The conditional pardon granted last week to Ruth Ellis, hanged 71 years ago, was probably the best her supporters could have hoped for. On Easter Sunday 1955, Ellis, a nightclub hostess, waylaid and shot her unfaithful lover, the racing car driver David Blakely, outside the Magdala pub in Hampstead, killing him and wounding a passer-by in the process.
Some of the shots were point-blank and Ellis immediately handed herself in to a passing policeman. A fortnight before, she had suffered a miscarriage as a result of Blakely’s violence.
There were problems for the defence, led by Melford Stevenson. The first was that she would not help herself, refusing to dress down and appearing in a smart suit with astrakhan cuffs and platinum hair. The very model of a modern night club hostess.
Asked what she intended when she shot Blakely, she replied it was obvious she intended to kill him. She played down his violence, saying, ‘I bruise easily’.
Stevenson argued that her mental state could reduce the charge to manslaughter, but the judge ruled against him. Neither Stevenson nor Christmas Humphreys, for the prosecution, made a closing speech.
Ellis did not appeal and was indifferent to the petition of 50,000 people for a reprieve. A seven-page appeal by her solicitor got nowhere. A day before her execution, a last-minute approach by her new solicitor, Victor Mishcon, also failed.
The home secretary, Gwilym Lloyd George, later wrote that if he had allowed the appeal, there was no point in having the death penalty. Two years later, the Homicide Act 1957 introduced the concept of diminished responsibility. If that had been in place, a manslaughter verdict might have been obtained, though it would not have been a foregone conclusion.
But times were changing. Men could be hanged to public indifference, but not women. The Ellis case was a major factor leading to the abolition of the death penalty.
James Morton is a writer and former criminal defence solicitor
No comments yet