"Sweet Violet"

Because Dr. Hakim Bakhtyar Rustomji Ratanji, who legally changed his name to Buck Ruxton, strangled his wife and the pretty nursemaid who saw him do it, subsequently dismembered his victims and threw the bloody fragments into a Scottish ravine known as The Devil's Beef tub (TIME, March 23), British Justice last week hanged this murderer in the courtyard of Strangeways Jail, Manchester.

It was the most highly publicized execution in months and a banner opportunity for Britain's No. 1 Anti-Capital-Punishment Crusader, plump Mrs. Violet Van der Elst. The widow of a Belgian shaving-cream tycoon (Shavex), her jail-gate antics before the hanging of British murderers used to fill British authorities with quiet amusement but they do so no longer. With her Shavex-colored limousine, sound trucks blaring hymns, hired sandwich men and airplanes scattering leaflets, "Sweet Violet," as the penny press calls her, can be counted upon to draw large crowds of gawpers who mill about, tie up traffic for hours (TIME, April 15, 1935). Usually the crowd's sympathies have been with Widow Van der Elst, but the testimony in the Buck Ruxton case was too strong even for British stomachs.

As her white Rolls-Royce, exuding posters, drove up before Strangeways Jail last week, somebody heaved a rock through one of the windows. Attempting to speak, Violet Van der Elst was booed down. "How would you like your daughter to be cut in little pieces?" shrilled an inquisitive voice. Sweet Violet again tried to speak. "Aw, get out!" roared the crowd. Police hustled her away, charged her with "driving through a crowd in a manner likely to endanger life and limb." She was held in $250 bail. Meantime, inside the jail the black flag was run up and the lifeless body of the Hindu doctor was cut down, buried in an open pit of unslaked lime.

As if in anticipation of the hostile reception she got at Manchester last week, Mrs. Van der Elst fortnight ago told a New York Herald Tribune correspondent that she was about to transfer her humane campaign to the U. S. "England," said she, "is too tough a proposition at present. . . I thought my husband would have suffered so, seeing me get arrested and fined, but the other night he appeared at a seance in the form of a beautiful luminous cross . . . and hovered directly over my head. It's a great comfort to me.

"Some day the crowds will be so great and so stirred up against capital punishment that the authorities won't dare go ahead with an execution. But I am before my time, I suppose. They crucified Christ, they stabbed Lincoln, they put Mrs. Pankhurst in prison, and I suppose they will martyrize me. I eat only fruit juices. I have gained 50 pounds since my husband died 18 months ago. The light of my life went out, and now my glands have ceased to function."

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