A hundred years ago today, Edith Thompson was hanged at Holloway Prison for the murder of her husband. She was executed even though there was no evidence she had any involvement in his stabbing. But what really happened?
By Tim StokesOn 9 January 1923 Edith Thompson and her lover Frederick Bywaters were executed for the murder of her husband, even though there was no evidence she knew he would be stabbed. Why was she convicted, and how does the case still resonate a century later?
Half a mile away in Pentonville Prison, and at the same time, her 20-year-old lover suffered the same fate. Edith Graydon was someone who wanted a life that was different from the one working-class women were expected to accept. In January 1916 Edith married shipping clerk Percy Thompson. They bought a house at 41 Kensington Gardens in Ilford, not far from where both had grown up. Edith earned more than her new husband - and also her father - and contributed more than half the £250 cost of the property, although the deeds had to be in Percy's name.
Frederick Bywaters knew the Graydon family as he was in the same class at school as one of Edith's brothers. At the age of 13, Freddy left London to join the Merchant Navy. "They're remarkable documents," says Ms Thompson, whose new book examines the letters in detail. "They're so expressive, they're sort of her other self poured on the page."Edith's brother Bill Graydon went to school with Freddy Bywaters
On 3 October 1922 Edith and Percy spent the evening watching the comedy The Dippers at the Criterion Theatre near Piccadilly Circus. After the show they boarded a Tube to Liverpool Street before catching a train to Ilford. In a corridor at Ilford police station, detectives arranged it so that Edith and Freddy would set eyes on one other, in the hope she would incriminate herself. After this encounter, she wailed: "Why did he do it? I didn't want him to do it. Oh God, oh God, what can I do? I must tell the truth."
"They were glamourous. They had an almost film-star air to them," Ms Thompson says. "He looked like a Rupert Brooke figure, almost, and she must have had a huge erotic charge about her."
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