allow for the consideration of common purpose, namely that if two people wish to achieve the death of a third, and one of these people acts on the expressed intentions of both, both are equally guilty by law. The presiding magistrate decided that the letters could be admitted and that the court at the Old Bailey would rule on it again. Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters were each charged with murder. Trial The trial began on 6 December 1922 at the Old Bailey, with Bywaters defended by Cecil Whiteley KC, and Thompson by Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett KC. The prosecution for the Crown was led by the Solicitor-General Sir Thomas Inskip, assisted by Travers Humphreys. Bywaters cooperated completely. He had led police to the murder weapon he had concealed after the murder, and consistently maintained that he had acted without Edith's knowledge. Edith Thompson's love letters were produced as evidence of incitement to murder. The extant letters date from November 1921 to the end of September 1922. They run to over 55,000 words and afford a day-to-day account of her life in London when her lover Bywaters was at sea. In a few passages of these letters she writes about her longing to be free of her husband, Percy. She refers to grinding glass light bulbs to shards and feeding them to Percy mixed into mashed potato, and on another occasion feeding him poison. She wrote of a woman who had lost three husbands and remarked “I can’t even lose one.” Thompson described how she had carried out her own abortion after becoming pregnant by Bywaters. Edith Thompson's counsel urged her not to testify, stressing that the burden of proof lay with the prosecution and that there was nothing they could prove other than that she had been present at the murder. But she refused his advice. She was determined to give evidence, imagining that she could save Bywaters. As Curtis-Bennett later noted, she had no conception of the danger she was in. She made a poor impression on the judge and the jury, particularly when she repeatedly contradicted herself. She had claimed that she had never attempted to poison her husband, and references in her letters to attempting to kill him were merely attempts to impress her paramour. In answer to several questions relating to the meaning of some of the passages in her letters, she said "I have no