On the chilly, gray morning of January 9, 1923, Britain’s chief executioner John Ellis arrived at Holloway Jail in London to hold fairly 29-year-old Edith Thompson.
Collectively together with her youthful lover Freddie Bywaters, who could be dispatched concurrently at Pentonville Jail, lower than half a mile away, she had been discovered responsible of murdering her husband, Percy.
The salacious particulars of this sensational crime of ardour had gripped the nation that festive season, but it surely was the way of Edith’s personal demise that was to hang-out Ellis.
Having hanged a few of Britain’s most infamous murderers — amongst them Edwardian wife-killer Dr Crippen and ‘Brides within the Bathtub’ assassin George Joseph Smith — Ellis was recognized for his calm {and professional} strategy.
Collectively together with her youthful lover Freddie Bywaters, Edith Thompson had been discovered responsible of murdering her husband, Percy
But even he admitted to being rattled by Edith’s ‘complete emotional collapse’ and her ‘cries and semi-demented physique actions’ as he entered the condemned cell at exactly 9am and pinioned her fingers behind her again.
Whether or not due to the sedatives she had been given, or by sheer terror, she fell unconscious and needed to be carried the few yards to the scaffold by Ellis’s two assistants and two male warders who had been introduced in from Pentonville, their feminine counterparts being thought to be too delicate to need to take care of such grim events.
‘As quickly as they reached the trap-doors I put the white cap on her head and face, and slipped the noose over all. It was a pitiable factor to see the girl being held up on her toes,’ Ellis later recalled.
‘Her head had fallen ahead on her breast, and he or she was completely oblivious of all that was happening . . .
‘I sprang to the lever. One flick of the wrist, and Mrs Thompson disappeared from view.’
Lower than 12 months later, Ellis gave up his job with no rationalization and later killed himself, chopping his throat with a razor. Some stated he had by no means obtained over the trauma of sending Edith Thompson to an finish that was all of the extra surprising as a result of it now appears possible she was harmless.
Her case was typically cited within the debates about capital punishment, which led to its abolition in 1965.
We owe her a debt for serving to make Britain a extra humane place, in line with René Weis, Professor of English at College Faculty, London, and a long-time campaigner for her title to be cleared.
As we strategy the a centesimal anniversary of her exectution subsequent month, Weis has written to the Ministry of Justice requesting that she ought to be given a royal pardon. He argues that she was discovered responsible solely as a result of she was a married lady who had dared to take a lover.
‘Irrelevant ethical prejudices colored the judgment of the courtroom,’ he writes in his e book Prison Justice, The True Story Of Edith Thompson.
Three stab wounds had been discovered to Percy’s neck, one passing up by the ground of his mouth and one other, which was deadly, severing his carotid artery. Pictured: Detective Sergeant Hancock with the knife used to homicide Percy Thompson in 1922
That Edith strayed from the marital path was all of the extra surprising for a girl from her deeply conventional, working-class background. Born on Christmas Day 1893, Edith was raised within the East London suburb of Manor Park, the eldest of 5 youngsters of tobacco firm clerk Invoice Graydon and his spouse, Ethel.
They had been a household of eager dancers and Edith helped her father out with the teachings he taught at a dance academy to complement his revenue.
His pupils included a younger Alfred Hitchcock, whose later fascination with the Edith Thompson case is alleged to have moved him to make his 1954 thriller Dial M For Homicide, during which an harmless lady is sentenced to hold due to public disapproval of her morals.
There was no trace that Edith would have offered such inspiration when she and Percy Thompson married in January 1916.
She was 22, he 25, they usually had met on the station platform when commuting to their respective jobs within the Metropolis of London.
Whereas Edith was a purchaser for a millinery wholesaler, Percy was a clerk with a delivery firm they usually appeared an odd match. Edith, who typically visited Paris for work, was vigorous, fashionable and adventurous whereas a girl who knew them each later described Percy as a ‘petty, morose and imply’ man who generally knocked his spouse about.
One factor in his favour was that he was accessible, in contrast to so many younger males who had gone off to struggle in World Warfare I. Not Percy, who had intentionally smoked 50 cigarettes a day to deliver on the non permanent wheezing which fooled Military medical doctors into declaring him medically unfit.
Unusually for these days, Edith earned greater than her husband, and after the battle their financial savings purchased them a big, four-bedroom home in then modern Ilford.
Aspiring to such middle-class pursuits as taking part in tennis and attending dinners organised by Percy’s pals within the Freemasons, they appeared content material sufficient. However in Might 1920, Edith was launched to Freddie Bywaters, who had recognized two of her brothers at college.
Coming back from a spell at sea with the Service provider Navy, he had appeared up the Graydons, and shortly Edith had fallen for the younger sailor who was eight years her junior.
‘He was muscular, broad-shouldered, tanned, with thick, light-brown wavy hair brushed again, and with darkish eyes and eyebrows set in a square-jawed face,’ writes Weis.
Along with his tales of journey all over the world, Freddie appeared way more Edith’s romantic best than her husband, but the connection would possibly by no means have developed had not Percy additionally hit it off with Freddie. ‘He was interested in the teen’s blunt, bluff method,’ says Weis, and in the summertime of 1921 the Thompsons invited Freddie to maneuver in with them as a paying visitor throughout his shore leaves.
