April. Bywaters says: “ At some time in March I gave her something” which he says, was quinine, and she says she does not know what it was. It is suggested the plain meaning of that is she tried that and failed. He says whatever it was it was only quinine but she does not know what it was.

Exhibit 18 — “ I used the light bulb three times, but the third time he found a piece — so I have given it up — until you come home.” Of course, you know her explanation is that this was merely — I don’t know what word to call it — swank — to show what a heroic person she was; that she was prepared to do all sorts of things which she was not in fact doing, and his explanation was always to exculpate her, and to say she was a melodramatic being. You will give what weight you think to it. Whether she gave all she said she did, or whether she only gave some of what she said she did, or gave nothing at all — his explanation was to exculpate her. Her explanation as given by the Solicitor-General this morning is that, “ He did send things which I was to give to my husband to make him ill, but I did not do it ” ; in other words she said “ He was expecting me to; I was not inciting him.” Gentlemen, in this case we are only judging her, her case. I am saying you may disregard her or you may think it true, but, of course, you will bear in mind that in that she is exculpating herself and saying the man is the wicked person : “ He sent me these things, and I did not pay any attention to him. When I wrote to him he thought I was trying to poison my husband,” because to give him something when he has a bad heart is to poison him, and she says, “ I kept it up and never undeceived him.”

Exhibit 19—“ I don’t think we are failures in other things, and we mustn’t be in this. We mustn’t give up as we said. No, we shall have to wait if we fail again. Darlint, Fate cannot always turn against us and if it is we must fight it — you and I are strong now, we must be stronger. We must learn to be patient. We must have each other darlint. It’s meant to be, – I know I feel it is because I love you such a lot — such a love was not meant to be in vain. It will come right I know one day, if not by our efforts some other way. We’ll wait eh darlint, and you’ll try and get some money and then we can go away and not worry about anybody or anything. You said it was enough for an elephant,” and he admits you know he did say either in letters or by words that 30 grains of quinine were enough for an elephant— why an elephant should want 30 grains of quinine I do not know, or whether his explanation is true, or what she was writing that she had not succeeded— “ perhaps it was, but you don’t allow for the taste making only a small quantity to be taken. It sounded like a reproach; was it meant to be.” Then further on, “ I was buoyed up with the hope of the ‘light bulb’ and I used a lot – big pieces too – not powdered – and it has no effect – I quite expected to be able to send that cable — but no — nothing has happened from it.” Now, what is the cable? She says the cable was a cable stating she was going to get a divorce. It is not for me to say anything to you, but it is suggested that the cable was his death. “ And now your letter tells me about the bitter taste again. Oh darlint, I do feel so down and unhappy.” Then she says, “ Wouldn’t the stuff make small pills coated together with soap and dipped in liquorice powder — like Beecham’s. Try while you’re away.” It is said that is asking him there to produce some poison with which they could poison this man without being discovered. “ Our boy had to have his thumb operated on because he had a piece of glass in it that’s what made me try that method again — but I suppose as you say he is not normal. I know I feel I shall never get him to take a sufficient quantity of anything bitter.” Then she says: “ No I haven’t forgotten the key I told you before.” Then further on — “ You tell me not to leave finger marks on the box — do you know I did not think of the box but I did think of the glass or cup whatever was used.” She says it is true he did write to her and ask her not to put finger marks on the box. Why finger marks? It is suggested by the prosecution that if this man is poisoned, and there is a trial, finger marks would display on the box who has handled the poison. “ Do experiment with the pills while you are away.”

Exhibit 22 — “ It must be remembered that digitalin is a cumulative poison, and that the same dose harmless if taken once, yet frequently repeated, becomes deadly.” I should not think you should bother much about what is in the book called “ Bella Donna.” The only point about it is, it is the case of a woman — nobody suggested she was like this woman, or the man was like this man. It is the case, admitted on oath by herself, that there is at the end of the book somebody poisoning her husband, or trying to poison her husband. “ It must be remembered that digitalin is a cumulative poison, and that the dose harmless if taken once, yet frequently repeated, becomes deadly.” And there is this remarkable statement — “ The above passage I have just come across in a book I am reading, ‘ Bella, Donna,’ by Robert Hichens. Is it any use? . . . I’d like you to read ‘ Bella Donna’ first, you will learn something from it to help us; then you can read the ‘ Fruitful Vine.’ ” No doubt the letter about the “Fruitful Vine” was something similar; they write chiefly about so-called heroes and heroines, probably wicked people, which no doubt accounts for a great many of these tragedies.

Exhibit 26 — “ Why aren’t you sending me something — I wanted you to — you never do what I ask you darlint — you still have your own way always — If I don’t mind the risk why should you? ” After the rest comes this — “ Have you studied bichloride of mercury? ” In answer to my question we were told it is what is called a corrosive sublimate, a poison with which those who unfortunately have to come to these Courts have to deal with.

Then we come to this last letter at the end of September, exhibit 60. It is quite obvious that that bit refers to a meeting, and, of course, quite properly, the Solicitor-General asked a question which was fully answered, and much point was made of it. It is no point in the case now — ” Do not forget what we talked of in the Tea Room; I will still risk and try if you will,” and it is said it is poison or it is the dagger. “ We have got many things to consider; shall we run away if we can get the money, or shall we try poison? We will talk it over.”

I think there is one other letter which I might refer you to, exhibit 64, although the date we do not know. “ I know what you say is really true, but darlint it does feel sometimes that we are drifting. Don’t you ever feel like that — and it hurts so — ever so much. Yes, we are both going to fight until we win — darlint, fight hard, in real earnest, — you are going to help me first and then I am going to help you and when you have done your share and I have done mine we shall have given to each other what we both ‘ desire most in this world’ ourselves, isn’t this right, but darlint don’t fail in your share of the bargain because I am helpless without your help — you understand.” That is certainly earlier in the year, some time before this took place, but there it is.

