Little more than a year since ITVX’s acclaimed drama series A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story, her descendants have finally recovered a shred of justice from her infamous case.
Ellis was convicted of murdering her lover, David Blakely, in 1955, with the judge on the case handing down a death sentence, making her the last woman to be hanged in the UK.
The decision has proven highly controversial in the decades since, with the full extent of Ellis’s abuse at Blakely’s hand not being revealed to the jury on the case.
Their romance was filled with threat, manipulation and physical violence, which caused Ellis to suffer a miscarriage in one especially traumatic instance.
The defence of ‘diminished responsibility’, which could have been argued in this case due to the troubling context, was not introduced into British law until two years later.
Ellis’s hanging had a devastating impact on her own children – her son, aged 10 at the time, took his own life decades later – making the story even more harrowing.
In light of the complexities of the case that were overlooked in the original trial, the King has accepted advice from the UK Government to offer a conditional pardon.
The pardon is conditional in that it does not exonerate her, but accepts that she should not have been executed – instead, correcting the sentence to life imprisonment.
Ellis’s grandchildren, who have long-campaigned for such an outcome, said in a statement (via BBC News): “The shadow of Ruth’s execution has fallen across two generations. We have carried shame that was never ours to bear.
“We hope Ruth’s story serves as a lasting reminder that the justice system must reckon with the abuse that drives women to the edge – and must never be afraid to acknowledge when it has got things wrong.”
Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy, who revealed the conditional pardon in the House of Commons today, explained that it recognises “a profound injustice in this exceptional case”.
He added: “We hope this brings a measure of peace to Ruth Ellis’ family, who have carried the weight of what happened to her for over 70 years.”
Lucy Boynton (Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?) portrayed Ellis in ITVX’s heartbreaking dramatisation of her final years, with Laurie Davidson (The Girlfriend) co-starring as her boyfriend, abuser and victim Blakely.
Based on Carol Ann Lee’s book about the case, titled A Fine Day for a Hanging, the series follows Ellis’s her complicated relationship and its grisly end, while posing the question of whether she deserved capital punishment. It seems that now we have our answer.
These are the tragic real-life events that inspired A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story.
What happened to the real Ruth Ellis? True story behind ITV drama
Ruth Ellis was the last woman to be hanged in the United Kingdom, and her case, some argue, helped pave the way towards the eventual abolishment of capital punishment for murder.
A working-class woman, Ruth survived a traumatic childhood blighted by the sexual abuse towards herself and her older sister by their father, who she was ultimately able to break away from after entering the world of work.
Ruth took several jobs in her life but, by the time of her fateful meeting with David Blakely, had found financial independence as a nightclub hostess and escort.
Although women were encouraged to return to domestic life in the years following the Second World War, Ruth appeared to have been a careerist and focused on supporting her two children, who she raised as a single mother.
Her life changed drastically when she met David, an upper-class race car driver, at the club in which she worked, with the two embarking on a troubled romance that spanned an extended period.
The relationship was physically abusive, with David attacking Ruth on numerous occasions, including causing a miscarriage on one occasion after punching her in the stomach.
The abuse was also psychological, characterised by coercive control and “love bombing”; a term which describes excessive affection being used to isolate an individual, while devaluing their self-esteem and creating trust or dependency issues.
Adding to the toxicity, there was an obvious power imbalance in their relationship stemming from their contrasting social backgrounds, with David seemingly not considering Ruth to be a viable long-term partner.
Gillian Pachter, director of BBC Four documentary The Ruth Ellis Files, explained (via HistoryExtra): “I think what’s tragic about Ruth is, because she mixed with these men of upper classes, she felt that maybe that world was open to her; that she was really their friend and thought that maybe she would actually marry David.
“The reality is that they were only mixing with her in hours of darkness,” she continued. “David never introduced her to his mother, he never proposed to Ruth, he was engaged to other, more appropriate girls. And so, she was a woman who people were embarrassed about.”
While she was seeing David, Ruth also came to be involved with another more privileged man named Desmond Cussen (portrayed by Mark Stanley); a former RAF pilot, who also frequented the bar she managed.
When the case has been examined retrospectively, some commentators have argued that Desmond should have been investigated more thoroughly by authorities in the wake of David’s murder.
As a lover to Ruth (and love rival to David), he played an influential role in her life, with concern being expressed that he may have encouraged her to carry out the shooting.
Indeed, on the day before her execution, Ruth told solicitor Victor Mishcon that Desmond had given her the gun used in the crime and even driven her to the scene on the night it took place (via The Guardian).
Desmond always denied that he had given her the gun, never faced any criminal charges – and has since passed away.
Nevertheless, in 1999, Ruth’s sister Muriel criticised the Home Office for not, at the very least, giving her a stay of execution until the last-minute bombshell claim could be properly scrutinised.
