Twenty-four-year-old Margaret Evans was pregnant. She already had a two-year-old child by the same father, Edmund Hugh Tunbridge, a 38-year-old warehouseman, and this time she felt sure he would do the decent thing and marry her. She didnt know he already had a wife.
On January 14th, 1922, a police sergeant saw him and Margaret walking along the bank of the River Lea near Hackney. As he turned to walk away, the officer heard a splash, and on looking back he saw Tunbridge walking towards him alone.
Wheres the girl you were with? the sergeant asked.
Tunbridge said no girl had been with him, but the policeman took him back to the riverbank and saw Margaret Evans floating dead in the water.
Tunbridge was charged with her murder, and at his trial he said he and Margaret had gone for a stroll to discuss her pregnancy and the possibility of marriage. When he refused to marry her, he told the court, she took a phial of poison from his pocket and committed suicide.
The jury found this story too unlikely to believe. They found Tunbridge guilty, he was sentenced to death, and he was hanged at Pentonville Prison on APRIL 18th, 1922.