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Widow’s Story in Ilford Mystery

Quite Happy Together and No Quarrel . . . I Did Not
See Anybody About at the Time

‘I heard him call out “Oh!” and he fell against me . . . We had no
quarrel on the way; we were quite happy together . . . I did not see
anybody about at the time.’
In these words Edith Thompson (27), widow of the stabbed
Ilford shipping clerk, told the police the story of her husband’s
death. Her statement was read at Stratford court yesterday, when she
and Frederick Bywaters, the 20-year-old ship’s steward, were remanded
on the charge of murder.
Mrs Thompson, said the police, made other statements, and
Bywaters also made a statement, but none of these were put in
yesterday’s hearing.
A large crowd had gathered around the police court in the
hope of seeing the couple, but they were brought from Ilford in a
cab, and manoeuvred into court before the waiting people knew of
their arrival.

Woman’s Covered Face

Bywaters, who entered the court first, is a tall young man of
striking appearance. A plain clothes officer stood between him and
the woman, who was helped into court by a woman attendant.
Mrs Thompson was wearing the clothes in which she went to the
theatre on the night of the tragedy.
When she entered the dock she covered her face with the deep
fur collar of her coat until the magistrate asked if there was
anything the matter with her face. She was requested to put the fur
collar down, was provided with a chair, and demanded a glass of
water. During the hearing she sat with her limbs trembling and hands
clutching at her garments.
Divisional Detective-Inspector Hall stated that when he saw
Mrs Thompson on Wednesday morning he said to her, ‘I understand you
were with your husband early this morning in Belgrave Road and I am
satisfied that he was assaulted and stabbed several times.’
Mrs Thompson then made this statement:
‘We came along Belgrave Road and just past the corner of
Kensington-gardens I heard him call out “Oh!” and he fell up against
me. I put out my arms to save him, and found blood which I thought
was coming from his mouth. I tried to hold him up. He staggered
several yards towards Kensington-gardens, and then fell against the
wall and slid down.
‘He did not speak to me, and I cannot say if I spoke to him.
I found his clothing wet with blood. He never moved after he
fell . . .
‘I ran across the road for the doctor and appealed to a lady
and gentleman passing. The doctor told me my husband was dead. Just
before he fell down I was walking on the right-hand side of the
pavement nearest the wall.
‘We were side by side . . . My husband and I were talking
about going to a dance.’
The Inspector added that Mrs Thompson appeared to be very
agitated at the time.
He took possession of Bywaters’ overcoat.
Mrs Thompson had practically to be carried out of court.
Before Bywaters left the dock he asked if he might have legal
assistance, and was told the police would give him every help and
facility.

Dodging the Crowd

By a ruse the police succeeded in getting the man and woman away from
the building without attracting the attention of the crowd.
The inquest on the dead man was opened at Ilford Town Hall.
Only evidence of identity was taken.

