Edith Thompson, he repeatedly stated, had made no suggestion to him to kill Percy, nor did she know that Bywaters intended to confront him.

In discussing the letters, Bywaters stated that he had never believed Edith had attempted to harm her husband, but that he believed she had a vivid imagination, fuelled by the novels she enjoyed reading, and in her letters she viewed herself in some way as one of these fictional characters.

* December 11 – End of the trial of Frederick Bywaters and Edith Thompson at the Old Bailey.

* 1923, 9 January: Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters, in London's Holloway and Pentonville Prisons respectively, for the murder of Thompson's husband.

Howard Maxford, author of The A-Z of Hitchcock: Ultimate Reference Guide, notes that some aspects of the Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters case have similarities to the plot of Stage Fright.

composite of photographs of British Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters, executed for murder in January 1923.

Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters

Edith Jessie Thompson ( 25 December 1893 – 9 January 1923 ) and Frederick Edward Francis Bywaters ( 27 June 1902 – 9 January 1923 ) were a British couple who were executed for the murder of Thompson ’ s husband Percy.

In 1920, the couple became acquainted with 18-year-old Freddy Bywaters, although Bywaters and Edith Thompson had met nine years earlier when Bywaters, then aged nine, had been a school friend of Edith ’ s younger brother.

The 26-year-old Edith was immediately attracted to the 18-year-old Bywaters, who was handsome and impulsive and whose stories of his travels around the world excited Edith's love of romantic adventure.

To Edith, the youthful Bywaters represented her romantic ideal ; by comparison, 29-year-old Percy seemed staid and conventional.

Soon afterwards, Edith and Bywaters began an affair, which Percy discovered.

A quarrel broke out and, when Bywaters demanded that Percy divorce Edith, Percy ordered him from the house.

Edith later described a violent confrontation with her husband after Bywaters left, and said that her husband struck her several times and threw her across the room.

From September 1921 until September 1922, Bywaters was at sea, and during this time Edith Thompson wrote to him frequently.

As police investigated further they arrested Bywaters, and upon discovering a series of more than sixty love letters from Edith Thompson to Bywaters, arrested her, too.

In these, Edith Thompson passionately declared her love for Bywaters, and her desire to be free of Percy.

" Edith and Bywaters were untrustworthy, so besmirched were their reputations before they had even entered the witness box.

Believing herself to be a witness, rather than an accomplice, Thompson provided them with details of her association with Bywaters.

The trial began on December 6, 1922 at the Old Bailey, with Bywaters defended by Cecil Whiteley KC, and Thompson by Sir Henry Curtis Bennett KC.

On December 11, the jury returned a verdict of guilty, and both Thompson and Bywaters were sentenced to death by hanging.

Thompson became hysterical and started screaming in the court, while Bywaters loudly protested Thompson ’ s innocence.

Before and during the trial, Thompson and Bywaters were the subjects of highly sensationalist and critical media commentary.

Bywaters attracted admiration for his fierce loyalty and protectiveness towards Thompson.

Despite the petition and a new confession from Bywaters ( in which he once again declared Thompson to be completely innocent ) the Home Secretary, William Bridgeman, refused to grant a reprieve.

In Pentonville Prison, 20-year-old Bywaters, who had tried since his arrest to save Thompson from execution, was himself hanged.

By 1920, Bywaters had joined the merchant navy.

His aim had been to confront Percy, and force him to deal with the situation, and when Percy had reacted in a superior manner, Bywaters had lost his temper.

Later, as was the rule, the bodies of Thompson and Bywaters were buried within the walls of the prisons in which they had been executed.

" " Curtis-Bennett later said: " Was it not proved that she had posed to him ( i. e. Bywaters ) as a woman capable of doing anything-even murder-to keep his love?

She had to: Bywaters wanted to get away from her.

" One mistake that Edith appeared to make was in testifying that Bywaters had led her into the poison plots.

Curtis-Bennett's linking of the innocence of Edith to that of Bywaters at the end of his closing speech disclosed the dire straits to which Edith's defence had sunk.

The Judge, Mr. Justice Shearman KC, placed much weight on inconsistencies in her evidence, particularly her statements to the police concerning the night of the murder that suggested she had intended to conceal her witness of the crime, and perhaps conversations of criminal intent with Bywaters preceding it, although she always vigorously denied foreknowledge of it.

Even though perceived in her favour by Broad and Young, the Court of Appeal held the poison-plots against her and against him: "... if the question is, as I think it was, whether these letters were evidence of a protracted, continuous incitement to Bywaters to commit the crime which he did in the end commit, it really is of comparatively little importance whether the appellant was truly reporting something which she had done, or falsely reporting something which she merely pretended to do.

" He writes " the absence of her letters all that could be said against her was that she had lied in a futile attempt to protect and cover Bywaters.

At the police station she appeared distressed and confided to police that she knew who the killer was, and named Freddy Bywaters.

One of her main lines of defence, that she was constantly seeking a divorce or separation from her husband, and that it rather than murder was the main object of the attested five-year compact between her and Bywaters shown in her letters, was dismissed by the Judge as a sham.

" If you think these letters are genuine, they mean that she is involved in a continual practice of deceit ; concealing the fact of her connection with Bywaters, and not reiterating it with requests for her husband to let her go.

She should have been granted a separate trial in that she was handicapped by having to appear alongside Bywaters.

In 1973, her devoted sister Avis Graydon, who had previously dated Freddy Bywaters, gave a long interview to Mrs. Audrey Russell, the first time she had spoken about the case since the early 1920s.