The Last Woman Hanged in the UK

Ruth Ellis was an escort and nightclub hostess located in the United Kingdom. She was convicted of murdering her lover, David Blakely, and hanged on July 13, 1955. It was the last time a woman was hanged in the UK.

Ellis began working as a waitress in 1940 when she was only 14 years old. In 1944, she became pregnant with the child of a married Canadian soldier and gave birth to a son. The father sent money to help with the child for about a year, but when the money stopped, Ellis could not properly support her son and sent him to live with her mother.

Afterward, Ruth began working as a nightclub hostess in Hampstead, a job she had secured through contacts from nude modeling work she had performed. It was a scandalous way to make a living at the time, but it paid more than the factory and clerical jobs she had attempted since leaving school. The manager of the nightclub, the Court Club in Duke Street, coerced Ellis and the other young women who worked for him into having sex with him and introduced them to other men who were willing to pay for sex. These contacts put her into contact with a lot of men who afforded her a means of survival.

By 1950, Ruth was making her living as a full-time escort and became pregnant by one of her clients. She had an illegal abortion in her first trimester and went right back to work. That same year, on November 8, she married 41-year-old George Johnston Ellis, who had been a customer at the Court Club. The marriage was doomed from the start.

George was a volatile alcoholic with possessive and jealous tendencies. This led him to believe his new bride was having an affair. Ruth left the marriage several times but kept returning. When she later became pregnant and gave birth to their daughter, he refused to believe the child was his. They separated and later divorced. Ruth moved in with her parents and returned to sex work to support herself and her children.

In 1953, Ellis became the manager of the Little Club in Knightsbridge. As such, she had many would-be suitors and hobnobbed with celebrities, accepting the expensive gifts her new associations routinely gifted to her. It was here that she met David Blakely, who was three years younger, through a mutual friend. In a matter of only weeks, Blakely had moved into the flat Ellis had now secured for herself — despite his being engaged to someone else. Ellis became pregnant again and had another abortion, not confident that she felt as strongly about Blakely as he seemed to feel about her.

Ruth Ellis was an escort and nightclub hostess in the UK. She was convicted of murdering her lover, David Blakely, and hanged on July 13, 1955. It was the last time a woman was hanged in the UK.

Ellis had begun working as a waitress in 1940 when she was only 14 years old. In 1944, she became pregnant with the child of a married Canadian soldier and gave birth to a son. The father sent money to help with the child for about a year, but when the money stopped, Ellis could not properly support her son and sent him to live with her mother.

Afterward, Ruth began working as a nightclub hostess in Hampstead, a job she had secured through contacts from nude modeling work she had performed. It was a scandalous way to make a living at the time, but it paid more than the factory and clerical jobs she had attempted since leaving school. The manager of the nightclub, the Court Club in Duke Street, coerced Ellis and the other young women who worked for him into having sex with him and introduced them to other men who were willing to pay for sex. These contacts put her into contact with a lot of men who afforded her a means of survival.

By 1950, Ruth was making her living as a full-time escort and became pregnant by one of her clients. She had an illegal abortion in her first trimester and went right back to work. That same year, on November 8, she married 41-year-old George Johnston Ellis, who had been a customer at the Court Club. The marriage was doomed from the start.

George was a volatile alcoholic with possessive and jealous tendencies. This led him to believe his new bride was having an affair. Ruth left the marriage several times but kept returning. When she later became pregnant and gave birth to their daughter, he refused to believe the child was his. They separated and later divorced. Ruth moved in with her parents and returned to sex work to support herself and her children.

In 1953, Ellis became the manager of the Little Club in Knightsbridge. As such, she had many would-be suitors and hobnobbed with celebrities, accepting the expensive gifts her new associations routinely gifted to her. It was here that she met David Blakely, who was three years younger, through a mutual friend. In a matter of only weeks, Blakely had moved into the flat Ellis had now secured for herself — despite his being engaged to someone else. Ellis became pregnant again and had another abortion, not confident that she felt as strongly about Blakely as he seemed to feel about her.

