She loved him — it’s really as simple as that. The murky details of our past are undeniably fascinating, but we should not spare ourselves an interrogation of our own motives in dwelling on such dark matter. Juridically, however, it was resolved in the blink of an eye when a crown’s attorney cross-examined the murderess: Christmas Humphreys: Mrs. Ellis, when you fired that revolver at close range into the body of David Blakely what did you intend to do? 1960: Manfred Smolka, East German border guard 1584: Balthasar Gerard, assassin of William the Silent. Ruth Ellis' family campaigned for her murder conviction to be … The last woman hanged in Ireland and the second of the 20th century was 31-year-old Annie Walshe from Co Limerick. She was working as a hostess when she met David Blakely. Most exections are referenced but not all have a full description. Due to the sheer scale of this comment community, we are not able to give each post the same level of attention, but we have preserved this area in the interests of open debate.

You have this quote from Ruth about David Blakely: ‘I thought the world of him; I put him on the highest of pedestals. In fact, it was quite the opposite — the men were hysterical and it was Ruth who usually vented a sort of quiet fury. The trial and punishment of Ruth Ellis became notorious as she was the last woman in England to be executed. Hostessing in the clubs in which Ruth worked was quite straightforward — or it should have been, but there was Morris Conley to contend with, and he was quite a character. Reading the original police statement about that night reveals a very different story; she was described as very calm and rational. Or are they living instruments of pure human evil, as the red-tops would have us believe? Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Ex-crime reporter shares tape of Ruth Ellis recorded before murder. Thousands of people have signed petitions asking for the death penalty to be lifted in this case, including 35 members of London County Council who delivered their plea to the House of Commons last night. Ruth’s basic job description was to look good and to chat to customers (mostly men) in the clubs, laugh at their jokes and keep them buying food and drink for as long as possible. The British obsession with this stuff was superbly sent up by Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton in the criminally-underrated Psychoville (2009-11), in the persons of Maureen and David Sowerbutts – a mother-son serial killing team from Wood Green who had an almost academic preoccupation with Britain’s grisliest slayings. On this date in 1955, Albert Pierrepoint escorted the alluringly tragic Ruth Ellis to the gallows at Holloway Prison — the last woman ever hanged in Great Britain. What became of Ruth Ellis’s body after her hanging?

And a couple of years ago there was quite an intense debate about bringing back capital punishment; Ruth’s name was always mentioned in relation to that particular argument, and I really felt it was time to explore her whole story. (Another missed entirely and winged a passerby.). Murder victim … That said, I’m very interested in the barrister’s attempt to frame its insanity defense around feminine hysteria — “the effect of jealousy upon a female mind can so work as to unseat the reason and can operate to a degree in which a male mind is quite incapable of operating.” This was bound to be undermined by Ruth’s own calm and the statements about her intent to kill that she gave to police and in court. Abusive, yes, heavy smoker, yes, alcoholic, no. The fact that Ruth was a young, attractive, lively woman with two small children caused many people to question the validity of capital punishment. our one-of-a-kind custom playing card deck, 1960: Manfred Smolka, East German border guard, 1584: Balthasar Gerard, assassin of William the Silent, 1955: Ruth Ellis, the last woman hanged in England, 1894: Patrick Prendergast, mayor-murderer. She had suffered a miscarriage just 10 days before the killing after David Blakely had punched her in the stomach. Ruth’s daughter, Georgina, had quite a colourful life, becoming a successful model who was in the newspapers fairly often as part of the George Best ‘set.’ She married and had children and worked hard to win a posthumous pardon for her mother, of whom she spoke often. Some people broke through police cordons to bang on the jail's doors, calling for Ellis to pray with them, but by 2330 BST the crowd had dispersed. That said, I think they served her quite badly and didn’t bring out so much that might have enabled the jury to see her crime in context.

1955: Ruth Ellis, the last woman hanged in England. Also check out two long pieces Lee wrote about Ruth Ellis for the Daily Mail: 1, 2).

Please be respectful when making a comment and adhere to our Community Guidelines. Most hostesses were in their late teens and early twenties, working-class girls who thought the lifestyle was more glamorous than toiling in a factory or in a shop. The girls who worked for Morris Conley, like Ruth, were expected to sleep with the clients if that was asked of them, and often had to sleep with ‘Morrie’ and his less than respectable friends too. Ruth worked hard to better herself but she didn’t use the men she loved to do so.

