Crusade Against Death

International

High among the luxuries Britain can now enjoy are Mrs. Violet Van der Elst and her anti-capital punishment crusade. This irrepressible lady inherited from her Belgian husband a profitable shaving cream business (Shavex). Fiftyish, she heads three corporations, is a director of twelve. She claims that she sleeps on two hours a night, is never tired. In her swank Kensington home she fondles a fine collection of Oriental objets d'art, hole spiritualist meetings, makes phonograph records of them. Lately she has been untiring in behalf of one Leonard Albert Brigstock, onetime petty officer in His Majesty's Navy, sentenced to hang for slitting the throat of Chief Petty Office Deggan on the gunnery training ship Marshal Soult. Crusader Van der Elst assembled 65,000 signatures to a petition for a reprieve; offered to hire a brain surgeon to prove that Brigstock was insane. Nonetheless the trap was due to drop under Brigstock at 9 a. m. one day last week in South London's Wandsworth Prison.

Shortly before 9 o'clock Mrs. Van de Elst went sweeping up to the prison gate in a cream-colored limousine, shouting through a loudspeaker: "They are hanging an innocent man. We have last-minute evidence to prove it." Three loudspeaker vans were already driving back & forth blaring out "Abide With Me". A mob of 50 sandwich men paraded with signs. Mrs. Van der Elst's supreme inspiration, three airplanes zoomed above the prison, trailing banners, "Stop the Death Sentence." Promptly at 9 o'clock, the trap dropped under Murderer Brigstock. "Gentlemen remove your hats," Cried Mrs. Van der Elst, falling on her knees. Later she said: "I pay -L-12,000 ($60,000) income tax and I have a right to be heard by the Government. I am going to protest against every execution in England from now on. ... The Government dare not arrest me."

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