Violet Van der Elst (4 January 1882 – 30 April 1966) was a British entrepreneur and campaigner best remembered for her activities against the death penalty.
Biography
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
Shaving cream or shave cream is a category of cream cosmetics used for shaving preparation. The purpose of shaving cream is to soften the hair by providing lubrication.
Different types of shaving creams include aerosol shaving cream (also k ...
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
Lincolnshire (abbreviated Lincs.) is a county in the East Midlands of England, with a long coastline on the North Sea to the east. It borders Norfolk to the south-east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south-west, Leicestershir ...
, England in 1937. She restored the house, having renamed it Grantham Castle, and had it wired for electricity.
She gained publicity from her vocal campaigns against
capital punishment
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that ...
, and stood three times, unsuccessfully, as an
independent
Independent or Independents may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups
* Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s
* Independe ...
candidate to be a
Member of Parliament
A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with Bicameralism, bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house ...
. Firstly she fought the
Putney constituency at the
1935 general election, coming third. Then she stood for
Southwark Central in the
1940 by-election
Year 194 ( CXCIV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Septimius and Septimius (or, less frequently, year 947 ''Ab urbe co ...
as an independent supporting the
National Government A national government is the government of a nation.
National government or
National Government may also refer to:
* Central government in a unitary state, or a country that does not give significant power to regional divisions
* Federal governme ...
, coming third. And lastly, she contested
Hornchurch at the
1945 general election
The following elections occurred in the year 1945.
Africa
* 1945 South-West African legislative election
Asia
* 1945 Indian general election
Australia
* 1945 Fremantle by-election
Europe
* 1945 Albanian parliamentary election
* 1945 Bulgaria ...
, coming fourth.
She lost most of her fortune through "obsessive litigation". She was forced to sell her country house and moved to a flat in
Knightsbridge, London, in 1959.
Publications
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''.
Death and legacy
Largely forgotten, she died in
Ticehurst House Hospital, a lunatic asylum, in
Ticehurst,
Sussex, on 30 April 1966, aged 84;
References
Bibliography
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External links
The Incredible Mrs Violet Van Der Elst
{{DEFAULTSORT:Van Der Elst, Violet
1882 births
1966 deaths
British anti–death penalty activists
English horror writers
English short story writers
People from Middlesex (before 1965)
Independent politicians in England