Evelyn Galilee has chosen to make Shilbottle her home for her final years. But after a lifetime on the move, she has never been able to shake the ghost of the last woman to be hanged in Britain.

She offers her experiences to the book Ruth Ellis, My Sister's Secret Life.

Evelyn Wright was born in Durham City. She was an only child and when she was 11 she went to live with her grandmother and attended a girls' school in Surrey.

She returned home to Durham at 16 and to her parents' dismay had no idea what she wanted to do with her life.

Her parents were friends with Manny Shinwell, an MP at the time, and he offered to help Evelyn find a job.

She ended up as a driver for the Durham Ward Agricultural Committee. She was one of five drivers hired to work at a prisoner of war camp for Italians and Germans just outside Durham.

Because of the number of English men at war, prisoners were put to work in their place. Evelyn was responsible for driving prisoners to help on local farms.

At one particular farm, there was a tall, skinny man who always happened to have his sheep on the road whenever Evelyn wanted to leave the property. Each time she passed through in her Ford van he would wave.

Evelyn said she would smile her 'lovely smile' and drive on. This man was Thomas Galilee and he and Evelyn were eventually married.

After three years of marriage, tragedy struck. Evelyn and Thomas were ploughing a paddock on the farm. They were riding the tractor together when the back plough got stuck. When Thomas tried to move the tractor it suddenly came free, jolted forward and fell down a steep bank on the edge of the field. Thomas pushed Evelyn off the tractor, which saved her life, but he was killed.

She spent ten days unconscious in hospital. She had broken bones and cuts in her face, where she must have hit a tree, the lower bone in her right leg was smashed and she also dislocated her shoulder.

When she left the hospital, Evelyn returned home to her parents and was in a deep depression.

"I wasn't on this planet. I couldn't talk. I could walk, but not very well. I remember sitting like a zombie trying to understand."

Evelyn never married again and did not have any children.

"I never found anyone to compare to him."

It was shortly after this she took her job at London's Holloway Prison.

"If this hadn't happened there's no way I would have taken a job in Holloway. My parents didn't want me to do it. It was not me."

She became a prison officer at Holloway on November 5, 1951 and said the initial introduction to the building was a shock.

"It was like a spiderweb. I thought 'I don't belong here', and I didn't. I never did.