I should be wanting in my duty if I did not plainly explain to you that the meaning of these letters is entirely for you, and you have to ask yourselves, do they form a very strong case; and is she asking him clearly for his assistance to remove and murder her husband by the administration of poison? With regard to some of the statements, if they are accurate, they show that she administered it, but the important part of it is that they were plotting and planning, and you have heard her explanation, that she did it because it was to please him, to show how devoted she was to him. His story was: “ I thought she advised me to do it, suggested I should do it, but I thought, it was all vapour — melodrama.” You bear in mind the force of those explanations; but it is a strong case for your consideration that on each of those voyages while he was away they are discussing the removal of her husband by poison, and it is said again, and I do not like to repeat myself, that that throws light, not only on the motive of what he did, but it throws light on their intentions and their actions in what happened.

The rest is short. You will consider, in saying whether you are satisfied, what was done before ; they met frequently. They met, as you know, and only parted at about half-past five that afternoon, and at half- past twelve that night Thompson is lying dead, and killed by the dagger of somebody. You have seen the weapon ; I call it a dagger ; it is a weapon that has to be seized with the fist — it is a stabbing weapon — you have seen it, and you have got it. Where is it done? Is it by accident that he comes up to her? All we know about that is that they were talking about a dance, and she was next to the wall. I am not dealing with his case; I have done with it. It certainly is in a lonely road which is obviously the direct way home, but it is in a road with no houses on one side except the house of one of the witnesses to whom I am going to call attention, and the back of other houses, and you have the circumstances of the killing which I mentioned to you when I was dealing with the other case. That is all we know. It is suggested by the prosecution that the moment she saw him there she expected him, and they ask you to be satisfied, they ask you to believe, that she saw it done. What evidence is there of that? She denies it. Of course, there is no other evidence.

There is one other very curious piece of evidence to which I want to call your attention, and that is the evidence of Mr Webber. He says he heard a noise, and these are his words; he heard those words — “ Oh, don’t, oh, don’t ” in piteous tones. You know he is some way off; I am not saying it is true; it is for you to say whether it is accurate, or whether it is imaginary, or whether he has made a mistake; but there is the evidence. The voice was Mrs Thompson’s. “ It was three or five minutes before I came out, and then I heard the doctor ask had he been ill.” Now, of course, again it is for you to say, if you believe that, what the words mean, “ Oh, don’t, oh, don’t,” in piteous tones, and it is made use of by her counsel as showing that she objected to the murder and was saying “ Don’t.” Well, a remark of force, but it is a double-edged weapon, this evidence, if you think it is accurate, because if you think it means that when she saw him being stabbed or saw one of the stabs, she said “ Don’t, don’t,” it means that she was looking on, and she saw it all. The evidence is incompatible with the story that she was senseless and only recovered — you know her story, I need not go into that matter again – if she was pushed aside and damaged by a fall (and there is independent evidence she had a bruise). That does not prove how the bruise was given, but her story is that she knew nothing of it. She saw some scuffling a little way down, and she saw the back of the man running away, knowing who he was. Of course, if that is so, it is impossible that she could be saying, “ Don’t, don’t,” and she saw the blows struck. I think it is entirely for you — I will not argue that. Of course, you will bear in mind that, if you think that is true, the fact that she was saying, “ Don’t, don’t,” at the end of it, would not protect her if she had summoned the man there and was only horrified when she saw the deed, and that he had compassed it. These are things that will appeal to you or anybody else; you will weigh them. But if you believe them you are in this difficulty, that it makes you disbelieve at once the whole of her evidence that she did not see it, and, indeed, if you think, knowing what these wounds are like and what happened, it is almost incredible that she should not have seen what happened. It is a remarkable story for you to believe: that the sudden push against the wall rendered her senseless and stupefied. That is the story.

It is always relevant to see what is done before and after the deed. It is said by the prosecution that it was arranged he should run away, and she should go to the doctor. It is said that their letters are suggesting they were arranging how to avoid suspicion when it was done, and the letters bear that out. Now were they; do they bear that out ?

I am going to read to you the evidence of the witnesses, which prove what Mrs Thompson said after the act was done. All the witnesses say she was very agitated; some of the witnesses say she did not know what she was saying. The witness Doris Pittard is called, and she says this — “ I saw the woman running, and she met me and said, ‘ Oh, my God, will you help me, my husband is ill, he is bleeding.’” I asked when it happened, and she said, “ I cannot tell you, when I turned to speak to him blood was pouring out of his mouth.” That is the account of Doris Pittard. Not a word of anything more: “ He is ill.” You have got to consider whether this was genuine, or acting a part of the prearranged plan; whether it was out of control. All the witnesses agree that she was in a state of great agitation. Give what weight you think to that. Percy Cleveley says she said her husband had fallen down. In cross-examination of Doris Pittard she said Mrs Thompson was running hard, she wanted help for her husband. Percy Cleveley said she said her husband had fallen down, and wanted help; he was ill; “ I want to find a doctor.” “ I asked her how it had happened. She said something brushed past and he fell down”; not a word about another man. She asked for help, and she ran on in front, and she was agitated. John Webber says this; I have read part of it, and I will read it again, because I want you to have the whole of it. “I heard these words, ‘ Oh, don’t, don’t,’ in piteous tones,” and then I asked the distance off [sic] — and it was the corner house, the next corner of the road. “ The voice was Mrs Thompson’s.” Dr. Maudsley says, “ I asked the woman whether the man had been ill, and she said no. I said, ‘ He is dead.’ She said, ‘ Why didn’t you come sooner and save him.’ I said, ‘ Has he been under any medical man? ’ She said, ‘ No, he often complained, but did not have one. ’ ” He said he did not see the wounds — in other words, if you think that she had seen the stabbing, she is leaving the doctor in ignorance and under the impression that her husband was ill.

