The real-life story of the last woman to be hanged in Britain for killing her lover David Blakely in 1955 is gripping the nation but what exactly happened to Ruth Ellis in the run up to her execution – and why did she turn to murder?
On July 13, 1955, at 9:01am, 28-year-old Ruth Ellis was the last person to ever be executed in Britain. Almost 70 years later and a new ITVX drama sees actress Lucy Boynton bring her story to life showing us what happened to her in the run up to her execution.
Ruth was a young model and nightclub manager who had entered a stormy affair with motor-racing ace David Blakely that later turned into abuse. After shooting Blakely outside a pub in Hampstead on Easter Sunday in 1955, she was arrested and later sentenced to death.
At the time, Ruth’s death sentence caused public outrage, with newspaper columnists condemning the decision and a petition to free her reaching 50,000 signatures.
And while Ruth never asked for a reprieve, her solicitor wrote a letter to the Home Secretary asking for a reprieve and at one point there was a glimmer of hope that she wouldn’t be sent to her death.
Six minutes before Ruth was executed, Holloway Prison received a call from Home Secretary Gwilym Lloyd George, announcing that she had been granted a reprieve.
The prison governor, Charity Taylor, spent the next 360 seconds on the phone to the Home Office, frantically trying to confirm the news but it had been a hoax and at 9:01 am, Ruth was hanged.
At the time of her death, she had two children. Ten-year-old Andy faced a harrowing life shadowed by their mother’s notoriety. He was taunted all his life about his mother to the point where he destroyed the marker on her grave at Amersham, St Mary’s Cemetery in Buckinghamshire. Tragically, Andy died from suicide in 1982.
Life wasn’t easy either for his half-sister Georgina, who was only three and was sent to live with an adoptive family when her mother was executed. Georgie, as she was known to many, led a fast-paced lifestyle that mirrored her mother’s in many ways.
She worked as a model, businesswoman and writer with numerous celebrity connections but always struggled with her mother’s passing. In the past, she had an affair with Charlie Wilson, one of the Great Train Robbers, as well as high-profile relationships with footballer George Best and actor Richard Harris.
Georgie released a book in 1995 called Ruth Ellis, My Mother, which shared memories of her mother and how Ruth’s life shaped her own – she suffered from alcoholism and struggled to raise her six children.
Meanwhile, her mother Ruth accepted her fate and never got involved in the petition to free her. Before she died, she wrote a final letter to Blakely’s parents, saying “I have always loved your son, and I shall die still loving him.”
All episodes of Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story are on ITVX with episodes airing weekly at 9pm every Wednesday.
