Ruth Ellis

Ellis was born Ruth Neilson on 9 October 1926 in Rhyl, Denbighshire, Wales, the fifth of six children. During her childhood, she moved with her family to Basingstoke, Hampshire. Her mother, Elisaberta (Bertha) Goethals, was a Belgian war refugee, and her father, Arthur Hornby, was a cellist from Manchester who played on Atlantic liners.^[1][2][3] The Register of Marriages records Arthur marrying Bertha at Chorlton-cum-Hardy in 1920. Arthur later changed his surname to Neilson.

Arthur's twin brother, Charles, was killed in 1928, when Ellis was two years old. Arthur began to be physically and sexually abusive to his elder daughter, Muriel. Although Bertha was aware of the abuse, she took no action. Muriel later stated that this was because Arthur treated her mother so badly that Bertha was afraid to speak out.^[4] As a result of the abuse, 14-year-old Muriel conceived a child by her father.^[5] Arthur was questioned by the police but released.^[5] Bertha then passed as the child's mother.^[5] Arthur began targeting Ellis when she turned 11. Muriel often tried to protect her, sending Ellis out of the house when she sensed trouble. The sisters never openly discussed their father's abuse.^[4][6][7]

Ellis briefly attended Fairfields Senior Girls' School in Basingstoke until 1940, after which she attended Worting village school^[5] before leaving education at the age of 14.^[8] Her first job was as an usherette at a cinema in Reading. Arthur moved to London shortly afterwards, taking a live-in post as caretaker-chauffeur for Porn & Dunwoody Ltd., a lift manufacturer. In 1941, Ellis befriended Edna Turvey, the girlfriend of her older brother Julian, who was on leave from the Royal Navy. Edna introduced Ellis to what Muriel later called "the fast life." Ellis and Edna eventually moved to London and lived with Arthur. His abuse of Ellis continued while he also conducted an affair with Edna. The affair ended when Bertha discovered the pair in bed during an unannounced visit.^[5] Bertha subsequently moved to London.^[9][5]

In 1944, at the age of 17, Ellis became pregnant by Clare Andrea McCallum, a married Canadian soldier. She was sent to a nursing hospital in Gilsland, Cumberland, where she gave birth to her son, Clare Andrea (Andy) Neilson, on 15 September.^[8][10] McCallum stopped sending money about a year later. Andy, who later lived with Bertha, was supported by Ellis through her work in various factory and clerical jobs.^[11][5]

By the end of the 1940s, Ellis had become a nightclub hostess in Soho through nude-modelling work, which paid significantly more than her earlier jobs. Morris Conley, her manager at the Court Club in Duke Street, blackmailed his hostess employees into sleeping with him. By early 1950, Ellis was making money as a full-service escort and became pregnant by one of her regular clients.^[11]

On 8 November 1950, Ellis married George Johnston Ellis, a 41-year-old divorced dentist with two sons, at the register office in Tonbridge, Kent.^[12] A regular customer at the Court Club, George was a violent and possessive alcoholic who became convinced that his wife was having an affair. Ellis left him several times but always returned. When she gave birth to a daughter, Georgina, in 1951, George refused to acknowledge paternity; they separated shortly afterwards and later divorced.

In 1951, while four months pregnant, Ellis appeared uncredited as a beauty queen in the Rank film Lady Godiva Rides Again.^[13] She returned to prostitution after her divorce from George and moved back into her parents' home with her daughter.^[11]

In 1953, Ellis became the manager of the Little Club, a nightclub in Knightsbridge. At this time, she was lavished with expensive gifts by admirers. She met David Moffett Drummond Blakely, three years her junior, through racing driver Mike Hawthorn. Blakely was a former public school boy educated at Shrewsbury School and Sandhurst, and a hard-drinking racing driver. Within weeks, he moved into Ellis's flat above the club despite being engaged to another woman, Mary Dawson. Ellis became pregnant for a fourth time but had her second abortion, feeling unable to reciprocate the level of commitment Blakely showed towards their relationship.^[11]

