by Q. Patrick
“Now, gentlemen, that is his case and that is the whole of the evidence with regard to it. Nobody questions that he inflicted those wounds, and now I think with regard to him you will have quite a simple task to arrive at your decision. First of all, it is the law that if you intentionally kill—intentionally—you are guilty of murder, but if you kill a person in legitimate self-defense, that is what is called justifiable homicide. It is said by the prosecution that this story, that Thompson attempted to shoot By-waters, is quite untrue. As a matter of fact, the policeman Geal said there was no weapon or pistol of any kind on the husband when his body was brought in. All of them say—all of the witnesses who were called—that, except for the stabs and cuts, there were no signs of a struggle on Mr. Thompson’s clothing. It is said on behalf of the prosecution, this story of the reason for their meeting and of the threat of the pistol is just like other tales that are put up by prisoners in any crime. The prosecution say it is a story which no reasonable jury would think of believing; it is contradicted by the facts of the wounds themselves; it never appears at all till he is put in the witness box, and it is such a story that you are entitled to reject entirely. If you think that is the truth you are entitled to acquit him altogether. He says that Thompson hit him and, if you believe that Thompson made an unprovoked attack upon him, and he only inflicted these stabs in self-defense, you will acquit him altogether. If you think it is a fabrication from beginning to end, you will reject it. I will not say anything more about it.”
But he did say more about it. Just in case there might be any lingering doubts as to Freddie’s guilt in the minds of the jurors, he defined the legal point of view toward provocation. “A man may flog you with a whip and, if you happen to have a pistol, and you take it out and shoot him, the jury may say the provocation was made … but it is inconceivable that it would be any provocation for a man to say, ‘I will not allow you to run away with my wife.’” Once again he reviewed the case for Freddie’s defense, pouring scorn on it and ending almost as he had ended before, with the sentence “If you think that is mere defense put up in order to escape retribution for what he had done and dismiss that story, then you will find him guilty of murder.”
There was one point in favor of the accused that had, in fairness, to be brought up—and demolished.
“I have only one other matter to say to you with regard to this, and, of course, it is my duty to say so at some time, and I will say it now. Of course, you know this is a man of good character. Sometimes evidence of this sort is put up—I am saying it quite frankly—because it is said, ‘Here is a young man; we are sorry for him; let us do something for him.’ Gentlemen, you know perfectly well, if you find him guilty of murder, what sentence I must pronounce. I never keep it back from the jury. You know as well as I do that the prerogative of mercy, which is in other hands, does not rest with me nor with you, and even if you really think him a young and honest person, and that he lost his head altogether, if you think that he was inflamed by sexual impulses and that the real truth of the matter is that he went out with the knife, put in his pocket in order to kill this man—went out and did kill this man and struck him from behind, as said by the prosecution, without any provocation whatever—if you are satisfied of it, then, however unpleasant your duty is, you must give effect to it. That is the only way I can help you with regard to him, and, after the adjournment, I will deal with the case of the female prisoner.”
However unpleasant his duty, Mr. Justice Shearman had performed it with relish. During the brief adjournment, in which the bailiffs who were to take charge of the jury in retirement were sworn in, the court sat dazed, as if a bomb had dropped nearby. Then Mr. Justice Shearman turned his attention to his second unpleasant duty—the duty of destroying Edith Thompson.
Chapter Seventeen
Mr. Justice Shearman began his summing up of the case against Edith Thompson by warning the jury that, if they found Bywaters innocent of murder, the case against the female prisoner automatically disappeared. However, if they found Bywaters guilty, they had to decide whether or not Mrs. Thompson had been his accomplice. By law, he said, a woman who extracts a promise from a man to kill someone is equally guilty with the man, however and whenever that murder is committed. In the case of Edith Thompson, the crux of the matter was: Did she know Bywaters was going to waylay them in Ilford and did she know he was carrying a knife? If she did, then she was as guilty as he.
It was obvious, said Mr. Justice Shearman, that murder, by its very nature, must be planned and carried out in secret. There was seldom any eyewitness evidence to a killing, and one had to make do with circumstantial evidence. In this instance, circumstantial evidence was provided by the letters. In the witness box, Mrs. Thompson had claimed that many of the suspect passages in them referred to a plan for a divorce or an elopement. In deciding whether or not to believe her, the jury should remember that the eagerness shown in the letters to keep the affair secret from the husband implied that no real desire for a divorce or separation had existed. The jury should also bear in mind that, if the husband had died “accidentally” from a heart attack, the predicament of the lovers would have been immediately solved. The truth, said Mr. Justice Shearman, could only be found in the letters, and he would now analyze the letters for the jury’s benefit.
With a specious pretense of fair-mindedness, Sir Montague prefaced this analysis with the following words:
“I am sure you will not think that I am taking any side in this matter; if you think I am taking any side in this matter, you know as well as I do you can disagree with me without giving offense to me or anybody else; it is entirely a matter for you. I am anxious not to take a side, but if you think any of my opinions jump out in any thing that I say, you will be perfectly at liberty to disregard them, because it is for you to decide it, because you are much better judges than I am. I do not want you to think, if I go into portions of the letters, that I am asking you to disregard the explanations of the letters. You will consider them very carefully. You will not consider that I am giving all the arguments on one side or the other.”
