IN 21st century Britain, David Blakely could have been locked up for domestic violence and coercive control.
Not only did the playboy racing car driver allegedly manipulate his partner Ruth Ellis, he punched her so hard in the stomach she suffered a miscarriage.
But she found herself on trial for his slaying in 1955, having shot him dead and admitted, “I intended to kill him.”
Back then the death penalty was mandatory for murder and so Ellis, a mother-of-two, became the last woman in Britain to be hanged aged just 28.
But many others believe the nightclub hostess deserves a pardon, arguing she was driven to do it by the abusive Blakely.
It was a wild and tempestuous relationship that is now being examined in a new ITV drama called A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story, starring Lucy Boynton.
Today, other extenuating circumstances would be considered by a judge.
Ellis was a victim of childhood sexual abuse and was beaten by her first husband George.
There’s enough substance and weight here for Ruth’s case to be taken back to the courts
Stephen Beard
The mother’s death left a terrible legacy.
Her former husband George Ellis hung himself in 1958, her son Andy took his own life in 1982 and her mother Bertha tried to kill herself.
Many hope Ellis will be given a pardon 70 years on from the crime.
Her grandson, former Hollyoaks actor Stephen Beard, 36, said: “There was such a severe miscarriage of justice, which will be explained through the series, that I wonder whether there is a KC who believes there’s enough substance and weight here for Ruth’s case to be taken back to the courts.
“If handled professionally and mercifully, the conclusion would have been that this was a case of both battered woman syndrome and diminished responsibility.”
Abusive beginnings
Born Ruth Neilson in the Welsh seaside town Rhyl, she grew up in Basingstoke, Hants with her five siblings, musician father Arthur and refugee mum Bertha.
It was a fearful household where the cruel Arthur battered his wife and sexually abused two of his daughters.
He got Ruth’s elder sister Muriel pregnant when she was aged just 14 and targeted Ruth from the age of 11.
Muriel said “When she came home of an evening my father would send me to the shop and do things to Ruth.”
Having moved to London after leaving school, Ellis fell for a married Canadian soldier called Clare Andrea McCallum.
The relationship resulted in a pregnancy, but because she was aged just 17 it was decided that her mum would look after her son Andy.
When she came home of an evening my father would send me to the shop and do things to Ruth
Muriel Jakubait
To make ends meet Ellis became a nude model and a hostess at the private members Court Club in Soho central London where she met her first husband.
Divorced George Ellis was one of her clients who paid to have sex with Ruth. At 41, he was 17 years older than Ruth.
He was also a violent and jealous alcoholic who banged her head against the wall.
Having married in November 1950, it was over the following year when he refused to accept paternity for the daughter Georgina they’d had together.
Now working as a manager of a nightclub in upmarket Knightsbridge, Ruth struggled to care for her daughter.
In a cruel twist, Georgina was taken by George to Warrington, where she was handed over to a wealthy couple who became her parents.
Love triangle
The most fateful moment in Ellis’ short life, though, was when she met handsome public schoolboy Blakely in September 1953.
She was obsessed by the 26-year-old wannabe racing driver, in his immaculate suits.
But Blakely was not a one-woman man and slept around, which led to blistering rows.
At the same time wealthy accountant Desmond Cussen came into her life, who wanted to make Ellis his wife.
This love triangle was to be resolved with a loaded gun.
The question is who really initiated the idea of taking Blakely out of the romantic equation by killing him.
Ellis, who had already aborted one pregnancy with Blakely, was punched in the stomach by him when she was with his child for a second time.
The end of the Death Penalty
The death penalty was abolished in the United Kingdom in 1965 for murder and in 1998 for treason and piracy with violence.
- 1955: Ruth Ellis was hanged at Holloway prison, becoming the last woman executed in the UK.
- 1964: Peter Allen and Gwynne Evans were the last people to be hanged in Britain.
- 1965: The Murder (Abolition of the Death Penalty) Act suspended the death penalty for five years, and made it permanent in 1969.
- 1998: The death penalty was abolished for treason and piracy with violence.
- 2003: The UK ratified the 13th Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights.
That resulted in a miscarriage in January 1955.
Her daughter Georgina has previously argued: “She was not in her right mind the night Blakely died.
“She’d suffered a miscarriage, was taking sedatives and she’d had a lifetime of men being cruel to her.”
It was allegedly Cussen who got the .38 Smith & Wesson pistol and brought it to Ellis for his own selfish ends.
John Bickford, a friend of the jealous accountant, said: “Cussen had driven her to Hampstead, provided the gun, and had goaded her into shooting Blakely to remove a love rival from the scene.”
Tragically, he didn’t impart that information to the police until two decades after Ellis had been executed.
With a gun in her hand and having drunk Pernod for much of the day, Ellis waited for Blakely to emerge from the The Magdala pub in Hampstead, North London, on April 10 1955.
When Blakely came out, her first shot missed and he ran. But the second bullet found its target as did three more as he lay defenceless on the ground.
Murder trial
Ellis waited to be arrested, telling the first officer on the scene “I am guilty, I’m a little confused.”
Back then it was an open and shut case.
At her trial she told the jury: “It’s obvious when I shot him I intended to kill him” and psychiatrists found no evidence of mental illness.
It took the jury less than 20 minutes to come back with a guilty verdict and back then murder always resulted in the death penalty.
The judge who passed the sentence was Sir Cecil Havers, who is the grandfather of actor Nigel Havers.
Nigel, who plays Sir Cecil in the new ITV show, says: “I know it upset my grandfather enormously.
“He wrote a letter to the home secretary expressing she did not deserve to be hanged. Simple as that.”
But there was to be no clemency, despite a public outcry.
On July 13 1995 hangman Albert Pierrepoint executed Ellis at Holloway prison in London.
She was the last woman in Britain to suffer such a fate and ten years later capital punishment was abolished.
