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THE ILFORD MURDER.
ŠPORY OF THE CRIME.
[BY B. C. BAILEY IN THE
* DAILY TK.CORAPH."]
A little after midnight a woman was going home through the streets of Ilford, There were not many people afoot in those suburban solitudes. She had come to a dark part of her journey when another woman ran towards her, crying, "My God, my God, will you help me! My husband is tl and bleeding, will you fotch a doctor ? Sha walked on and found a man lying on the pavement, She asked what had happened. "I don't know," the wife said, "someone flew past, and as I turned to speak to him blood was pouring out of his mouth." It occurred to the questioner that this answer was inadequate. She thought the wife agitated.
·
THE THOMPSON MENAGE.
villains is natural.
But there is 8, 200+ ·· Upon the facts of the man's death and thing to be said for another explanation. the statements of Mrs. Thompson, and
In such cases' as this. it is common to find Bywaters there was thus & prima facie that the obverse of passion is delight in cleo against them, But it is no less cruelty. The gusto with which the ad- chvique that this case offers certain ministration of poison to the husband is problems. "Why did ba da "Tan Whather she did. in fact attempt to poison- written about is not to be ignored.
him or not, she took pleasure in thes
to lenvo
woman's cry, sincere or insincere, states one of them. What premeditation was there? Which of the two who steed thought of it. The sensual desire which charged together was the directing will demanded murder and satisfaction in It is not to be expected that in every imagining the process of murder. When crime motives can be discovered which that is allowed for, wo find suggested an seem to the normal mind sufficient to answer to the problem over which common account for the deed. If we were all souse stumbles, why these two people normal in our emotions, our feelings, wanted to do murder at all. There was our desires, even if we were all rational so practical reason why, if Mrs. Thompson in conduct, the labours of the criminal wished
her husband, with courts would be sensibly lightened. An Bywaters, she should..not have done so, examination of the evidence given at the She had her own resources, Bywaters his.. trial will suggest what manner of people It is not probable that she would have were these two who were found guilty of suffered in position of repute. Tha the murder of Percy Thompson, But we chance of such damage was plairly must not, as the judge was careful to infuitely greater in an attempt at murder. She fetched a doctor. Medical examinaremind tho. jury, begin with the assump Morality, in the nature of the case, is to tion by the light of a match showed that tion that a crime of passion is in itself be luft out of the argument. To any the husband had then been dead some entitled to leniency. Murder is one the normal, sane judgment her motives for minutes. Why didn't you come sooner les murder because it is preceded and murder are preposterously inadequate. and save him said the wife. The prompted by adultery. Since Darid and But when we read her letters and see that doctor sant for the police. To the can- Uriah in the forefront of the battle there the killing of her husband was in itself a atable, who saw her honie, the wife have been many such cases. The judge gratification of passion, motives loom out remarked: They will blame me for who defined the murder as a "vulgar au this." When her husband's body was common crime" is a better guide than examined it was found to bear a number those who have sought to confuse the issue of wounds There were four cuts upon by sentimental rhetoric. the body, one on the jaw, one on the right' The back of the necic had been stabbed twice and deeply, the injury which caused death was a stab on the right side of the throat. The divisional surgeon formed the opinion that the man who inflicted these wounds must have been in front at first and afterwards delivered the blows from the back. Red tracks in the street showed that his victim had допо some little way after the first wounds were inflicted. A pool of blood beyond marked the place where the fatal blow was struck, but the wounded man still struggled co He died, as the surgeon computed, some two minutes after the artery in his neck was pierced?
& TID.
Such were the facts which the police had to investigate. It was easy to discover who the murdered man was and all about him. The murder was cem. mitted in the early morning of October 4th. Before acon on that day the wife bad twice declared to police officers that she could not account for her husband's wounds. She heard him say "Oh!" she told the divisional detective inspector, and he fell against her and blood came out of his mouth. Till that happened, she had not been aware of anything unusual, They were walking peacefully home, they were quite happy together." She had not seen anying about.
THE ARRESTS,
of the murk.
THE MURDER.
On the afternoon of October 3rd they had tea together. She left him and went to the theatre with her husband. As husband and wife walked from the station at Ilford to their home that night, Bywaters (who dived at Norwood) was there waiting for them.
