San Antonio light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1911-1993, 1925-09-13
By John Ellis
Official Executioner of Great Britain
CHAPTER Nv
CHAPTER Nv.
CONTINUED from Last Sunday


c) 1925 by American Weekly Rights Reserved
LONDON, September 6.
TT is easy for me to select the most nerve-rackng
| execution ever participated in. The scenes that
marked the carrying out of the death sentence
upon the notorious but pretty Mrs. Edith Thompson
are indebly imprinted upon my memory. 1t is not
pleasant to swing good-lookng woman into eter-
nity-and this particular execution was much more
distressing than there any need of.
Somehow rumors of what had happened leaked
out publicly, and reused such fierce storm of con-
troversy that the general clamor very nearly stam-
peded the Government into doing away with the
death penalty entirely. Yet venture to claim in
all modesty that if the suggestions / put forward
that morning had been strictly adhered to- both Mrs.
Thompson and those who were forced to witness that
dreadful last scene would have been spared much of
the anguish they had to endure.
The question of whether should be
hanged at all is hardly one that to pronounce
an opinion upon This can honestly aver, however,
that almost to the last believed Edith Thompson
would be repreved, and it may aStonish those who
choose to regard hangman nhuman monster
when l add that / genuinely hoped she would be
saved from the rope.
Not that had any respect for Mrs Thompson
herself She had shown herself to be utterly false
to her marriage vows, had apparently deliberately
plotted against her husbands life, and then when
Nemesis placed her in feon's dock she not
enough of sport to stand true to her lover, young
Bywaters and was concerned only with saving her
own neck. Nevertheless, only in a legal sense was
she murderess, for she took actual part in
hitting the crime Moreover she woman, and
there was something distasteful to me in hanging
even bad woman in such circumstances.
Mrs. Thompson's crime is so fresh IN the memory
Of newspaper readers that is hardly necessary for
me to describe it fully. brief resume of its dra-
matte outline will think, be sufficient
Edith Jessie Thompson had been married about
seven years when the tragedy came that swept her
husband her lover and herself to death. For almost
the whole of those years she and Percy Ihomp-
son had lived the ordinary uneventful lives of
NAL husband and wife. There had been children
of the marriage, and consequently Mrs. Thompson
continued in her post as bookkeeper and manageresS
of London millinery establishment, where she
earned $50 week, plus fairly valuable bonuses.
This and Percy Thompson's $50 week as ship
ping clerk meant that the unencumbered couple were
able to live very comfortably in their suburban home
But, reading between the lines of what heard
about her at that time, it seemed to me that Mrs.
Thompson looked upon herself a woman with a
capacity for deep passion, which she forced to
bury beneath the mask Of a humdrum life with an
Unimagnative husband.
Then came fatefuI holiday in the Isle Of Wight
when she was thrown into the company Of young
Frederick Bywaters, a steward on the P & o. liner
Morea. Straghtaway Edith Thompson plunged into
the passion that she had dreamed about for so long
The woman of twenty-eight and the youth of twenty
~ became secret lovers.
percy Thompson had no suspicion at that time
s wifes UnfaithfUlneSs, and so we find young
1tUay being received into the Thompson
or several weeks as a trusted, paying
the young fellow went a-vOyaging and
Thompson bndged the gap of their
passionate correspondence without