It was not until a week later that her letters were found in his sea chest (or ‘ditty-box’) in his cabin on the Morea, which was anchored at Tilbury.
The trial began at the Old Bailey on Wednesday, 6 December. There were five other indictments against Mrs Thompson, besides that of murder – of conspiring to murder, of attempting to murder and of inciting Bywaters to murder Percy Thompson. But the couple were only tried on the first count. The judge was Mr Justice Shearman. The Solicitor-General, Sir Thomas Inskip, KC, led for the prosecution – Travers Humphreys was his second. Cecil Whitely, KC, defended Bywaters, and Sir Henry Curtis Bennett, KC, acted for Mrs Thompson.
Against the advice of her counsel, Edith Thompson gave evidence, as did Freddy Bywaters. Curtis Bennett observed later: ‘She was a vain woman and an obstinate one. She had an idea she would carry the jury. Also she realised the enormous public interest, and decided to play up to it by entering the witness box.’
Mrs Thompson was rigorously cross-examined. The letters and her adultery seemed damning. There seemed to be no doubt that in the letters she had incited Bywaters to kill her husband. ‘I never considered them as such,’ said Bywaters. Mrs Thompson’s explanation of her talk of poison was: ‘I wanted him to think I would do anything for him, to keep him to me.’
‘She worked and preyed on the mind of this young man,’ said the Solicitor-General, and the judge appeared to agree – his summing-up was prejudicial and remorseless. Bernard Spilsbury’s evidence – about the total absence of any poison or glass in Mr Thompson’s body – was ignored. It seemed as if the jury were being asked to view the case as a breach of the third commandment, not the second.
The judge stated: ‘This charge really is – I am not saying whether it is proved – a common or ordinary charge of a wife and an adulterer murdering the husband … You are told this is a case of great love. Take one of the letters as a test – “He has the right by law to all that you have a right to by nature and by love.” If that means anything, it means that the love of a husband for his wife is something improper … and that the love of a woman for her lover, illicit and clandestine, is something great and noble. I am certain that you, like any other right-minded person, will be filled with disgust at such a notion.’
On Monday, 11 December, both the accused were found guilty. Bywaters said: ‘I say the verdict of the jury is wrong. Edith Thompson is not guilty. I am no murderer – I am not an assassin.’ After sentence was passed Mrs Thompson cried out: ‘I’m not guilty! Oh, God. I’m not guilty!’ Separately removed from the dock, they never saw each other again.
Despite many protests, the verdict against her was upheld in the Court of Criminal Appeal, a decision that shocked many people, and on 9 January 1923, Edith Thompson, although sedated, was dragged from her cell in Holloway Prison, screaming and fainting, towards the scaffold. She was hanged by John Ellis, the chief executioner, and two assistants. At the same time Freddy Bywaters was hanged by William Willis in Pentonville Prison half a mile away.
John Ellis, a neurotic man who drank a lot, retired in 1923, several months after the execution of Mrs Thompson – some said because of it. In August 1924, in Rochdale – eighteen months after she was hanged – Ellis tried to commit suicide by shooting himself. His aim was poor and he only succeeded in fracturing his jaw and lodging a bullet in his neck. ‘Bloody hell,’ observed executioner Tom Pierrepoint to his nephew, Albert. ‘He should have done it bloody years ago. It was impossible to work with him.’ When Ellis recovered he was sent for trial for the offence before a magistrate, who remarked: ‘If your aim had been as true as the drops you have given it would have been a bad job for you.’ On promising to stop drinking and to behave himself, Ellis was discharged. But, seven years later, in 1931, he cut his throat and died.
Edith Thompson’s body was exhumed from the cemetery in Holloway Prison in March 1971 and reburied in unconsecrated ground near Woking in Surrey.
22
PATRICK MAHON
THE MURDER OF EMILY KAYE, 1924
The ghastliest murder case dealt with by Scotland Yard between the wars made police history of another kind. It led to the introduction of the Murder Bag, a case of forensic, medical and other items that was taken thereafter to the scene of every murder visited by detectives of the Metropolitan Police. This murder also illustrates yet again the terrible lengths to which a murderer will go to dispose of a corpse, and the unique terrors he faces. Mahon’s method of disposal was so sensational, albeit unsuccessful, that it actually started a trend.
