Edith Jessie Thompson

Frederick Edward Francis Bywaters and Edith Jessie Thompson were convicted of the murder of 32-year-old Percy Thompson and sentenced to death.

Frederick Bywaters and Edith Thompson had been having an affair and conspired together to murder Percy Thompson.

Frederick Bywaters then killed Percy Thompson in Belgrave Road, Ilford as he was walking home with Edith Thompson. He came up behind him and stabbed him multiple times in the back.

The court heard that Edith Thompson had been writing letters to Frederick Bywaters soliciting him to kill her husband so that they could be together and had told him that they would be coming home by train on the night in question. Although the letters focussed mainly on poison, and that Frederick Bywaters killed Percy Thompson by stabbing him, the court heard that the method of murder was irrelevant, citing past legal cases and interpretations of the law that laid out that if one person solicited another to kill a man with a knife, but instead the person killed the person with a gun, that as the effect was the same, the intended victim being killed, the manner in which it was achieved was irrelevant and the soliciting party was still guilty.