AVIS [laughs] I only ever went out once with him and that was to have this drink.
All three of you? I used to go there sometime. In May 1972, Hitchcock mentioned several famous murder cases in an interview about Frenzy (1972) broadcast on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: //
AVIS: Yes; and he, Reg, sent them to Bessie to ask her what they were [she laughs]. Manning bequeathed £50 to ‘Mr W Graydon of 231 Shakespeare Crescent’, although the Graydons did not in fact get this money because the will leaves everything in the first instance to Jane Mary Ann Mannnig (née Jump: they married in 1885), and she outlived Edith Thompson’s father.
And then when you get the evening paper which my brother would bring, I believe my elder brother was in the court.
I do! AR Mmmm … [the] governor’s room is way up in the …. AVIS Well, there was a lot of people inside the church, but I think there’re only twenty at the breakfast. Neville George Clevely Heath (1917–1946) was a killer responsible for the murders of two young women and who was executed in London in 1946. AVIS and of course in those days we didn’t, there was no dancing close to each other. Did he call her Edith? and what was it? because these days there’s no clothing, they only have vegetables.
AR What about that evidence, do you have no recollection? And then there was that other poor girl we saw – I don’t know what she’d done – the gate was opened; and she must have knocked her, the mug of water away and spilled all over and a lump of bread about that size looked like stale as hell; and I remarked about it and this wardress that was with us went and shut the main door, not the iron door, but the door that you can’t see. AR And can you remember what happened on that occasion? AVIS Oh, we went in the afternoon. Flowers added to the memorial appear on the bottom of the memorial or here on the Flowers tab. I expect she would be. She’d go for years without touching anything, then she’d have a break.
AR Mmmm. As far as we was concerned, them was concerned, you see they was, when she was down here at Ilford, there was always a matron there, and you weren’t allowed, she was further away from us than you are from me, even down here. Bessie was the head clerk, she was the head of the office. As Stephane Duckett noted in Hitchcock in Context (2014): As a consequence [of the Edith Thompson case] a number of Hitchcock’s films feature innocent, or more importantly partly innocent women who nevertheless face the full penalty of the law where public opinion in the form of a disapproval of their lifestyle — particularly sexual — plays a significant part in the determination of their culpability. To my mind he seemed to lose interest in the case.
you, your mother and father, not Newenham?
So after his body was exhumed, for … forsenic [forensic] reasons, they had him buried in some other part of it.
AR and did you, did you ask Edie to go with you because she was good at choosing?
At Henley’s he was taught to dance by Edith Thompson’s father who was assisted by Avis and, occasionally, by Edith too. AVIS Oh, I didn’t know that. AR Now, where did you meet them, can you remember? Not once. AVIS No, he never said anything about it at all. AR Mmmm, that sounds like it, doesn’t it? AR She never had any problems, never went to hospital for anything?
He murdered at least eight women — including his wife Ethel — by strangling them in his apartment at 10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill, London. AVIS Yes, wait a moment. You see I, I can’t always grasp these things and I was thinking; and you are quite right about Freddy coming down to our house the next night with the paper, laying it down on the table. AR No. He said …. AVIS Yeah.
They moved from Dalston to Speen in Buckinghamshire, and granddaddy lived twenty years.
AR Now she says something here about you which I don’t know what, what you would feel about it because I think she’s being quite nasty here. In a later interview with Roger Ebert, Hitchcock talked about the murders:[10]. I never only went out with him that once. His grandfather was William Graydon and Edith Graydon (whom I’m writing about) was his sister. AR Where’s the Manchester? My mother, she was a very, very good plain cook, and she would go out of her way to make a very nice little show for her. This account has been disabled. She’d sometimes come laden with shopping that she’d bought from the City, because you see, in those days we didn’t get Saturday off. After her conversion to Catholicism Avis and Hitchcock’s sister became close friends and so she inevitably met the by then famous director himself. I said ‘who is this man Tommy?’ She said ‘Percy’. AR Well, yes … when, was she allowed to talk about the case? AVIS Yes, in the middle two weeks of June.
AVIS Oh yes, Chelsea was the absolute it. AR Do you remember, did Edie from the time she was arrested and knew that Percy was dead, did she ever express any feelings about it? Enormous, outside the, outside Pentonville. AVIS Yes, when we were children; and then, when my cousin came to live with us, cousin Edith Garnett, mmmm, I think I had a put-you-up in the bedroom, except …. I can’t remember about that. AVIS No, I don’t remember that, but if she said so I would say that was the truth! I think…. AR No, he just liked seeing her. I remember my father sitting down putting his hat, his clothes on the hall stand as we came in, sat down, and made a cup of tea. Did you come …. But I didn’t want to endure any more scenes in front of her.’. She is the ‘Janie’ mentioned by Avis. AR ‘But if you asked her why she did like it or did she not, she couldn’t say, could she, do you think?
he came round.
Today it’s all the other way about. And how many hours we were drinking this cup of tea I couldn’t tell you.
Dad and Mummy used to come.
AR: So it was someone that she met at work! AVIS There was nothing in it but this one, this long table, and she was sitting at the end with two wardresses. Mrs Richard Thompson? It might be too terrifying for some audiences, but it would make a great subject worthwhile. I don’t know that I, that I’ll try. He popped his head through the window to see [if] we were alright – I suppose the house was quiet and he wondered what had happened, and he came in, you see; and I believe it was he, I don’t think my father went out, I think it was he who brought the bottle of whisky in and said to my mother and father ‘you must have a drink’. AR She mentions you toasting Sally Luns in front of the fire.
Do you remember that? Or I’d say to her ‘I don’t think much of that frock you’ve got on’ [laughter] – I didn’t like it on. AVIS: Yes, and they [Reg and Bessie] were a sweet couple. AVIS: … and I remember her … because I don’t remember anymore. We never went in the morning.
AR But was Edie’s behaviour different on that occasion than from any other occasion? AVIS A lot of them, yes, a lot of them, yes; a lot of them she bought. Bottle had known Cora Crippen, who performed as "Belle Elmore" and had gone drinking with her husband. AR Did Edie buy all her things in Berwick Street market?
AR It’s a quotation from, a direct quotation from a letter that Edie wrote Freddy. Better known as Dr. Crippen, he was executed on 23rd November 1910 for the murder of his wife, Cora Henrietta Crippen. We would pay, mind you, but she’d had all the trouble with it; and then uncle would come with us, because the football pool was just around the corner. AR and Edie used to go there on Friday evenings. Yes. This phenomenon was examined recently by Dr Lucy Worsley in the television series A Very British Murder with Lucy Worsley (2013), which featured an interview with Hitchcock's biographer John Russell Taylor.
AVIS Yes, he went to see her in Holloway. He said, all other directors had – I had learned from an engineer – and he said ‘they all say, except Arthur, ‘so long as you continue to do your work as it has been all these years, you can stay here.’. AR Yes … yes. So I suppose he kept that back to suit his own ends. He didn’t seem to stress that. Found more than one record for entered Email, You need to confirm this account before you can sign in. AR She is saying – and this letter isn’t dated, but it’s obviously in May 1922 –. AR Ah, he was the man who was so badly injured.