Those are the only four strangers who saw her. The rest are police officers. The first is Walter Mew. He said, “ I went with her to her home. On the way she said, ‘ Will he come back? ’ I said, ‘ Yes.’ She said, ‘ They will blame me for this.’ ” There is no cross-examination about her statement. Then there is Police Constable Walter Grimes. He said, “ I asked her, ‘ Are you in the habit of carrying a knife? ’ She said, ‘ No.’ She said, ‘ I cannot explain what happened ; I do not know ; I only know he dropped down and said, ‘Oh !’ — I mean groaned or made an exclamation of pain.’ ” Then the next person that same night, you know, or soon afterwards, is his brother, Richard Halliday Thompson. He said, “ She was very agitated. I knew he was dead. I said, ‘ What has happened? ’ She said, ‘ He was walking along and he suddenly became queer and said, ‘Oo-er ’ ” — that is how they wrote it down. “ She said he complained of pains in his leg on the way to the station. She said she went for a doctor, and the doctor said he died from haemorrhage. I think that is the last. These are all the statements I think until we come to the statements she makes to the police.

Now, gentlemen, you will doubtless bear in mind this, that all the witnesses say she is agitated; it is perfectly clear that she is concealing the truth on her own showing, if she knew that the man was there. Everybody, the strangers, thought that he was ill, and she keeps them in that opinion — everybody she meets from the time she starts to the doctor to the time she comes back. There is a series of deceptions as to the real facts of the case, if she knew them. It is said by the prosecution you cannot call witnesses to show what they did and what they were planning beforehand ; but you can show from beginning to end that the woman is telling what is not true. It is said on the other side she said that because she was wanting to shield the man. You will give what weight you think to it; there it is. Was she really out of her mind, or had she sufficient sense to know, whether agitated or not — I can well imagine that — she was carefully concealing what, had happened? It is not decisive, but you are entitled to weigh that as a fact, with all the other circumstances of the case.

Now we come to the statements. The important evidence is that of Inspector Hall [‘Sellars’ in transcript mistake], and this is the gist of his evidence. At 11 a. m. the next morning he said he told her who he was, and he said, “ I understand you were with your husband early this morning in Belgrave Road ; I am satisfied that he was assaulted and stabbed several times. She said, ‘ We were coming,’ ” etc. (reading statement of Mrs Thompson, p. 35). That is her statement. That is at 11 a.m. on the next day, and she is obviously concealing a great deal of what she knew. She is taken through a room, and she sees that they have arrested Bywaters, or, at any rate, that Bywaters is in the police station. As soon as she sees him at the window she said, “ Oh, God! oh, God ! what can I do? Why did he do it? I did not want him to do it:” Now there, again, look at these statements. I do not want to, and you must not, use that against Bywaters; it has nothing to do with him. But again it is noticeable that she is throwing the blame on him, “ Why did he do it? ” and she is excusing herself. Then she makes certain statements. Now these statements are reduced into writing; there are two of them. Before I come to them there is one other witness, Mrs Lester. Mrs Lester says that that morning the prisoner said to her, “ They have taken him away from me. If they would allow me to go to him I could make him better ” — quite incomprehensible, you know, and carrying out the fact of the notion that she did not know he was dead. Do you think that she did not know he was dead or what had happened? At any rate, you have that; that is the statement she made. Then the first statement, the first long statement they took from her runs as follows: — (reads statement). Then she is obviously questioned ; you know by this time they had got some of these letters before them. Then she sees Bywaters there, and she says what I have read to you — “ My God, my God, what can I do! Why did he do it? I did not want him to do it, and then she makes another statement. She says, “ I will tell you the truth ” ; it does not necessarily follow that she tells you the truth when she says she is going to tell you the truth, and then she makes a second statement ‘ — “ When we got near to Endsleigh Gardens a man rushed out from the gardens and knocked me away from my husband. I was dazed for a moment. When I recovered I saw my husband scuffling with a man. The man I know as Freddie Bywaters was running away. He was wearing a blue overcoat and a grey hat. I knew it was him, although I did not see his face.” Now, when they are both charged Bywaters says he is not guilty, and she says nothing.

Gentlemen, that is really the whole of the case. I ask your earnest consideration of it. I am not going to say another word to you about the case of the man, only to repeat that if you find the man guilty of murder, then you have got to consider, was this woman an active party to it ; did she direct him to go ; did she know he was coming; and are you satisfied that she was implicated directly in it? Her story is that she knew nothing about it; it was a surprise; in fact, she was pushed aside, and she immediately fainted. She did not see what was going on ; when a man pushed her against the wall she did not look up to see what happened, she swooned away, and then at the end she sees Bywaters going away. You know exactly what was done before the act; you know the fact of all the letters, and you know what she did after, and you know that her evidence is now that she knew nothing about it. In the letters she was merely saying she was poisoning her husband in order to make an appearance before Bywaters. Her whole case is, she says she is quite innocent of this matter, and that she is shocked at everything that has happened, and had nothing to do with it. You will not convict her unless you are satisfied that she and he agreed that this man should be murdered when he could be, and she knew he was going to do it, and directed him to do it, and by arrangement between them he was doing it. If you are not satisfied of that you will acquit her; if you are satisfied of that it will be your duty to convict her. Will you please retire and consider your verdict.

Is there anything you want, gentlemen ?

The FOREMAN OF THE JURY — I think there is, my lord, the prisoner’s overcoat you wished us to have as well as the knife.

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — Yes, you have the knife. In that bundle you will find copies of the signed statements which they made.

 

(Bundle handed to jury.)

Verdict

[The jury retired at 3.32, bailiffs being sworn to take them in charge, and returned into Court at 5.13.]

 

The CLERK OF THE COURT — Members of the jury, have you agreed upon your verdict?

 

The FOREMAN OF THE JURY — We have.

 

The CLERK OF THE COURT — Do you find the prisoner, Frederick Edward Francis Bywaters, guilty or not guilty of the murder of Percy Thompson?

 

The FOREMAN — Guilty, sir.

 

The CLERK OF THE COURT — Do you find the prisoner, Edith Jessie Thompson, guilty or not guilty of the murder of Percy Thompson?

 

The FOREMAN — Guilty.

