DEMONSTRATION AT PRISON GATES

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 201, 22 May 1936, Page 11

DEMONSTRATION AT PRISON GATES

Mrs. van der Elst Fined as Sequel London, May 20. Mrs. van der Elst, tlie demonstrator against capital punishment, who was charged with a breach of the peace and with dangerous driving when she appeared outside the jail during the execution of Dr. Buck Ruxton for murdering his wife and their maid, was fined £3 for failing to stop her car when ordered to do so. Other charges were dismissed. Counsel for the defence said that sl.e did not realise the strength of local feeling against Dr. Ruxton’s liorrilne murders, and "struck a. bad patch” there in making propaganda against capital punishment. Mrs. van der Elst Ims declared that capital punishment is "barbaric and uncivilised,” and Ims frequently demonstrated outside prisons at the time of executions. On April 16 she appeared outside a prison at Birmingham when Mrs. Dorothea Nancy Waddingham was executed for the murder of a woman in a nursing home. On tlii.s occasion Mrs. van der Elst brought a van mounted with a loudspeaker which played hymns, and employed a line of sandwichmen whose boards read : "I appeal to you to prevent the Imaging of a mother of five children.” She also endeavoured to obtain six aeroplanes- from tlie Hounslow and Heston aerodromes, but the authorities refused her these. When the boxer Del Fontaine was executed at Wandsworth jnii last October Mrs. van der Elst again used a loudspeaker in a van and broadcast hymns, telling the crowd that England had executed another insane man.