The Daily Sketch, Saturday 7th October, 1922

Sunday 8th October, 1922

Darlint Fred,
Here I am. The room is small, as you might expect, but on another
matter, the matter of the light, there is more than you might
imagine. In fact, it was light that woke me this morning; weak
slivers of October light from the oddly shaped window. Today is the
official end of British summer time. Now that I have said that to
myself the phrase has a strange ring about it. The end of summer. The
end of our summer. I wonder why I have remembered such a detail? Of
course, it’s ludicrous, I can’t imagine why it matters, but a picture
popped into my head as I opened my eyes – a picture of you, somewhere
across London in Pentonville, in a grey room with a concrete floor
just like this one, lying in bed and altering your watch, spinning
the hands quickly, so that they slip around as they do in a picture
show, without regard for convention. The hands on a watch, flashing
through hour after hour, or the pages on a calendar, torn and
fluttering, time eaten, time flying and time lost. Of course, this is
sheer imagining. Your watch has – no doubt – been confiscated, as
have all of my belongings.
Freddy, I hope you are bearing up, as I am, and not feeling
too afraid. I’m staring at the window, so that I can describe its
shape exactly to you. A cathedral-shaped window? No, that doesn’t
make sense, it’s more like the shape of a loaf of bread, if you can
imagine that, yet there is something here that reminds me of being in
church. A smell rather like school, a smell of the boiled cabbage
cooking in the kitchens, also of boiled clothes and sheets, perhaps
even boiled skin, and of carbolic soap. I am adequately warm and at
the moment there is thankfully, some quiet. It’s not a tiny window
and it’s not high up particularly. The bars would be wide enough to
slip a child’s hand through. That is, if the glass was not there to
prevent such a thing.
Do you remember, Freddy, reading about Lady Constance, about
the Suffragettes in Holloway? But no, you would be what, ten or
something like that, while I, thinking of myself already as a young
woman at seventeen, I suppose I took some notice of such things. I
couldn’t help wondering this morning, if one of those women hadn’t
been kept in this exact room. After all that starving she did, maybe
her hands and wrists did become tiny, maybe they were slim as two
sheets of paper and maybe she thought of breaking the glass and
slipping a hand right through. But to what avail? She could only have
held the bars and stared out. She would have had no strength to do
more. Just a thought that crossed my mind, Freddy. A random thought.
No doubt you have wondered, too, at who might have slept in your cell
before you. It helps, doesn’t it, to keep the mind on other matters
and not to expend ourselves worrying about our own predicament.
It was the young wardress who brought me my breakfast. She
has pale skin like a freckled brown egg and she finds it impossible
to meet my eyes. I can tell she is curious about me. (Judging from
the crowd yesterday at Stratford, it must have been in the newspapers
by now.) I think she would love to stare outright, but she pushes her
lank hair behind her ears (they all wear such strange caps, I cannot
see that they are use or ornament) and she scuttles out again, with
almost – I’m not joking darlint – almost a curtsey. I’m cheery and in
fine spirits and I hope this letter finds you the same. I’m still
groggy with sleep and last night’s crumpled dreams and the dress I
slept in.
I wear my prisoner’s number on a yellow cloth badge on my own
dress, which I’ve been allowed to keep until tomorrow, as they were
not quite prepared for me and have had some delay in finding my
prison garments. As long as I don’t think about the last week, if I
concentrate instead on the small details: the shelf, the stool and
pail in the corner of the room, the scratchy grey blanket, the white
egg-cup painted with a black arrow and the words Prison Commissioner
on it, the beaker of milk and the dry roll on a tin plate, the pillow
which is surely stuffed with something akin to straw (when I
mentioned this to the wardress she snorted at me), I feel fine. I
have found I am in possession of an astonishing capacity to not
think, if I so desire. For instance, I believe I have not thought of
Percy, not for one moment in twenty-four hours. Is that not
remarkable?
I have asked the Governor if I could send this to you and he
has kindly replied that I might not. It was an odd experience,
stepping out of my shoes and my wonderful crepe de chine in that
small office that they call the ‘Reception’. I’m now wearing some
unspeakable items of underclothing which seem to have been
constructed from the sacks used to carry coal.
The officer taking down my details asked: Where were you
born, do you know? That might tell you something about the kind of
ladies they are used to in here!
I can apparently visit the library – accompanied by a
wardress – as often as I like and whilst on remand I won’t be put to
work and may remain in my room. The Governor has supplied me with
paper and plenty of it and a pencil, but no pen, so I am writing
anyway in the hope that you can read these words at some time in the
future, when this dreadful mess is cleared up. I am so in the habit
of writing letters to you that I find it impossible to stop. Always
in my mind, a conversation with you, with my Great Pal, continues.
Knowing that your situation is so similar to mine only increases this
tendency.
I am not allowed a fork or knife and, of course, you must be
in the same position. It will be hard, won’t it, to have to eat
everything with a spoon? But then again, since twice a day we are
given porridge without salt and with a great hunk of bread, I can see
that a spoon is the most useful of items.
Darlint, I’ve promised myself not to remonstrate with you
and, as I say, not to think about the last few days which have
brought us here, but occasionally it becomes difficult to keep my
resolve. A sentence rises up in me, like a bird opening its wings in
my chest and then beating them, harder and harder. Then I see you
again in your coat and hat, running away down Belgrave Road and I see
Percy slipping, slipping and – they have offered me drugs here to
keep me from wailing – yes, I admit, I may have been wailing last
night, although I can scarce remember – and the sentence is: Why oh
why did he do it? I believe I know the answer, Freddy, and I believe
that when you have the occasion to do so you will explain all to me,
reassure me, as you have so often done in the past, so please,
forgive me, won’t you, for mentioning it just then.
Let us move on to cheerier things. Although I am allowed a
pencil, naturally I’m not allowed a knife to sharpen it, which
strikes me as funny. After all, I could poke someone’s eye out with a
pencil, couldn’t I, or my own, if self-injury is what they are hoping
to prevent. This thought reminded me of the Punch and Judy show we
watched, that first summer on the Isle of Wight, do you remember it?
What, Judy, do you mean to cry? Why, yes you hit me in the eye. I’ll
just lie down and kick, and die! It must be curious to be a prison
governor and to think of people in this way. To think, is this woman
likely to do harm to herself or to one of my wardresses, is she a
wicked murderess or a careless Baby Farmer or just a poor girl who
couldn’t pay the rent? So my point is this, that when this pencil is
blunt, I must wait until such occasion as I can request permission to
have it sharpened. What I am saying, of course, is please forgive me
also if this letter has to end abruptly. I don’t as yet, understand
the routine in here enough to know when I will next speak to someone.
I must end now as I can hear someone coming. Perhaps I will
get to sharpen my pencil! Bear Up.
Thinking of you,
Peidi.


It’s strange but if I thought in the past of being in prison, which I
have to say, I never did, never believing I would experience such a
thing, but if I did in some recess of my mind ever imagine it, which
I suppose I must have, given that I have dug up the image I’m about
to describe; I realise now that I pictured a hospital ward or a
dormitory, a long thin room stuffed with many people, sardines in a
tin. I did not picture myself alone like this.


I need to calculate, to know the precise moment.
Was it the first instant I clapped eyes on Freddy? Was it
when I decided to marry Percy? Was it the conversation I had with
Freddy the night of the theatre?
If only I could pin-point it. That’s what keeps me awake,
struggling to land on the exact square – like a child playing
hopscotch. Was it when I knocked on Freddy’s door, that evening in
the late summer of 1921? Or was it earlier than that – the evening
the Irish hawker called at the door and made his sly remarks to me?
For there must be one, one tiny moment, and if I could find
it, search for it and land on it, it might be possible – just
possible – to pick up the chalk and throw it again, so that it falls
somewhere else. So that with a hop and a skip and a jump I’m landing
with both feet on another square, doing something else.
Not here in my cell, thinking this.

