A Cage To Hold My Dreams
Hanging Ruth
(Ruth Ellis, executed in Holloway Prison, London, July 1955)
Nice day for a hanging, don't you think ?
Not any old hanging. Goodness, no.
I'm talking about a Ruth Ellis hanging
You remember Ruth, don't you ?
The blonde showgirl who shot her cheating
lover. Well, this morning at five-past-nine
the public hangman and his wretched
assistant will have done their work.
They arrived yesterday afternoon
to study her through a window.
They practised long into the evening with
a bag of sand and a length of rope.
They watched as she drank her last cup of tea,
which promptly came back up again.
The hands which fastened her arms,
tied the noose around her slender neck, and
slipped the hood over her head weren't
ours. But they were working for us.
They are our servants
carrying out laws which we created.
We weren't with the chief medical officer
to check the body swaying
under the trap-door and confirm that life
was extinct. We didn't see the open mouth,
the bulging eyes, the judicially snapped neck,
the head almost ripped
from the body of this sick, bewildered,
tragic woman. We were lucky.
Most of us were still in bed
We had people up at the crack of dawn
to do all that for us.
We also had someone
to write the medieval-in-spirit death notice
and someone else to pin it on the door
of Holloway Prison,
so that the morons who trail around
after executions could applaud the real
obscenity of it all.
Ruth Ellis is gone, punished according to
the laws of Britain. Hooray !
Now we can sleep soundly in our beds.
A sick woman who killed a rat is dead.
Nice day for a hanging, don't you think ?
Not any old hanging. Goodness, no.
I'm talking about a Ruth Ellis hanging
You remember Ruth, don't you ?
The blonde showgirl who shot her cheating
lover. Well, this morning at five-past-nine
the public hangman and his wretched
assistant will have done their work.
They arrived yesterday afternoon
to study her through a window.
They practised long into the evening with
a bag of sand and a length of rope.
They watched as she drank her last cup of tea,
which promptly came back up again.
The hands which fastened her arms,
tied the noose around her slender neck, and
slipped the hood over her head weren't
ours. But they were working for us.
They are our servants
carrying out laws which we created.
We weren't with the chief medical officer
to check the body swaying
under the trap-door and confirm that life
was extinct. We didn't see the open mouth,
the bulging eyes, the judicially snapped neck,
the head almost ripped
from the body of this sick, bewildered,
tragic woman. We were lucky.
Most of us were still in bed
We had people up at the crack of dawn
to do all that for us.
We also had someone
to write the medieval-in-spirit death notice
and someone else to pin it on the door
of Holloway Prison,
so that the morons who trail around
after executions could applaud the real
obscenity of it all.
Ruth Ellis is gone, punished according to
the laws of Britain. Hooray !
Now we can sleep soundly in our beds.
A sick woman who killed a rat is dead.
