England: Last woman hanged in UK granted posthumous pardon

Ruth Ellis, who was 28 when she was hanged in 1955 for murdering her partner, David Blakely, has had her death sentence replaced on the official record with life imprisonment.

The pardon was announced by Justice Secretary David Lammy after being approved by the King. It follows an application by four of Ellis’s grandchildren, who argued that the domestic abuse and trauma she suffered before the killing were not recognised at her trial.

Ellis, a nightclub hostess, shot Blakely outside a pub in Hampstead, north-west London, on April 10, 1955, and was later executed at Holloway Prison.

The Ministry of Justice said that under modern law Ellis may have been able to rely on the partial defences of loss of control or diminished responsibility, potentially reducing a murder conviction to manslaughter.

Announcing the decision, Lammy said: “We hope this brings a measure of peace to Ruth Ellis’s family, who have carried the weight of what happened to her for over 70 years.”

Ellis’s granddaughter, Laura Enston, welcomed the decision.

“This pardon does not undo what happened 71 years ago,” Ms Enston said. “It does not restore the lives that were broken, the children left behind, the years lost. But it says, formally and finally, that Ruth should not have been executed – that the justice system failed her. That acknowledgement matters profoundly to our family.”

She added: “The shadow of Ruth’s execution has fallen across two generations. We have carried shame that was never ours to bear.”

The Ministry of Justice said Ellis’s case was exceptional because she was the last woman to be hanged in the UK and that the pardon recognised “the historic injustice of the death penalty in this particular instance”.