Hanged for Adultery: the Tragic Fate of Edith Jessie Thompson

On 9 January 1923, one hundred years ago, Edith Thompson was hanged for the murder of her husband, as was her lover, Freddy Bywaters. Edith and I grew up on the same street in East London, separated by several decades, and her story was part of my upbringing. The suspicion (now certain knowledge) was that Edith’s real crime was adultery with a ‘boy’ eight years her junior, and that a ‘gendered’ trial and appeals process wrongly condemned her. This video sets out the case for a posthumous pardon.