Both Ellis and Blakely continued to see other people and she eventually moved in with former Royal Air Force pilot and accountant, Desmond Cussen. However, she continued to see Blakely despite their relationship becoming increasingly violent. There are numerous incidents in which they fought and she was physically harmed by him.

Nonetheless, he eventually asked her to marry him and she agreed. Not long after, in January 1955, she miscarried another pregnancy after they argued and he punched her in the stomach. Their relationship became increasingly more strained between them and he began avoiding Ellis.

On April 10, 1955, Ellis asked Cussen to drive her to a location where she thought Blakely might be staying with friends. She saw Blakely drive away just after she arrived, so she followed him to the Magdala, a relatively large public alehouse, and went inside to confront him, still accompanied by Cussen.

When Blakely exited the pub, she pulled out a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson Victory Model revolver from her purse and fired five shots at him. The first shot missed and he attempted to flee behind his car for cover. Ellis pursued him and fired a second shot. Blakely collapsed on the pavement. She then stood over him and fired three more bullets. At least one of the shots was made while she was leaning close enough to him that it left powder burns on his skin from the gun.

Ellis tried to fire a sixth time, but the gun was jammed. She eventually got the round to fire, but it hit the ground nearby and ricocheted off the road, hitting a bystander and costing them their left thumb. Ellis stood over him in a daze, asking for someone to call the police. When a nearby off-duty officer arrested her, she told him, “I am guilty. I’m a little confused.”

An autopsy showed that Blakely had suffered fatal gunshot wounds to the intestines, liver, lung, aorta, and trachea. The gun she used was taken into evidence and is now displayed in the Metropolitan Police’s Crime Museum.

Once at the police station, Ellis appeared relaxed. She was determined not to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol. She gave a detailed confession and was charged with murder. An examination by police psychologists found no evidence of insanity or other mental defects.

Ruth Ellis arrived in court on June 20, 1955, wearing a simple black suit and white silk blouse. Her hair was freshly bleached and perfectly coiffed. Her defense counsel expressed disdain about her appearance, but she refused to alter it to make herself look more sympathetic to the jury. When asked by the prosecution what she had intended to do when she fired the gun at Blakely, her reply showed no remorse:

“It’s obvious when I shot him I intended to kill him.”

Her trial lasted only two days and it took the jury a mere twenty minutes to convict her of the crime. She was given a death sentence without any testimony about the physical and mental abuse she had suffered at Blakely’s hands being considered as reasons for leniency in sentencing. Though her family petitioned for a reprieve from the death sentence, Ellis herself was opposed and took no part in the effort.

In a final letter to Blakely’s parents written while awaiting her execution, Ellis wrote, “I have always loved your son, and I shall die still loving him.”

Ellis was hanged just before 9 a.m. on July 13th by the well-known hangman, Albert Pierrepoint, in an execution room that sat adjacent to her cell. In the years afterward, Pierrepoint would remember her as a brave young woman who smiled at him when he came to take her to the gallows. Outside the prison, hundreds were gathered to protest her execution, but to no avail.

She was buried in an unmarked grave on the prison grounds of Holloway Prison. Her body was moved in the 1970s when the remains of executed women were removed and reburied elsewhere. Ellis was relocated to a cemetery at St. Mary’s Church in Amersham, Buckinghamshire.

At the time Ellis was hanged, the death penalty was already becoming less acceptable in a civilized society and many death penalties were being converted to life sentences or pardoned. It is likely that without her confession and seeming lack of remorse for her crime, some leniency might have been taken on Ellis. It is further believed that had the evidence of her abuse been considered, she would have been given more consideration in her verdict and sentencing.

Subsequent efforts before and after her execution to obtain a pardon were summarily dismissed. Instead, she bears the legacy of being the last woman hanged in the UK and a huge part of the public outcry that began to change the law to end executions. The death penalty was abolished ten years after her death.