Last woman hanged in Britain gets pardon from King Charles
by Lisa Hornung · UPIJuly 8 (UPI) -- King Charles III granted a posthumous pardon to the last woman hanged in Britain.
Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy announced the conditional pardon of Ruth Ellis as an "act of mercy recognizing the historic injustice of the death penalty in this exceptional case."
Ellis shot and killed David Blakely, 26, outside a pub in London on April 10, 1955. She was convicted of murder and executed on July 13 the same year. She was 28.
Four of Ellis' grandchildren applied for the pardon. They argued that she was a victim of a historical injustice because she suffered domestic abuse and trauma.
"I have the honor 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," Lammy said to the House of Commons. "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 recognize a profound injustice in this exceptional case."
Laura Enston, Ellis' granddaughter, said she was happy with the news.
"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.
Ellis was a nightclub hostess and mother of two from Rhyl, Denbighshire, Wales. She shot Blakely outside the Magdala pub in Hampstead, London. Their relationship was tumultuous and involved infidelity from both.
Blakely was a race car driver in Britain.
Ellis was physically abused by Blakely and was even punched in the stomach, which caused a miscarriage.
The judge in the case told the jury to ignore the fact that she had been "badly treated by her lover" as a defense.
After her conviction, a petition with 50,000 signatures was submitted to the Home Office asking for clemency.