Bad Women

“In a world where independent voices are increasingly stifled, PEN is not a luxury it is a necessity.”

 These are the words of Margaret Atwood the Vice-President, International PEN.

It's a fantastic organisation and one I am proud to support. At the Aye Write Festival in Glasgow they usually host a big event at the weekend. This is the third year that they have asked me to be part of it. I think it’s my job to balance the academia (read into that what you will!). My co panellists normally have more letters than alphabet soup after their name. They tend to close their eyes while talking, hands spanned, fingertips  touching, nodding in concentration... like they  are  in  a channel  four midnight chat  show.  I have such a short attention span that I have usually forgotten the start of their sentence by the time they get to the end of it. I think the point of it is the audience enjoy the contrast. This year the title is; 

  Bad Women. "Why do some women commit criminal acts? Jean Rafferty (author of Myra, Beyond Saddleworth) discusses Myra Hindley and the taboo of female violence with Zoe Wicomb, followed by crime writer Caro Ramsay and Dr Lizzie Seal (author of Women, Murder and Femininity: Gender Representations of Women Who Kill) discussing the transgressive female in literature."

Like I say I'll do the jokes.

                                                           Virginia Soares de Souza

When I say in talks that female serial killers tend to fall in to two types - either acting with a man (folie de deux)... or a member of the medical profession,  it  tends to get a laugh as I am one of the latter (medic not serial killer!) So the current case of Brazilian doctor Virginia Soares de Souza   has been catching my interest. Details in the British press are scarce and contradictory but she seems to be charged with the murder of seven patients and investigations are going on for another 300 incidents. She is accused of cutting the oxygen supply to patients on life support and then administering Pavulon which relaxes the diaphragm muscle making respiration even more problematic.  I believe that they are analysing over 1700 hospital records. Which could make her the world's worst serial killer. British GP Harold Shipman was convicted in 2004 of killing 15 patients but is probably responsible for 260 plus.

                                              A typical headline- the terrible revelations seemed never ending

The De Souza case is fairly typical of the way that female serial killers operate.

They have moved with the times though. In the Victorian age they poisoned, (the black widow image) and they killed men (their husbands or live in partners or 'the insured'), and children (their own or other people's) usually for financial gain.  Things have moved on slightly and the psychology of the motive of the female serial killer is becoming less clear. They tend not to kill for material gain now. In the medically trained there might be some unusual psychopathological behavioural factors (Munchhausen's syndrome) and obvious issues of what we as a society expect women to be i.e. caring and nurturing. Sexual and sadistic motives are very rare but suffering childhood abuse seems to be a consistent finding.

Female serial killers are much rarer than male, about 15%. But something inside me wonders how accurate that figure is. Or does the quiet nature of their crimes mean they are going unnoticed.

Obviously anybody with a psychological and perhaps unhealthy interest in the power of life and death will be attracted to the medical profession in any form.

Britain’s  worst medical female serial killer was  Beverley Gail Allitt. She was  convicted of murdering four children, attempting to murder three other children, and causing grievous bodily harm to another six all in a  59 day period in  1991. She killed by injecting insulin or altering the air supply to her young patients. She received 13 life sentences, a minimum term of 40 years - one of the longest minimum terms ever suggested by a trial judge and is unlikely ever to be considered safe enough to be released.

                                                      Beverley Allitt was a well liked nurse

Reading some of the Shipman transcripts it is noted how often his patients said what a great doctor he was, genuine and considerate. The concept of a compassionate carer is echoed in the fact that when two month old Becky Phillips was admitted to the care of Beverly Allit and died, her twin sister was also admitted as a precaution.  Katie Phillips had to be resuscitated twice after unexplained breathing difficulties. The second time she stopped breathing she suffered brain damage which led to a degree of both paralysis and blindness. She was then transferred to another hospital.

Her parents had been so grateful to Allitt for Becky’s care, they asked her to be Katie's godmother. That is the measure of how much the parents appreciated Allitt within their daughters' health care team.

Allitt's motives have never been fully explained. Was it Munchausen’s by proxy? Does that even exist?

                                                                Brady and Hindley

The crimes of Myra Hindley are still beyond the comprehension of most people.  She is one of the most reviled women of the twentieth century but worth mentioning here because she is a classic example of a folie de deux. Rosemary West is another. The big question is, would these women ever have killed if they had not met those men?  Personally I don’t think that is the point, we all have a degree of responsibility for self.  Or is it that we as a society can't quite comprehend that the female gender is capable of 'evil' for want of a better word. Something inside me thinks that a clear headed woman would have given Fred West and Ian Brady a wide berth but there was a need in Rose and Myra that these men fulfilled for them. The main issue still is both Myra and Rose killed children. End of.

