The last woman to be executed in the United Kingdom, Ruth Ellis, has been pardoned, the British government announced on Wednesday, which recognized that she had been the victim of a “profound injustice”, 71 years after her hanging for having killed her violent companion.
Ruth Ellis, who was 28 and worked as a nightclub hostess, was executed in July 1955 for shooting dead her partner, David Blakely, outside a London bar.
Ten days before she killed him, David Blakely, who was a racing driver, punched pregnant Ruth Ellis in the stomach, causing a miscarriage.
The jury sentenced her to death after only twenty minutes of deliberation.
“I have the honor to announce that His Majesty the King has agreed, on our recommendation, to grant a conditional pardon to Ruth Ellis,” Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy told Parliament.
“While this pardon does not mean that Ruth Ellis was innocent of the murder of David Blakely, it does, however, replace the death penalty with a sentence of life imprisonment, in order to recognize a profound injustice in this exceptional case,” added David Lammy, who is also the Minister of Justice.
Two of Ruth Ellis’ grandchildren were in the public gallery at Parliament House when the announcement was made.
She had two children aged 3 and 10 when she was executed.
Ruth Ellis’s children and grandchildren failed to have her conviction overturned in 2003 at the Court of Appeal. But they continued to campaign for her pardon.
“Today, justice has finally been done to our grandmother,” responded Laura Enston, granddaughter of Ruth Ellis, in a press release.
“This grace does not erase what happened 71 years ago. (…) But she affirms, officially and definitively, that Ruth should not have been executed, that justice failed her,” she added.
Laura Enston recalled that her grandmother had been “the victim of repeated and brutal violence”.
His hanging helped to swing public opinion against the death penalty, which was abolished in 1973 in the United Kingdom.
This affair was adapted for the cinema in 1985 under the title “A Crime for a Passion” (“Dance with a Stranger”), with Miranda Richardson and Rupert Everett.
