NO REPRIEVE

New Zealand Times, Volume L, Issue 11412, 8 January 1923, Page 7

NO REPRIEVE

MAN AND WOMAN TO HANG. ILFORD MURDER CASE. Australian and N.Z. Cable Association. LONDON, January 5. The Home Office has declined to reprieve Bywaters and Edith Thompson. By waters, a 20-year-old ship’s steward, and Edith Thompson were tried as a result of the death of Percy Thompson. The case created most unusual interest in London, and great queues formed over-night at the Old Bailey, so eager were people to hear the evidence, It was alleged that attempts were made to poison Percy Thompson, who refused to'divorce his wife to enable Bywatere to marry her, hut the actual killing was done in a street at Ilford, when, one evening, Bywaters met the-woman and her husband. Thompson was stabbed in the hack and in the back of the. neck, and it was apparently this fact which made the jury refuse to believe Bywaters’s story of acting in self-defenoe. The woman was implicated by' letters die had written to Bywaters. Since the passing of the sentence the old controversy as to the hanging of women has been revived. No woman has been hanged in Great Britain since 1907.