25

Hanged by the Neck

In February, 1923, I attended the famous trial of Edith Thompson and Fred Bywaters, which created a sensation in England keener than any which had been felt since the Crippen case.

The first part I had to play in it was to go out, one wet, dreary evening, to North London, to try to persuade Grayson, the father of the murderess on trial, to give me the story of her life. All the other newspapers were on the same job, and it was with a feeling of dismay and depression that I walked down the long sad crescent that led to the Graysons’ house, pushed open the rusty little gate, and rang the bell.

The door opened, and the pale face of a little oldish man appeared. He was crying.

‘Mr. Nichols?’ he said in a voice that was half a whisper.

I nodded.

With a weary gesture he motioned me in. I found myself in a little parlour, neatly kept. It was lit by incandescent gas, which bubbled and fizzled, and cast green shadows in the corners. A little china sparkled on the mantelpiece. There was no fire and the room was very cold.

We sat down. It was all like a nightmare. I could say nothing. He could say nothing. And then his son appeared in the doorway—pale and distracted. Somehow the presence of a third person made it easier, and, rousing myself, I tried to put, as gently as I could, the nature of my request.

He shook his head. It was impossible. All the papers had been there. They had not had a minute’s peace. They could tell them nothing. I passed that over, talking, talking—anything to prevent him again giving way to his grief. And, by and by, he seemed to cheer up a little.

Then, suddenly, without any warning, he threw out his hands, and cried in a broken voice ... ‘To think that this should happen to us!’

It was the universal cry of humanity. Why should it happen to us? There were five hundred little houses, all exactly alike, in this desolate crescent. There were five thousand equally desolate crescents in London. Why had God picked out this one little house out of so many?

The scene passes to the Old Bailey, on which the eyes of all England at this time were centred.

The first sight one has of the Principal Court of Justice at the Old Bailey is not awe-inspiring. It is, of course, a completely modern building, with an air about it which makes it look as though it were designed for a cheerful lecture room at Cambridge. The light wood and plaster, the glass roof, the sunlight that floods the whole place—nothing here to promote any morbid speculation.

But as the court fills, as one by one the barristers take their places at the long tables, as the back benches are occupied by the usual array of stupid women hung with false pearls, as the Judge and jury file into place, and as, finally, the prisoner is led into the dock, then all this cheerfulness, this matter-of-fact atmosphere, this clean, modern feeling, becomes far more horrible than if the trial were conducted in a vault by black inquisitors under candlelight. For in this place, tragedy is made ridiculous. The mask of pain is moulded into a grotesque. It is almost as though an operation for life or death were taking place before one’s eyes, without any anæsthetic. Rather be tried before a howling mob, and bundled straight off in a tumbril to the guillotine, than be brought up to this clean, wholesome room, like a young man undergoing a viva voce, in which failure means hanging by the neck.

The court was already packed to suffocation, and I sat down. Five minutes to ten. In a few moments the curtain would rise on the biggest tragedy of 1922. And yet, what was the mood of the audience? Pleasant, amused expectation apparently. From behind me came a whiff of cheap scent and the light chatter of many tongues. Looking up into the gallery one could see the fatuous faces of young girls, wearing the sort of expression you see before the lights go down at a cinema. One of them had a box of chocolates laid on the ledge in front of her, and from time to time she pushed it towards a young man by her side. Standing in the group by the door was a very bad and very popular actor, bowing ceremoniously to the scented ladies. The only people who looked at all serious were the police, and one felt that they were serious only because they had duties to perform.

Ten o’clock. The curtain rises. I shut my eyes. There is a mumble of voices, a shuffling of feet, a rustle of papers. Silence. I open my eyes again to find that the ‘female prisoner’ is already in the dock, and that the play has begun.

Look at her, this ‘female prisoner.’ Look at her, this Edith Thompson, née Grayson, who has spent twenty-eight passionate, unhappy years on this earth, and is now being sent to eternal darkness. (I am drifting irresistibly into the style of Carlyle, but I can’t help it.) A lovely creature, one would say. A neck like the stem of a flower, and a face equally flower-like. So very white, with the pallor of old lilies carved in ivory. So very tired, as though no longer could that one head support the burden of so much pain.

Oh yes. I know that she is a murderess. I know that she is an adulteress. That foully, and with felonious intent, she did, on divers occasions attempt to do to death an honest and an upright man. I know all that, and a good deal more besides. But I also know that my heart is wrung with pity.

A man with a red face is cross-examining her. He leans forward, and reads from a letter in his hand. It is one of those amazing love-letters which this strange creature had sent from her dingy suburb to her boy lover.

