she actually aided and abetted the striking of the fatal blows. 8. There is no evidence of wilful murder against her. Therefore, in her case murder is not murder, but merely a legal extension of the legal definition of murder. It is a moral, not a physical, crime. It is a sin of the soul, and not a consummation of sin in the act of slaying. I might amplify this catalogue of the innocence or non-guiltiness of Mrs. Thompson, but my eight points suffice to drive home my argument that her guilt stopped short of wilful murder if only by a hair's breadth was a broad abyss separating the will from the deed. One last word. If Mrs. Thompson had not been walking with her husband when he was murdered, would the jury have found her guilty of wilful murder? Why should she be hanged by reason of what may have been the unforeseen accident of her presence? In Verdict in Dispute (1949), Edgar Lustgarten states that "The Thompson verdict is now recognized as bad, and the trial from which it sprang stands out as an example of the evils that may flow from an attitude of mind." He continues with ‘There was no failure of law; there was no failure of procedure; there was no failure to observe and abide by all the rules. It was from first to last a failure in human understanding; a failure to grasp and comprehend a personality not envisaged in the standard legal textbooks and driven by forces far more powerful and eternal than those that are studied in the Inns of Court.’ From this it may be reasonably surmised that his essay is something of an apology for Edith, whose culpability he diminishes on the basis that "she was a woman of quality whose talents were frustrated." He adds "She was a remarkable and complex personality, endowed with signal attributes of body and of mind. She had intelligence, vitality, a natural grace and poise, sensitiveness, humour and illumining all these that quintessential femininity that fascinates the male." He writes "[In the absence of her letters] all that could be said against her was that she had lied in a futile attempt to protect and cover Bywaters. That might make her an accessory after the fact. It could not bring her into danger of the rope." Although Lustgarten does not allege any defect