Mr. Justice Shearman’s flattery of the jury had been much more effective than Sir Henry’s, because he was flattering them not as being something they were not, “men and women of the world,” but for what they actually were—“right-minded persons.” Having thus assured himself a favorable hearing, he turned his sharp, cruel, contemptous attention to the letters themselves.
“I am going to read you certain extracts from the letters.… It is said by the prosecution that from beginning to end of these letters, she is seriously considering and inciting the man to assist her to poison her husband, and if she did that, and if you find that within a week or two after Bywaters came back, the poisoning is considered no longer possible (he has no longer studied or has not studied bichloride of mercury, but has read ‘Bella Donna’ without seeing how ‘Bella Donna’ can be of any use to him), they would naturally turn to some other means of effecting their object. And it is said to you they naturally would.”
The “other means,” of course, was the stabbing of Percy Thompson. There was evidence, Mr. Justice Shearman explained, to show that on the night of the crime Mrs. Thompson and Bywaters had parted a mere half hour before she joined her husband and the theatre party. There was also evidence that she had told Bywaters what train she and her husband would take back to Ilford. If these facts were sufficient to suggest that she knew Bywaters would show up at Ilford, then the jury was entitled “to assume that she sped him on his errand, that when she saw him, at any rate, she knew he was coming and what he was after.” If this were so, the Judge implied, the stabbing could be considered the logical outcome of the abandoned but “long-studied incitement for him to help her to poison.”
At this point, his grotesquely bigoted but fascinating analysis of the letters began.
“Now let us look at the letters. I am sure you know them and you recollect the whole of them. In Exhibit Sixty-two you find this:
‘Yesterday I met a woman who had lost three husbands in eleven years, and not through the war; two were drowned and one committed suicide, and some people I know cannot lose one. How unfair everything is.’ And then she breaks off. In Exhibit Twenty-seven—I am not going to comment, I am only going to call your attention to the facts: ‘I had the wrong porridge today, but I don’t suppose it will matter, I don’t seem to care much either way. You’ll probably say I am careless and I admit I am, but I don’t care, do you? I gave way this week to him.’ Of course you know these letters, as was quite properly pointed out, are full of the outpourings of a silly but, at the same time, wicked affection. There are all sorts of things in the letters other than alluding to poison and many other things which I am not going to refer to, but mostly cases on which I believe to be matters of that description. In the same letter there is: ‘You know darlint I am beginning to think I have gone wrong in the way I manage this affair. I think perhaps it would have been better had I acquiesced in everything he said and did or wanted to do. At least it would have disarmed any suspicion he might have and that would have been better if we have to use drastic measures darlint—understand? Anyway so much for him. I’ll talk about someone else.’ Is that talking about divorce or is that talking about drastic measures—measures for removing him?
“Then in Exhibit Fifteen there is this incident about his taking too much of some medicine: ‘Some one he knows in town (not the man I previously told you about) had given him a prescription for a draught for insomnia and he’d had it made up and taken it and it made him ill. He certainly looked ill and his eyes were glassy. I’ve hunted for the said prescription everywhere and can’t find it and asked him what he had done with it and he said the chemist kept it.’ Of course, it is suggested she wanted to get hold of the prescription. ‘I told Avis about the incident only I told her’—look at these words—‘as if it frightened and worried me’—not that it had frightened her, but she pretended it to convey that; and you will have to consider in a good many of these things whether she was genuine or acting. ‘I told Avis about the incident only I told her as if it frightened and worried me as I thought perhaps it might be useful at some future time that I had told somebody.’ It is said she is already preparing for witnesses in case there should be a murder case; that is what is said. Then: ‘It would be so easy darlint—if I had things—I do hope I shall. How about cigarettes?’ Then the next is an extract: ‘“Death from hyoscine poisoning, but how it was administered there is no sufficient evidence to show.”’ Then there is another extract [from a newspaper clipping]: ‘“Ground glass in box”’—I only allude to it because somebody else alluded to it. [Nobody had.]
