![]() ![]() ![]() In the story, Phyllis Chaundry is 24 years old and married to Arthur Chaundry, a much-older 47 years old. Vickers mentions this case briefly at the beginning of his tale and uses it as an inspiration for his fictional murder mystery, which he refers to as the Chaundry-Lambert case of 1936. Critics have speculated that this case was one of the influences that led Hitchcock to explore the idea of women being punished for their morals, a theme that appears repeatedly in the director's works, including Stage Fright (1950). There has been quite a bit written about the case and, in 1937, Alfred Hitchcock himself expressed an interest in making a film about it. She was the first woman to be hanged in England since 1907 and she was one of only 17 women hanged in the United Kingdom in the twentieth century. The case became famous after Edith's trial and execution by hanging. Frederick was soon caught and arrested, and Edith was arrested as well under the British legal theory of Common Purpose, which said that anyone involved in participating in a criminal enterprise is guilty of the crime even if they did not carry it out.įrederick Bywaters, Edith Thompson and Percy Thompson One night, when Edith and Percy were returning home from a show in London, Frederick jumped out from behind some bushes and stabbed Percy to death. To summarize the facts briefly, Edith married Percy and later had an affair with Frederick. Though Vickers does not go into detail, the case involved a British couple named Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters, both of whom were executed in 1923 for the murder of Edith's husband Percy. One of the stories in this series is "The Crocodile Case," which has been reprinted several times as "The Crocodile Dressing-Case." The story begins by referring to the famous "Thomson-Bywaters case" of 1922. In his lifetime he wrote over 70 books, the first in 1914, but he is best remembered today for his mystery short stories, especially the series known as the Department of Dead Ends, which concerned a "fictional department of Scotland Yard where evidence from unsolved crimes is kept." Many of his stories in this series were published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, and they have been called "the best detective stories of the 1940s." He studied at Oxford but did not earn a degree he worked as a salesman, a newspaper crime reporter and a ghostwriter before settling into a long career as a writer. Next up for Dennis was to adapt a story by Roy Vickers titled "The Crocodile Case," which was first published in the March 1949 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Vickers (1889-1965) was born William Edward Vickers in England. ![]() Dennis adapted "Fatal Figures" for the small screen, then followed that teleplay with his adaptation of Cornell Woolrich's story, "Post Mortem," which I discussed here in my series on Woolrich. ![]()
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