Click to enlarge

ON THE GALLOWS
Violet Van der Elst
Signed & inscribed

London, The Doge Press, 1937, 1937. First edition. This copy inscribed, "To my friend Nurse ? With my best Wishes Violet Van der Elst "

Book - original brown leather-textured cloth-backed red linen boards, title gilt to the spine, gilt arms - motto "pitie avec justice" - to the upper board, light toning around edges, bumped corners. Internally bright and clean, one loose plate which has a corner crease. Portrait frontispiece and 25 other plates.

Pictorial dust jacket jacket has seen better days front flap[ entirely missing, rubbed, chipped, creased, tears and pieces mising around edge areas and from missing front flap area. Nonetheless a scarce signed copy.


Prominent campaigner’s autobiographical account of her fight against capital punishment, illustrated with some fascinating plates of the mass protests that she organized outside Britain’s gaols. Van der Elst’s origins were humble, but she made a fortune developing Shavex, the first brushless shaving cream, and spent most of her wealth campaigning against the death penalty. She stood three times for Parliament, unsuccessfully, on an anti-execution platform and was quite a celebrity in the 20s and 30s. However, she died more or less penniless, and forgotten in 1966, the year after the death penalty was abolished in Britain.