Family of last woman hanged in UK in fight to have her pardoned 70 years on

The family of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in the UK, are seeking a posthumous pardon 70 years on in light of evidence that shows she was a victim of domestic abuse.

Ellis was 28 years old and the mother of two young children when she was sent to the gallows for the murder of her former partner David Blakely back in 1955.

She never disputed being the person who pulled the trigger when Blakely was shot on April 10 that year outside The Magdala Pub in Hampstead, North London.

But evidence of the sexual, emotional and physical abuse Ellis suffered was never considered during her trial, with jurors told to disregard the fact she had been ‘badly treated by her lover’.

Ellis’s grandchildren have now applied to justice secretary David Lammy seeking a conditional pardon.

Laura Enston, Ellis’s granddaughter, said: ‘Ruth’s execution has had a devastating impact on our family.

‘My mother and uncle suffered from trauma from which neither of them were able to recover, and as grandchildren we have felt these ripple effects.

‘The evidence shared with the justice secretary makes clear that the punishment did not fit the crime.’

Ruth Ellis’s life ‘deemed not worth saving’

Speaking to Metro, Laura said her grandmother’s execution ‘cast a long shadow over our family’.

Her mother Georgina died from cancer aged 50, while her uncle Andy ended his own life aged 37.

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‘My mum was three when Ruth was executed,’ Laura said. ‘My uncle was 10 years old, and neither of them had any sort of therapy or support.

‘Their mother’s life was deemed not worth saving.

‘I feel the clock was started on my mother’s life and my uncle’s life when that death sentence was handed out.’

For Laura, a pardon would not just set the record straight from a legal perspective, it would also shift public perception of Ellis away from the stereotypical jealous ‘cold-blooded killer’.

‘The shame and embarrassment that I grew up with, thinking she was this caricature essentially that she was portrayed to be, has disappeared,’ she said.

‘I now view Ruth as really quite remarkable

‘In the face of adversity, in postwar Britain, she had no education, but she managed to carve a career for herself, and she was being an active parent.

‘She achieved so much in those short years and tolerated so much. She is no longer somebody I am embarrassed by.

‘It’s sad because my mum really leaned in on that sordid caricature figure of Ruth and it defined her really.’

Who was Ruth Ellis?

Born Ruth Neilson in Rhyl, Wales, on October 9, 1926, Ellis was the fifth of six children to Bertha and Arthur Hornby.

Her upbringing was blighted by sexual abuse at the hands of her father, who also preyed on and impregnated Ruth’s elder sister Muriel.

The family moved to London in 1941 and within a few years Ellis had fallen pregnant with Andy at 17.

Her relationship with the father – a Canadian soldier – didn’t last and she found herself working a variety of jobs to support herself and Andy.

She moved on to become a nightclub hostess while earning extra money working as an escort.

Ellis married one of her clients, dentist George Ellis, in 1950. But it soon became clear he was an alcoholic prone to violence when drunk.

The relationship collapsed following the birth of her second child, Georgina, a year later and Ellis went back to working as an escort before getting a job at the prestigious Little Club in Knightsbridge.

‘The wheels started falling off when she met David Blakely’

After taking elocution and etiquette classes, she became one of the youngest women to be promoted to manager at the age of 27.

It was a job that brought money, celebrity friends and status, and the Little Club was where Ellis would eventually meet David Blakely.

‘She was doing incredibly well,’ Laura said.

‘The club was thriving. She was earning loads of money, she had a nice apartment above the club, she was looking after her children.

‘Ultimately, the wheels started falling off when David Blakely came into her life.’

Ellis shot Blakely dead outside The Magdala following a tumultuous relationship with infidelity on both sides and physical abuse by Blakely.

Under cross-examination, Ellis admitted that she intended to kill Blakely, and the jury took just 20 minutes to convict her of murder – a charge that carried a mandatory death sentence.

Ellis was ‘abused by every significant man in her life’

‘What we now know is Ruth was subject to long term domestic abuse – she had been abused by every significant man in her life,’ Laura said.

‘She had been sexually abused by her father, by her first husband, and then she was in a very toxic relationship with David Blakely – who she ended up shooting – to the point that she actually ended up miscarrying 10 days before the shooting.

‘There is plenty of evidence – there are medical records, there are accounts of her turning up at hospital in a wheelchair. There’s lots of evidence to prove the abuse.’

Laura added: ‘All of this stuff was never explored at the trial.

‘She was poorly represented, poorly advised, and ultimately what we now know is that she was on trial for so much more than murder – she was on trial for what she represented.

‘If you think about 1955, it’s postwar Britain, women were being thanked for all their work in the war effort and then being ushered back to the home to be good little housewives.

‘Ruth was the antithesis of this – how she looked, she was managing a nightclub in Knightsbridge in a real hotspot, she was a single parent with two children, and she had really come from nothing.’

Ellis was ‘so let down by the system – now we know why’

Laura and the family’s legal team at Mishcon de Reya are also presenting evidence of the social bias Ellis faced from the very start.

The initial police statement details information about Ellis’s parents, including where they lived and how much they earned, alongside those of Blakely’s upper-class background.

‘I knew misogyny and discrimination against women had played a big role in this trial, but I didn’t realise to what extent,’ Laura said.

‘It’s quite shocking – but also very telling of the time, this was 1955 – the newspaper coverage, the narrative around Ruth was very much “working-class woman traps upper class gentleman”.

‘He was no gentleman. He was sponging off her. She was doing incredibly well for herself and everything unravelled.

‘She ended up losing her job. She had no money. She ended up losing her children. My mother Georgina ended up being adopted during this time.

‘She lost so much, and she was really let down by everyone around her really.

‘The trial lasted just over a day, the jury took 15 minutes to reach their verdicts, and she was executed about three weeks after the judgement.

‘She was so let down by the system, but we now realise why.’

Unlike court appeals, pardons can consider broader factors, such as social developments, that may render a conviction or its resulting punishment inappropriate or unfair.

Laura said Ellis’s case ‘is a real example of women suffering and the impact of what people in domestic violence situations go through’.

A pardon is the government’s long overdue chance to ‘hold its hands up and admit the mistakes of the past’, she added.

Ruth’s case is ‘a blot on the consciousness of Britain’

Already a landmark for how Ellis was failed, the family believes the case can again be pivotal for more positive reasons, by raising key issues around domestic abuse and its psychological impact on survivors.

‘This story, we are still talking about it 70 years on,’ she said.

‘The reason for that is it has been a blot on the consciousness of Britain, and we won’t rest until Ruth’s story is changed formally.

‘These issues we’re discussing happened 70 years ago are hugely relevant to today.

‘If anything we do can help accelerate the support for women and girls in these situations, and Ruth’s experiences and what she went through, that would be fantastic for us to be able to do.

‘Out of something so tragic, for there to come positivity, that’s ultimately what we’re trying to achieve.’

Barrister Alex Bailin KC, who is representing Ellis’s family, added: ‘Thankfully, 70 years after Ruth was hanged, there is now a much better understanding of the impact of domestic abuse on the emotional wellbeing and behaviour of victims.

‘Based on the evidence we have reviewed, if Ruth’s case had taken place in modern times, she would have been able to plead a defence of diminished responsibility or loss of control.

‘A posthumous conditional pardon for Ruth Ellis would correct a historical wrong and send a clear message to the public that violence against women and girls is never acceptable.’

A documentary, Ruth Ellis: Y Cariad a’r Crogi (The Lover and the Hanging), is available on Welsh language channel S4C.