Monday 9th October, 1922

Dear Freddy,
A short letter, darlint, which perhaps I will be permitted to send to
you. Tomorrow is the day of Percy’s funeral. Mother came last night
to tell me and to ask what I would like her to write for me as an
inscription on the wreath. Can you imagine! What could I say? Mother
suggested: From your Loving Wife, Edith, but after a lengthy
discussion we decided on: From Edie. Judging from what mother says of
the hubbub at home, the note will be torn up by some irate well-
wisher before long.
I am in good spirits again and hope this letter finds you in
the same. I did suggest to Mother that she might plant some hyacinth
bulbs, for me, on the soil above Percy’s grave, which she seemed to
think a very odd request. Mother says I cannot seem to get it into my
thick head what has happened. Those were her exact words, Freddy! In
fact she began shouting. I suppose when I get out of here I will have
to plant the bulbs myself.
I know you will find it painful for me to write to you of
Percy but today is the first time I have been able to think of him
without fainting. Even as I write my hands are perspiring and the
pencil slips in my fingers. But I must press on because I have
decided it is not a good thing at all to try to survive by not
thinking. I am expecting Percy at any minute to walk in here with his
navy jacket on and say, Come on, my girl, and then to take over,
bustle a little, fill out the forms, do everything necessary to take
me home.
I long for cigarettes but I am allowed books and have ordered
three novels.
I did so rely on Percy. I can see that now. Perhaps him being
those few years older made a difference. He was dreary, and a
terrible dance partner, and there’s no need to mention to you his
temper, after a drink or two! Still, that dreary side of him is
something I crave a little, just now, after the excitement of the
last week or so. If I ever get the chance to again, I will time his
morning egg so perfectly, and I will not complain at all if he stands
over me, squeezing my waist with his big hands, while the egg rattles
at the edges of the pan, like something mildly angry, like something
about to gently explode.

Tuesday 10th October

Freddy, just a little note. Last night I had such terrible nightmares
and I’ve woken with such a strong sense of fear, feeling all the
events of the last week rise up and tumble over me. I did so long to
be held and comforted by you and writing to you like this is the
closest I can come to that feeling.
The nightmares were brought about by thinking of the funeral
today. I suddenly pictured our lovely house at Ilford with the
funeral cortege outside of it, and Percy’s dreadful friend Harry
lighting his pipe and trying to look solemn and my mother with that
shocked expression she wears permanently now and Avis, wearing my
borrowed black coat and my beautiful embroidered kid gloves. Then I
tried to remember who else might turn up for Percy’s funeral besides
his mother and brother and realised I could think of no one! How few
friends he had. Maybe Ernest – the old boy from the Shipping office –
and that’s the total. I’m not sure Ernest really cared for Percy
much, either. There was an awkward occasion one Christmas when Percy
had a tipple too many. That was when Percy was the new boy and great
things were expected of him. He’ll go far, Mother said when I brought
him home, tall and broad in his smart black suit. She could hardly
stop herself from rubbing her hands together in expectation! I don’t
suppose you can imagine that now, can you, knowing him only in the
last two years? He was judged a promising catch once, you know.
I mention this not to make you feel guilty, darlint, but only
because I have no one else to talk to about such things. Percy had no
son or daughter to mourn him, he only had me. I kept going over it
and over it. Mother said the coffin had white lilies on the top and
brass handles and I imagine Percy in there – yes, I have got that
far, Freddy, I can picture him now lying in his coffin with his arms
crossed and feel only the merest pang of pain when I do so, like a
knife faintly drawn across my heart.
I’m sorry I mentioned the knife there. I didn’t mean anything
by it.
In my imagining of Percy, his arms are folded rather smugly,
rather stonily and he has a look which says: I told you so. He has
just finished one of those short coughs which announced his every
comment. This morning when this thought first came to me, I wept and
wept, realising the strange futile pleasure Percy took in being right
about miserable things. Then I wanted to laugh out loud and get hold
of Percy and say, so you see it was all true, your wife is a Judy
indeed and that young Bywaters came to no good, all as you predicted.
I thought I should hate him but instead I had such sorriness for him
that his life was worn down to a tiny penny, dull and soiled, and
that it should be his pleasure in reducing the lives of others, too.
He knew I wasn’t happy, didn’t he? We often spoke of it and his
stubborn response seemed to be: well I am not happy and never have
been so what makes you think your life should be different?
If only I could plant some hyacinths here in a bowl to make
the room cheery. I am watched night and day – no I don’t mean that a
wardress is there constantly. I mean that whenever I glance at the
spy-hole, someone seems to be passing, just checking up on me. I’ve
discovered that the young one, the freckled, curtseying one is called
Eve. I heard her name called by the stout one, Clara, who bustles in
with great speed, in fact does everything speedily; ushers a girl in
to take out the pail, replaces the tray, reports on events ‘outside’,
announces visitors: Governor’s on his way to see you. Or: Your
sister’s waiting in the visitors’ room. Despite her brusqueness (and
I’ve heard her shouting at other prisoners, so I would certainly not
like to be on the wrong side of her!) it’s Clara I like best. I
believe she is sympathetic to us. But I wonder if I’m a poor judge of
such things? It seems to me that Eve glances at me slyly. Sometimes I
catch her eyes on my waist, on my shapeless self inside this prison
dress and I know what she is thinking.
Hyacinths, violets, how much difference it would make to be
allowed to have flowers in our rooms! Violets always remind me of
that night when we stood under the statue of Eros, and I was saying
to you that the sky was snagged on his arrow because when I threw my
head back to look at the stars, that’s exactly how it appeared. And
you said, not listening to me at all, but searching amongst the women
at the steps of the statue, Damn these flower-sellers, milling around
the place, why do they never have violets? until the prettiest of the
lot came to you and said: Sir, I have the most beautiful violets,
what’ll you give me for ’em? and you said, A good spanking if you
talk to me that way again. But, of course, you were laughing and you
bought some anyway and she took it in good spirit when I appeared
beside you to take your arm, seeing that you were taken.
Those violets lasted very well. They were kept in a beaker of
water beside my bed for nearly a week, prompting no comment at all
from Percy. Sometimes I think he knew exactly who they were from. In
my fondest moments I think that at some level Percy regretted his ban
on happiness and thought: Let her have that tiny scrap and no more.
That much doesn’t threaten me.
But he was wrong, wasn’t he? I think that happiness – once
planted – grows roots. Before I was ever happy, I had no idea of what
it might feel like. So many people seem to have no idea at all that
they might choose to be happy: one only has to look around to see
that. Perhaps it only takes the tiniest shoot of true happiness for
that to germinate, to exist somewhere and contain the seed of itself,
something that might be passed on. For surely it is impossible to
feel something if you don’t know – if you have never been told – that
such a thing exists?
We had our happiness didn’t we, the light might shine through
it sometimes but it was green and fresh and unbending as a blade of
grass, wasn’t it, Freddy, while it lasted?