As their affair developed, Edith confided in Freddie about her growing unhappiness in her marriage and he or she would take days off work so that they may very well be collectively as quickly as her husband had left for the station every morning.
These liaisons continued till August 1921, when Freddie witnessed an argument during which Percy hit Edith and threw her throughout the room.
When Freddie intervened, Percy started to suspect that there is likely to be one thing between him and his spouse, and demanded that his love rival transfer out of the home.
That Edith strayed from the marital path was all of the extra surprising for a girl from her deeply conventional, working-class background. Pictured round 1920
Shortly afterwards, Freddie joined P&O as a laundry steward, and he was away at sea 5 instances over the subsequent 12 months.
Throughout that point Edith requested Percy for a separation on a couple of event, however he at all times refused as a result of it could make issues ‘far too straightforward’ for her and her youthful lover.
However Freddie ultimately took issues into his personal fingers. Late one night time in October 1922, he lay in await Edith and Percy as they returned residence from a night on the theatre, hiding within the shadows of a residential road close to their residence and pouncing as they handed.
Pushing Edith apart, he set about Percy with a dagger. Three stab wounds had been to his neck, one passing up by the ground of his mouth and one other, which was deadly, severing his carotid artery.
As Percy tumbled over with a pitiful groan, Freddie fled the scene, leaving the older man dying in a pool of his personal blood as a hysterical Edith ran to a close-by physician’s home for assist.
When the police started their investigations the subsequent day, Edith made no point out of getting seen her lover on the scene; however then Percy’s brother, Richard, advised officers about her affair with Freddie.
He was taken in for questioning that night time and located to have Percy’s blood on his coat. He confessed virtually instantly, claiming he had not meant to kill Percy, simply frighten him into giving Edith the separation he had lengthy been denying her. Each he and Edith insisted that she had recognized nothing of his plans to confront Percy, however then the police found a unprecedented tranche of greater than 60 love letters Edith had written to Freddie whereas he was away at sea.
In a single she talked a few lady she’d met who had misplaced three husbands, and lamented that ‘some folks I do know can’t even lose one’.
In others, she appeared to refer to varied failed makes an attempt to kill Percy, together with poisoning him with strychnine in addition to grinding damaged glass into his mashed potato.
This was sufficient to persuade the police that she will need to have conspired with Freddie, letting him know her husband’s whereabouts on the night time in query, and was subsequently as responsible as he.
Their trial started on the Outdated Bailey on December 6. Attracting enormous Press protection, it noticed crowds queuing for seats within the public gallery, many satisfied that the handsome younger man within the dock will need to have been seduced and corrupted by a complicated, older lady.
Such views had been inspired by newspaper stories that made a lot of Edith’s elegant look. At some point she wore ‘a brown coat with mole-fur collar and cuffs’, one other ‘a gray crepe de chine costume trimmed with black silk’ and ‘a velvet Tam-O-Shanter’.
This was all by means of portraying her as a murderous femme fatale, regardless of it being clear that her letters to Freddie had been what René Weis describes as ‘fantasy want fulfilment.’
On the chilly, gray morning of January 9, 1923, Britain’s chief executioner John Ellis arrived at Holloway Jail in London to hold fairly 29-year-old Edith Thompson
In a single, for instance, she talked about grinding up a light-weight bulb and sprinkling it into Percy’s meals.
‘I used [it] 3 times however the third time he discovered a bit so I’ve given it up till you come residence,’ she wrote.
But a autopsy examination discovered no proof that Percy had ever been poisoned or suffered inner harm attributable to damaged glass.
Neither was there something to recommend that Edith had advised her lover the place and when to assault her husband.
Certainly, on the night time in query, her youthful sister, Avis, was meant to attend the theatre with Edith and Percy after which stick with them in a single day.
This was confirmed by the good friend she gave her ticket to that afternoon after she determined to make different plans.
It wasn’t till shortly earlier than the present that Edith discovered her sister wouldn’t be coming and, as Weis factors out, ‘it’s inconceivable that Edith would have arrange an assault on Percy if Avis was to be current, as Edith was absolutely anticipating her to be’.
Fairly than highlighting such vital particulars, Mr Justice Shearman appeared intent on portraying the couple’s love affair within the worst doable mild, suggesting in his summing-up that the jury ‘like some other right-minded individuals, will likely be crammed with disgust’ at what had transpired between Edith and Freddie.
And so it proved. On the fifth day of the trial, the jury retired for less than two hours earlier than discovering each defendants responsible.
When the decide donned his black cap and sentenced them to demise by hanging, a terrified Edith screamed ‘I’m not responsible, Oh God, I’m not responsible’, because the wardresses wrenched her fingers free from the rail of the dock and carried her right down to the cells.
Within the weeks main as much as the couple’s executions, greater than one million folks signed a newspaper petition calling for a reprieve for Freddie Bywaters, who was nonetheless seen as an harmless led astray by his older lover.
If he had been reprieved, then Edith would have been, too.
However the truth her title was not even on the petition says a lot about an age when a married lady who dared to have an affair was regarded by well mannered society as so morally reprehensible {that a} decide and jury thought it fully possible she may commit homicide too.