 

The CLERK OF THE COURT — You say they are severally guilty, and that is the verdict of you all. Frederick Bywaters and Edith Thompson, you severally stand convicted of murder ; have you, or either of you, anything to say why the Court should not give you judgment of death according to law?

 

PRISONER BYWATERS — I say the verdict of the jury is wrong Edith Thompson is not guilty. I am no murderer, I am not an assassin.

 

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — Is there any question of law, Sir Henry, as to the sentence I have to pronounce?

 

Prisoner THOMPSON — I am not guilty.

 

Sir H. Curtis-Bennett — No, my lord.

 

 

Sentence

 

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — Frederick Edward Francis Bywaters, the sentence of the Court upon you is that you be taken from this place to a lawful prison, &c.

 

Formal sentence of death was then passed on Frederick Bywaters.

 

 

 

Sentence

 

 

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — Edith Jessie Thompson, the sentence of the Court upon you is that you be taken from this place to a lawful prison, &c.

 

Formal sentence of death was then passed on Edith Thompson.

 

The CLERK OF THE COURT — Edith Jessie Thompson, have you anything to say in stay of execution?

 

Prisoner THOMPSON — I am not guilty; oh, God, I am not guilty!

 

The prisoners were then removed.

 

Mr JUSTICE SHEARMAN — Gentlemen, I thank you for your patient attention to a long and difficult case.

Appeals

Royal Courts of Justice, Thursday, 21st December, 1922.

Court of Criminal Appeal

Rex v. Frederick Edward Francis Bywaters.

Before— The Lord Chief Justice of England, Mr Justice Darling, and Mr Justice Salter.

 Judgment

The LORD CHIEF JUSTICE — This appellant, Frederick Edward Francis Bywaters, was convicted at the Central Criminal Court, together with a woman named Edith Jessie Thompson, of the wilful murder of Percy Thompson, and he was sentenced to death. He now appeals against conviction, and, in accordance with the practice of this Court, it is right that this appeal should be dealt with at once, and it will not then be necessary that this appellant should have the ordeal of listening to the appeal in the other case.

Now, the learned judge, in his summing-up to the jury, spoke of the charge as a common or ordinary charge of a wife and an adulterer murdering the husband. That was a true and appropriate description. The case is a squalid and rather indecent case of lust and adultery, in which the husband was murdered in a cowardly fashion, partly because he was in the way and partly, it would seem, because such money as he possessed was desired by the others. There is no need to recapitulate the facts of the case. The woman, Mrs Thompson — to whom I refer for the present purpose only in describing so far as it is necessary to describe the events which preceded the commission of the crime, prejudging nothing as to what may be said on her behalf in that appeal— was the daughter of a Mr Graydon, and is twenty- nine years of age. In 1915 she married Percy Thompson, who, at the time of his death, was thirty-two years of age. There were no children of the marriage. They occupied part of a house at 41 Kensington Gardens, Ilford, and there was evidence, upon which it is not necessary to dwell, that there came a time, at any rate, when she and her husband ceased to be upon good terms. The appellant Bywaters was twenty years of age last June. He was employed as a ship’s writer; and apparently he had known the Graydons for two or three years, and in the year 1921 he stayed with Mr and MrsThompson at the Isle of Wight, and then afterwards in their house at Ilford. In August of last year Bywaters told his mother that Mrs Thompson led a very unhappy life with her husband, and asked his mother how Mrs Thompson could get a separation, and there is evidence that he met Mrs Thompson twice at the warehouse where she was employed — once eighteen months ago, and once on Friday, the 29th September of this year. That was the day upon which Bywaters’ new period of leave started. There was further evidence that he and Mrs Thompson were seen together at a neighbouring teashop on the 29th September and on the 3rd October, and that letters had been taken for Mrs Thompson from the warehouse to Bywaters. On Tuesday, the 3rd October, Mr and Mrs Thompson went to a theatre with Mr Thompson’s uncle. This appel- lant, Bywaters, was at Mr Graydon’s house in Manor Park that night; and in the course of the evening it was mentioned that the Thompsons had gone to the theatre. Bywaters left about ten o’clock, or a little later, and the place where Mr Thompson was afterwards killed was some 2 miles and 370 yards from the house of the Graydons, and was not at all on the appellant’s way home. Mr Laxton left the Thompsons at the Piccadilly Tube station at about a quarter to eleven that night, and they made their way to Ilford, and as they were going in the direction of their home Mrs Thompson went running to a passer-by in a state of great agitation and made a statement. I do not at present enter into that statement, because it is not necessary. Mr Thompson had been killed, and when the police came and took his body to the mortuary he was found to be wounded in many places: on the left side below the ribs there were four slight cuts on the skin which had gone through his clothing; there were two slight cuts on the front of the chin; two slight cuts on the right side of the lower jaw; and a slight cut on the right arm. There was a stab in the back of the neck 2 inches deep and one and a quarter inches wide; a stab at the back of the neck 2 inches deep and one and a half inches wide; a stab in the centre of the neck 1 inch wide and 2^1/2 inches deep, which penetrated down and opened the gullet. The doctor was of opinion that the fatal wound in the neck was received from behind, but he was doubtful about it.

