Fatal Families - Unleashing the evil within (Infamous Murderers) by Rodney Castleden Page A

to go on holiday with them to the Isle of Wight. Percy liked Freddy, and agreed. The moment they were alone, Edith and Freddy kissed for the first time. Edith recalled in her letters how tightly he had held her. It was a short step to arranging for Freddy to become the Thompsons’ lodger in their double-fronted house in Ilford. Two weeks into this new arrangement it was Freddy’s birthday, so Edith took the day off work to take Freddy breakfast in bed. She told him she was suicidal. He told her to take her clothes off. They made love then and there, and after that at every possible opportunity. At last it was the passionate relationship that Edith had dreamed of, straight out of her bodice-ripping novellas. Perhaps for Freddy, at just nineteen, it was simple opportunism rather than love.
    The Twenties were a time when liberation was in the air among the younger generation, and the liberation of women in particular. They bobbed their hair, wore strapless dresses and daringly short skirts, and won scandalous reputations as reckless flappers. Why shouldn’t women be free to do as they like? Unfortunately for Edith, who belonged to this generation, there was another, older generation brought up with late Victorian values and for whom the Great War had meant the loss of their dearly-loved sons. This was the older generation that would shortly pass a terrifyingly harsh judgement on Edith Thompson.
    To begin with, Percy knew nothing of the passionate affair going on in his own house, but eventually his suspicions were aroused. Edith unwisely refused to have sex with her husband. This led to a quarrel in which Percy struck Edith and pushed her to the ground. Freddy tried to intervene and Percy threw him out; he had to go back to his parents. After that, Edith arranged to meet Freddy secretly every time his P & O ship docked at Tilbury. Edith became pregnant by Freddy and induced a miscarriage; she was afraid that a baby might scare Freddy off altogether. Meanwhile, Freddy was trying hard to back out of the relationship. He even wrote to her, ‘Can we be pals only?’ She wrote back in effusive romantic style, saying ‘even if you don’t still love me, I always shall you.’
    Percy, dogged as ever, refused to give Edith the divorce she wanted. ‘I have got her and I will keep her’, he told Freddy.
    In September 1922, Freddy’s ship docked again in Tilbury. He travelled into London to meet Edith and they took a train from Fenchurch Street to Ilford, making love in an empty carriage. Now he was with her, Freddy’s passion for Edith was as strong as ever. They met again and again, dreading the ending of Freddy’s shore leave on 3 October. In her letters Edith called Freddy ‘darlint’ by which she meant ‘darlingest’. She was a great letter-writer. It was to be her downfall. Now she wrote one that would help to send her to the gallows. ‘He has the right by law to all that you have the right by nature and love – yes darlint be jealous, so much that you do something desperate.’ At her trial, this was interpreted as an incitement to murder. Maybe that is what she meant. Maybe she didn’t know what she meant by it. Maybe it was just a string of phrases from a novelette.
    Whatever Edith intended to happen, Freddy seems to have taken it as the signal that he was to kill Percy. The Thompsons went out one evening to see a Ben Travers farce at the Criterion. As they walked home afterwards, a man jumped out onto the ill-lit pavement from a front garden, pushed Edith onto the ground, and repeatedly stabbed Percy with a knife. One of the blows severed Percy’s carotid artery and blood poured from his mouth. Edith shouted, ‘Oh don’t, oh don’t!’ and the man ran off into the night.
    The police found Freddy Bywaters still wearing his bloodstained coat and he told them where he had got rid of the knife. There was no doubt about his guilt. Edith’s position was precarious, especially in view of the letter she had written,