Fatal Families - Unleashing the evil within (Infamous Murderers) by Rodney Castleden
Authors: Rodney Castleden
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and therefore came close to getting away with murder; without any human remains it is unlikely Dew would have gone any further.
As he waited to be executed, Crippen thought only of Ethel Le Neve, kissing her photograph and writing her poignant letters. In these final days, a new public attitude to Crippen developed, a respect for this quietly dignified and vaguely romantic figure. Many people started to feel sorry for the hen-pecked little man; he had after all been led quite a dance by his awful wife. Crippen was, even so, hanged at Pentonville on 23 November, 1910. Ethel Le Neve, still only 27, was tried a week after Crippen. She was found not guilty of being an accessory after the fact, and slid instantly and deliberately into obscurity. Some said she went to Australia and died there in 1950. Some say she went to Canada or America instead, changing her name to Allen. Some say she ran a tea-room in Bournemouth under another assumed name. I happen to know that she spent her last years in Hove. But it was a half-life, a life in the shadows, a life ruined by the unhappiest of love affairs, and it seems particularly unjust that Ethel must have suffered far, far more than her lover.
Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters
‘Oh don’t!’
Edith Thompson was born, as Edith Graydon, on Christmas Day 1893 in a lower middle class family in Manor Park, East London. Her father was a clerk with the Imperial Tobacco Company. Edith was the eldest and liveliest of his five children, and he made a great fuss of her. In fact he spoiled her. She was a talented dancer, and she took part in amateur theatricals until 1920. This interest in drama was her undoing. She was impressionable, tended to over-dramatize things, and read enormous quantities of romantic fiction which fed her rich fantasy life.
Alongside this drama-queen personality there was a harder-headed Edith who knew she needed to make money if she wanted to get on in life. She became a book-keeper at the age of seventeen, at a wholesale milliners in Aldersgate, a firm called Carlton & Prior, and found herself promoted fairly quickly. When she met Percy Thompson, she was earning more than he was.
Percy Thompson was a plodder. He came from a poorer family and started work at the age of thirteen. He was solid, dependable, and usually he took no chances. Even so, on holiday in Ilfracombe in June 1914 Percy had sex with Edith. Edith was far from sure she wanted to spend the rest of her life with dull Percy, but the war nudged her towards marriage. Young men were dying in their thousands, then tens of thousands, and it seemed foolish to wait. They were married in 1916.
Percy Thompson turned out not to be the sort of romantic hero Edith had longed for. He was not even going to be the gallant young soldier Edith saw other young women waving off to the front. He enlisted but was discharged as medically unfit; he boasted to a friend that he had duped the army medical officers into thinking he had a heart condition, so he was either a weakling or a coward and either way he was not what Edith was looking for.
In the summer of 1920, Edith met Frederick Bywaters. He was eighteen, over eight years younger than Edith, with a square jaw, healthy muscular body, light brown wavy hair and a pleasant face. He was in every way the opposite of Percy. Percy had (apparently) tricked his way out of the war; Freddy had played truant from school to fight, signing up for a Merchant Navy convoy when he was only fifteen. Freddy was an old school friend of Edith’s brother Billy, which is how he came to be lodging at the Graydons’ house while his ship was in the London docks. Mrs Graydon saw Freddy as a possible husband for her second daughter Avis, but before the summer of 1920 came to an end Edith was already showing a serious interest in him.
The following summer Freddy’s ship returned from the Far East, and Edith persuaded Percy to invite Freddy – and Avis, for form’s sake –
As he waited to be executed, Crippen thought only of Ethel Le Neve, kissing her photograph and writing her poignant letters. In these final days, a new public attitude to Crippen developed, a respect for this quietly dignified and vaguely romantic figure. Many people started to feel sorry for the hen-pecked little man; he had after all been led quite a dance by his awful wife. Crippen was, even so, hanged at Pentonville on 23 November, 1910. Ethel Le Neve, still only 27, was tried a week after Crippen. She was found not guilty of being an accessory after the fact, and slid instantly and deliberately into obscurity. Some said she went to Australia and died there in 1950. Some say she went to Canada or America instead, changing her name to Allen. Some say she ran a tea-room in Bournemouth under another assumed name. I happen to know that she spent her last years in Hove. But it was a half-life, a life in the shadows, a life ruined by the unhappiest of love affairs, and it seems particularly unjust that Ethel must have suffered far, far more than her lover.
Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters
‘Oh don’t!’
Edith Thompson was born, as Edith Graydon, on Christmas Day 1893 in a lower middle class family in Manor Park, East London. Her father was a clerk with the Imperial Tobacco Company. Edith was the eldest and liveliest of his five children, and he made a great fuss of her. In fact he spoiled her. She was a talented dancer, and she took part in amateur theatricals until 1920. This interest in drama was her undoing. She was impressionable, tended to over-dramatize things, and read enormous quantities of romantic fiction which fed her rich fantasy life.
Alongside this drama-queen personality there was a harder-headed Edith who knew she needed to make money if she wanted to get on in life. She became a book-keeper at the age of seventeen, at a wholesale milliners in Aldersgate, a firm called Carlton & Prior, and found herself promoted fairly quickly. When she met Percy Thompson, she was earning more than he was.
Percy Thompson was a plodder. He came from a poorer family and started work at the age of thirteen. He was solid, dependable, and usually he took no chances. Even so, on holiday in Ilfracombe in June 1914 Percy had sex with Edith. Edith was far from sure she wanted to spend the rest of her life with dull Percy, but the war nudged her towards marriage. Young men were dying in their thousands, then tens of thousands, and it seemed foolish to wait. They were married in 1916.
Percy Thompson turned out not to be the sort of romantic hero Edith had longed for. He was not even going to be the gallant young soldier Edith saw other young women waving off to the front. He enlisted but was discharged as medically unfit; he boasted to a friend that he had duped the army medical officers into thinking he had a heart condition, so he was either a weakling or a coward and either way he was not what Edith was looking for.
In the summer of 1920, Edith met Frederick Bywaters. He was eighteen, over eight years younger than Edith, with a square jaw, healthy muscular body, light brown wavy hair and a pleasant face. He was in every way the opposite of Percy. Percy had (apparently) tricked his way out of the war; Freddy had played truant from school to fight, signing up for a Merchant Navy convoy when he was only fifteen. Freddy was an old school friend of Edith’s brother Billy, which is how he came to be lodging at the Graydons’ house while his ship was in the London docks. Mrs Graydon saw Freddy as a possible husband for her second daughter Avis, but before the summer of 1920 came to an end Edith was already showing a serious interest in him.
The following summer Freddy’s ship returned from the Far East, and Edith persuaded Percy to invite Freddy – and Avis, for form’s sake –
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