Ruth Ellis
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- For the lesbian activist, see Ruth Ellis (American).
Ruth Ellis (October 9, 1926 – July 13, 1955) was a British murderer who was the last woman to be executed in the UK. She was convicted of the murder of her lover, David Blakely, and hanged at London's Holloway Prison.
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[edit] Biography
Ruth Hornby was born in the Welsh seaside town of Rhyl; her mother, Bertha, was a Belgian refugee, and her father a cellist from Manchester who spent much of his time playing on Atlantic cruise liners. His stage name was Arthur Neilson, but the original family name was Hornby. One of five children, she was raised as a Catholic. Ruth left school at fourteen to work as a waitress. In 1941, at the height of the Blitz, the Neilsons moved to London.
At 17, she became pregnant by a married Canadian soldier, and gave birth to a son, Clare Andrea ("Andy"), in 1944. The father visited and paid support for the child until he returned to Canada. Via low-level modelling work, she became a nightclub hostess, which paid significantly more than the various factory and clerical jobs she had worked since leaving school.
In 1950, looking for some security, she married 41 year old George Ellis, a divorced dentist with two sons, who had been a customer. Unfortunately, George was an alcoholic who became violent when drunk, and Ruth was jealous and possessive, convinced he was having an affair. The marriage deteriorated rapidly. When Ruth gave birth to Georgina in 1951, George refused to acknowledge paternity, and they separated shortly afterwards. She moved in with her parents, and went back to hostessing to make ends meet.
[edit] David Blakely
In 1953, she became manager of a nightclub, and met David Blakely, three years her junior. He was a well-mannered former public school boy, but also a hard drinking racing driver with expensive tastes. Within weeks he moved into her flat above the club, despite being engaged to another girl at the time. She eventually accepted Blakely's proposal of marriage, although Ruth was still married to George Ellis. Blakely became progressively more jealous of her attentions to male customers, and spent more and more time in the club to keep his eye on her. Her earnings fell as a result, and his inheritance was blown on a playboy lifestyle and development of a racing car. Rows about money, fuelled by alcohol, became violent - from both sides. He also maintained another mistress, and each was extremely jealous of the other's affairs and activities. Ruth also had another older lover, Desmond Cussen, who hated Blakely.
On Easter Sunday, April 10, 1955, Ruth Ellis shot David Blakely outside The Magdala (a public house) in Hampstead. A passer-by also sustained a slight wound. She made no attempt to leave the scene, asking a witness to call the police. The jury at the trial took just fourteen minutes to convict her of the murder of David Blakely. The circumstances of her obtaining the gun were never fully explored at trial. Reluctantly, the day before her death Ellis made a statement that the gun had been provided by Cussen, and he had actually driven her to the murder scene. The authorities made no effort to follow this up, and the last woman to hang in England went to the gallows at Holloway Prison on July 13, 1955, aged 28.
The case caused widespread controversy at the time: on the day of her execution the Daily Mirror columnist Cassandra wrote a famous column attacking the sentence, writing "The one thing that brings stature and dignity to mankind and raises us above the beasts will have been denied her - pity and the hope of ultimate redemption." A petition to the Home Office asking for clemency was signed by 50,000 people, but the Conservative Home Secretary Major Gwilym Lloyd George rejected the appeal for mercy.
[edit] Legacy of The Ellis Case
The hanging of Ruth Ellis strengthened public support for the abolition of the death penalty, which was halted in practice for murder in Britain ten years later. Reprieve was by now commonplace. It was becoming clear to many that capital punishment was arbitrary - political, rather than judicial considerations determined which of the condemned would pay the supreme penalty.
Factors which counted against Ruth Ellis included her appearance, her lifestyle, her supposed lack of remorse, the fact that a passer-by was slightly wounded, and the sensational aspects of the case. Unfortunately, the murder and Ruth's arraignment also occurred during the 1955 General Election campaign, which was won by the Conservatives on a strongly pro death-penalty platform. It may be that the publicity and furor surrounding the case was counter-productive to Ruth Ellis' cause, and the newly-elected Home Secretary could not be seen to bow to a section of public opinion in exercising the Royal Prerogative of mercy.
The execution brought world-wide condemnation. The concept of the crime passionnel seems foreign to the British, foreign newspapers observed. One French reporter wrote: "Passion in England, except for cricket and betting, is always regarded as a shameful disease."
The tragedy of David Blakely and Ruth Ellis was not confined to them. Within weeks of her execution, Ruth's 18-year old sister died suddenly, allegedly of a broken heart. Ruth's husband, George Ellis, descended into alcoholism and hanged himself in 1958.
Her son, Andy,suffered irreparable psychological damage and committed suicide in a squalid bedsit in 1982. It is said that the trial judge, Sir Cecil Havers, had sent money every year for Andy's upkeep. Christmas Humphreys, the prosecution counsel at Ruth's trial, paid for his funeral.
The case continues to have a strong hold on the British imagination, reinforced by the dramatic portrayal in Dance with a Stranger, and the case was referred back to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission. The Court firmly rejected the appeal, although it made clear that it ruled only on the conviction based on the law as it stood in 1955, not on whether she should have been executed.
[edit] Burial And Reburial
The body of Ruth Ellis was buried in an unmarked grave within the walls of Holloway Prison, as was customary. In the early 1970s the prison underwent an extensive programme of rebuilding. During this process all the bodies of executed women were exhumed from the prison cemetery in Holloway. Most remains were reburied in Brookwood Cemetery, with the exception of Ruth Ellis who was reburied in Saint Mary Churchyard in Amersham, Buckinghamshire. The headstone in the churchyard is inscribed Ruth Hornby.
[edit] In Film
Her story was told in the 1985 film Dance with a Stranger (director Mike Newell), featuring Miranda Richardson as Ellis.
In the film Pierrepoint (2006), Ellis was portrayed by Mary Stockley.
[edit] Yield to the Night
The 1956 film Yield to the Night, starring Diana Dors as a doomed murderess bears a close resemblance to the Ellis case - however, the work is in fact based on a 1954 book of that name by Joan Henry.
[edit] Quotation
- It is obvious that when I shot him, I intended to kill him. – Ruth Ellis, on the stand at the Old Bailey, 20 June 1955 (this was in answer to the only question put to her by Christmas Humphreys for the Prosecution 'When you fired the gun, did you mean to kill?')
