to find Edith Thompson guilty only if they were convinced that she had lured her husband to the place where he was murdered. In his charge to the jury he noted ‘Now, I am going to ask you to consider only one question in your deliberations, and that is, was it an arranged thing between the woman and the man? … if you think that when she saw him [Bywaters] there that evening he came there under her direction and information that she had given him as to where she would be about that time – if you think she knew perfectly well as soon as she set eyes on him that he was there to murder, she is guilty of murder too.' The judge then turned to Edith Thompson’s letters, focusing on the ones referring to poison and ground glass, directing the jury to ‘look at these words’ when Edith related to Bywaters how she had pretended to Avis that Percy's state of health worried her. Avis had testified in court that this incident was a fabrication regarding a bottle of medicinal tincture of opium which she, Avis, had poured down the sink. The judge saw it differently and restated the prosecution's case: ‘It is said that she is already preparing for witnesses in case there should be a murder case; that is what is said’. He failed to acknowledge that this point had been tackled head-on by the defence, as it was his duty to do. Again, commenting on a passage in the letters in which Edith Thompson refers to ‘this thing that I am going to do for both of us, will it ever at all make any difference between us, darling, do you understand what I mean; will you ever think any the less of me?’, the judge simply restates the Crown's interpretation, after pretending to the jury that he will resist interpreting the passage: ‘The meaning of that is for you to judge; you will fully understand that it is not for me to tell you what the letters mean … It is said the meaning of that is ‘If I poison him is it going to make any difference to you afterwards’; that is what is suggested as the plain meaning of the words.' The Court of Appeal would interpret the passage similarly as self-evident proof of intent to murder, overlooking the fact that