The first time I clapped eyes on Freddy. It must have been then.
Percy carries the cases, of course. We take a number 25 from
Cranbrook Road to Victoria station, and sit at the front on the top
deck, this being a treat to get us into the holiday mood (since we
could have just as easily taken a tram) and Percy remarks, more than
once, on the heaviness of my case.
What have you in there? he teases, amiably enough. Half of
Carlton & Prior?
I return his teasing moments later when I read an
advertisement on the side of the bus passing us. FORCE, a wholewheat
breakfast cereal, and under the picture it reads: For breakfast try
FORCE.
I nudge Percy. For breakfast, try force! You’ve been taking
that too literally, darling . . .
His head swivels towards me as if on a stick, and at first he
looks like someone who has just sat on a bee. Then right after that,
he bursts out laughing. (This, I know, might be considered
provocative. But when Percy is in a good mood, I like to take
liberties.)
So we arrive in good time at Victoria station, where we are
to meet Avis and Freddy. We buy our tickets and have a cup of tea and
a Sally Lunn in the tea-shop at the station. That’s where we are
sitting when they turn up. Fred and Avis. I have my back to them; I’m
smoking a cigarette.
Percy sees them first. I watch his face register their
arrival and then he noisily scrapes back his chair and stands up and
it is all a flurry of greetings and introductions. I stub out the
cigarette hastily and stand up too.
My first impressions of Freddy are . . . not particularly
tall, perhaps, and wearing a long midnight-blue sort of coat, a
spotless grey hat? His shoes gleaming and freshly polished.
He is smiling, a charming smile, a smile that tells me he is
conscious of his handsomeness and his good teeth. He holds out his
hand. If I close my eyes now I can feel his palm – smooth, warm,
flat, the texture of a pebble washed smooth by the sea. When I try,
try as I’m doing now, to bring that moment to mind, I can hear him
jingling coins in his pocket, or hear that odd whistling he did. The
snap and click of footsteps on a pavement, the hiss and sulphur of a
match being lit . . . but that’s not right; that’s not my first
impression of Freddy surely, that’s from somewhere else?
Well, we have scarce a moment to acknowledge each other’s
existence in the run to the platform and with Avis twittering that we
had all misjudged the time and that Percy’s watch must be wrong. We
bundle ourselves onto the train, laughing, and Percy takes our coats
for us and hangs them up and the train begins moving almost as soon
as we sit down.
I’m trying to remember Freddy from school; Avis has told me
he was there and how much younger than me he was. Naturally enough,
girls of fourteen are not much interested in boys of seven! I’m not
having much success.
Avis has brought sandwiches of cured ham and boiled eggs and
a flask with more tea, organised as she is, and we are all ravenously
hungry and excited, I think, yes, even Percy is talkative and
ventures a few jokes, as London fog gives way to green fields and
hedges and a blank sheet of cloudless sky.
Freddy doesn’t say much to me beyond could I pass him please
the salt for his egg, and I’m unsure what impression I’ve created, or
whether I’ve impressed him at all. I notice the way he eats – the way
he always eats – quickly, a little like a wild scavenging animal
might eat something, a fox say, with one eye on the look-out for
hounds.
It’s watching him eating which reminds me. I don’t know why
but the dip of Freddy’s head, the intensity of his concentration, his
jaw moving determinedly: all of that brings a picture of Freddy to
mind, a memory of the very first time I saw him, as a small boy, in
school.
Valentine’s Lake.
We are swimming, all the children are swimming in Valentine’s
Lake and Freddy is a small child, one of the youngest. Of course we
loathe swimming in the lake – icy and slippery with reeds, sometimes
even a water-rat or a duck swimming right into your path to scare the
wits out of you, but we all put up with it because it is Mrs Wall who
teaches us swimming and terrorises us into compliance. But not
Freddy! Now I can see him on the bank of the lake, with a stubborn
thrust to his lower lip (a ‘pet lip’ my mother called such a thing
and it was strictly forbidden) there he is, with his skinny legs and
his long shorts, refusing, refusing point blank, to go into the water.
We all look on in awe and terror as Mrs Wall seems to rise
from the neck of her coat like a swan and then begins to push at him
with her stick, screaming: Come on boy, don’t waste my time! And
still he refuses to go near the water. Some boys call out names,
treading water and calling softly, Scaredy Fred, Baby Boy, and other
nastier ones, but there he is, undeterred.
Now the funny part is, I can’t remember the outcome. I can’t
picture whether Freddy is forced by the teacher to swim with the rest
of us, or whether he runs away, or is caned or whether he escapes
punishment. I remember that his hair is curly and dark and not much
different at seven than it is at twenty and his eyes like two bright
pearly buttons, much too pretty for a boy. Infuriating – the way that
memories offer themselves only as fragments or incomplete stories.
The end of this incident refuses to relinquish its secrets and so
here he is, childish and uncompromising, not minding how much ire he
produces in the teacher. Stuck.
Little Freddy Bywaters, seven years old, refusing to dip a
toe in the water.

