Last woman hanged in the UK to be granted conditional pardon
The last woman hanged in the United Kingdom will be granted a conditional pardon but she will not be declared innocent, David Lammy has said.
The Deputy Prime Minister said the pardon will replace Ruth Ellis’s death penalty with a sentence of life imprisonment “to recognise a profound injustice in this exceptional case”.
He told the Commons: “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.”
Laura Enston, Ellis’s granddaughter, said she hoped her grandmother’s story “serves as a lasting reminder that the justice system must reckon with the abuse that drives women to the edge – and must never be afraid to acknowledge when it has got things wrong”.
Ellis, a nightclub hostess, shot and killed her lover David Blakely outside The Magdala pub in Hampstead, London, in April 1955.
She was convicted of his murder and then executed on July 13 1955 at Holloway Prison.
On Wednesday, Mr Lammy said: “I have the honour to say that His Majesty the King has accepted our advice to grant Ruth Ellis a conditional pardon, the last woman to be hanged in the United Kingdom.
“While the pardon does not claim she was innocent of killing David Blakely, it replaces the death penalty with a sentence of life imprisonment to recognise a profound injustice in this exceptional case.”
Mr Lammy was responding to the Labour MP for Colchester Pam Cox, who told MPs Ellis’s family had “campaigned unwaveringly for her to receive a posthumous pardon”.
She said: “Her case serves as a haunting reminder of a time when our justice system ignored the realities of domestic abuse and coercive control.”
Making a statement outside the Houses of Parliament, Ms Enston said: “Today, justice has finally been done for our grandmother, Ruth Ellis – the last woman to be hanged in England in 1955.
“This pardon does not undo what happened 71 years ago.
“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.
“Ruth was a victim of sustained and brutal abuse.
“Her children, our mother and uncle, never recovered.
“My uncle took his own life. My mother’s trauma left her unable to be the parent we needed.
“The shadow of Ruth’s execution has fallen across two generations.
“We have carried shame that was never ours to bear.”
Ms Enston also said she was “deeply grateful” to Mr Lammy “for having the courage to act”.
Grace Houghton, an associate at Mishcon de Reya and part of the legal team that put together the application for a conditional pardon, said Ellis was “the victim of domestic abuse”.
Published: by Radio NewsHub