Ruth Ellis
Born in Rhyl, North WalesBorn on 9th of October 1926
Died in Holloway, London
Died on 13rd of July 1955
As the last woman executed in Britain, and for a crime of passion, a certain glamour now attaches to Ruth Ellis. In reality her story is pitifully grubby.
Born in Rhyl in 1926 in a large family which a few years later moved to Basingstoke, Ruth left school at 14 to waitress there and a year later in London. A brief affair with a married Canadian soldier when she was 17 left her pregnant with her son Clare. To make a living she did nude modelling and worked as a nightclub hostess before marrying an abusive alcoholic man of 41 – dentist George Ellis - when she was 24; the marriage produced a daughter of disputed paternity and quickly ended.
Graduating to managing a nightclub saw her begin affairs with racing driver David Blakeley and former RAF pilot Desmond Cussen, whose live-in mistress she became. She miscarried Blakeley’s child after he hit her.
On the evening of April 10 1955 Cussen gave her a gun and drove her to a pub in Hampstead where it was known Blakeley would be. Ruth Ellis chased and shot Blakeley, three of the bullets fired point-blank. At her trial she incriminated herself; dressed brassily; and failed to reveal both Cussen’s part in the crime and Blakeley’s attack. In spite of worries about her treatment and regardless of a huge public petition for clemency she was hanged at Holloway Prison by Albert Pierrepoint on July 13 1955.
Buried here
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