Violet Van der Elst
Violet Van der Elst was a British entrepreneur and campaigner best remembered for her activities against the death penalty.
She was born Violet Anne Dodge, the daughter of a coal porter and a washerwoman, she herself worked as a scullery maid. In 1903, she married Henry Arthur Nathan, a civil engineer 13 years her senior. She developed cosmetics including Shavex, the first brush-less shaving cream and became a successful businesswoman. After her first husband died on 15 November 1927, she married Jean Julien Romain Van der Elst, a Belgian who had been working for her as a manager but was also a painter.
Having amassed a huge personal fortune she purchased Harlaxton Manor, in Lincolnshire, England in 1937.
She gained publicity from her vocal campaigns against capital punishment, and stood three times, unsuccessfully, as a candidate to be a Member of Parliament. Firstly she fought for the Putney constituency at the 1935 General Election as an Independent, coming third. Then she stood for the Southwark Central constituency in the 1940 by-election as an independent candidate supporting the National Government, coming third. And lastly, she fought for the Hornchurch constituency at the 1945 General election as an Independent, coming fourth.
She wrote the book On the Gallows in 1937 as part of her efforts to eradicate the death penalty. In the same year she published a collection of 13 ghost stories, The Torture Chamber and Other Stories.
Her campaigning, her behaviour, and unsuccessful political career reduced her fortune, forcing her to sell her house and move to a flat in Knightsbridge, London, in 1959.
Largely forgotten, she died in Ticehurst House Hospital, a lunatic asylum, in Ticehurst, Sussex, on 30 April 1966, aged 84; her wealth reduced to £15,528, having seen the abolition of capital punishment for murder in Britain the previous year.
In the 2005 film Pierrepoint, she is played by Ann Bell.