And again, when he was far away:

I found myself longing for their escape, planning for it, wondering if by some miracle it could not be brought about. The main well of the court is surmounted by a glass roof. If only, I thought, some friend could land on that roof in an aeroplane, shatter the glass with a single blow, throw down a rope to the two tortured creatures in the dock, and pull them up, up, out of this hell into the clean air above. If only there would be an earthquake to rend the walls, so that this gloating crowd would rush away affrighted, and leave the lovers to themselves. If only there would be an utter darkness, to cover all this shame, and set us free. Bad reasoning of course, on my part. Bad sociology. Bad law. Justice has to be done, and all that sort of thing. But I defy any sensitive person to sit through a long trial of this description, to see a beautiful woman and a strong young man slowly done to death, without siding, heart and soul, with the accused.

During the whole of that tragic trial, through gloom to deepening gloom, I was in constant touch with the Grayson family. As I saw more of them, I marvelled that so utterly commonplace and kindly a group of individuals should have, as one of their members, the complex, passionate character of Edith Thompson. The mother I hardly recollect, save as a little, broken woman in black, whose hand was always to her eyes and who walked with uncertain steps, as though stumbling in darkness. But there was a sister whom I often saw. She seemed to have more control over herself than any other member of the family. She was cool, almost dominating, in the witness-box, and in her own home she was the one who assumed the chief burden of work and responsibility. A brother, too, I remember, with a face drained of all colour and eyes red with secret weeping. As for Grayson himself, he was just stunned. There is no other word which adequately describes his slow, mumbling speech, his downcast eyes, his dumb look of pain.

At three o’clock on Saturday afternoon during the trial, I used to meet Grayson as he came out of Holloway Prison. Do you know Holloway Prison? It is of all places the most dreary and forlorn. It lies at the end of the long and dismal Caledonian Road in North London. It has no colour save the faded advertisement hoardings which peel from the dirty walls, no animation but for the noisy trams that rattle down the end of the street, and the cries of pale children playing in the gutter.

The prison itself is built of grey stone, like a fortress. It has narrow windows and high walls. Over the whole pile broods an air of monstrous cruelty and strength, from the rusted spikes that guard the outer wall’s summits to the heavy gates that shut out its inmates from the world. I would stand watching these gates for five minutes, ten minutes, half an hour, and then they would swing slowly open and through them would emerge the little sombre procession, Grayson, the brother—sometimes the sister and the mother as well.

Silently I would join them and walk with them down the road, while the trams rattled by, and the newsboys shouted out the latest details of the case, and lovers jostled us, arm-in-arm. And then the cross-examination would begin.

‘How was she?’

‘She was better. Brighter.’

‘Were you allowed to go into her room?’

‘No. They put a table across the door. We spoke to her over that. We stood in the corridor. There was a warder by her side.’

‘What was she wearing?’

‘A dressing-gown. You see, she’s been in bed. Ill. Very ill. Exhausted, they say. Still, she was better, and she has been reading.’

‘What books has she been reading?’

‘Dickens, she told us. She said that she wanted life and comedy, and Dickens gave her that. Full-blooded life—that was the word she used.’

‘Did she say anything about—him?’

‘Him?’

‘Yes. Bywaters?’

‘No. His name never crossed her lips. She asked about her appeal, and she seemed quite hopeful about it. And then—she began to remember things.’

‘Remember things?’

‘Yes. Last Christmas for example. She said, “Do you remember the party we had last Christmas? And all the presents I had? And the crackers? And the Christmas tree?”’

And then I would shake them by the hand, and wish them good cheer, and say that I was sure the appeal would turn out right—anything to take away that look of tragedy from their eyes. They would brighten, perhaps, for a moment, and then the mask would fall over their faces again, as they turned away, and went down the windy street.

The most horrible meeting of all, as far as I was concerned, was on the day after she had been hanged. I was in the office, writing some ridiculous account of an agricultural exhibition, when word was brought that Grayson wished to see me.

It was the most difficult thing I have ever had to do. I found him sitting in the waiting-room, under a glaring electric light. Standing by his side, with one hand on his shoulder, was the son. We looked at each other in silence. What was there to say? What language was ever invented which could possibly be fitted to an occasion so forlorn?

Eventually we did speak—or rather, I spoke. ‘Bit knocked up,’ was all he could say. ‘Bit knocked up.’ Over and over again, like a child repeating a lesson it had learnt and did not understand. I told him that they must all go away to the country, to the sea, anywhere, as long as they were away from prying eyes, from the memory of the dead.

He went out. ‘Bit knocked up,’ he said again, and that was the last I heard of him.