Wednesday 11th October, 1922

I am writing this back in my room in Holloway in the afternoon at
around 2 p.m. I’ve noticed that if I begin my letter ‘Just a little
note’ it invariably transforms into a great epistle, so I will
restrain myself from such inaccurate beginnings in future! I am going
to try again to approach the Governor about writing to you and see if
he won’t allow this letter – and all my others – to be passed on.
This morning was the most bewildering experience, so strange
to be out in the world but yet chaperoned and still not free to go
the toilet or wave my arms about or run and skip or do anything
without being held tightly by the two wardresses bustling me through
the mob at Stratford . . . and then to see you standing in court so
stiffly, only in fact two feet away from me. I tried not to stare,
Freddy, afraid that it might damage our case. (My solicitor has been
talking to me a great deal about this, he even approved of the black
dress with the beaded apron and neckline this morning because it
is ‘sober’, but that shows how much he knows, as it is in fact the
most fashionable Parisien dress I own and any woman would realise
that straight away. Fortunately there were few women in the court-
room. Still, I think he is wrong and there was no harm in my looking
my best. That dress is based on a design by Paul Poiret. It floats
across the bust and is very flattering.)
You looked pale, as I suppose, did I. I know so well your
composed face, your composed posture, the one which tries to disguise
the fact that internally you are like the flame from a gas-jet, pure
energy and fire shooting upwards, but all the while casting an
illusion of something still enough, calm enough to touch. I only had
to glance down at your hands to guess the truth and, as I expected,
all your agitation could be seen there, in the way your fingers
wrapped themselves around your thumbs in tight fists. I wanted to
gently unfold your fingers, the way Mother once unpeeled mine from
the school gate when I was small girl and protesting violently at
being taken inside. I wanted to kiss each finger and say to you, it’s
all right, Freddy, bear up.
I really did believe I would be freed by the end of the
session. I tried to follow what was said in court this time. Last
week was an utter fog and this morning I thought it important to
understand. I was feeling fine, quite bolstered up until the
prosecutor read my statement from the police station and explained
how you and I ‘accidentally’ met up at Ilford in the police station
as I was escorted to another room. There was no accident about it! He
and the other policeman deliberately engineered it, opening the door
at that exact same moment so that you and I were facing each other,
only a yard between us. We were like puppets on the hands of the
Punch and Judy Professor. I’m sure you know that as well as I, and in
the state I was in about all that had happened my mind would not
operate fully. I could only drop my mouth open in the most dramatic
way like a drawer falling off its runners and stare at you and then
moments later utter those words to them, those words that they seized
on and wrote down and then read out in court and made us both sound
so guilty: Oh God, oh God, what can I do? Why did he do it, I did not
want him to do it. I must tell the truth.
But hearing it read out like that, it sounded different
entirely, I was incensed! If you saw me whispering to Stern it was
because I was asking him if it was possible to interrupt, to tell the
court that in fact I had been told in the police station by the
officer in charge, by that ugly one, with his horrible protruding
eyes and a tongue that doesn’t seem to fit right in the bottom of his
mouth, I was told by him, that you had already confessed to the crime
and that I would now be helping you if I told the truth. You must
believe that, Freddy. I wasn’t trying to save myself from any
involvement. I didn’t know I would be involved, I didn’t know I would
end up here, I – Freddy, I ask myself over and over – why did you do
it, why oh why . . .
(Later)
I have taken some deep breaths and am trying to compose myself. I
know this is no place for recriminations. What you need now from your
Peidi is for her to remain cheery, for her to give you her undivided
support, her help, her love. And I do, darlint, I offer you all of
that. Naturally I am disappointed to be back in here again – I really
thought today would be the last day of my custody and have set a lot
of store on it all being over by now. It is what has helped me to get
through the last week, knowing that when we got to court it would all
be cleared up. I have tried not to dwell on Percy, on the events of
last fortnight, instead willing myself to concentrate on the future,
on how we will both survive this experience. Your behaviour . . .
well, I’m not sure what to say here, as I worry now at who might read
these letters . . . still, your behaviour is at the least explicable