Miss Ethel Primrose Duncan was thirty-two and unmarried. A tall and dark-haired, well-built woman, she lived with her sister in Worple Avenue, Isleworth. On Thursday, 10 April 1924, at about ten o’clock at night, she was on her way home in pouring rain. In the High Street near Richmond Station she met an attractive man in his thirties with merry eyes and a ready smile. He offered to escort her part of the way towards Isleworth. This meant crossing the River Thames by way of Richmond Bridge. As they walked along with the rain dripping off his trilby hat, he told her that his name was Pat, that he was married, lived in Richmond and worked in Sunbury. His marriage, he said, was ‘a tragedy’. Before he left her, he asked her if she would dine with him soon, and when she replied in the affirmative he said he would get in touch. She gave him her address, and he wrote it down in his diary. ‘You’ll probably hear from me on Wednesday,’ he said, with murder in mind – though not that of Miss Duncan.
The following Tuesday she received a telegram in the late afternoon which read – ‘Charing Cross seven tomorrow. Sure. Pat.’ As requested, on Wednesday l6 April she went to Charing Cross at 7 pm. But it was not until about 7.50 pm that Pat appeared. His wrist was bandaged, and he said he had sprained it saving a lady from falling from a bus. He also said he had travelled up from Eastbourne, where he had borrowed a bungalow from a friend, and he asked Miss Duncan over dinner at the Victoria Station restaurant whether she would like to spend the Easter holiday with him in the bungalow. She agreed, and it was arranged that in two days’ time (on Good Friday) he would meet her at Eastbourne. They left the restaurant at about half-past ten, by which time he had missed the last train back to Eastbourne. So after booking himself in for the night at the Grosvenor Hotel beside Victoria Station, he courteously accompanied her to Waterloo Station and saw her safely on to the 10.36 pm train for Isleworth. There had been nothing at all in Pat’s cheerful manner and conversation to suggest to Miss Duncan that he had just murdered another woman.
The next day, Thursday, Ethel Duncan received a telegraphic order for £4 and a telegram that read – ‘Meet train as arranged. Waller.’ Up to that point she had had no idea what Pat’s surname was.
On Good Friday, she travelled on the 11.15 am train from Victoria to Eastbourne, arriving at 1.57 pm. Pat met her at the station – he was wearing a fawn-coloured suit – and after leaving her luggage in the station cloakroom they had lunch at the Sussex Hotel. In the afternoon they went for a drive in a taxi cab and dined that evening in the Royal Hotel, Eastbourne, leaving there about 10 pm. A taxi took them both (after they had collected her luggage) along the coast for about 3 miles towards Pevensey Bay, to a village called Langney, and finally to a bungalow by the shingly beach and the sea.
Here Pat and Ethel spent three nights, sleeping in the bedroom that was first on the left in the hall. Ethel realised as soon as she entered the room that another woman had been there before her, for a tortoiseshell brush and some cosmetics lay on a chest of drawers. Then the following morning, in tidying up, she discovered a pair of ladies’ buckled shoes. Pat said they belonged to his wife. She had been down the previous week, he said, and would return there after Easter. He told Ethel she need not bother about cleaning the bungalow as his wife would do that. Ethel never saw the shoes again on her visit – Pat had hidden them away. But he could not conceal the bruising she had noticed on the back of his right arm.
On Saturday morning they drove into Eastbourne, where Pat left Ethel to d
o some shopping while he took the taxi on to Plumpton Races, 20 miles to the west. Unknown to Ethel, Pat stopped off at Lewes and entered the general post office, from where he sent a telegram to ‘Walter, Officer’s House, Pevensey.’ It read: ‘Must see you Tuesday morning nine Cheapside. Lee.’ Pat reached the race course about 1.30 pm and remained there until the last race had been run. He had retained the taxi driver who had brought him there and returned in the same taxi to Eastbourne. There he met up again with Ethel at the railway station about 6.30 pm. They dined that night at the Sussex Hotel. On the way there he called in at the Sussex Stores and made some purchases.