Ellis then began seeing Desmond Cussen (1923–1991),^[14] a former Royal Air Force pilot who had flown Lancaster bombers during the Second World War and later took up accountancy. He was appointed a director of the family business Cussen & Co., a wholesale and retail tobacconist with outlets in London and South Wales. Ellis eventually moved in with Cussen at 20 Goodwood Court, Devonshire Street, north of Oxford Street. The relationship with Blakely continued, however, and became increasingly violent as both continued to see other partners. Blakely offered to marry Ellis; she agreed, but in January 1955 she suffered a miscarriage after he punched her in the stomach during an argument.^[15]

On Easter Sunday, 10 April 1955,^[16] Ellis took a taxi from Cussen's home to a second-floor flat at 29 Tanza Road, Hampstead, the home of Anthony and Carole Findlater, where she suspected Blakely might be. As she arrived, Blakely's car drove off, so she paid the taxi and walked the 1⁄4 mile (400 m) to The Magdala public house in South Hill Park, where she found his car parked outside.

At around 9:30 pm, Blakely and his friend Clive Gunnell emerged. Blakely passed Ellis, who was waiting on the pavement, when she stepped out of the doorway of Henshaw's, a newsagent next to The Magdala. As Blakely searched for the keys to his car,^[18] Ellis took a .38 calibre Smith & Wesson Victory Model revolver from her handbag and fired five shots at him. The first shot missed. She pursued Blakely as he ran around the car, firing a second shot that caused him to collapse onto the pavement. She then stood over him and fired three more bullets, one discharged less than half an inch from his back, leaving powder burns on his skin.

Ellis was seen to stand over Blakely as she repeatedly attempted to fire the revolver's sixth shot, finally discharging it into the ground. This bullet ricocheted off the road and injured a bystander, Gladys Yule, who lost the use of her right thumb.^[19]

Ellis, apparently in shock, asked Gunnell, "Will you call the police, Clive?" She was arrested immediately by an off-duty policeman, who heard her say, "I am guilty, I'm a little confused." Blakely's body was taken to hospital with multiple fatal wounds to the intestines, liver, lung, aorta and trachea. Originally taken in as evidence, the revolver is now in the Metropolitan Police's Crime Museum.^[20]

At Hampstead police station, Ellis appeared calm and not obviously under the influence of drink or other drugs. She made her first appearance at a magistrates' court the next day, 16 April, and was ordered to be held on remand. Ellis was twice examined by the principal Medical Officer, M. R. Penry Williams, who found no evidence of mental illness; an electroencephalograph examination on 3 May also found no abnormality. While on remand, she was examined by psychiatrist Duncan Whittaker for the defence and by Alexander Dalzell on behalf of the Home Office. Neither found evidence of insanity.

On 20 June 1955, Ellis appeared in the Number One Court at the Old Bailey, London, before Mr Justice Havers. She wore a black suit and white silk blouse, with freshly bleached and coiffured blonde hair. Her defending counsel, Aubrey Melford Stevenson, supported by Sebag Shaw and Peter Rawlinson, expressed concern about her appearance (and dyed blonde hair) but she did not alter it to appear less striking.

The only question put to Ellis by prosecutor Christmas Humphreys was, "When you fired the revolver at close range into the body of David Blakely, what did you intend to do?" She replied, "It's obvious when I shot him I intended to kill him." This answer guaranteed a guilty verdict and the mandatory death sentence. The jury took 20 minutes to convict her.^[21]

Ellis remained at Holloway Prison while awaiting execution. She told her mother that she did not want a petition to reprieve her from the death sentence and took no part in the campaign. However, at her relatives' urging, her solicitor, John Bickford, wrote a seven-page letter to Home Secretary Gwilym Lloyd George setting out the grounds for reprieve.^[22] Lloyd George denied the request. Ellis dismissed Bickford (who had been chosen by Cussen) and asked to see Leon Simmons, the clerk to solicitor Victor Mishcon, whose firm had previously represented her in her divorce proceedings. Before visiting her, Simmons and Mishcon saw Bickford, who urged them to ask Ellis where she had obtained the gun.

