THE ILFORD VERDICT

Otago Witness, Issue 3595, 6 February 1923, Page 25

THE ILFORD VERDICT

FINAL SCENES IN COURT. WOMEN AND THE DEATH PENALTY. (From Ottb Own Correspondent.) LONDON, December 14. Seldom have the great London morning and evening papers devoted so much space to a criminal trial as they have to the Ilford case. Six and seven columns a day during tile time the case lasted was not unusual. The rush, too, of the public for seats in the court was quite unprecedented. Queues began to form when the proceedings the previous night were finished. Many of the patient people were unemployed, and sold their places on the following morning for as much as £5. It was undoubtedly an extraordinary case, and possessed a good deal of dramatic interest, but the generosity of space on the part of the great newspapers to such a painful and sordid trial was probably due to the intense rivalry in the matter- of circulation which is such a feature of London journalism. Dramatic episodes marked the closing stage of the trial. The jury were absent for two hours. With the atmosphere of the denselycrowded court unbearably hot and stuffy, several women, unable to stand the nerve strain, had to h 9 assisted out of court before the members of the jury resumed their seats. A moment or two later two knocks on the door by the usher were heard, and the judge returned to the bench. All eyes were fixed on the vacant dock, and a couple of minutes elapsed before the prisoners, who had been taken to the cells when the jury retired, were brought back. Mrs Thompson, pale and almost fainting, was assisted by two wardresses to the front, and then collapsed into her seat. By waters also betrayed signs of the ordeal through which he was passing, but kept his feelings under control. As he stepped lorward he shook hands with his solicitor, Mr Matthews. Then, amid a deathly silence the Clerk of Arraigns asked the usual questions to the foreman of the jury- "How say you,” he inquired, “do you find the prisoner Frederick Bywaters guilty or not guilty of the murder of Percy Thompson?” "Guilty,” came the quick reply. A tremor of deep emotion passed through the court when, in answer to a similar request in regard to Mrs Thompson, the foreman repeated in a low voice the same fateful word. The female prisoner, who had beep assisted to her feet, closed her eyes, and would have fallen but for the support of the wardresses. The Clerk of Arraigns then, turning to Bywaters, asked him if he had anything to say why judgment should not he given according to law? 11l a firm voice he replied; “I say the verdict of the jury us wrong. Edith Thompson is not guilty. 1 am no murderer; I am not an assassin.” Mr Justice Shearman, having put on the black cap, then passed sentence of death in the usual form. MRS THOMPSON’S COLLAPSE. Mrs Thompson, who throughout the terrible ordeal presented an agonising appearance, and had flun» herself back with a groan was now assisted to her feet, and the judge repeated the sentence of death on her. When the Clerk of Arraigns asked her. if she had anything to say why there should be a stay of execution of the sentence, she plaintively sobbed, “I am not guilty. Oh, God, 1 am not guilty.” She then fell into the arm 3 of the wardresses, who carried her out of the dock. Bywaters stepped calmly down to the cells without assistance. He afterwards sent for is counsel, Mr Cecil Whiteley, to thank him for his efforts on his behalf. It is stated that Mrs Thompson will appeal against the sentence. Her mother was assisted to a seat in a fainting condition, and Mrs Bywa'ters was also deeply affected. LAST WOMAN TO BE HANGED. Now the question arises; Will Mrs Thompson Ire hanged? It is more than 15. years since a woman was hanged in Great Britain. The last to suffer, this fate, was Mrs Rhoda Willis, baby farmer and murderess, conJ victed under the name of Mrs Leslie James,

and executed by Pierrepoint in Cardiff Gaol on August 14, 1907. If the Ilford murder trial had taken place 150 years ago, the ju ’go would, in all probability, have dealt J, Mrs Thompson by havuig her burnt at the gallows. In those days ot ruthless justice such was the fate of the woman convicted of unsband-murder—-a crime that was regarded as petty treason, and punished accordingly. Until the law was altered in 17915, there were many women who paid this penalty for taking ‘ a short cut to widowhood. It was the rule in such cases .nat strangulation should come first, but in that of at least one of the women to he so condemned—Catherine Hayes 1725 the executioner dropped the rope too soon, and the woman was literally burnt alive in tne presence of a great crowd To-day all this is changed, ' hut death is still the only sentence which the court can pass upon man or woman found guilty of murder, and so Mrs Thompson has been sentenced to die. That judgment may prove to he but the grim formality of the law. Women are not exempt from the hangman’s rope, hut it is such a considerable time since a woman was sent to ihe gallows that it is a matter for speculation whether the death penalty, will he enforced in the case 01 Tvlra Thompson. PARALLEL MURDER CASES. A murder trial with many points oi similarity to tlie Thompson and .Bywaters case took place at Leeds on December 9 1903 John Gallagher, aged 30, a labourer, and Ennly Swann, 42, were indicted for the murei ot wiiliam Swann, the woman’s hus-o-ana. Both prisoners were found <milty and were hanged together at Leeds prison on December 29, 1903. It was hot alleged tnat Mrs Swann took any part in the actual killing ot her husband. The case for the prosecution was that Gallagher had been a lodger at the house of the Swanns until the husband turned him out. Bywaters, too, remembered, lodged with Mr and Mrs Thompson until a quarrel occurred between the two men. For another sensational crime of passion of which a woman was found guilty one has to go back JL° 18S9 to the famous case of Mrs Maybrick, who was sentenced to death for the murder of . tier husband by poisoning him with arsenic. Mrs M aybrick was not executed, but it was. not her sex that saved her from the scaffold. The gallows had already been erected for her in Walton Gaol when tile death sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life. The reason for tiie Home Secretary’s intervention is interesting. The official statement made at the time read: “While the evidence leads clearly to the conclusion that the prisoner administered and attempted to administer arsenic to her husband with intent to murder, yet it does not wholly exclude a reasonable doubt whether his death was in fact caused by the administration of arsenic.” One of trie greatest exhibitions of hardihood at the scaffold was that of Mrs Annie Walters and Mrs Amel i a Sach, two nurse 3, who were executed in Holloway Prison in 1903 for the murder of an infant. At the last moment Walters, whom it seemed nothing could unnerve, shouted out, “Goodbye, Sach!” Among other notable executions ate those of Mrs Dyer, the baby farmer, at Newgate, in 1896; Mrs Pearcey, hanged at Newgate, in 1890, for the murder of Airs Hogg; and Catherine Wilson, who was convicted of the murder of Airs Soames by poison in 1862.