when they understand our circumstances and how much you tried to
protect me.
Now I want to end this letter on a different note so will
write to you of other things. Did it strike you as astonishing, the
crowds, what, how many people would you say, I can never estimate
such things . . . were milling outside the Stratford court? Eve, the
younger wardress, has a sister in Manor Park, you might remember the
sister, Olive Draper, I think she is the same age as Florrie. Olive
was there, Eve, told me. They are all trying to get a glimpse of you
Mrs Thompson, she said, in her slightly nasty, sly way, as she was
escorting me to the bathing rooms.
Eve is hard to fathom, she does not say what she thinks,
unlike Clara, but sometimes her look says it all. She has four
children, I discovered, so she is not as young as I imagined. She
lost her husband in France, and the children are looked after by her
sister. (It occurred to me then, Freddy, that I am now a ‘widow’. You
might think this discovery a belated one, but the word has never
presented itself to me before, and even now that it has, even whilst
I might concede intellectually that it is true, the word won’t seem
to stick, but floats away unattached, like a piece of paper on a
stream. Others might think of me as a widow. I wonder if you do? If
the word has occurred to you, or the idea?)
The bathing rooms, I wonder if you have to suffer the same
indignity? But then, men of course, mind these things far less, and –
what am I thinking of – you have spent years on your ship, you can
scarcely be embarrassed about performing your ablutions in public!
Some of the other prisoners, I can tell, have also now
received ‘news’ of who I am. I have scarcely had a conversation with
any of the other women and I am, naturally enough, afraid of them. On
walking into their company I have that feeling I often had, whilst
working at the shop or at the theatre, or even, now I think of it,
from school. It is when parts of myself seem to flake and break apart
and reshift, and I wonder with a feeling of pure terror, who I am and
where I fit in. I am sure that the women here think I have a ‘posh’
accent, a ‘posh’ haircut, that I lived in Ilford with my garden and
my job in the city and my big house and thought I was better than
them. Of course they don’t say that, but I know it anyway.
And then in other situations, walking into the Governor’s
office for instance, or when Lady Rothermere used to come into the
shop for her hats, or even Diana Sheperton, you remember her, don’t
you? Well then, I used to feel so lowly, so ignorant, so ill-bred and
petty with silly desires for a ‘maid’ at Kensington Gardens, when
there was only Percy and me to look after and I would see myself for
what I was, a girl from Stamford Hill, a child as Percy always
said, ‘too big for her boots’, with ideas above her station. I would
think of Mother, and her mania for buying gloves, all kinds of
gloves, and never letting anyone but us girls see her hands so that
no one else could realise how calloused and rough they were, from her
childhood, her years of hard work.
You know, Freddy, before all of this, I really expected
Mother to be proud of me. I mean, I had a good job and yet when I
used to go on a Friday for tea at Shakespeare Crescent, what I felt
most strongly even then, was her disapproval, the constant questions
from Father about the patter of tiny feet, the constant comments from
her on the hat I was wearing, or the stockings, or the cigarettes I
was smoking. I kept thinking that I had done all she wanted, that is,
found myself a solid husband with prospects and a lovely big house
and then, to cap it all, started to earn more money than Percy, in
fact, earned more in a week than Father used to earn in a month and
instead of being pleased for me she seemed, well . . . what was it?
Always trying to crush me. I don’t want to make Mother sound cruel,
which she wasn’t. I keep going over that occasion I told you about,
the planting of the hyacinths, the way she looked at me. I tremble
when I think of it, although I don’t understand why.
I feel sometimes as if I am constantly shrinking and then
inflating – I am serious here, I know I can talk to you of such
things and that you won’t laugh at me – I can’t seem to remain the
same size in any given situation and I still have that sensation, I
have it in fact more powerfully lately. In court, I’m sorry to go
back to this, but I must – in court, I thought, if only I was
educated, like Stern, my solicitor, if only I could make sense of
their strange words and see myself the way they see me, maybe then I
could understand how I should be, how I should behave, what is
required of me to make them understand.
Well, I must finish this now (my wrist is aching and the
pencil is worn down to the stub). I will see you in court in
Stratford, darlint, on Tuesday the 17th and now I will begin again my
petiton to the Governor, begging him to allow me to send you these
letters.
All love,
Your Peidi.

