THE ILFORD MURDER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18281, 23 December 1922, Page 7

THE ILFORD MURDER.

BOTH APPEALS DISMISSED.

SYMPATHY ONLY FOR VICTIM. A. tnd N.Z. LONDON. Dec. 21. The appeals of George Bywaters, ship's steward, and Mrs. Thompson, against their conviction for the murder of the latter** husband, were both dismissed. The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Hewart, and Justices Darling and Salter dismissed Bywaters' appeal which was based on the grounds that Mr. Justico Shearman refused to take the two trials separately, the alleged inadmissibility of Mrs. Thompson's letters as evidence, alleged misdirection of the jury and that the v verdict was against the weight of evidence. Counsel argued that the letters confused the issue. The Court did not call upon the Crown to reply. The Lord Chief Justice said that their Lordships regarded the case as a squalid and rather indecent case of lust and adulterv, in which Thompson was cruelly murdered. There was no ground whatever in their opinion to interfere with Mr. Justice Shearman's decision to try the prisoners together. Bywaters heard the result unmoved. The Lord Chief Justice, in Mrs. Thompson's appeal, in which the Crown also was not called upon to reply, said that the deceased was the only person in the case who excited sympathy. The relations between Bvwaters and Mrs. Thompson were, most culpably intimate. There passed between them remarkable and deplorable correspondence of a most mischievous and venomous type.