On this date in 1955, Great Britain hanged Ruth Ellis, who became the last woman executed in the United Kingdom. Ellis was convicted of murdering race-car driver David Blakely. Ellis and Blakely had an affair that sometimes became violent, including one time when Blakely hit Ellis in the stomach causing her to miscarriage. Ellis, a married night club hostess, was found guilty of shooting Blakely to death outside a pub in North London. She emptied the bullets in her revolver into his body and then asked someone to call the police. She immediately gave a full confession.
After the jury convicted the 28-year-old Ellis of intentional murder, she automatically received the death penalty. She was hanged at Holloway Prison. As in the modern United States, executions of women often seem to highlight for some the barbarity of the death penalty. In Ellis’s case, thousands of people protested the planned execution.
Although more men were hanged after Ellis, she was the last woman hanged in Great Britain. The last men were hanged in 1964, as England, Scotland, and Wales banned the death penalty for murder in 1965. In 1973, Northern Ireland banned capital punishment, and in 1998 Great Britain banned executions for all crimes, including treason.
I just learned there is a movie about the case, Dance With A Stranger (1985). It does not appear to be available on Netflix, but is available other places
The murder of Blakely and the hanging of Ellis led to other tragedies. According to a detailed Wikipedia article, Ellis’s husband, George Ellis, hanged himself a few years later. Ruth Ellis’s son by another man, who was 10 when his mother was hanged, suffered psychological problems after the execution and eventually killed himself in 1982. Ruth’s sister Muriel Jakubait has worked unsuccessfully to clear her sister’s name, although many have argued that Ellis suffered from battered spouse syndrome and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Albert Pierrepoint, the official hangman of Great Britain who hanged Ellis, wrote in 1974 “that executions solve nothing.” The United Kingdom eventually agreed, but it was too late for Ruth Ellis. More details on the case are available on the TruTV website.
Have you seen Dance with a Stranger? Leave a comment.
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