On 12 July 1955, the day before her execution, Mishcon and Simmons visited Ellis, who wished to make her will. When they pressed her for the full story, Ellis asked them to promise not to use what she said to seek a reprieve; Mishcon refused.^[23] Ellis then disclosed that Cussen had given her the gun and taught her how to use it on the weekend before the murder. She also said that Cussen had driven her to the scene. After a two-hour interview, Mishcon and Simmons went to the Home Office; the Permanent Secretary, Sir Frank Newsam, was summoned back to London and instructed the head of Criminal Investigation Department (CID) to check the account.^[24] Lloyd George later said that the police were able to make considerable enquiries but that it made no difference to his decision. He believed the information made Ellis's guilt greater, showing the murder was premeditated.^[25] He also said that the injury to the bystander was decisive: "We cannot have people shooting off firearms in the street! As long as I was Home Secretary I was determined to ensure that people could use the streets without fear of a bullet."^[26]

In a final letter to Blakely's parents from her prison cell, Ellis wrote, "I have always loved your son, and I shall die still loving him."^[27]

The Bishop of Stepney, Joost de Blank, visited Ellis prior to her execution. Just before 9:00 am on 13 July, the hangman Albert Pierrepoint and his assistant entered her cell and took her to the adjacent execution room, where she was hanged.^[28] There was a momentary delay caused by a hoax call to the prison. The caller claimed to be the private secretary to Lloyd George and said there had been a stay of execution. Prison governor Charity Taylor spent six minutes telephoning the Home Office to confirm it as a hoax. As a result, Ellis was executed at 9:01 am instead of the planned 9 am.^[29] Like the murder weapon, the noose is now in the Metropolitan Police Crime Museum.^[30] As was customary in British executions, Ellis was buried in an unmarked grave within the walls of Holloway Prison.

In the early 1970s, the remains of executed women at Holloway were exhumed for reburial elsewhere. In Ellis's case, directed by her son and next of kin, Andy, her remains were reburied in the churchyard of St Mary's Church in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, some 3 mi (4.8 km) from where Blakely was buried. Her headstone was inscribed, "Ruth Hornby 1926–1955."^[31]

Ellis's case caused widespread controversy, attracting exceptionally intense press and public interest to the point that it was discussed by the Cabinet. She was the last woman to be executed in Britain.^{[32][33][34][35]} Then-Prime Minister Anthony Eden made no reference to the case in his memoirs, nor is there any mention in his papers. He accepted that the decision was the Home Secretary's responsibility, though there are indications that he was troubled by it.^[33] A petition to the Home Office asking for clemency was signed by 50,000 people but was rejected.^[36]

On the day of Ellis's execution, the Daily Mirror columnist Cassandra criticised the sentence, writing: "The one thing that brings stature and dignity to mankind and raises us above the beasts will have been denied her – pity and the hope of ultimate redemption".^[36] The British Pathé newsreel reporting the execution openly questioned whether capital punishment – of a woman or of anyone – had a place in the 20th century.^[37] The novelist Raymond Chandler, then living in Britain, wrote a scathing letter to the Evening Standard referring to what he called "the medieval savagery of the law".^[38]

The execution helped strengthen support for the abolition of the death penalty, which was halted in practice for murder in Britain 10 years later (the last execution in the UK took place in 1964). Reprieve was by then commonplace: between 1926 and 1954, 677 men and 60 women had been sentenced to death in England and Wales, but only 375 men and seven women had been executed.^[39] In the early 1970s, Bickford told the Metropolitan Police that Cussen had said, in 1955, that Ellis lied at the trial when she denied he had given her the murder weapon. A police investigation followed, but no further action was taken.