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A Tale Of Two Murders. An exploration of the case of Edith Thompson and her lover Frederick Bywaters, who were both hanged for murder in 1923. Was Edith really an accomplice or just a witness? Laura Thompson investigates this disturbing case and what it tells us about the perceptions of women in early twentieth-century Britain.
Info autore
Laura Thompson is the author of several critically acclaimed works of non-fiction. Her first book The Dogs: A Personal History of Greyhound Racing won the Somerset Maugham Award. Rex V. Edith Thompson: A Tale of Two Murders was shortlisted for a CWA Dagger Award. She has written biographies of Nancy Mitford and Agatha Christie, A Different Class of Murder about the Lord Lucan scandal, The Last Landlady about her grandmother, and the New York Times-bestselling Take Six Girls: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters.
Riassunto
'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.
Prefazione
The case of Edith Thompson and her lover Frederick Bywaters, both hanged for murder in 1923.
Testo aggiuntivo
The 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' The Times.