The prosecution was not catcorned to interpret the processes of the murderer's. Consider the characters as they emerge minds. It suficed to prove that Mr. from the records of the trial. In Thompson and Bywaters were conspiring January, 1815, Percy Thompstu married together to kill her husband. That they Edith Jessie Graydon." He was theri 25, did not in fact do it by any of the and she was 21. He was a clerk in a methods they discussed does not affect the shipping office," earning enough to keep up validity of the proof of murderous intent, a small suburban home. "No children were The jury had before them evidence of a born. Mrs. Thompson also went into a long-studied ipcitement of the man by the When he cards City office, and became a bookkeeper and woman to do murder. madageress. Wo have, therefore, no back to England on September 23rd of question of a wife dependent on her this year ho telegraphed to her to meet. husband. At the time of the murder his him. She did meet him and frequently. salary and hers were of about the same amount, some £6 a week ench. She would have been able to support herself if she had separated from him. Nothing is known of any quarrel between them for some years after marriage, Mrs. Thompson said, under cross-examination, that she
He said that he had gone there, way- thought she cock an aversion to her. husband in 2018. In June, 1921, Frederic laying them after midnight in a quiet Bywaters, a lad who was then 19, who street, to urge Thompson to divorca his had known Mrs. Thompson's brothers at wife. There was, one may suppose, school, and had remained intimate with nothing else to say, but this was hardly
He saying.
declarel that the Graydon family, went for a short worth holiday with Mr. and Mrs. Thompson and Thompson attacked him and that he killed her sister. On their return he stayed with in. self-defence. That is why, on this the Thompsons on, us ho says the misalon of, midnight negotiation in the husband's invitation. Then there was a street, ho had provided himself with a.. quarre! batween Mr. Thompson and his sheath knife. But it is a disagreeabl wife over a very trivial matter. Mr. task to record the desperate efforts of the
erima lad to give bis Thompson started to knock his wife about.
acme rags of" He threw her across the room, and she manliscas. He did his best to pretend overturned a chair." Such is Bywaters's that the woman know nothing of his story. He interfered, and "at Thompson's intentions and to take the crime on his request and his own inclinaties" be then own shoulders left house. Another witüces testified that'
The evidence was overwhelming. When after this quarrel Mrs. Thompson's arm
a woman of 28 commits adultery with a was black from shoulder to elbow." On lad of 90, and is involved with him in the day of the quarrel, according to
murder, a jury is not easily to by Bywaters, Thompson told his wife to get persuaded that he was not under her a separation, and she replied that she influence. Everything in the case con wanted, one, but her husband would "only frmed the presupposition that the woman whino back and retract his statements." was the leader. This is not to make a Why, if she wanted a separation, she did defence for Bywaters. At 20 a lad must not leave him neither she por Bywatera be considered responsible for his actions." In the witness box she may well bo scrry for him, but his s bas, explained. said that she pretended to be happy "to not a case, however good his record out- satisfy her husband more than anything." side this intrigue may be, which commande
much sympathy It is alleged, th Bywaters, who was employed as a olerk evidence being chiefly from Bywaters, that on a P. and U. liner, went back to his the husband maltreated his wife, and ship. "Just before that" Mrs. Thompson Bywaters, according to bis can atatement. and he "fell in love" and so when he was "extracted a promise from him that bit The lad may have gono they wrote one another love letters. was not to beat her." Ho bad a week or two in London in believed himself a knight-erranty protect. On the next morning, when Mrs. November, 1921, seeing Mrs. Thompsoning an injured lady, but, after all, Thompson, it is to be assumed, krew of "practically every day. When he sailed injured ladies and knight-crranta akould this arrest, the detective-inspector asked again the letters were resumed.
not correspond about giving broken glass to the brutal husband. There are more her if she could give any information of Long extracts from hers were read at honourable ways of protection.
Even her husband's assailant. She repeated in the trial. They show considerable fluency though we believe the worst which tho substantially the same terms the extra of expression. They are in the style of two who murdered him have insinuated ordinary account of the death which she the novelette. The judge called them the about the man they murdered, there had given before, and then added, "I outpparings of a silly, wicked affection. remains against them both the damning cannot remember whether there was any There is no doubt about their vigour or question, why did they resort to murder one there or not. I know there was no the violence of the colours with which they The woman need not have endured one one there when he fell against me." She are charged. But when Mrs. Thompson's day more of her husband than she chosa. acknowledged, of course, that sho knew counsel talked of their Bywatera, She admitted that in
beautiful There is only the one answer, that they language of love" he was speaking to his desired, or one of them desired and quarrel between her and her husband brief. Bywaters was a sounder critio imposed a dominant will on the other, Bywaters had "interfered on her behalf." when he remarked that the woman who murder for its own sake, murder s She had written to him and gone out with wrote them was a woman who lived in punishment, as vengeance, or as cruelty; him without her husband's knowledge. melodrama," lived and thought and wrote She had destroyed his letters to her.
