THE CRIME OF EDITH THOMPSON.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 229, 27 September 1930, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE CRIME OF EDITH THOMPSON.

WAS SHE MORALLY INNOCENT OF MURDER?

0V ,n SiMAWn H??cJ,r AT LED TO THE GALLOWS—WOMAN WH £-mnFRF SH?RpSsffk uT ° DEATH —'CONFRONTED WITH SC S WAX S H A\K S ELF AS MURDERESS—BYWATERS AS WAX IN HER HANDS—LIVED IN WORLD OF MAKEBELIEVE.

Edits Thompson, beautiiul, talented, fascinating, is probably the only -woman in the world wno has been led to the gallows cot by vice but by her own overvivid imagination. She is certainly unique as the one "oman who did not realise until long alter she had taken her part in the slaying of her husband that she was a' xaurderess! Tne cause of her crime, paravesical as this may seem, lay in the fact thai she belonged to the respectable nidcie-ciasses. \ ery poor, she would have fought her way to success, very rich she would have shone. But the essential mediocrity of tier surroundings, to which she recognised her own superiority, drove >, er to the strange course of life that came j 0 its climax only with the death of Percy Thompson, her husband, at Ilford, England. ■

The murder can be described in a sentence. She took a lover, Freddy Bywaters, a mere lad, and led him to stab to death her husband. So such for the crime it-self. But the complex motives that lay beneath it, the singular mentality that it revealed, these are the features that make Edith Thompson appear to the thinking person a carious and striking personality. Edith Thompson was an efficient young woman who earned more than her husband, and who had no need of financial assistance from him. Therefore, had she cisliked him, she could have left him at any moment without disagreeable consequences to herself. But—strange as it may seem—she did not dislike him, and never desired to leave him. Equally, although she -was Freddy By waters' mistress, she was not genuinely in love with him! A World of Puppets. For Edith Thompson could not love very ardently, since _she lived in a world of dreams, a world of puppets, and nobody anpeared very real to her. Her life was oiie long, elaborate piece of play-acting, aad the audience she wished to please was—herself. Edith enjoyed imagining a situation, but she never dreamed of taking the steps necessary to create one. And she failed to realise that Freddy Bywaters, who in her view was no more than a stage hero playing opposite to her, woulu translate emotions into action any more than she intended to do so herself. It was Bywaters' tragedy that he did not understand Edith. It was to prove hers also. Freddy Bywaters c-ame as a paying guest to the Thompson home. Edith, who could be very irritating occasionally, caused Thompson to lose his temper. On one occasion there was something of a souffle between husband and wife and Freddy interfered. Shortly afterwards Freddy left, at Thompson's wish. But he was already madly infatuated by the voman who, seven years older than himself. was glad to have this attractive and handsome lad to relieve the monotony of her days. Bywaters was a sailor, and most of the liaison was carried on by letter. Edith Thompson's letters are remarkable, so cleverly composed, so vibrant with passion and feeling that there is no doubt she could have made a name for herself in literature._ Little by little, with all the intensity of the creative artist. Edith deluded the young lover into the belief that she was _ trying to poison her husband that she might marry him. A Pretence and a Lie, It was a pretence, a lie, but it satisfied Edith's sense of the theatrical, placed her in an interesting and unusual light, bound the lad more tightly to her by the only bonds that she recognised—the bonds of the imagination. She liked to picture herself the tragic wife whose broken heart had turned her into a desperate creature at bay. Actually at this period she and her husband were living together quite happily. Nevertheless she planned _ her letters in such a way as to rouse within the hoy a burning passion or jealousy. Very subtly, week after week, month alter month, Edith continues to the emotions of her young lover. _ the writes amusingly of a man who, seeking her at_a hotel, believed that she was there .n answer to an advertisement of his ana a.ddressed her, saying "Are you 'Romance. The incident was improbable, but it was designed to remind Bywaters that she ■fas attractive to men. Finding words so satisfying, Edith did not realise that to Bvwaters thev were merely a prelude to action. She thought that he grasped that the thrill lay in their emotional reactions, their mental attitudinising. But ironically enough, Bywaters knew no more about the singular being that was Edith Thompson than did her husban . Both men were equally ineapable ot trating her unusual mind. Thus. x.clit .did not take literally Bywaters announcement that he would kill Percy Thompson, and without misgiving arranged ' a Bywaters should "overtake" them as tne walked home from the theatre on tne night of October 3, 1922. Even then she had no idea that Bywaters would do anything other than make ner appear the more interesting in her nusband's eyes by creating a scene ana aemanding that Thompson divorce her. - did it dawn upon her that Bywaters consider himself a hero should he ss ri the fatal blow that would free her lT ° what she had taught him to believe . poor, inoffensive Thompson s brutal do nations. There had already been a between Thompson and Bywaters, but latter, urging Thompson to give her up, had cried, '"You are making Edie s lite: a hell," to which the husband had ietoi . "Eye got her and I'm going to keep ner. which suited Edith splendidly., fired a repetition of the exciting H&P and of the agreeable sensations slie then experienced. Struck the Fatal Blow. But when the fateful night came, t eie were no words. Freddv rushed at In° u 'P' and stabbed him to death. horrified bevond measure, turned upon nei lover. Bywaters, bewildered, could not himself to the situation or u " d .-»nnow that he had committed tne deed which he thought Edith desired, s had no tenderness left lor him. ?dith, as he was to learn, did not suSer gladly. He had made the able mistake of regarding her not as artist but as an ordinary woman meant what she said. She had been pIJ. fting and he had not acknowledged nei talent, and for this error she was to p. with her life-she who had been no moie in earnest than tht child who pla}= 5 •hers and lets some of them die onlj to re lj re them a moment later. Edith, in the eyes of the law was a E®hy as Bywaters, for she had U Warned that the murder was to be c fitted. But morallv she remained inno c ™t, since she did not really know it, ror she did not believe it. Had she not_ saia that she too, was trying to rnurdei by poisoning him, and ] ha „ Bernard Spilsbury proved this * a j\* /'tan ap p ea ] failed and s^?,f a iiT m parents for the last time she said: t bitterly- disappointed because I did e _ Mice. I don't want mercy • • • ?°&t ask for that . . • .but» And Justice seems to have been blinded. - ®«nng what she knew of herseli.. tna* Plaat must have seemed to her justrh

(By PHYLLIS LEWIS.)

Dazed by Horror. Only during her last hours on earth did she begin to visualise herself as others saw ner—a murderess. Until then she had been as a dramatist in whose play an actor haa been accidentally killed. But when she had so little time left that she w-as compelled to lace truth undramatised, naked, vital, did she appear to realise her own part in creating this real-life tragedy. Then the horror of it dazed her, stunned her, and she went to the gallows very nearly a madwoman. Because she could not differentiate between the word and the deed, because she could get an emotional reaction without external cause —and not because oi any hatred she bore J^ lln n °t only did she help assassinate her husband but she brought about the death also of her twenty-year-old lover. In spite or the anguish she caused, in spite of her guilty relations with a lad who was as wax in her hands and whose moral strength she sapped only to lead him to a shameful death, beautiful Edith Thompson will be remembered as the one murderess who paid the supreme penalty for a crime that, accidentally and quite outside of her will, she transplanted from the realm of her imagination _ into grim reality.—(AngloAmerican X.S. Copyright.)