Friday 13th October, 1922

Darlint,
Avis came to visit this morning, with Mother. She squeezes her hands
together and stares at me and the atmosphere between us is entirely
unnatural, false. All the time I can see she is thinking: she and
Freddy, she and Freddy, together . . .
It was, thankfully, brief. I suspect it is Mother who
persuaded her to come. I imagine they are worried now, as ever, about
appearances and wish to present, to God knows who, an image of us as
a united family. Father was working and says he will see me Saturday.
Actually, on consideration, if I know Avis, she is struggling not to
imagine you and me together, because such topics give her a queasy
feeling at the best of times. It was a tense occasion and the worst
of it was a rumour which Avis passed on, in coded way, that your ship
has been searched. She said it in such a heavily meaningful way,
almost comical, I thought, with her self-importance, she having juicy
information from the outside that she knew I was dying to hear. I
dread to think what they might find there, if the information is
true. I pray that you destroyed my letters as I asked you to, darlint.
This must of necessity be short. The Governor has refused my
request to pass these letters to you and it is wearying to continue
to write to you like this, uncertain as to when, if ever, you will
read my words. The sense of communicating, talking to you, is not
strong today. I am afraid I am not in the best of spirits so will
write another time, when I am.
I thought of your superstitiousness just then, thinking of
the date today if I have got it right (I feel I am losing track), and
then thought of your monkey, the one you gave me as a good luck
charm. Its stout little body, with the long arms folding over its
head. Hear No Evil. It struck me (and this is not friendly, Freddy,
as I am out of sorts), it struck me that you are like that monkey
sometimes. You wish to cover your ears with your hands, if something
doesn’t suit you. When that is not possible, as it was not with me,
since I insisted on talking truthfully to you, you find it very
disturbing indeed. Perhaps it is this disturbance which has caused
your present predicament.
Yours,
Peidi.

Saturday 14th October, 1922

Oh, darling Freddy, please, please forgive my last letter. I know
that you suffered a great deal of sadness, over the last year,
listening to me and you were the first and last person who did so and
understood and took me seriously and thought that my unhappiness
mattered at all and I feel terribly guilty. Your Peidi feels
dreadful, dreadful for writing in such a way to you, when we need all
the strength we have inside us right now to face tomorrow together
and redeem ourselves in court.
Forgive?

Sunday 15th October, 1922

Freddy,
My solicitor, Stern, has been to see me today and so, darlint, I know
now that you did surrender the key to your ditty box in which were
all my letters. Please know that I for- give you, as you are younger
than me and must be very frightened.
Stern says that you kept all my letters, there are nearly
sixty-five in total. This has given me some pause for thought.
I didn’t keep your letters, darlint, not because I didn’t
want to, but – oh, just because I worried I suppose, that Percy might
find them. Now, in some ways, I wish I had them, as your neat cabin-
boy’s writing would comfort me. But it is probably better for both of
us, I mean, where the courts are concerned, that I destroyed them.
Most of them – the ones which matter. I may have kept a friendly note
from you, addressed to me and Percy, that could not do any damage.
I want to write calmly and not get upset about this. Part of
me is flattered at you keeping my letters. I know you did it because
you love me. Now that I have written that sentence I find it leaps
about on the page, it has picked up some legs from somewhere and is
walking around. I can’t continue my train of thought until I have
followed this sentence. You love me. I feel confident writing it, so
I must be assured of it. I remember vividly, the first time you told
me that you did and I know you will remember, too.
But the reality is, Freddy, I didn’t believe it then. It was
a sentence from novels I read, a sentence I had always wanted to
hear. Of course, Percy said it too sometimes, and I had the same
exact response. A kind of disgust. I found the words disgusting.
Disgust fought with vanity, with triumph, because I knew I had
succeeded in igniting your desire for me, I had won you from Avis,
but desire, wanting me, that was all I thought you meant. So I took
the words and gobbled them up and I grew a little fatter on them and
in time, when I was fatter, when I was not starving, it occurred to
me that maybe you had meant something else.
I fear I’ve put this badly and must write again on the matter
when my head is less foggy. Foggy, of course, through anxiety about
my letters and who will now read them and whether they will be put in
court, which Stern says will be a disaster. He is quite a worrying
person, speaks sharply to me when he thinks I don’t understand the
seriousness of the situation I find myself in, or when I ask too
often about you. He says he is going to request that the letters be
considered inadmissible evidence because you have taken
responsibility for what happened and because there is no prima facie
case against me. This should suffice. So I will finish now and see
you on Tuesday.
(If I don’t write fully about certain events, certain recent
events, it is because if ever I get to forward these letters to you I
know they will be read by others.)
Your darling Peidi.


The letters I wrote to Freddy while he was away at sea, they’re
looming up, all written in blue ink on purple tissue paper. They are
lying in Freddy’s ditty box, crumpled and folded and beginning to
look like flowers, like roses, with layers and layers, tighter and
more dangerous the closer you get to the centre. And then they are
being opened out again by other hands, pale hands, terribly bloodless
hands, shredding the petals of the flowers. My words are leaping out
and others are reading them, and petal by petal they are not the
same, not beautiful at all, ripped apart like that.
A great flush of shame and embarrassment floods right over
me, making my scalp prickle and my legs tremble – oh, God, I hope
that Stern is right and they are never read out in court!

