Another dark parable of society's vilification of women. Intelligent... A tantalizing investigation'Kate Colquhoun. On the night of 3 October 1922,in the quiet suburb of Ilford,Edith Thompson and her husband Percy were walking home after an evening spent at a London theatre,when a man sprang out of the darkness and stabbed Percy to death. The assailant was Frederick Bywaters,a twenty-year-old merchant seaman who had been Edith's lover. When the police learned of his relationship with Edith,she was arrested as his accomplice,despite protesting her innocence. The remarkably intense love letters Edith wrote to Freddy - some of them couched in ambiguous language - were read out at their trial for murder at the Old Bailey. They would seal her fate: Edith and Freddy were hanged for the murder of Percy Thompson in January 1923. Freddy was demonstrably guilty; but was Edith truly so In shattering detail and with masterful emotional insight,Laura Thompson charts the course of a liaison with thrice-fatal consequences,and investigates what the trial and execution of Edith Thompson tell us about perceptions of women in early twentieth-century Britain.
MEDIA REVIEWS
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLCISBN: 9781784082468Number of pages: 448Dimensions: 198 x 129 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
In this compelling book you enter (Edith's) world,root for her,and come out filled with rage and dismay at a society that showed her no mercyLaura Thompson has written a stunning,passionate and unforgettable book which will hopefully bring some balance to the story of Edith Thompson and Freddy BywatersExtraordinarily gripping: by turns titillating,moving,shocking,and in its final pages,producing feelings of sickened revulsion in this readerThe Thompson-Bywaters case was one of the most lurid murder trials of the Twenties. Edith Thompson and her young love Freddy Bywaters were hanged for the murder of Edith's husband,but Laura Thompson argues passionately that he was the victim of a miscarriage of justiceThe author brilliantly evokes a world significantly different from our own in many ways - while remaining very much the same in others - and the organisation of her material is really impressiveThe precursor to the Villa Madeira murder. The prewar justice system exacts terrible retribution on a woman who had the temerity to take a young lover
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