Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters - Early Life and Events Leading To The Murder

Early Life and Events Leading To The Murder

Edith Thompson was born Edith Jessie Graydon on Christmas Day 1893, at 97 Norfolk Road in Dalston, London, the first of the five children of William Eustace Graydon (1867–1941), a clerk with the Imperial Tobacco Company, and his wife, Ethel Jessie Liles (1872–1938), the daughter of a police constable. During her childhood, she was a happy, talented girl who excelled at dancing and acting, and was academically bright, with a natural ability in arithmetic. Upon leaving school in 1909, she joined a firm of clothing manufacturers near Aldgate Station in London. Then, in 1911, she was employed at Carlton & Prior, wholesale milliners, in the Barbican and, later, in Aldersgate. Edith quickly established a reputation as a stylish and intelligent woman and was promoted by the company several times, until she became their chief buyer and made regular trips to Paris on behalf of the company.

In 1909, at the age of fifteen, she met Percy Thompson, three years her elder. After a six-year engagement they were married at St Barnabas, Manor Park, in January 1916. At first they lived in Westcliff (Southend-on-Sea) before buying a house at 41 Kensington Gardens in the fashionable suburb of Ilford in Essex. With both their careers flourishing they lived a comfortable life.

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. By 1920, Bywaters had joined the merchant navy. 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. Percy welcomed the youth into their company, and the trio, joined by Edith’s sister Avis, holidayed on the Isle of Wight. Upon their return, Percy invited Bywaters to lodge with them.

Soon afterwards, Edith and Bywaters began an affair, which Percy discovered. He confronted the pair. 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. Upon his return, they met again.