Now to pass over further evidence, no small part of the evidence in the case undoubtedly consisted of a remarkable correspondence between the appellant and Mrs Thompson. Few of his letters had been preserved, I think only three. Many of her letters had been preserved, and those letters were undoubtedly used as some material helping the jury to arrive at a true conclusion with regard to this appellant. It is not necessary for me in dealing with his case to enter further into the nature of the contents of those letters ; but it is said by Mr Whiteley, who has argued this appeal on behalf of the appellant, that it was wrong in this case that the appellant and Mrs Thompson should be tried together. That is the first ground of his appeal. Now, it has been held again and again by this Court — the cases are so numerous that it is not necessary to refer to them — that it is a matter of judicial discretion whether two persons shall or shall not be tried separately. In this case the learned judge, exercising his discretion, decided that the present appellant and Mrs Thompson should be tried together. In the opinion of this Court, there was no ground at all for unfavourable criticism of that decision. On the contrary, this was clearly a case in which, in the interests of justice, it was desirable that the two prisoners should be tried together. It is said that the effect of trying the two prisoners together was that many of the letters written by Mrs Thompson to the appellant were used as material from which the jury might draw a conclusion unfavourable to Bywaters. But exactly the same thing would have happened if the prisoners had been tried separately. It is not to be supposed that if the learned judge had come to the conclusion that Bywaters should be tried separately the prosecution would not have made use of those letters. It was further said that the result of trying the two prisoners together was that Mrs Thompson became, as otherwise she might not have been, a witness in the case in which Bywaters was being dealt with. No doubt, if the result of trying two persons together who might have been tried separately is what has been called in the cases referred to by Mr Whiteley a miscarriage of justice, this Court will interfere. But what is meant by a miscarriage of justice? That means that a person has been improperly found guilty. It is idle to suggest that a miscarriage of justice has taken place if the prisoner, against whom there is ample evidence, and, indeed, overwhelming evidence, suffers, in the opinion of the defence, some incidental disadvantage because a fellow-prisoner, who would not otherwise have been a witness does go into the witness-box. No doubt, in cases where the defence of one accused person is to incriminate another accused person, that is a good reason for not trying the two persons together; but that was not this case, and, in the opinion of this Court, it was helpful in the administration of justice, which knows no other object except to arrive at a true conclusion, that Mrs Thompson’s evidence should have been given as assisting the members of the jury to come to a right conclusion in the case, not only of herself, but also of Bywaters. Now, in the course of the complaint under this head, Mr Whiteley said that there was no evidence at all that Mrs Thompson did anything to aid and abet the actual commission of this crime on the night of the 3rd October. That is a matter which may have to be considered in the next appeal, but, so far as that argument is employed on behalf of Bywaters, speaking for myself, I am not prepared for a moment to admit that there was no evidence that Mrs Thompson aided and abetted the actual commission of this crime. Upon the whole, so far as this first ground of appeal is concerned, the learned judge, as we think, exercised his discretion and exercised it wisely and well in holding that these two prisoners should stand their trial together.

The second ground of appeal was that as the learned Solicitor- General appeared as leading counsel for the prosecution, he had, and exercised, the right of reply; and it was contended that, at any rate, since the passing of Lord Denman’s Act, the Criminal Procedure Act of 1865, the law officer of the Crown has not a right of reply. Support for that proposition was sought to be derived from cases in which the prerogative of the Crown in relation to the provisions of statutes dealing with similar matter has been considered. The argument fails, for this quite simple reason: the Act of 1865 is not dealing with this matter at all, and it was long after 1865 that the resolution of the judges referred to by Mr Whiteley was come to, namely, in the year 1884. That was not an enabling resolution; it was a resolution which had a limited effect, and it was this: that in those Crown cases in which the Attorney or Solicitor-General is personally engaged, a reply where no witnesses are called for the defence is to be allowed as of right to the counsel for the Crown and in no others. That is the existing state of the law. If the law is to be altered, it must be altered elsewhere, but at present, when the law officer of the Crown, whether he be the Attorney-General or the Solicitor-General, appears in a Crown case — which is no mere accident – what it means is that those who have had to deliberate upon the matter have come to the conclusion that it is a case in which, in the interests of justice, it is right that a law officer of the Crown should appear — when a law officer of the Crown does appear, then, according to the exercise of his discretion, he may exercise the right which at present he lawfully has; and, again, applying that matter to the facts of this particular case, one cannot see any ground for the suggestion that the defence was prejudiced by what the learned Solicitor-General, in a speech of studious moderation, did.

Finally, it is suggested that there was misdirection. The summing-up in the case of Bywaters fills, in the transcript of the shorthand note, an enormous number of pages. It is not denied by Mr Whiteley that the questions relating to Bywaters were fully and clearly put again and again, and, in the opinion of this Court, in the particular and minor matters to which Mr Whiteley has taken exception, there is no ground whatever for the complaint of misdirection.

As to the complaint that evidence was wrongly admitted, I have already dealt with that in dealing with the letters. The complaint there is with regard to the letters, and I make this further observation about them only: it matters not for this purpose whether Mrs Thompson had really done or attempted the various acts which in those letters she said or suggested that she had done or attempted. It matters not whether those letters show, or, at any rate, go to show, that there was between this appellant and Mrs Thompson any agreement tending to the same end. Those letters were material as throwing light, not only upon the question by whom was this deed done, but what was the intent, what was the purpose with which it was done. Therefore, not to mention other grounds, those letters were most material upon the allegation of the appellant, by way of afterthought, that what he did was done in self-defence. I say “ by way of afterthought,” because when one looks at the statement which he made at an early stage, after his arrest upon the 5th day of October (exhibit No. 6) — and Mr Whiteley has already read the passage this morning — what he said was this — “ The reason I fought with Thompson was because he never acted like a man to his wife. He always seemed several degrees lower than a snake.” That is not merely not the same thing as saying — “The reason I fought with Thompson was in self-defence, because he appeared to me that he was going to shoot me”; it contradicts that reason. It is something which excludes that defence.

 

In all these circumstances, not to dwell further upon the evidence in a very ordinary though a very painful case, in the opinion of this Court this appeal fails upon every ground, and must be dismissed.

 

                       

 

Royal Courts of Justice, Thursday, 21st December, 1922.

Court of Criminal Appeal

Rex v. Edith Jessie Thompson.

Before— The Lord Chief Justice of England, Mr Justice Darling, and Mr Justice Salter.

