Sensational

Publication Instance Details #3205

Publication Overview

Translation	Is Multilingual	Explicit Irish Context?	Ekphrasis	Has Paratext?	Reference to News, Media or Technology
No	No	No	No	No	No

Details

Human Rights Issues	Assassination Death Penalty/Unlawful Detention/Incarceration Gender-based violence
Languages	English
Genre	Short Lyric
Medium	Print Collection
Notes	Bardwell's poem is inspired by Ruth Ellis' murder of her lover in London in 1955. Ellis was a British nightclub hostess and convicted murderer who became the last woman to be hanged in the United Kingdom following the fatal shooting of her lover, David Blakely in whose hands she had reportedly been the victim of sexual violence. Her execution played a major part in the movement to abolish the death penalty, although it took a further decade for the law to be changed. The poem addresses Ellis' executioner Albert Pierrepoint raising questions about her death penalty but also about law and justice. Bardwell wrote another poem about the Ruth Ellis case, titled 'For Ruth Ellis'.