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The killing of David Blakely took place outside a pub in Hampstead, London, called The Magdala, where Ruth fired six bullets towards her abusive lover – four of which hit him, with fatal consequences.
Ruth proceeded to immediately confess to the crime and hand over the gun to an off-duty policeman, with her subsequent trial having little-to-no substantial case for the defence.
There are multiple reasons for this. For starters, Ruth’s immediate confession did not help her case, and her withholding the accusation against Desmond until after the trial did not either.
In conversations with her solicitor, John Bickford (portrayed by Toby Jones), she claimed to have acquired the gun used in the murder from a US serviceman years earlier, rather than from the other man in her life.
Also not helping matters was the ruling that David’s abuse of Ruth would not be discussed during the trial, as it was deemed a private and unrelated matter that would not be proper to discuss publicly.
Nevertheless, it is true that John sympathised greatly with Ruth and desperately hoped that she would avoid facing the death penalty, if only so her full life story could be conveyed effectively.
Discussing the hard-working solicitor, A Cruel Love screenwriter Kelly Jones told press: “He had an interesting story because he had worked in Austria after the war and had seen horrible, traumatic things, and came to this [case] with a real knowledge of what abuse and trauma does to somebody – and recognised that in Ruth.”
The strongest defence of Ruth came from outside the courtroom, with newspapers covering the harrowing details of her life, prompting concerned citizens to write to their MPs about the case and call for her not to face capital punishment.
A petition requesting a pardon was also signed by approximately 50,000 people and submitted to the government for consideration.
Their pleas were ignored and, if anything, Ruth’s fate was expedited; not only did the jury find her guilty in a mere 14 minutes, but she was executed within 22 days of the verdict being delivered.
Besides the late amendment to her story, this was also unusual as other women sentenced to death in this time period had ultimately been given reprieves, leading contemporary analysts to question whether the hanging was political.
Pachter continued: “One of the things that I’ve concluded is that she was just the wrong kind of woman. This was a time when women were supposed to go back into their houses, get married, make babies.
“All of these women who’d had freedom during the war because they’d been working, the forces of society were saying [to them], ‘let’s get back to the old ways’.”
She added: “That wasn’t for Ruth – she stood for everything but that. She was a single mother, she was working, she was sexually active, she was glamorous; she couldn’t be farther from the domestic goddess-type figure.
“So to have reprieved her, maybe that would have been seen as an endorsement of the wrong kind of woman.”
A Cruel Love star Lucy Boynton concurred, telling RadioTimes.com and other press: “They did not want [Ruth] to be the kind of poster woman of possibility, and so she was used as a kind of political chess piece. So I think it’s really important to acknowledge the full landscape.
“And that’s why I’m so grateful to this series, because I think it’s the first time that we do really examine with a contemporary lens what led to this being allowed to happen in broad daylight, when even in 1954 it was a tremendous miscarriage of justice.”
Where was Ruth Ellis hanged?
Ruth Ellis was hanged on 13th July 1955 at Holloway Prison. As depicted in the show, she declined a sedative intended to relax her prior to the execution taking place.
“It says so much about Ruth’s character, I think, that she wanted to be clear-eyed about what she was going through, and she kind of just had incredible bravery,” said A Cruel Love screenwriter Kelly Jones.
“Actually, Albert Pierrepoint said that she was the bravest person he’d ever executed, which is quite an incredible thing in quite a long and storied career of hanging people.”
Where was Ruth Ellis buried?
Ellis was initially buried in an unmarked grave in Holloway Prison Cemetery.
However, in 1971, her remains were exhumed and reburied in a marked plot in St Mary’s Churchyard in Amersham, Buckinghamshire.
What was the impact of the Ruth Ellis case?
The execution of Ruth Ellis proved so controversial among the general public that it was subsequently used to bolster arguments in favour of abolishing the death penalty for murder in Britain.
That’s precisely what ended up happening in 1969, with the final hanging actually taking place five years earlier.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t change that multiple members of the Ellis family were subject to tragic fates.
Ruth’s ex-husband George took his own life three years after her death, while her son, Andy (who was 10 years old at the time of the execution), did the same more than a quarter-century later, at the age of around 38.
Her daughter, Georgina, went into foster care after both of her parents died and lived to the age of 50, when she passed away from a form of cancer in 2001.
What happened to John Bickford?
John Bickford died from health complications caused by alcoholism.
The execution of Ruth Ellis haunted him for his remaining days, with the solicitor claiming shortly before his death that he had withheld evidence of Desmond Cussen’s involvement prior to the trial (via The Guardian).
What happened to Desmond Cussen?
Desmond Cussen moved to Australia after the execution of Ruth Ellis, where he died in his 60s.
He always denied any involvement in a plot to kill David Blakely.
A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story is available to stream on ITVX.
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