 Judgment

The LORD CHIEF JUSTICE — This appellant, Edith Jessie Thompson, was convicted at the Central Criminal Court, together with the last appellant, Frederick Edward Francis Bywaters, of the wilful murder of Percy Thompson, and she was sentenced to death. She now appeals against conviction. The charge against her was in point of law that she was what is called a principal in the second degree; that is to say, that she was a person present at the commission of the offence who aided and abetted the commission of the offence, and, to put it in a slightly different way, the point of the charge against this woman was that she incited and aided and abetted the commission of this crime upon the night of the 3rd day of October. Now, before I come to deal with the argument that has been presented on behalf of the appellant by Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett, it is necessary, as shortly as possible, to review some of the facts of this essentially commonplace and unedifying case. The appellant, Edith Jessie Thompson, is twenty-nine years of age. She is the daughter of a Mr Graydon, and seven years ago she married Mr Percy Thompson, the man now dead, the only person who in this case excites any sympathy.

At the time of his death he was thirty-two years of age. They lived in a part of a house at Ilford, called No. 41 Kensington Gardens ; and the evidence was that the appellant and her husband were not on good terms with each other. She was employed as manageress to a firm of milliners in Aldersgate Street, where she received a salary of £6 a week in addition to a bonus. Some time ago, a considerable time ago, the appellant made the acquaintance of Bywaters, a young steward on a liner, whose case was dealt with this morning. He had stayed with them elsewhere and in their own house, and it is quite obvious from many portions of the evidence that the terms upon which she and Bywaters had come to be, long before the 3rd October of this year, were terms of the most culpable intimacy. Bywaters was from time to time absent on his ship. It is not necessary even for the sake of clearness to examine closely the chronology in the case; but there were periods when he was at home and there were periods when he was away, and the periods when he was away are to a great extent covered by a remarkable and deplorable correspondence, full of the most mischievous and perilous stuff. In August of last year Bywaters, according to the evidence, made a statement to his mother about the unhappy life of Mrs Thompson, and the evidence showed, if the jury accepted it, as they apparently did, that on more than one occasion Bywaters had called at the warehouse where Mrs Thompson was employed, that he had kept up this protracted correspondence with her. The letters which are actually made exhibits began with the 11th of August, 1921, and they continue right down to the 2nd October, 1922 — that is to say, the day before the commission of the crime — and the evidence further was that after an absence of some weeks, Bywaters began a new period of leave on the 29th September last. There was evidence that he was with the appellant at a neighbouring teashop upon that day; and again upon Tuesday, the 3rd day of October. That was the day upon which the crime was committed. On that Tuesday, the 3rd October, the appellant and her husband went to a theatre with the husband’s uncle, Mr Laxton. Upon that same evening Bywaters went to the house of the appellant’s father; and it appears to have been mentioned at that house that the Thompsons had gone to the theatre. Bywaters left about ten o’clock or a little after ten. Somewhat later the appellant and her husband with Mr Laxton, went to the Piccadilly Tube station, about a quarter to eleven. There, it was said, they were apparently on good terms, and it is clear from what followed that they made their way home by train to Ilford. Shortly before midnight a Miss Pittard was walking with Mr and Mrs Cleveley from Ilford station, and their way took them through a road called Belgrave Road, and when they were between De Vere Gardens and Endsleigh Gardens, both places not far from Kensington Gardens, where the Thompsons own house was, Mrs Thompson came running to him. She was agitated and incoherent. She said — “ Oh, my God, will you help me, my husband is ill; he is bleeding.” And she said he was on the pavement, and asked those persons to go or take her and get a doctor. They took her to the house of a doctor, Dr. Maudsley, and then Mrs Thompson ran back. A witness was called named Webber, who lived about 30 or 40 yards away from that place, and he said that as he was going to bed he heard a woman’s voice, a voice which he now recognised as Mrs Thompson’s voice, calling in piteous tones, “Oh, don’t, don’t.” He went outside, and three or four minutes later he saw three persons coming from Dr. Maudsley’s house. Mrs Thompson was in front running and sobbing. He followed, and found Mrs Thompson and Mr Thompson. He asked her if he could help, and she said, “ Don’t touch him, don’t touch him; a lady and a gentleman have gone off for a doctor.” Miss Pittard and Mr Cleveley then came up, and they found the appellant kneeling down by Mr Thompson, who was lying upon the footpath in Belgrave Road with his back propped against the wall. The place was dark. Mr Cleveley struck a match, and Miss Pittard asked Mrs Thompson what had happened; and the appellant answered, “Oh, do not ask me; I do not know. Somebody flew past, and when I turned to speak to him blood was pouring out of his mouth.” A few minutes later Dr. Maudsley arrived, and he found that Mr Thompson was dead. He thought he had been dead then about ten minutes. Mrs Thompson was standing by his side, and he described her as being confused, hysterical, and agitated. He asked her if Mr Thompson had been ill coming home, and she said “ No.” He told her that Mr Thompson was dead, and she said, “ Why did not you come sooner and save him?”  The doctor made no examination then. He saw the blood. He did not see any wound, but he sent for the police. A police sergeant took the appellant to her house, and on the way she said, “ Will he come back? They will blame me for this.” Now, the place where the body was found was about 50 yards from the Thompsons’ house and 1250 yards from Ilford station. It was an indirect way from the station to the house. The police came, took the body to the mortuary and undressed it, and it was examined; and a great number of wounds were found upon it. The most serious wounds were three stabs, apparently inflicted from behind, one of which penetrated down to and opened the gullet. Mr Thompson’s brother was sent for, and shortly before two o’clock in the morning he arrived at Mrs Thompson’s house. She told her brother-in-law that Mr Thompson was walking along and suddenly came over queer and said “ Oh ! ” and that on the way from the station he had complained of pains in his legs, and that she had met a lady and gentleman and had gone for a doctor, and when they got back he was dead.