I am a little too young to be aware of the impact The Moors Murderers had on the media and on wider society. I do recall, age 14/15, my modern studies teacher refusing to answer the direct question What did Myra Hindley actually do that was so awful? Given Hindley's status as a co-defendant in the first mass-murder trial held since the abolition of the death penalty, the class debate was that the death penalty should be reinstated for her and Brady.

No matter how you approach the subject of Hindley, you will get a different picture of the woman.   She was a sensible young woman, but when she met Glasgow born Brady, she fell for him in a big way. He encouraged her to read works by Hitler and de Sade.  He was her first lover and some sources say she was totally under his control.  She certainly acted and dressed to please him but that is a million miles away from accepting his ideas that murder and rape were the “supreme pleasure”.
 The murders of 16-year-old Pauline Reade, 12-year-old John Kilbride, 12-year-old Keith Bennett then 10-year-old Lesley Ann Downey are all well documented. Brady and Hindley themselves photographed and taped the torture of Lesley Ann Downey. The last murder was that of 17 year old Edward Evans. Their recorded nonchalant attitude to their vile actions helped to ensure the lasting notoriety of their crimes;

 But it was Hindley's gender that made her so vilified. Her photograph has been referred to by Helen Birch as "synonymous with the idea of feminine evil".

                                                                   Myra Hindley

This one picture has sunk deep into the British psyche.

The circumstances of Myra Hindley were a million miles away from the circumstances of Ruth Ellis, but a mere ten years apart. One lived out her days in a relatively comfortable jail whilst the other was sentenced to death. This is a subject I may return to after I have debated with my co-panellists as it is fascinating and I've interested to see what my fellow panellists have to say.

This blog was typed on the banks of Loch Ness but as yet I have seen nothing. Still watching...

Caro GB 05/04/2013

The Legacy Of Ruth Ellis

Ruth as a youngster

9.30pm Easter Sunday, April 10th 1955. Hampstead, London. A tall, dark man leaves the Magdala pub. As he walks to his car, a small slim blonde shouts his name as she takes a .38 Smith and Wesson revolver from her handbag. Her first shot misses, the second brings him down. The blonde walks over to him as he lies on the pavement, she fires three more shots. She then lifts the gun to her head and pulls the trigger. 

It jams. As she lowers the gun it discharges, the bullet ricochets and hits a passerby in the hand. The blonde turns to a man in the crowd. “Can you get the police?” 

“Madam,” he said, ‘I am the police.’

It’s a famous story, but worth revisiting. The tall, dark man was the would be playboy/racing driver David Blakely. The blonde was Ruth Ellis. She died on the scaffold 13 weeks later, age 28. Her youngest child was only three years old.

Ruth was the last woman to be hanged in Britain and the national outcry contributed to the abolition of capital punishment and led directly to the introduction of the defence ‘diminished responsibility’ in English law.

Her case is intriguing. A simple crime of passion? Or something more worthy of John Le Carre? I've found more than a few references to spies, Philby, McLean, Stephen Ward and Profumo while reading around her life. There is much that does not add up. And so much more that is just wrong.

Ruth Neilson was born in Rhyl, North Wales, her family followed their musician father round the country. It was a tough life. As a child Ruth was rebellious, but never bright. When she was 14, the family moved to London. It was only six years post war, work was scarce but Ruth got a job in a factory. Then the mousey brunette became a platinum blonde and hung about the dance halls of central London with her one good frock, gravy browning and a pencil line on her legs to mimic stockings, pinching her cheeks to redden them instead of blusher. At the dancing she met a Canadian soldier ten years her senior, no doubt he had a wide smile and a full wallet.  He wined and dined her, sent her flowers.  It was only when Ruth fell pregnant by him that she learned he was married with kids of his own. She was 17.

 

Leaving her son with her mother, Ruth found work at The Camera Club where ladies posed nude for men to photograph (with cameras that rarely contained film). Ruth was on the slippery slope from naked model, to hostess at the Court Club, then a bit more than a hostess. (To put that in perspective; £2 for a week's work at Woolies. £20 for working at the Court Club.) As a hostess she sold overpriced drink to clientele and made extra money by offering extras. She went on to manage The Little Club in Knightsbridge where she worked hard. After a couple of years and a few illegal abortions she met dentist George Ellis, 21 years older than her. They married, but it lasted less than a year, fuelled by his alcoholism and her pathological jealousy. By the time Ruth walked out, she was pregnant with their daughter Georgina.