Richardson brilliantly captured Ellis’s brassy vitality and almost masochistic devotion to Blakely (a dashing Rupert Everett), a playboy who took everything for granted while she fought for every scrap. Too bad. Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Arts and Literature,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,England,Execution,Hanged,History,Interviews,Milestones,Murder,Other Voices,Popular Culture,Sex,Women, Tags: 1950s, 1955, albert pierrepoint, carol ann lee, david blakely, holloway prison, july 13, london, love, ruth ellis.

Yes, they did, but very rarely. Why are we shocked when women commit violent crimes? And when it came to her trial, the class values of the time were heavy in the courtroom with the male barristers and judge and so on all very much men of the upper classes — and who viewed her accordingly. Is it that the nearness of their crimes renders the horror more palpable?

She was found guilty of murder at the Old Bailey, jailed at HM Prison Holloway and swiftly put to death on 13 July. Steve said: “She was hanged in 1926 during the great strike and there were hardly any newspapers printed so her trial and execution, unlike most other women hanged in … Perhaps he hoped that with David out of the way, she would be reprieved and they could then have a life together. It was her death on the scaffold that gave the abolition movement its emotional spur.

She did not appeal against her conviction. In 1971, when the prison was demolished and rebuilt, her body was released to her son for burial.

I’m going to phrase this inelegantly: what is the DEAL with Desmond Cussen? What would a hostess do, who worked in this trade, and who were the clientele? But Ruth herself did not seem to care much what happened in the courtroom, once it became evident that the story as she saw it — David’s friends having, in her view, deliberately destroyed the relationship between them — was not going to come to light. Please continue to respect all commenters and create constructive debates. The case was a tragic one, Ellis having endured a hard life and several miscarriages at the hands of the cruel and hypocritical men she encountered among London’s nightlife. I think he did love Ruth, and he tried hard to make things work with her, but he knew her heart was with David.
More famously, Miranda Richardson portrayed Ruth Ellis in Mike Newell’s moving Dance with a Stranger (1985). The jury, which never heard that Blakely regularly beat his killer (including once to induce a miscarriage), needed 14 minutes to convict her. Or could an abler barrister have presented a different story? Her trial opened on 20 June and the jury took just 14 minutes to find her guilty of murder. I think other adaptations have also done her a disservice.

Home Welcome to British Executions. But why are we so drawn to the true crimes of yesteryear? The former hostess had tracked her inconstant and abusive lover David Blakely to a Hampstead pub a few months before — getting the ride, and the murder weapon, from her unrequited hanger-on Desmond Cussen — and shot Blakely dead on the street.

It was also Pierrepoint who executed Ellis, of course, and she appears in that film played by Mary Stockley. He had hoped to lay his mother to rest alongside David Blakely at the Holy Trinity churchyard in Penn but the vicar there would not allow it. You can find our Community Guidelines in full here.

Her circumstances were such that the question of diminished responsibility was raised in her defence, and the Ellis case did much to advance the abolition of the death penalty in Britain, which finally came to pass in 1965. Our journalists will try to respond by joining the threads when they can to create a true meeting of independent Premium. The case has increased debate about British criminal justice and the death penalty. I think any case is always immeasurably more complex than it is presented in newspaper columns and headlines. Why wasn’t she more cynical about Blakely? I think her name is still quite familiar, to be honest. Ruth was buried in the confines of Holloway Prison after her execution, sharing her unmarked grave with four other women who had been hanged there. She also infamously replied to the prosecution’s question of what she intended to do when she set out to find David with the gun, “It is obvious when I shot him I intended to kill him.” That one line completely sealed her fate. Today her image is frozen in time, rendered iconic with the passing of the years – a sometimes troubling business, as in the case of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley.

Murderers Gwynne Evans and Peter Allen, who killed a friend for money, were the last criminals to be executed in the UK 50 years ago, but historians say …

Ruth’s legal defence was legendarily feeble. And what became of her family and the others who were part of the story? She died of cancer at the age of only 50. Class and politics played a huge role in Ruth’s life generally. The 1985 biopic Dance with a Stranger left a big impression too, even though it wasn’t entirely faithful to Ruth’s character, making her seem much more hysterical a personality than she actually was, although I thought Miranda Richardson was brilliant in the role — as she always is!
They argued Ellis was suffering "battered woman syndrome". That couldn’t have been further from the truth; if she was only interested in using men to better herself socially, she would surely have married her sometime-lover Desmond Cussen, who was a much steadier prospect with money and property and who wanted very much to marry her. Ellis’s case certainly exposed the double-standards of the time – the tabloid press betraying an unseemly prurience in its reporting on the world of twilight vice she lived in.


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