Wight in June 1921, Edith and Bywaters began an affair. Initially, Percy was unaware of this, although he gradually noticed his wife was drifting away from him. Matters came to a head barely a month after the affair started. A trivial incident in the Thompsons’ garden triggered a violent row during which Percy Thompson struck his wife and caused her to fall over some furniture. Bywaters intervened and Thompson ordered him out of the house. The Thompsons' sitting tenant, a Mrs. Lester, commented on Mrs Thompson's bruises in one of her statements to police. From September 1921 until September 1922 Bywaters was at sea, and during this time Edith Thompson wrote to him frequently. After his return, they met up again. Murder On 3 October 1922, the Thompsons attended a performance at the Criterion Theatre in London's Piccadilly Circus along with Edith's uncle and aunt, Mr and Mrs J. Laxton. They left the theatre at 11 pm and all went to Piccadilly Circus tube station, where they separated. The Thompsons caught the 11:30 pm train to Ilford. As they walked along Belgrave Road, between Endsleigh and De Vere Gardens, a man jumped out from behind some bushes near their home and attacked Percy. After a violent struggle, during which Edith Thompson was knocked to the ground, Percy was stabbed. Mortally wounded, he died before Edith could summon help. The attacker fled. Neighbours later reported hearing a woman screaming hysterically and shouting "Oh don’t, oh don’t" several times, and by the time police arrived she had still not composed herself. At the police station the following day she was distressed. She was unaware of the fact that Bywaters was already a suspect: he was arrested that evening and taken to Ilford Police Station. The police confronted her with Bywaters and one of the inspectors, Frank Hall, misleadingly told her that Bywaters had already confessed. She then admitted to the police that she knew who the assailant was and provided the police with details of her association with Bywaters. The police investigated further and discovered a series of more than sixty love letters from Edith Thompson to Bywaters. The letters were the only tangible evidence linking Edith Thompson to the killer. In Stratford Magistrates Court her defence argued that the letters in no way connected Mrs Thompson to the actual place or manner of the murder and that therefore they did not