Then David Blakely walked into The Little Club. He was everything she wanted in a man; upper class, tall, charming... and he had just come into an inheritance.  He had aspirations to be a racing driver but in reality, he was a spendthrift playboy who couldn’t keep a job and was soon dossing in Ruth's flat over the nightclub and drinking most of her profits. His friends thought she was brash and common. Her boss told her to choose Blakely or the job. She chose Blakely, making herself jobless and homeless even though Blakely is on record as punching her in the face in front of his friends....

Then Desmond Cussen came on the scene. He was also older, and seemed to love her. He put a roof over her head but she treated him as badly as Blakely treated her. Cussen and Ellis lived together, with Blakely staying overnight and sharing their bed with Ruth.

 

In late March 1955, she found she was pregnant with Blakely’s baby. He punched her in the stomach, she miscarried, he walked away. By Easter Ruth was determined to track Blakely down, he had been in hiding. Cussen thought it was a good idea to give Ruth a gun, teach her how to fire it then on Easter Sunday he got her drunk on Pernod, gave her some tranquilizers and drove her to the Magdala pub .... the bullet holes are still visible in the bricks.

After the shooting Ruth was taken to Hampstead, ‘confused’. She admitted it all without mentioning Cussen at all. She was charged with murder and on 20^th June she stood trial at the Old Bailey in front of Lord Justice Cecil Havers. She had been told to play down her sexuality but instead she dyed her hair peroxide again and painted her lips red. There is a report that one juror muttered 'tart' as she walked into the dock.

The trial lasted two days.

Louisa Merryfield

Styllou Christofi

The evidence not heard is interesting. Had she been of sound mind? The drugs evidence? The alcohol? The hormonal effect of the loss of the child, to say nothing of the emotional impact? How does a novice manage to fire a gun so well? There was little mention of Cussen’s role in the murder. At no point was Cussen asked about his gun or his whereabouts. The conviction is arguably unsafe and the original trial was mismanaged but her statement “I shot him because I wanted to kill him” put the noose round her neck. As the law stood then, she was guilty. The facts were simple, there were no mitigating circumstances. The jury came back in 23 minutes and the judge sentenced her to death by hanging. She was quite calm.

Then the tide seems to have turned. 50,000 people signed a petition. There had been no such reaction to the previous two executions of women: in 1953, middle aged housekeeper Louisa Merrifield was hanged for killing her employer Sarah Ricketts with rat poison, while in 1954 Styllou Christofi strangled her daughter-in-law in a fit of jealousy and set the body on fire in the garden. A week before she died, a reprieve was granted to a 40-year-old woman who had battered her 86-year-old neighbour to death with a shovel after a long-running feud. At the time of these trials, provocation was narrowly interpreted, applying only to killers who reacted "in hot blood" to something happening immediately before the killing. In the 90s, however, judges softened the law on provocation, opening it up to battered women and others whose self-control was affected by despair or depression.

When told about the petition to save her, Ruth is quoted as saying, "I am very grateful to them. But I am quite happy to die."

The day before she died, Ruth did tell her defence counsel about Cussen's role, he tracked down the home secretary, they tried to find Cussen but he had gone into hiding. She was taken, calmly to the gallows. Albert Pierrepoint, the hangman said she was peaceful and polite, she greeted him with a smile. He later said that he felt it was wrong and resigned soon afterwards. 

 Ruth and Desmond

Cussen went to Australia where he died in his late 60's. Ruth's sister believes that Ruth protected him during the trial because he had promised to look after her family. And he did.

The sister also says that their father had raped her at the age of 14, producing a son who was brought up as her brother, and had probably abused Ellis as well.

The defence counsel today would be spoiled for choice; clinical depression, battered spouse syndrome, post-natal/ post-miscarriage depression. There was only 10 days between the miscarriage and the murder.

Ruth is the subject of more than 17 books and the 1985 film Dance with a Stranger. Her daughter Georgina died of cancer in 2001 and her son Andy committed suicide in 1982.

Her legacy is the defence of diminished responsibility.

In a weird twist, she appears briefly (pregnant) in the film 'Lady Godiva Rides Again' with Diana Dors.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfnYDZ7HBM4.

I think she is the second beauty queen to walk out, jet black hair cut in a bob.

There was no film star career for her. But I think she would be pleased that her name still burns bright in legal history.

Caro  GB 22nd March 2013