Qualla: Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters https://qualla.com/edith-thompson-and-frederick-bywaters en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:14 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/e/edith-thompson-and-frederick-bywaters-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters https://qualla.com/edith-thompson-and-frederick-bywaters Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters: Introduction https://qualla.com/edith-thompson-and-frederick-bywaters/ Photo credit Uclerew, CC BY-SA 4.0. At nine o'clock on the morning of 9 January 1923, in two London prisons half a mile apart, the British state hanged Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters at the same moment. She was twenty-nine. He was twenty. Percy Thompson, Edith's husband, had been stabbed to death by Bywaters on an Ilford street three months earlier while Edith was knocked to the ground beside them. Bywaters never stopped saying she knew nothing about it. Edith Thompson protested her innocence at the gallows. A century later, lawyers, historians, and the Criminal Cases Review Commission have all agreed: something terrible happened in that courtroom, and the women's death penalty in Britain was effectively over.

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/e/edith-thompson-and-frederick-bywaters-wp/gcpe-edith-thompson-and-frederick-bywaters-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters: Three Lives in Ilford https://qualla.com/edith-thompson-and-frederick-bywaters/ Photo credit Uclerew, CC BY-SA 3.0. Edith Jessie Graydon was born in Dalston, north-east London, on Christmas Day 1893. She was the eldest of five children. She danced and acted in amateur productions, was clever at arithmetic, and went to work at fifteen for a wholesale milliner in the City. By her late twenties s...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/e/edith-thompson-and-frederick-bywaters-wp/gcpe-edith-thompson-and-frederick-bywaters-three-lives-in-ilford.mp3 0:06 2 full Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters: The Letters https://qualla.com/edith-thompson-and-frederick-bywaters/ Photo credit Uclerew, CC BY-SA 3.0. Edith Thompson wrote to Bywaters across two years and more than fifty-five thousand words. The surviving letters run from November 1921 to September 1922, a day-by-day account of her London life while her lover was at sea. In a handful of passages she described grinding glass int...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/e/edith-thompson-and-frederick-bywaters-wp/gcpe-edith-thompson-and-frederick-bywaters-the-letters.mp3 0:06 3 full Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters: The Murder https://qualla.com/edith-thompson-and-frederick-bywaters/ Photo credit Uclerew, CC BY-SA 3.0. On the night of 3 October 1922, Edith and Percy Thompson were walking home from a London theatre near their Ilford house. A man jumped from behind some bushes and attacked Percy. Edith was knocked down. Neighbours later said they heard a woman screaming hysterically, calling out ...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/e/edith-thompson-and-frederick-bywaters-wp/gcpe-edith-thompson-and-frederick-bywaters-the-murder.mp3 0:06 4 full Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters: The Trial https://qualla.com/edith-thompson-and-frederick-bywaters/ Photo credit Uclerew, CC BY-SA 3.0. Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters were tried together at the Old Bailey before Mr Justice Shearman in December 1922. The prosecution, led by the Solicitor-General Sir Thomas Inskip, used a selection of Edith's letters to argue that she had incited Bywaters to murder her husba...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/e/edith-thompson-and-frederick-bywaters-wp/gcpe-edith-thompson-and-frederick-bywaters-the-trial.mp3 0:06 5 full Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters: 9 January 1923 https://qualla.com/edith-thompson-and-frederick-bywaters/ Photo credit Uclerew, CC BY-SA 3.0. Frederick Bywaters was hanged at HMP Pentonville. Edith Thompson was hanged at HMP Holloway. They were executed at exactly the same hour. Reports from those present at Holloway describe Edith's hanging in terms that haunted prison reformers and abolitionists for decades; she was,...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/e/edith-thompson-and-frederick-bywaters-wp/gcpe-edith-thompson-and-frederick-bywaters-9-january-1923.mp3 0:06 6 full Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters: A Long Reburial https://qualla.com/edith-thompson-and-frederick-bywaters/ Photo credit Uclerew, CC BY-SA 4.0. Frederick Bywaters lies in an unmarked grave inside the walls of Pentonville, where his remains were buried hours after his execution. Percy Thompson is buried at the City of London Cemetery. Edith Thompson was buried in Holloway, then reburied in a single unmarked plot with thre...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/e/edith-thompson-and-frederick-bywaters-wp/gcpe-edith-thompson-and-frederick-bywaters-a-long-reburial.mp3 0:06 7 full