Monday 16th October, 1922
Holloway

Freddy. I don’t know why I wrote ‘Holloway’ there – almost a joke,
don’t you think? As if I might actually be writing to you from
somewhere else. From Shanklin, for instance. Wouldn’t that be lovely?
If I were standing in Rylstone Gardens, near the little cliff walk we
took that first morning, with the sound of the grey flat sea below us
rolling incessantly and you by my side, smoking a cigarette,
luxuriously . . . I am allowed cigarettes here, are you? But only two
a day and right now it is six hours until Clara will come in with my
next.
Clara is kind, I’ve decided, and I much prefer her to Eve.
When she speaks she makes this sniffing noise first, a little
dismissive, to indicate disapproval ostensibly, but I think, in
truth, to cover up her strong emotions on the matter. She has never
been married and says sharply that she doesn’t much miss it, judging
from what other women tell of it. This morning she brought my
breakfast, the usual roll, glass of milk – I can’t stand the tea, it
is always so stewed by the time it gets to me and with a dreadful
thin scum on top of it – and as she set it down she said, Well,
they’re all popping off at the rate of flies, Now it’s Miss Marie
Lloyd, and we discussed this for a while. She died apparently the
weekend of our arrest, but Clara has only just found out about it,
via her brother who works in a music hall as an usher. He met Marje
Lloyd many times. I wonder if you have heard about her death, Freddy?
I did find it upsetting, particularly the nature of it. Did you know
she began crumbling on stage, forgetting her lines, trembling and
staggering and the audience only laughed more and more, believing it
part of the act? That is what disturbed me, imagine laughing at
someone else’s dying, seeing it happen in front of your eyes and
being – well, entertained by it! I can’t imagine being so confused
that you couldn’t tell which was real and which play-acting, or not
able to empathise and feel for the person up there on the wooden
boards, not able to remember that she is flesh and blood just like
yourself. I’m convinced I should have understood immediately that it
wasn’t an act, that she was falling for real and needed assistance.
This is just what Clara said, too. She said most people and then she
said sniffily, most men, have no great skill in imagining anyone’s
feelings other than their own – especially a woman’s – and the world
would be a much better place if they did.
Clara is quite a gossip and it is mostly deaths and dead
babies which interest her. There is a Baby Farmer in here at the
moment, quite a famous one, although I haven’t met her yet and
tremble at the thought of doing so. I’m sure you find the company
you’re keeping equally disreputable. Clara says most of the women in
here are poor souls really, no danger to anyone else but themselves.
I’ve thought about what she said of men and empathy. Of
course you are the exception to this, darlint, you always understood
me when I confided in you, more than anyone, certainly more than
Percy, but more than Avis, too. I wonder what gave you this gift, if
others, according to Clara, so lack it? I know that you are so close
to your mother and I was thinking of Avis teasing you that time when
Lily sent you a present, addressed to The Birthday Boy and I wonder
if this has something to do with it?
Mentioning Lily then gave me pause. She must have been to
visit you. I saw her in court with her big hat on, the black straw
one with the curved ostrich feather – well, of course we called
it ‘ostrich’, although it wasn’t – the one that I sent her from
Carlton & Prior only a month ago. Only a month ago! What on earth can
have happened to time, why does it now stubbornly refuse to obey any
rules, why does a day sometimes take an entire week to pass, and this
last month feel longer than all the years of my childhood put
together? It’s as if I’m holding a concertina, alternatively
stretching and compressing the minutes in my hands until my head
spins with the unexpectedness of every moment, time being something
I’m now afraid of, unable to trust. I honestly don’t know from one
moment to the next if time will pass quickly or slowly. All pattern
is shot to pieces.
Surely it is only a matter of hours now, until the 17th and
the moment when I’m freed. I know that I shouldn’t say such things,
when your position is so much more uncertain than mine – but believe
me, I will do all in my powers to explain the distress you were
suffering, the circumstances. Everything will be all right then,
darlint, so please don’t be envious of my greater chance of freedom.
I haven’t dared to think what you and I might do, if we are
ever able to have our one little hour.
Today I told Clara that I had been having difficulty sleeping
and she mentioned that I might visit the Doctor, but I was thinking
to myself, there will be no need for that, I will be outside soon and
I am determined only to think of that and of how to get through the
next few hours. Of course, I have to be careful what I write here,
but I can freely say that I can’t wait until the moment that I see
you again in the court-room, darlint. Despite the ugliness of the
circumstances, nothing will mar that shiver of delight when I see you
tall and erect, with your high forehead and your proud self, always
on the edge of jauntiness, always, no matter what.
All my love to you, Be Brave, my sweet.


I thought I was fine about Percy. I had pictured him in his coffin,
arms crossed and so forth, I was calm about him, typically calm, Avis
would accuse me; reconciled. And then one night I’m turning in bed to
face the wall, trying to get warm under the stupid scratchy grey
blanket and suddenly – here is Percy!
His face, his most angry face ballooning at me, blood
trickling from his mouth like a long tongue of black treacle. I
spring up with my heart leaping up and down in my body on a string
and, of course, Percy disappears. It’s dark in here, past lights out,
with an occasional scuffle and twitch of movement in the corner of
the room. Who’s there? I want to say out loud. I tell myself it must
be a mouse. I call to Clara – not loudly, tentatively – but nobody
comes.
All night he won’t leave me. He is sobbing and lonely and all
alone somewhere and he taps at the wall in the corner of the room and
he wants me to let him in. There are shadows flickering on my tightly
closed eyelids and silhouettes in the weak yellow light of the lamp
and then Freddy running and me falling and Percy falling and Percy
never getting up again and the lamp going out. Lonely, he says. I’m
lonely, come and join me. Please, Edie. I must have slipped into
sleep.

Copyright © Jill Dawson 2000. Reprinted by permission of Houghton
Mifflin Company.