With whatever emotional agitation such statements were made they could not convines. The police must have been satisfied within a very few hours of the murder that, whatever might be the truth about it, the widow was not telling the truth. They knew that she was a Mrs. Thompson, with a home at Ilford, and that her family also, the Graydons, were Ilford people. At her father's house on the evening of October 4th-and for that matter on several evenings before was a young man called Bywators, a friend of Mrs. Thompson and the Graydons of some years' standing. About seven o'clock on this evening after the murder Bywaters brought a paper into their house, and asked if Mr. Graydon had seen it, "This is a terrible thing," he said, "if it is true." A little later the police came and arrested him.
THE LETTERS." "
in a world of extravagant "passione, a
The manner in which the case was tried..
The inspector took her to the police world where everything is bigger, more may stand as a model of the manner in which crimes of passion should be station. There she saw Bywaters de- violently coloured, lighter," and darker investigated. The moderation of the tained. She exclaimed, "Oh, God! Ch, than realities. The language of the prosecution, which was ocotent to bring God! What can I do? Why did he da letters is not cf love, a word which is not out the facts and let the facts speak for it I did not want him to do it." And to be used in this case, but of forced themselves, and the calm summing up of almost immediately afterwards she said passion und brooding sensuality. that she must tell the truth. She' was,
The judge stumbled over a passage the case by Mr. Justice Shearman, in which, when sentimentalittes had bear the inspector reports, hysterical, But about the busband having the right by law curtly ruled cut every argument which after the usual caution about giving to all that the lover has a right to "by the defence could advance was considered. evidence against herself, she made nature and love." It may be taken as the however vague its import, but which another statement which, though it context, the old text, of many another insisted on the interpratation of facts by fessed she had becas previously lying, squalid correspondence, on which Mra
seemed to show signs of consideration. A Thompson voluminously discoursed Self.commonsense, have done justice. Let us man rushed out, she said, knocked her and indulgence, according to this philosophy, hope that there will be no attempts th pushed her away from her husband. She is an excuse for everything. It was the retry the case out of court by rhetoric excuse in this case for elaborate discussion and no glorification of those who ar Then she recognised Bywaters ringing the husband. Four or five methods at the
was dazed. When she recovered she saw
her husband struggling" "with a man, about the ways and means of poisoning guilty of "a vulgar and common crime?
away. She did not see his fast, but least were considered, the use of hyoscine IRRITATED & INFLAMED EY" recognised his clothes. It seems a fair of ground glues, of something which gave can be directly traced in many cases to- interpretation of this to consider it as tea a bitter taste, of gas fumes, and of
meint to convey that the presence of bichloride of mercury, to say nothing of the Sunday Motor trip and Golfing. The Bywaters in that lonely, dark street was the tacting of Mr. Hichens's heroine, dust from sections of the local ronda wholly unexpected by Mrs. Thompson, and Pella Donna. The woman discussed it all contain a decided eye irritant." A sug- that her husband was killed in a fight backwards and forwards, and boasted, if gestion for these trips would be to keep The statement, in fact, hysterical or not, words mean anything, of attempts sho takes the only ground upon which any had mado,
the windshield up and to use a pair of defence could be made for the woman or But there is no evidence that her Sun glassa. Bun glasses of any pattern " husband, ever consumed any poisonous with either Crookes, Luxfol, Fiouzal, When Bywaters was told that Min. substance, None was found in his body. Amber, London Smoke, or Blue Lense Thompson and he would be charged His health was at no time affected.. together with murdar his first concern defence contended that all the eager are obtainable at very moderate pricea way to oxalate her. She was not aware, writing about poison was, as the judge from The Hongkong Optical Co., succes. he insisted, of his plans or his movements. summed up their argumente, swank to
the man..
"
The
When husband and wife came to where he show what an, heroic person she was. It to Clark & Co., Manufacturing and Was waiting for them, he pushed her will not escape notice that the poisons she Refracting Opticians the most compet aside, and saw no more of her. There was mentions are notorious in the annals of ent manufacturing" optical establishment a fight, in which the dead man got, the the criminal coucle or in fiction. The in South China-located in 83, Queen's worst of it, and "Mrs. Thompson must suggestion that Mrs. Thompson was, like
have been spellbound," for, after the many others, onger to pretend that she Bond Central (opposite to the Singer wepting Bywaters saw no more of hor. could rank with the most conspicuous of Sewing Machine Company)-ADYT [10
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