Pardon could follow ‘sexist’ 1923 hanging

IT WAS a case that shocked and scandalised Edwardian Britain and ended in the hanging of a 29-year-old woman on the basis of a few scribbled love letters.

Now, after decades of academics and campaigners arguing that Edith Thompson was the victim of sexism and classism, the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) is to look again at her case, reversing a decision it took only last year.

Thompson was executed by hanging at Holloway Prison on Jan 9 1923, three months after her lover, Freddy Bywaters, had murdered her husband, Percy.

The Thompsons had been on their way home from an outing to the theatre. While walking home from Ilford station, in east London, Bywaters jumped out and stabbed Percy, leaving him mortally wounded, before escaping.

Thompson and Bywaters were arrested and their trial became a sensation. They were both adamant that she had no knowledge of the attack.

The key evidence was a series of letters written by Thompson to Bywaters. She wrote about having put glass from a lightbulb in his food, to no effect, and of trying to poison him. But a post mortem examination of Percy found no evidence of either glass or poison.

Prof René Weis, of University College London, who is leading the campaign, has dismissed the writings as simple fantasies. He and others have long argued that Thompson’s true crime was to reject the life laid out for her as a working-class woman. She enjoyed nights out in London and trips to Paris.

“The public came to admire Freddy and intensely dislike Edith, a siren who had seduced a young man and thus set in motion a chain reaction that resulted in one man’s death and the certain execution of a ‘lad’,” Prof Weis told the BBC.

Last year, the MOJ dismissed a request to pardon Thompson. The law firm involved applied for a judicial review arguing that the ministry had made a series of errors.

It then received a note that the department was reconsidering and that the process had been restarted.

Thompson’s case became central to campaigns to abolish the death penalty, Prof Weis said.