On Easter Sunday, Pat busied himself in trying to change the lock on the door of the bedroom next to theirs. There were four bedrooms in the bungalow, as well as a sitting room, dining room, bathroom, kitchen and scullery. There was also a telephone. Pat’s explanation for his task was that a pal of his had some valuable books in the room and he was concerned about their safety. The chisel he was using slipped and cut his left hand. Ethel bound it up for him, and through the partly open door glimpsed a bed and a large brown trunk. Pat said that if he had known the trouble the lock was going to be, he wouldn’t have started. Later that afternoon he solved the problem another way. He told Ethel: ‘I’ve screwed the door up. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that before.’ That night they dined at the Clifton Hotel in Eastbourne, travelling there and back by taxi. Pat seemed to have a lot of money on him in cash.
Earlier that day, Pat had shown her a telegram that had apparently arrived the night before when they were out. He opened it, told her what was in it. It was from someone called Lee, and he told her: ‘We’ll have to go up to London tomorrow. I have to be in town at nine o’clock on Tuesday morning.’
So, at 3:30 pm on Easter Monday, the couple left the bungalow and returned by train to London, where they dined together before going to the Palladium Theatre. After the show Pat travelled with Ethel from Waterloo to Richmond Station, where at midnight he left her, no doubt promising to see her again. Ethel’s romantic weekend was over.
She did not see him again for more than five weeks. But a fortnight after their parting she was horrified to read in the newspapers that in a bungalow on Pevensey Bay the headless, mutilated remains of a woman had been found in a trunk.
Pat’s real name was Patrick Herbert Mahon. He was thirty-four. Thin-faced, nice-looking, tall (5 ft 11 in) and with an athletic build, his most noticeable features were his deep-set eyes and thick brown wavy hair, which was already streaked with grey. Born in 1889 and brought up in West Derby, Liverpool, by Irish parents, as a boy he was a regular church-goer, good at games, a good mixer, intelligent, smart and an avid pursuer of girls, his activities in this field being undiminished by his marriage on 6 April 1910 to Jessie, aged twenty-three, from Walton, Liverpool. He gave his occupation then as ‘literary publisher’s book-keeper’. (His father was a stock-keeper in a clothing warehouse.) A year after his marriage, Mahon spent a weekend on the Isle of Man with another girl, a visit paid for by some forged cheques. For this he was bound over, but he was soon sent to prison on another charge of embezzlement. He moved to Surrey, and his constant picking up of women got him into trouble with his employers and eventually with the police. In 1916, during a robbery, he struck a maidservant with a hammer, but was so overcome with guilt that he remained on the scene until she recovered consciousness, reassuringly kissing her and apologising for what he had done. He was sentenced for five years in jail for this attack.
When he was released, he joined his wife and she got him a job as a £12 a week salesman in Sunbury with Consol Automatic Aerators (1914) Ltd; they marketed soda fountains and she worked as a secretary with the firm. The Mahons lived with their surviving child in Richmond – another child, a boy, had died while his father was in prison.
In May 1922, the company went bankrupt and came under the receiver. A chartered accountant, Mr Hobbins, was appointed by a firm of CAs, Robertson, Hill and Co., to sort out the company’s affairs, and in effecting this he retained the services of Mr and Mrs Mahon and a chemist. In fac, he appointed Patrick Mahon as sales manager, on a salary and commission that averaged £42 a month. Mahon’s duties sometimes took him into the City of London, to the offices of Robertson, Hill and Co. in Copthall Avenue, Moorgate, where Mr Hobbins worked. His secretary and shorthand typist was Miss Emily Beilby Kaye.
Aged thirty-eight (born in November 1885), she was a tall, athletic woman, with fair bobbed hair and a round face – ‘a cheery, loveable girl’ according to a cousin. Her parents had died in Manchester when she was seventeen, since when she had supported herself locally as a clerk for over twenty years while living with her married sister, before eventually coming to London in October 1922.
It was in January 1923 that she was engaged as a typist by Robertson, Hill and Co. at £17 6s 8d a month, and in May she went to live in the Green Cross Club, Guilford Street, off Russell Square, where for a time she shared a room with Miss Edith Warren. Miss Kaye was described by Edith as placid and not easily roused. But she was also ‘strong physically and unusually strong mentally’. Edith thought that Emily, whom she called ‘Peter’, was ‘capable of very deep feeling’. Peter called Edith ‘Phiz’. Peter was also a prudent woman. Over the years she had accumulated some £600, which she had invested in stocks and shares.
