On January 9, 1923, Edith Thompson, aged 29, and her lover, Frederick Bywaters, aged just 20, were executed for the murder of Edith’s husband, Percy Thompson.
The execution was controversial even then, and is even more controversial today. Was Edith carried by four men, terrified of being drugged with sedatives for days, to the gallows and innocently hanged?
Only 800 meters separated the lovers who were executed at the same time but in their respective prison yards.
Edith
Murderous woman or victim of moral considerations?
Was Edith guilty of inciting a much younger man to murder her husband? Or has she fallen victim to long-outdated moral views about how a wife should behave? Was her big crime being an extremely attractive, independent woman who paid little heed to society’s rules of how a middle-class wife should behave?
And did she pay with her life not to follow them?
Three months before the execution, Freddie had run to Edith’s husband, Percy, and stabbed him several times as they returned from the theater. So many things are crystal clear. But Freddie maintained, until his death, that Edith knew nothing of his plan, and Edith always maintained her innocence.
Edith, Percy and Freddie.
Exceptionally ambitious
Edith was born in the last decade of the 19th century, the eldest of five siblings, so she had to help raise her sister and three brothers.
From an early age, Edith showed great independence and a desire to go further in life than her parents, who belonged to a lower class.
As soon as she finished school, she left home and moved to central London, where she found a job in a wholesale women’s hat business. She was doing so well at her job that she became head of the purchasing department before she left. She wanted more. She wanted more.
In January 1916 she married clerk Percy Thompson and they bought a house together. They had met when she was 15 and he was 18 and had been together for six years. Edith earned much more than her husband, which was very unusual at that time, and she paid most of the purchase price for the house, even though it was in her husband’s name, as was the custom at that time. era. Which actually annoyed Edith, but Percy didn’t care. But they lived well, it seemed, and lacked nothing.
Percy and Edith
An unlikely couple… And then came Freddie
Now Edith should have become a housewife and mother, but she had other ideas. She was an excellent dancer and loved to go out at night and enjoy life in London’s finest hotels and ballrooms. She had a large group of friends whom she often took with her to the theatre, cinema or restaurant, which Percy was less interested in as he was rather dull and humorless.
Frederick Bywaters had been a classmate of Edith’s younger brother and a good family friend, but had left school at the age of 13 to join the merchant navy.
In June 1921, Frederick was on vacation when he was invited to spend a week’s holiday with Percy, Edith and her sister on the Isle of Wight. And by the end of the week, Edith and Frederick, then only 18, had begun an affair, and she invited him to rent a room with the couple between cruises.
Frederick, called Freddire, was light-hearted, unlike the brooding Percy, and had many amusing stories to tell of his travels, which Edith loved to hear. Percy was also known to treat his wife harshly, sometimes to the point that her wounds were visible.
Edith and Freddie.
The fateful letters
When Freddie was sailing, they exchanged letters with Edith, which Edith demanded he burn after reading. But he didn’t, and today these letters speak volumes about the relationship between the three, husband, wife and lover, as well as about Edith’s gratitude. Some of the letters were about everyday things, but others were deeper thoughts about sex, miscarriages, suicide, and the meaning of life.
They wandered between reality and fantasy, and in several of the letters Edith writes about herself in the third person, much like a novel, suggesting that perhaps her husband (the protagonist) would benefit from a little poison in his food.
These letters probably cost Edith her life.
Likewise, she wrote how unfair it was that many splendid men had perished in the war while “much worse men” were still alive. But she gave no name.
But Freddie’s stay at the family home was not long as it was cut short when Percy got hold of Edith, and Percy kicked him out as a result.
The murderer
On October 3, 1922, Edith and Percy were going to the theater and were returning from the station when a man jumped from a nearby bush and stabbed Percy several times in the neck with a knife.
His blood splattered up to 13 meters.
Edith became furious and the neighbors heard her yelling at someone to stop. When the police arrived, she was apparently in a nervous breakdown and was taken to the police station.
It only took a few hours for the police to suspect Freddire of the murder, but Percy’s brother had said it was likely, as Freddie was almost certainly sleeping with his sister-in-law.
Freddie, then 20, was living with his mother and the police arrested him the same evening. All of Edith’s letters were found in her room and she was immediately suspected of involvement in the murder.
The police made sure to meet the lovers at the police station to see their reaction. Edith yelled at Percy why did he do that, she would never have wanted her husband dead.
Freddie immediately confessed to the murder, but said it was self-defense. He allegedly intended to talk to Percy who then attacked him and he then picked up the knife. He vehemently denied that Edith had anything to do with it, that it was his idea and that she knew nothing of his presence near the house.
The media lost their minds over the murder.
Public opinion
The media exploded at the scandalous news that a boy, barely a child, had killed the husband of his eldest mistress. And possibly at his request.
The authorities thought so, and on December 6, 1922, Freddie and Edith were brought to trial, charged with Percy’s murder.
A group of people waited anxiously outside and the unemployed saw an opportunity to move chairs to people for payment, and those who were lucky enough to get a seat in the courtroom could sell them to a high price.
The timing of the trial was off-putting for Edith. Britain was considered to have lost far too many young men on the front lines of the First World War, and it was such a shame that a selfish, older, married woman – no doubt suffering from bubonic plague from high level, overpainted and in too short skirts – sent yet another pageant to death by selfishness alone.
Then the public started turning against Freddie, but the hatred against Edith grew day by day and that obviously paid off both the jury and the judge.
Edith and Freddie
Judgment and execution
So it was that Freddie and Edith were sentenced to death by hanging only five days into the trial, despite their two repeated protests that Edith was nowhere near murder. Freddie nearly fainted upon hearing his mistress’s death sentence as he shouted to the jury that she was innocent, he and he alone was responsible.
Freddie confessed but the evidence against Edith was questionable to say the least. Witnesses said she was terrified by the attack and tried to save her husband. Moreover, the couple had received the theater tickets at the last minute and were blown away. There was no way Edith could have informed Freddie of their travels, he must have followed them and/or sat for them.
A petition has been started to save Freddie and over a million people have signed up. But Edith was now Britain’s most hated woman and no one cared about her fate. She was a witch who had broken her marriage vows, seduced a younger man and tricked him into committing murder, or so the public believed.
Edith spent her last days in a state of complete stupor, pounding on doors and walls until she was covered in blood and refusing to eat.
During those years, all death sentences against women were automatically appealed, but Edith’s appeal was denied at zero.
They fought to look the defendants in the eye.
Guilty or innocent?
Gradually Edith was forgotten, but recently historians and criminologists have begun to investigate more closely all aspects of the case. Most people are of the opinion that it was very questionable to hang Edith for the murder of her husband, a murder which she clearly did not commit and it is very doubtful that she came in any way approaching it would be.
Edith Thompson’s case is currently being investigated by UK authorities and it is believed she will most likely be pardoned this year.
Not that it would help him much from now on.
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