Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters

Edith Jessie Thompson (25 December 1893 – 9 January 1923) and Frederick Edward Francis Bywaters (27 June 1902 – 9 January 1923) were a British couple executed for the murder of Thompson's husband Percy.

Their case became a cause célèbre.

Edith Thompson was born Edith Jessie Graydon on 25 December 1893, at 97 Norfolk Road in Dalston, London, the first of the five children of William Eustace Graydon (1867–1941), a clerk with the Imperial Tobacco Company, and his wife Ethel Jessie Graydon (née Liles) (1872–1938), the daughter of a police constable.

During her childhood, Edith was a happy, talented girl who excelled at dancing and acting, and was academically bright, with a natural ability in arithmetic.

After leaving school in 1909 she joined a firm of clothing manufacturers, Louis London, near Aldgate station in London.

In 1909, at the age of 15, Edith met Percy Thompson who was three years her senior.

Then, in 1911, she was employed at Carlton & Prior, wholesale milliners, in the Barbican and later in Aldersgate.

Edith quickly established a reputation as a stylish and intelligent woman and was promoted by the company several times, until she became their chief buyer and made regular trips to Paris on behalf of the company.

After a six-year engagement, they were married at St Barnabas, Manor Park on 15 January 1916.

At first, the couple lived in Retreat Road in Westcliff-on-Sea, before buying a house at 41 Kensington Gardens in the then-fashionable London suburb of Ilford in July 1920.

With both their careers flourishing, they lived a comfortable life.

In 1920, the couple became acquainted with 18-year-old Frederick Bywaters, although Bywaters and Edith Thompson had met nine years earlier when Bywaters, then aged nine, had been a schoolfriend of Edith's younger brothers.

Frederick Bywaters had enlisted in the merchant navy.

The 26-year-old Edith was immediately attracted to Bywaters, who was handsome and impulsive and whose stories of his travels around the world excited Edith's love of romantic adventure.

To Edith, the youthful Bywaters represented her romantic ideal; by comparison, 29-year-old Percy seemed staid and conventional.

Percy – oblivious to the emerging romantic attraction between his wife and Bywaters – welcomed the youth into their company.

Shortly thereafter, the trio – joined by Edith's sister Avis – holidayed in Shanklin on the Isle of Wight.

Upon their return, Percy invited Bywaters to lodge with them.

While holidaying upon the Isle of Wight in June 1921, Edith and Bywaters began an affair.

Initially, Percy was unaware of this although he gradually noticed his wife was drifting away from him.

Matters came to a head barely a month after the affair started.

A trivial incident in the Thompsons’ garden triggered a violent row during which Percy Thompson struck his wife and caused her to fall over some furniture.

Bywaters intervened and Thompson ordered him out of the house.

The Thompsons' sitting tenant, a Mrs Lester, commented on Mrs Thompson's bruises in one of her statements to police.

From September 1921 until September 1922, Bywaters was at sea and during this time Edith Thompson wrote to him frequently.

After his return, they met up again.

On 3 October 1922, the Thompsons attended a performance at the Criterion Theatre in Piccadilly Circus, London, together with Edith's uncle and aunt, Mr and Mrs J. Laxton.

They left the theatre at 11 pm and all went to Piccadilly Circus tube station, where they separated.

The Thompsons caught the 11:30 pm train to Ilford.

As they walked along Belgrave Road, between De Vere and Endsleigh Gardens, a man jumped out from behind some bushes near their home and attacked Percy.

After a violent struggle, during which Edith Thompson was knocked to the ground, Percy was stabbed.

Mortally wounded, he died before Edith could summon help.

The attacker fled.

Neighbours later reported hearing a woman (here assumed to have been Edith) screaming hysterically and shouting "Oh don’t, oh don’t" several times.

By the time police arrived Edith had not composed herself.

At the police station the following day she was distressed.

She was unaware that Bywaters was already a suspect: he was arrested that evening and taken to Ilford Police Station.

The police confronted her with Bywaters.

One of the inspectors, Frank Hall, untruthfully told her that Bywaters had already confessed.

She then admitted to the police that she knew who the assailant was and provided the police with details of her association with Bywaters.