F Tennyson Jesse

Jesse was born in 1888, to a clergyman and his wife. She was related to the poet Tennyson. Her family moved around a lot, abroad, and she was educated in different places. She went to a school of art in Cornwall, when she was 18 and she did some painting. She then became a journalist and had a special interest in criminology. She wrote several books about murder trials and she also wrote novels. One of her novels is A Pin to See the Peepshow. It was based on the Edith Thompson case in the 1920s. Edith Thompson was a young woman who was in a dull marriage. She fell in love with a younger man, and they had an affair. He was a sailor, and they wrote letters to each other. Bywaters, her lover, then killed Edith's husband. She was accused of inciting him to murder her husband and was tried and executed, though she was not the one who committed the murder. M/F