A Day in July
           It was a memorable day. A memorable time in the
playground in the boys’ school I attended. Myself, and a
group of friends talking quietly. As usual a teacher and a
couple of prefects were about. Passersby paused and looked
in. Perhaps they joined with the teacher in thinking we were
up to something. For some reason people often think a group
of boys together were up to something but no, that day was
different.
     It was July 13th 1955. We were held together not by any
sense of joyful mischief plotting. I was eight years old and
the same age as my friend. We knew and were together in a
sense of horror, curiosity and fear. We could not understand
even then and, I have had problems for different reasons
since but, how could they do it? This was the day Ruth Ellis
died in Holloway Prison, the last woman in England to be
hanged.
      We had heard grownups talking and seen pictures of the
large crowds holding vigil outside Holloway Prison. We had
noticed it in the newspapers and youngsters do notice and
feel things. Ruth Ellis, who had been found guilty of the
murder by shooting of her abusive boyfriend David Blakely
who had repeatedly physically abused her including punching
her in the stomach thus causing her to miscarry. Ruth Ellis
died the victim of a bullying man and a cruel system that
could only see with narrow and blinkered vision.
                                                   -2-   
  Two years after Ruth’s death the possible defence of
diminished responsibility became law and even now where it
should be established it is often infact difficult to make
plain. In a BBC radio interview the public executioner
Albert Pierpoint said he thought the legal system in England
was the fairest in the world; yet then as now prison and all
its worse manifestations was and still is a predominantly
working class experience and this is somewhat of an
inevitably as our laws are framed and administered around
the laws of private property.
     But, I am digressing slightly. We return to those boys
in the playground. Wondering what it’s like when you go
through to the execution room. When the rope is carefully
and precisely fixed around your neck and then, the drop.
I remember this so well and it was in no way a kind of
morbid curiosity. What held us together was a fear not of
the unknown or of anything grown – ups might not expect us
to understand; it was a sense of how could they do this to
her; it was all so horrible.
       As an eight year old I tried to express myself in
words. I remember writing a poem about Ruth that sadly has
got lost among the passing of the years. But what is left in
memory is that feeling and also a sense that this may well
have been one of the significant formative events in my
life.
      
                                                 -3-
       I am now a prisoner support activist; I write and
also work as a tutor and counsellor. My support work extends
to a number of prisoners in this country and in America some
of whom are on death row. My compatriots of that day so many
years ago have long since moved along their own pathways in
life yet; I have a notion that from time to time, wherever
they are they too will think back to that day all those
years ago, a day though engulfed in the mists of time is
still a beacon to the memory and, perhaps a teacher.
       We need to learn that we do not really have a clear
notion of what justice is. We need to look for decisions
reached with impartiality and with concern for the unifying
and betterment of society and mankind at large and to be
aware of justice in Ruth’s condemned cell, in courts and
prisons being an anguished wanderer who cries “Not in my
name”
                                                      George
Coombs (657 words)