LONDON LETTER
301
a woman, 'Margaret Allen, 36, was hanged at Manchester for murder.
One of a family of twenty, she had lived for some
of
her life as a man
and found a happy employment as a trousered bus-conductress. She
murdered her neighbor without motive, an elderly woman who came to
call ("I wouldn't have done it if I'd had a cigarette") and then tried
to throw the body in the river. She continued to wear trousers, smoke,
and say nothing throughout the trial and before her. execution asked
to see her one friend, a younger woman, and told her that she did it
"in one of her funny moods." For the execution she was made to abandon
her shirt and trousers and dress for the first time in blouse and skirt.
One sees at once in this story a resemblance to Oamus' short novel,
l'Etranger,
and it is hard not to feel that Margaret Allen's perverse and
indifferent attitude might not have hastened her fate. The friend could
raise only a hundred signatures to a petition for her reprieve which sug–
gests that the Mancunians are still healthily intolerant of the abnormal.
The hanging of women is often accompanied by revolting physical con–
sequences. The last woman to be hanged in this country was Mrs.
Thompson in 1926 and the prisoners and wardresses of Holloway still
firmly believe that her ghost haunts the block with the condemned cell.
The sudden death of the radio comedian Tommy Handley, how–
ever, threw the country and especially the capital into a paroxysm of
grief and it was clear that this was one of the things the British really
cared about, and not just one of those things the newspapers told them
they did. Handley belonged to those humorists, like the cartoonist Giles,
or the columnist Nat Gubbins, who enchanted people during the war
because they were on their side and not making them laugh to improve
morale and to please authority. The impact of his death reveals the
strength of the subconscious British revolt against the drabness of our
lives and our devotion to those who lighten it. The popularity of the
near-criminal ex-Polish "contact" man, Stanley, who was referred to in
the proceedings of the Lynskey Tribunal as "the biggest scoundrel
unhung" and who was cheered at the Chelsea Arts Ball on New Year's
Eve is another symptom of this. On the whole it would be unfair to
blame the Labor Government, for it is doubtful
if
anyone but Sir Staf–
ford Cripps could carry out the economic measures necessary to our
pathetic condition as a country who has lost two great wars on the
winning side (for that is what it amounts to). In the same way
it
would
be
a mistake to assume that the findings of the Lynskey
Tribuna~
how–
ever unfavorable they may prove to the government officials involved,
are likely to have much effect on the General Election. For one intellec-