At three o’clock in the morning two police sergeants went to Mrs Thompson’s house and saw her. She was asked if she could explain what had happened on the road, and she said, “I do not know; I cannot say; I only know that my husband suddenly dropped down and screamed out ‘ Oh!’ I then rushed across the road and saw a lady and gentleman, and asked them if they would help me, and they went with me for the doctor.” She was asked whether she could account for the cuts on her husband’s neck, and she said, “ No. Wo were walking along, and my husband said ‘ Oh,’ and I said ‘ Bear up,’ thinking he had one of his attacks.” He then fell on her, and walked a little further. He then fell up against the wall and then on the ground. She was asked if her husband carried a knife, and she said “ No. ” She was asked if she was carrying a knife in her handbag, and she said “ No.” She was also asked if she or her husband saw or spoke to any person in Belgrave Road, and she said, “No; I did not notice any one.” About eleven o’clock in the morning of the 4th October Inspector Hall saw Mrs Thompson at her house, and she told him : “ We were coming along Belgrave Road and just passed the corner of Endsleigh Gardens when I heard him call out, ‘ Oh er,’ and he fell up against me. I put out my arms to save him, and found blood which I thought was coming from his mouth. I tried to hold him up. He staggered for several yards towards Kensington Gardens and then fell against the wall and slid down. He did not speak to me; I cannot say if I spoke to him. I felt him, and found his clothing wet with blood. He never moved after he fell. We had no quarrel on the way; we were quite happy together. Immediately I saw blood I ran across the road to a doctor’s. I appealed to a lady and gentleman who were passing, and the gentleman also went to the doctor’s. The doctor came and told me my husband was dead. Just before he fell down I was walking on his right hand side on the inside of the pavement nearest the wall. We were side by side. I did not see anybody about at the time. My husband and I were talking about going to a dance.” That evening Mrs Thompson was taken to the police station, and on the 5th October she made a statement which became exhibit No. 3 at the trial. I shall not read it all; but it is to be observed that in that statement made when she went to the police station she says this: “I have always been on affectionate terms with my husband. I remember Tuesday, the 3rd October, we both went to our respective businesses that day; I met my husband by appointment at a quarter to six in Aldersgate Street.” She then describes how they went to the theatre and how they came home; and then she describes or purports to describe what took place, and she says, amongst other things, this — “ I cannot remember whether I saw any one else there or not. I know there was no one there when he staggered up against me.” She went on to speak of Bywaters and her knowledge of Bywaters. She said, I am not in possession of any letters he wrote to me. I have destroyed them all, as is customary with me with all my correspondence. When he was at home in England we were in the habit of going out occasionally together without my husband’s knowledge.” According to that statement she had not seen Bywaters that night; she did not associate Bywaters with what had taken place, and she was on good terms with Mr Thompson, her husband. Now it happened that at the police station she saw Bywaters, who had been taken to the police station, and was in the library as she passed, and she then said, “ Oh God, oh God, what can I do? Why did he do it? I did not want him to do it. I must tell the truth.” And then she made a further statement, which is exhibit No. 4. In that short statement she said this — “ When we got near Endsleigh Gardens a man rushed out from the Gardens and knocked me and pushed me away from my husband. I was dazed for a moment. When I recovered I saw my husband scuffling with a man. The man who I know as Freddie Bywaters was running away. He was wearing a blue overcoat and a grey hat. I knew it was him although I did not see his face.” The two were afterwards charged together. The knife with which these wounds had been inflicted was found in a neighbouring drain, and I do not think I need dwell upon the rest of the evidence. Dr. Spilsbury said that all the wounds except the one on the arm of Mr Thompson were stabs.

The appellant Bywaters gave evidence first, and Mrs Thompson gave evidence, and I shall have to refer in a moment to the denials she made. She said, among other things, that she first fell in love with Bywaters in September, 1921, and that she had told her husband that she had given him cause for divorce. The jury, having heard the whole of the evidence, both that which I have summarised and much else, came to the conclusion that the appellant was guilty of wilful murder.

Now, what are the pleas that are put forward on behalf of the appellant in this appeal? Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett at the outset stated, and very frankly stated, that before he came into Court this morning he had decided to abandon that ground of appeal which rested upon the allegation that this appellant and Bywaters ought to have been tried separately, but were in fact tried together. That ground of appeal is not persisted in. But Sir Henry says — he puts it in more than one way, but it is really the same contention illustrated and sought to be enforced from different points of view — that in order that this appellant might properly be convicted of this crime there ought to be evidence showing not merely that as between her and Bywaters there was a community of purpose in this matter, but that that community of purpose continued right up to the crucial moment when the crime was committed; and in regard to that complaint Sir Henry relies especially upon two matters. He relies first upon the letters and the use to which they were put or not put; and secondly he relies upon certain portions in the summing up, where he says the learned judge not only misdirected the jury in the sense of inviting them to find what they could not find, but also omitted to direct the jury in the sense that he did not adequately put before the jury what the defence of the appellant was. With regard to the letters, in the opinion of this Court there was more than one ground upon which the use of these letters could be justified. It is enough for the present purpose to say that they could be justified upon this ground that by means of them the prosecution were seeking to show that continuously over a long period, beginning before and culminating in the time immediately antecedent to the commission of the crime, Mrs Thompson was, with every sort of ingenuity, by precept and by example, actual or simulated, endeavouring to incite Bywaters to the commission of this crime. I am not going to read those letters. There is a great mass of them. Many of them were read at the trial. They begin in the summer of 1921, and they continue until the 2nd October, 1922; that is to say, they continue until the day before the day upon which this crime was committed. Now, what is it that those letters may reasonably be regarded as showing? First of all, they show a passionate and, in the circumstances, a wicked affection between Mrs Thompson and Bywaters. Secondly, they contain what purport to be accounts of efforts which have been made, sometimes without the assistance of Bywaters, sometimes with the assistance of Bywaters, to get Mr Thompson out of the way. Thirdly — and this is a thread that runs through the whole skein of these letters — there is the continual entreaty and hope that that which they both desire will somehow be accomplished. Now, in the opinion of the Court, the theory that these letters, so far as they purport to describe attempts made upon the life of Mr Thompson, are mere nonsense— “ Vapour,” as Bywaters calls them — “ Melodramatic nonsense,” as learned counsel has thought fit to call them — is a theory which cannot be accepted. But however that may be, if the question is, as I think it was, whether these letters were evidence of a protracted, continuous incitement to Bywaters to commit the crime which he did in the end commit, it really is of comparatively little importance whether the appellant was truly reporting something which she had done, or falsely reporting something which she merely pretended to do. I am not going to read them; it is not necessary; but reference may, perhaps, be made to one of them, which is the last. By this time Bywaters was back in this country. The appellant and Bywaters were meeting. They had ample opportunity of conversation and arrangement of any plan in which they might be interested; and upon the 2nd of October the appellant wrote to him — “ I tried so hard to find a way out of to-night, darlingest, but he was suspicious and still is. . . . We ought to be able to use great big things for great big love like ours.” And again “ Darlint, it is funds that are our stumbling block — until we have those, we can do nothing.” That is not the only passage in the later correspondence in which the appellant refers to the importance of money. Then she goes on— “ Darlint do something tomorrow night will you? something to make you forget. I’ll be hurt I know, but I want you to hurt me— I do really — the bargain now seems so one-sided — so unfair — but how can I alter it.” And finally, the last passage— “ Don’t forget what we talked in the tearoom. I’ll still risk and try if you will — we only have 3 and three quarter years left darlingest.” Now, it cannot be said that those letters were not evidence against the appellant in support of the charge which the prosecution were making up against her.

