Vivienne escaped from Northumberland House on 15 September. She was caught twenty-four hours later when she tried to draw money from her bank without knowing that her funds had been blocked. Her next and more promising attempt at escape took place with outside help. In the thirties there were Lunacy Law reformers, who realised that some people were wrongly diagnosed as insane. Part of their work was to rescue people who were put away for life only because they were disturbed and difficult. Previously, in the eighteenth century a husband had the power to incarcerate a troublesome wife in a madhouse, the target of Mary Wollstonecraft’s novel The Wrongs of Women. But in the course of the nineteenth century, legislation did not leave wives entirely helpless. The law in place in the 1930s stated that if a certified person could live undetected in normal society for six weeks, they were automatically de-certified.
A Lunacy Law reformer called Marjorie Saunders had successfully sheltered one such escapee in her London house when she was approached by Louie Purdon, a pharmacist from Allen & Hanbury, to help her one-time customer and friend Vivienne Eliot. Mrs Saunders duly waited for Mrs Eliot at the appointed place in Oxford Street–in vain, for she was caught once more. From then on, Miss Purdon was not able to communicate with Mrs Eliot. Northumberland House did not pass on telephone messages and letters were returned.
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