Ruth Ellis, the last woman executed in Britain, has been posthumously granted conditional pardon, according to Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy. Ellis, a 28-year-old single mother, was hanged in 1955 for killing her abusive lover, David Blakely.
LONDON (AP) — The last woman to be executed in Britain, for gunning down her abusive lover outside a London pub more than 70 years ago, has been posthumously granted a conditional pardon, Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy said Wednesday.
Ruth Ellis, a 28-year-old single mother and nightclub hostess, was hanged on July 13, 1955, for the murder of race-car driver David Blakely. She shot him outside the Magdala pub in the Hampstead neighborhood on April 10, 1955.
“While the pardon does not claim she was innocent of killing David Blakely, it replaces the death penalty with a sentence of life imprisonment to recognize a profound injustice in this exceptional case,” Lammy said.
A sensational case that caused an outcry
The killing and trial caused a sensation, and became a cause celebre after she was sentenced to die. When she went to the gallows, 1,000 people held a silent vigil outside Holloway Prison in north London.
Her case is believed to have changed British law. At trial, she was not allowed to argue that she acted because of the emotional impact of abuse. Two years after the hanging, Parliament passed a law allowing a diminished responsibility defense.
The pardon was sought by her grandchildren, who have long fought to reduce her conviction because the repeated sexual, emotional and physical abuse Ellis endured was not considered during the trial or afterward, when she could have been granted a reprieve from the death penalty.
“Justice has finally been done,” Laura Enston, a granddaughter, said in a statement. “This pardon does not undo what happened 71 years ago. It does not restore the lives that were broken — the children left behind, the years lost. But it says, formally and finally, that Ruth should not have been executed; that the justice system failed her. That acknowledgment matters profoundly to our family.”
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