It is 50 years since Ronald Ryan became the last person to be hanged in Victoria. Ryan was serving an 8-year sentence for breaking and entering and together with another inmate broke out of Coburg’s Pentridge prison. During the breakout a prison warder, George Hodgson, was killed. After Ryan was recaptured, he was tried and convicted of Hodgson’s murder and subsequently sentenced to death.

The Liberal government was facing re-election and decided to carry out the death sentence to show it was tough on law and order. The sentence galvanised the community and led to mass protests against Ryan’s sentence and the death penalty. There were strong doubts about the strength of the evidence against Ryan. Hodgson’s daughter called for the sentence to be commuted; seven of Ryan’s jurors signed a petition calling for the sentence to be commuted, and a young Barry Jones was spurred into political actions. Barry Dickins, who wrote a play in the nineties about the hanging and met many of the protagonists, now delivers a charged and highly personal reflection on the life and death of Ronald Ryan.

Mark Rubbo