If only it hadn't happened in Ilford. In the early 1920s, Ilford was the symbol of a new kind of urban life. With its manicured lawns and mock-Tudor beams, it represented a shining post-war world order which, though a mere 15 minutes by commuter train from the centre of London, might as well have been a million miles away.
Ilford then was a salubrious suburb inhabited by prosperous couples who had fled the city's working-class ghettoes in search of an environment in which to raise children, roses and the occasional well-bred dog. But on the night of October 3rd, 1922, Percy Thompson was stabbed to death as he walked home from Ilford station with his wife Edie after a night out at a West End theatre. Within three months of the killing 29-year-old Edie Thompson and her 20year-old lover Freddy Bywaters had been hanged for murder - and the innocence of the London suburbs had been destroyed forever.
The trial was a pop culture sensation. Blanket newspaper coverage ensured that crowds queued all night outside the Old Bailey for a seat in the public gallery and a bird's-eye view of the lovers in the dock. Sightseers besieged the Ilford house and stripped its privet hedge by taking leaves as souvenirs; onlookers thronged to the spectacle of Percy's body being exhumed for forensic examination; the very elderly Thomas Hardy wrote a poem about Thompson, and both Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot noted the affair in writing, one sympathetically, the other applauding her execution. Almost 80 years on, the case seems not to have lost any of its fascination; it is the subject of a novel, Fred & Edie, to be published this month and a feature film, An- other Life, due for release next spring.
But what, exactly, had the lovers done to merit such intense and prolonged scrutiny? Murder, sure: but in addition to the fatal crime, the story had all the elements of a popular pot-boiler - a willowy wife, a youthful lover, a bundle of risque love-letters, a backstreet abortion. Edie had married Percy Thompson in 1916 - and though her Essex family hailed him as "a great catch", they were indisputably an odd couple from the start. He was a stolid, unambitious shipping clerk; she was a book-keeper and manager at the City milliner Carlton & Prior. Edie earned good money, and spent it on chic clothes and natty hairdos. She was a looker and she knew it; she liked to dance, flirt and smoke openly in public. Percy, mostly, liked to drink. In the summer of 1921 the Thompsons went on holiday to the Isle of Wight with Edie's younger sister Avis and the latter's new boyfriend.
Freddy Bywaters had been a childhood friend of the girls' younger brother, so presumably Edie had known him for years. Maybe she'd never noticed him; maybe he'd been awkward, gangly, shy. But by the summer of 1921 Freddy had grown into a curly-haired, dark-eyed, sharp-dressed young man. He was personable, too: at least, Percy liked him enough to invite him back to Ilford as a paying guest. The conditions were ideal; the romance blossomed, complete with smouldering glances in the kitchen, hurried assignments in parks and brief encounters on trains. When Freddy returned to his job as a laundry steward on the P&O steamship SS Morea, Edie poured out her feelings in letter after letter, addressing him as "Darlingest boy", often abbreviated to "Darlint".
It was these vivid, mildly pornographic letters which drew Jill Dawson, a Cambridge-based poet and academic, to the story. She first encountered them in an anthology alongside some of her own work and, when she came to edit The Virago Book of Love Letters, sought out the complete set. But why did they make such a lasting impression on her? "It may not have been the first letter of Edie's that I read, but the one that sticks in my mind was one where she described her husband forcing himself on her. She was telling Freddy, so obviously she used a certain amount of delicacy in what she said, but it was clear enough what she meant, and it was so depressing. It seemed so loveless; I thought it was dreadful."
Having written two novels on totally unrelated subjects, Dawson decided that her third novel would be a fictionalised account of the Thompson-Bywaters affair, written from Edie's point of view.
She began her research in the newspaper files of the period - and was fascinated by what she found there, particularly with regard to women's role in post-war society. "The coverage reflected very mixed views about what was happening to women at the time; there were debates about bobbing their hair, and whether married women should work now that the men were back from the war, that sort of thing. And the tone was often disapproving, highlighting certain things like, why did Edie work when she didn't have to, why didn't she have children, how come she earned more than her husband? There was also very much the feeling that she was an older woman and a bit past it - which is odd when you think that she was only 28 - and there was, too, a sense that she had got a bit above herself, living in this big house in Ilford and commuting to work every day."
ON the face of it, Edie makes a rather dubious feminist role model, with her childlike passions, her fondness for the latest fashions and her occasional flutter on the horses. At the time, however, she was condemned as a ruthless, conniving woman who had conscripted young Freddy to debauchery and, ultimately, violence. The reason she excited such opprobrium, according to Dawson, lies not so much in the content of her letters as in their tone. "Considering what could, or rather couldn't, be said in those days, her letters are quite explicit - she doesn't use explicit language, but it's easy to piece together what she means. But it wasn't just the sauciness that outraged the public; it was when she wrote things like, `Yesterday I met a woman who had lost three husbands in 11 years and not thro' the war, two were drowned and one committed suicide, and some people I know can't lose one. How unfair everything is. Bess and Reg are coming to dinner Sunday ...' You can imagine how that went down with people who had just lost husbands, lovers and brothers in the war."
Dawson insists that the media's relentlessly negative view of Edie Thompson contributed to the guilty verdict, for there was never a shred of evidence to link her to the actual stabbing of her husband, and Bywaters went to the gallows protesting her absolute innocence. But she admits that in the letters, Edie often fantasised. "Did she really give him poison, or put ground glass in his food? We'll never be able to give conclusive answers to those questions - there are lots of gaps in our information about this case, and that in itself fascinates me. I'm always interested in the point at which private worlds become public. And it's only because of the letters that we know any details about this at all."
The point at which private worlds become public has shifted considerably since the 1920s. "These days a case like this would be treated as a case of domestic violence, and win much more sympathy on that score. I heard a radio interview with Edie's sister Avis in later life, in which she said that Percy was a real drinker, and was seriously unpleasant when he was drinking. She said that that never came out at the trial, that not much was made of it. I suppose it wasn't that remarkable at that time.
"She didn't say he was an alcoholic - but maybe she just wouldn't use that word. After all, this is the woman who, when asked why she never married, said `oh, how could you tell a young chap something like that - that your sister had had a bit of trouble with the police?' My God, that's one way of putting it . . ."
The "bit of trouble" ended with Edith Thompson being carried to the gallows, drugged to the eyeballs and possibly pregnant. The novel hints at the latter, but Dawson confesses that she finds the whole idea too disturbing to contemplate in detail. "I read up a lot about hanging and the nitty gritty of what goes on, and I read some very strange things - for instance, Thomas Hardy writing poetry about hanged women - and a certain prurience towards the idea of a woman being hanged. Included in that was a rumour that women often haemorrhaged when they were hanged, so they had to wear leather knickers and so on. Edie's dress was burned because it was so gory to look at, so again we'll never know for sure. However, my feeling is that she was pregnant; she talks about a `miss' in one of her letters just before the trial."
If true - and it's known that Thompson's executioner committed suicide and the prison governor and chaplain both retired, the latter to pursue a lifelong campaign against capital punishment - it makes the case of Edith Thompson into a simple, tragic miscarriage of justice. But for Jill Dawson, the story carries an even simpler message. "She is often dismissed as silly and romantic, but at the end of the novel I thought, what is so silly and romantic about being in love? We've all been there. There's this dismissive attitude that someone from Ilford couldn't experience a great love affair - but we all have great love affairs. Or at least that's how they seem to us."
Fred and Edie is published by Sceptre at £14.99 in the UK. The film Another Life, starring Natasha Little, Nick Moran and Ioan Gruffudd, is due for release early next year