If America can’t put a person to death painlessly, it should stop executions altogether

I have never supported the death penalty. Maybe I was influenced when I was six or seven years old by the fact that our next-door neighbour in Campden Hill Square, west London, was a woman who devoted her life to campaigning for its abolition. She was born Violet Dodge in Surrey in 1882, the daughter of a washerwoman and of a ‘coal porter’ (a person whose job is to carry sacks of coal). She herself had worked for a while as a scullery maid, but eventually became immensely rich for inventing and manufacturing Shavex, the first brushless shaving-cream. She also married a Belgian painter called Jean Van der Elst, who died suddenly in 1934 and in whose memory she dedicated herself to the campaign against capital punishment.

Whenever there was an execution pending, she would set off from Campden Hill Square in her chauffeur-driven yellow Rolls-Royce to protest outside the prison where the hanging was to take place.