In the course of office business she soon met Patrick Mahon. He said later: ‘Miss Kaye was aware that I was married, knew my wife by sight, and had spoken to her on many occasions on the phone. Miss Kaye frequently rang me up, and towards the end of August or September … suggested a day on the river, which suggestion, as I was anxious to gain some impartial knowledge of the legal proceedings in connection with the litigation in which the company was concerned, I accepted.’ The events of that day, he said, showed him that Emily Kaye was ‘a woman of the world’. After that, according to him, she often wanted to see him. He claimed that ‘She reproached me on several occasions as being cold, and told me plainly she wished my affection, and was determined to win it if possible.’
On 21 October, she was dismissed for some unknown reason from Robertson, Hill and Co, but was able to obtain employment elsewhere. Over the New Year she went to stay with her sister, Mrs Elizabeth Harrison, in Cheshire, and when she returned to London she got a new job working as a shorthand typist and book-keeper for a financier, Lewis Schaverien, in Old Bond Street. She was only there a month.
In February 1924, she began to sell shares and to cash her savings, putting the proceeds into an account with the Midland Bank in Coleman Street. On 16 February, she cashed a cheque for £404, receiving the money in four £100 notes and four £1 notes. In March, she was ill with influenza and went down to Bournemouth for a week to recuperate. At the end of this visit, she was joined by Patrick Mahon in Southampton, where he bought her a diamond-and-sapphire cluster ring at Cranbrook’s, a jeweller’s in the High Street. That night they shared a double room in the South Western Hotel, signing the register as Mr and Mrs PH Mahon, Richmond.
On Emily Kaye’s return to the Green Cross Club, she showed the ring to Edith Warren and said she was engaged to Pat. Edith thought that Peter seemed to be ‘very fond’ of Pat but not ‘passionately in love’. Later he asked Edith not to use his name in front of the other girls as they knew some of his business acquaintances. Edith was to refer to him as ‘Derek Patterson’.
Emily also told the club secretary, Ada Smith, about her engagement – ‘She came bounding into my room exclaiming: “It’s fixed, my dear – the date!”’ – and that she and her fiancé were going to emigrate to South Africa. She wrote in a similar vein to her sister on 5 April, on the very day that Mahon, calling himself Waller, travelled to Langney to inspect a bungalow that had been advertised to let in Dalton’s News. He agreed to rent it at three-and-a-half guineas a week from 1 April to 6 June.
On Monday, 7 April Emily Kaye packed her bags, said her goodbyes and moved out of the Green Cross Club. She went to Eastbourne
and took a room in the Kenilworth Court Hotel, Wilmington Square, where she stayed until Saturday the 12th; Mahon had met Miss Duncan in Richmond on the 10th. About 2 pm on the 12th, Emily Kaye received a telegram – ‘Regret extremely cannot come three-fifteen. Coming four forty-nine. Meet train. Pat.’ Before she left the hotel she asked the receptionist to forward any letters to ‘Poste Restante, Paris.’ The receptionist noticed that Miss Kaye was wearing a smart grey costume, grey suede shoes and a fur coat with a dark collar.
In London at about lunchtime that day, Mahon had paid a visit to Staine’s Kitchen Equipment Company in Victoria Street, and had bought a ten-inch cook’s knife and a small meat saw. That evening he met Emily Kaye in Eastbourne as arranged and they drove out in a taxi to the bungalow by a stretch of coast known locally as The Crumbles.
The bungalow was called the Officer’s House and was one of a row of white-washed properties once occupied by the coastguard on Pevensey Bay. Nearly three years earlier, and within a short distance of the bungalow, a seventeen-year-old London typist name Irene Munro had been battered to death and robbed of her holiday money by two young men – Jack Field, aged nineteen, and Bill Gray, twenty-nine. Both were subsequently hanged.
The bungalow had been let furnished to Mahon by a Mr Muir of Ashley Gardens in London on behalf of a Mrs Hutchinson of Prince’s Gate. It had been cleaned up and made ready by Mrs Hutchinson’s cook-housekeeper on 11 April, the day that Mahon had travelled down from London to meet Mr Muir at the bungalow and to receive the keys. He had returned to London that afternoon without seeing Emily in Eastbourne.
Murder of the Black Museum 1875-1975: The Dark Secrets Behind a Hundred Years of the Most Notorious Crimes in England Page 27