I pass to the summing up. The complaint against the summing up, which is a very long summing up, is that it did what it ought not to have done, and it omitted to do what it should have done. Is there any ground for that criticism? Let me refer to one or two, and only to one or two passages. The case for the prosecution was that the appellant and Bywaters were acting together. The case for this appellant was that the letters she had written were nonsense, and that what took place on the night of Tuesday, 3rd October, was to her a great surprise. At the very outset of the summing up the learned judge put the question for the jury in this clear and simple form — “ The case presented is that these two, by arrangement between each other, agreed to murder this man, and the murder was effected by the man. Unless you are satisfied of that, namely, that they did it, did it by arrangement in the way I shall explain to you, there would be no case against the woman.” Then the learned judge deals with the case against the man, and, to come to a later page, he says this — “ Now I am going to ask you to consider only one question in your deliberations, and that is, was it an arranged thing between the woman and the man,” &c. (reading to the words) ” if you are satisfied.” I pause there to say that one of the incidental criticisms offered upon the summing up is that it does not expressly say in so many words the burden of proof is upon the prosecution, but again and again and again the learned judge says that everything depends upon the jury’s being satisfied of something, which apart from technicality is the same thing as saying that the prosecution have to prove their case. ” If you are satisfied that there was,” &c. (reading to the words) “ that is what I submit to you ” Now, the criticism which is offered upon that passage is that there was no direct evidence that she had informed Bywaters that she would be there with her husband at that time. There was no direct evidence that he was there at her invitation, or upon information given by her. That is quite true. But in  view of all the rest of the evidence, both as to what happened before the  commission of those acts, and as to what happened immediately after the commission of those acts, it was obviously open to the jury to infer that  that which was done was done as the result of preconcerted arrangement,  and that is what the learned judge is putting here, making it plain again and again and again that they are to be satisfied before they draw that inference. And he pursues the same matter. He says on the next page — “ The short case for the prosecution is this, that for months these people had been corresponding” &c. (reading to the words), “inciting him to murder.” In the next sentence the learned judge goes on to say —”I will deal with the letters and deal with her explanation later on; and it is complained that in that part of his summing up he says, “ I know when you have letters the jury want to hear what the judge says about the letters.” I cannot help thinking that far too much stress has been laid upon that particular phrase. It seems no more than this —” I have not forgotten the letters; I know you will expect me to deal with them.” And when the learned judge comes to deal with the letters, what is it that he says? Let me refer to two other passages. He says this, having referred to a letter — ” The meaning of that is for you to judge. You will fully under- stand it is not for me to tell you what the letters mean. You are the judges of that, not I. There is no law about it whatever.” And yet again he says — “ I should be wanting in my duty if I did not plainly explain to you that the meaning of these letters is entirely for you.” In view of those warnings, it seems to me to be impossible that the learned judge could be understood to have meant by his former phrase, “ You will take your view of these letters from me.” Again, to pass to another passage, the learned judge says this — ” It is said by the prosecution that from the beginning to the end of these letters she is seriously considering and inciting the man to assist her to poison her husband; and if she did that, and if you find that within a week or two after he came back the poisoning is considered no longer possible, he has no longer studied or has not studied bichloride of mercury, but has read ‘ Bella Donna ’ to see if ‘ Bella Donna ‘ can be of any use to him ” — I pause to say there that a remark was made as to the view which she expressed upon a leading character in that story, and it is also to be observed that she recommended that book to be read by him as a book which might prove useful to him hereafter— “ they would naturally turn to some other means of effecting their object,” &c. (reading to the words) “a meeting which only finished when there was a discussion in the tearoom ” — that is the discussion referred to in the last paragraph of the last letter. And again — “You are entitled to assume— it is entirely for you to say whether you are satisfied — you are entitled to assume that she sped him on his errand,” &c. (reading to the words) ” you will not draw it unless you are satisfied.” And finally, at the close of the summing up the learned judge once more repeats the warning. It is on the last page of the summing up — ” You will not convict her unless you are satisfied that she and he agreed that this man should be murdered,” &c (reading to the words) “ he was doing it.” The matter could not be put more strongly than that — “ If you are not satisfied of that you will acquit her. If you are satisfied of that it will be your duty to convict her.”

Taking that long summing up as a whole, and reading one part with the rest of what the learned judge says, in the opinion of this Court it is not possible to found upon it any unfavourable criticism. The case was clearly put before the jury. There was simple evidence, partly direct evidence, partly evidence from which inference might properly be drawn; and upon that evidence, in a case which exhibits from beginning to end no redeeming feature, the members of the jury have convicted the appellant. In the opinion of this Court there is no reason to interfere with that conviction, and this appeal must be dismissed.