“Exhibit Sixteen: ‘However for that glorious state of existence I suppose we must wait for another three or four months. Darlint, I am glad you succeeded, oh so glad I can’t explain, when your note came I didn’t know how to work at all—all I kept thinking of was your success—and my ultimate success I hope. I suppose it isn’t possible for you to send it to me—not at all possible.’ Now it is suggested he had written to her, you know—at any rate, she understood he had written to her saying, ‘I have got something that would poison him or make him ill.’ ‘I suppose it is impossible for you to send it to me.’ She in her answer, you will recollect, says: ‘He was to send me something to make him ill, and I never intended to do it, although I said that to him.’ He said in his answer it meant letters. Then she continues: ‘Darlingest boy, this thing that I am going to do for both of us will it ever—at all, make any difference between us, darlint, do you understand what I mean? Will you ever think any the less of me—not now, I know darlint, but later on—perhaps some years hence—do you think you will feel any different—because of this thing that I shall do?’ The meaning of that is for you to judge; you will fully understand it is not for me to tell you what the letters mean; you are the judges of that, not I; there is no law about it whatever. It is said the meaning of that is: ‘If I poison him is it going to make any difference to you afterwards?’ That is what is suggested in the plain meaning of the words.…
“Exhibit Fifty: ‘This time really will be the last you will go away—like things are, won’t it? We said it before darlint I know and we failed—but there will be no failure this next time darlint, there mustn’t be—I’m telling you—wherever it is—if it’s to sea—I’m coming too, and if it’s to nowhere—I’m also coming darlint. You’ll never leave me behind again, never, unless things are different.’ Now, it is said that the meaning of that is: ‘If we get married you can go on your voyage and leave me behind, but if he is still alive I am coming away with you.’
“Exhibit Seventeen: ‘Don’t keep this piece’—that is at the top. ‘About the Marconigram—do you mean one saying Yes or No, because I shant send it darlint I’m not going to try any more until you come back.’ What does that mean? ‘I made up my mind about this last Thursday. He was telling his Mother et cetera the circumstances of my “Sunday morning escapade” and he puts great stress on the fact of the tea tasting bitter “as if something had been put in it” he says. Now I think whatever else I try it in again will still taste bitter—he will recognize it and be more suspicious still and if the quantity is still not successful—it will injure any chance I may have of trying when you come home.’ The date of that letter, if you look at it again, is April. Bywaters says, ‘At some time in March I gave her’ something which he says was quinine, and she says she does not know what it was. It is suggested the plain meaning of that is she tried that and failed. He says whatever it was, it was only quinine, but she does not know what it was. [This is not true. Mrs. Thompson, like Bywaters, had said the thing she had been given was quinine.]
“Exhibit Eighteen: ‘I used the light bulb three times, but the third time he found a piece—so I have given it up—until you come home.’ Of course, you know her explanation is that this was merely—I don’t know what word to call it—swank—to show what a heroic person she was; that she was prepared to do all sorts of things which she was not in fact doing, and his explanation was always to exculpate her, and to say she was a melodramatic being. You will give what weight you think to it.….
“Exhibit Nineteen: ‘I don’t think we are failures in other things, and we mustn’t be in this. We mustn’t give up as we said. No, we shall have to wait if we fail again.… You said it was enough for an elephant,’ and he admits, you know, he did say either in letters or by words that thirty grains of quinine were enough for an elephant. Why an elephant should want thirty grains of quinine I do not know, or whether his explanation is true, or what she was writing that she had not succeeded. ‘Perhaps it was. But you don’t allow for the taste making only a small quantity to be taken. It sounded like a reproach, was it meant to be?’ Then further on, ‘I was buoyed up with the hope of the “light bulb” and I used a lot—big pieces too —not powdered—and it has no effect—I quite expected to be able to send that cable—but no—nothing has happened from it.’ Now what is the cable? She says the cable was a cable stating she was going to get a divorce. It is not for me to say anything to you, but it is suggested that the cable was his death. ‘And now your letter, tells me about the bitter taste again. Oh darlint, I do feel so down and unhappy.’ Then she says: ‘Wouldn’t the stuff make small pills coated together with soap and dipped in liquorice powder-like Beecham’s—try while you’re away.’ It is said that is asking him there to produce some poison with which, they could poison this man without being discovered. ‘Our Boy had to have his thumb operated on because he had a piece of glass in it that’s what made me try that method again—but I suppose as you say he is not normal, I know I feel I shall never get him to take a sufficient quantity of anything bitter.’ Then further on: ‘You tell me not to leave finger marks on the box—do you know I did not think of the box but I did think of the glass or cup or whatever was used.’ She says it is true he did write to her and ask her not to put finger marks on the box. Why finger marks? It is suggested by the prosecution
that if this man is poisoned, and there is a trial, finger marks would display on the box who has handled the poison. ‘Do experiment with the pills while you are away.’
“Exhibit Twenty-two: ‘It must be remembered that digitalin is a cumulative poison, and that the same dose, harmless if taken once, yet frequently repeated, becomes deadly.’ I should not think you should bother much about what is in the book called ‘Bella Donna.’ The only point about it is, it is the case of a woman—nobody suggested she was like this woman, or the man was like this man. It is the case, admitted on oath by herself, that there is at the end of the book somebody poisoning her husband or trying to poison her husband. ‘It must be remembered that digitalin is a cumulative poison, and that the same dose, harmless if taken once, yet frequently repeated, becomes deadly.’ And there is this remarkable statement: ‘The above passage I have just come across in a book I am reading, “Bella Donna” by Robert Hichens. Is it any use? … I’d like you to read “Bella Donna” first, you will learn something from it to help us; then the “Fruitful Vine.”’ No doubt the letter about the ‘Fruitful Vine’ was something similar; they write chiefly about so-called heroes and heroines, probably wicked people, which no doubt accounts for a great many of these tragedies.
