Who was Ruth Ellis? Nightclub manageress, convicted murderer and last woman to hang in the UK
Ruth Ellis was a nightclub manageress who became the last woman to hang in the UK, after she murdered her husband.
Her incredible life will be dramatised in the ITV drama A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story, where she will be played by Lucy Boynton.
Overcoming a horrific upbringing
Ruth was born on October 9, 1926, in Denbighshire, Wales.
She grew up in Baskingstoke, Hampshire, and was raised by her mother Elisaberta, a Belgian war refugee, and her father Arthur, a cellist.
When Arthur’s twin brother died in 1928, when Ruth was just 2 years old, he became physically and sexually abusive towards Ruth’s older sister Muriel.
Despite knowing about the abuse, Elisaberta (known as Bertha) did nothing to intervene.
Arthur also began to abuse Ruth.
Ruth became an usherette at a cinema in Reading, after leaving school at just 14-years-old.
She gave birth to a son on September 15, 1944, after having an affair with a married Canadian soldier named Clare Andrea McCallum.
Life as a nightclub hostess
By the end of the decade, Ruth had become a nightclub hostess in Hampstead.
She had landed the job after a stint as a nude model and was making much more money than she had as an usherette or factory worker.
However, Ruth’s manager, Morris Conley, blackmailed his employees into sleeping with him.
At the start of 1950, Ruth decided to become a full-time escort.
On November 8 of that same year, she married 41-year-old George Johnston Ellis, a divorced dentist with two sons.
She had met him at her nightclub, the Court Club, where he was said to be a violent customer.
Ellis was paranoid that Ruth was having an affair and when she gave birth to a daughter named Georgina, in 1951, he refused to believe that she was his child.
Ruth picks up a gun
Ellis and Ruth divorced and, in 1953, she began a relationship with David Blakely.
David was a publicly-educated man whom she met at the Little Club.
At the time, she had become the manager of the nightclub in Knightsbridge and was regularly lavished with gifts by her celebrity friends.
Her relationship with Blakely was extremely volatile, with the pair regularly breaking up and reuniting.
Ruth left Blakely because she felt that she could not reciprocate his intense feelings for her, but eventually returned after briefly dating a man named Desmond Cussen.
In January 1955, she had a miscarriage after Blakely hit her while she was pregnant.
Three months later, on Easter Sunday, April 10, she took a taxi and went to find her ex-lover.
At 9:30pm, she took a revolver from her handbag and fired five shots at Blakely.
When the first one missed, Blakely tried to run around the car but was caught by the second bullet.
After he fell to the ground, Ruth fired again and killed him.
In shock, Ruth asked Blakely’s friend Clive Gunnel to phone the police.
When a policeman arrived, she simply said: “I am guilty, I’m a little confused.”
Shocking court appearance
Ruth was taken to be medically examined, but the physicians failed to find any evidence of mental or physical illness which may have caused her to carry out the attack.
On June 20, 1955, she appeared at the Number One Court at the Old Bailey in London.
Her defending counsel, Aubrey Melford Stevenson, felt that her appearance might damage her case.
She was dressed in a black suit with bleached and coiffured blonde hair, creating a striking silohuette.
When asked if she meant to kill Blakely, Ruth was honest.
She said: “It’s obvious when I shot him I intended to kill him”.
She was convicted of murder within twenty minutes by the Jury and sentenced to death.
Ruth’s execution
Ruth wrote to Blakely’s parents and said that she “always loved” their son and said that she “shall die still loving him”.
She was visited by the Bishop of Stepney, Joost de Blank, before her execution on July 13, 1955.
Sadly, she was hanged and buried within the walls of Holloway prison.
Years later, in the 1970s, her grave was exhumed and moved to a Churchyard in Buckinghamshire, where Blakely was buried.
The news of Ruth’s death sent waves through British society and was even discussed by cabinet.
Ruth was the last woman to ever be executed in Britain, as her case shocked lawmakers across the country.
A Cruel Love
Ruth’s incredible story will be dramatised in the upcoming ITV drama A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story.
She will be played by Lucy Boynton, an actress known for her roles in Bohemian Rhapsody, Miss Potter and Sing Street.
The show is set in 1955, the year Ruth was hanged, and is based on Carol Ann Lee’s biography A Fine Day for Hanging: The Real Ruth Ellis Story.
Viewers can watch the series when it lands on ITV on March 25, 2025, 70 years after her death.