'A Cruel Love': The true story of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain
The name Ruth Ellis will always be inextricably tied not to her life, but to her death. On 13 July 1955, at precisely one minute past nine, the 28-year-old was executed by hanging – the last woman in Britain to face the death penalty. Her execution was delayed by one minute, after a prankster dialled Holloway Prison pretending to be Home Secretary Gwilym Lloyd George, asserting that Ellis was to be granted a pardon. After the call was verified, and Ruth died, she was buried in an unmarked grave on the prison grounds – such was the custom at that time.
However, Ellis’ tragic and checkered life leading up to that fateful day is now set to be the subject of an upcoming ITV drama. In A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story, Lucy Boynton takes the reins as Ruth, who forged a life away from childhood abuse to become a manager of one of the West End’s most exclusive establishments – before she shot dead a violent partner. As viewers dig deeper into Ruth’s story, she becomes more than just a bleak figure from Britain’s history – rather, a symbol of ‘the timeless British obsessions of sex, class and death’.
Born Ruth Neilson in the small Welsh town of Rhyl on 9 October 1926, Ruth was the second-youngest of six children. Her father, Arthur, was a cellist, while her mother, Bertha, was a Belgian refugee. When Arthur’s twin brother Charles was killed in 1928, he became sexually and physically abusive to his daughter, Ruth's older sister Muriel. Muriel birthed her father’s child when she was just 14 years old. When Ruth turned 11, Arthur also started to abuse his younger daughter. While Bertha never stopped the abuse, with biographers citing fear of her husband, she often tried to make excuses to get Ruth out the house to avoid the advances of her father. It has also been speculated that it’s why the family changed their surname to Ellis and frequently moved houses – to keep the ongoing sexual abuse a secret.
In 1941, Ruth befriended Edna Turvey, her brother Julian’s girlfriend. It was Edna – who enjoyed nightclubs, drinking and casual encounters with men – that introduced Ruth to what she described as ‘the fast life’, and the pair moved to London with Arthur. Her father continued to abuse her, and also started an affair with Edna – which was abruptly brought to an end when Bertha made an unannounced visit to London and caught the pair together.
In war-torn London, a teenage Ruth worked as a waitress in a Leicester Square tearoom by day, but was a regular in the city’s underground dive bars where she would dance with soldiers hoping to combat the German forces. There, she met Clare McCallum, a Canadian soldier, with the pair embarking on a whirlwind romance. Pregnant at just 17 years old in 1944, Ruth was shunned by her mother and forced to give birth to her son, Andy, hundreds of miles away in a hospital in Cumberland. While McCallum promised to marry her, he returned back to Canada at the end of the war to his wife and two children. Destitute and now with a child to look after, Ruth was forced to seek refuge with her sister – and turned to escort work.
Her job at the Camera Club, which saw her work as a hostess as well as pose nude, was where Ruth met Morris Conley, a manager of Mayfair’s Court Club who was known for his vicious manner and blackmailing his employees into sleeping with him. With her peroxide-blonde hair, good looks and elocution-tuned speaking voice, Conley was impressed by Ruth, and employed her at Court Club, where she met her future husband – dentist George Johnston Ellis. It certainly wasn’t love at first sight on Ruth’s part, but she finally settled with Ellis, who, as an alcoholic, quickly turned violent. He refused to believe that Georgina, born in 1951, was his – and eventually, Ruth turned her back on the marriage.
It was while she was pregnant with Georgina that Ruth’s good looks saw her land a walk-on part in Lady Godiva Rides Again, alongside Diana Dors and Kay Kendall. Ruth appeared in a non-speaking role in the film, featuring in the beauty pageant scene.
Conley was taken with Ruth and, aged just 27, he decided to make her the manager of the Little Club in Knightsbridge. Just a stone’s throw away from Harrods, the discrete venue was popular with royalty and the rich who were looking for a good time away from prying eyes. Here, Ruth met racing driver David Blakely – the man she went on to shoot dead just months later.
Blakely was already married, but began a passionate affair with Ruth, who lived just atop of the Little Club. Ruth herself was seeing Desmond Cussen, a former RAF pilot. At this point, Blakely had started to beat Ruth, leaving her physically injured.
On 10 April 1955, an Easter Sunday, Ruth took a taxi to the Magdala pub in Hampstead, and waited for Blakely to emerge. At 9.30pm, when he left the premises and searched for his car keys, she shot her lover numerous times at close range – so close, in fact, police reported that Blakely’s dead body had gunpowder burns. It was later revealed that Cussen had provided the firearm that killed Blakely, and trained Ruth how to use it – however, he faced no charges.
When she was arrested, Ruth appeared confused, but otherwise sound of mind, telling officers that she was guilty. She never shied away from her guilt; during her trial in June 1955, she told lawyers that she intended to kill Blakely and shunned her family’s decision to try and fight for her freedom.
The government chose to make an example of Ruth, with no reprieve given to her despite the extenuating circumstances, and she resigned herself to her fate. Her final letter was to Blakely’s parents, where she confessed she would “always love him”.
Ruth’s execution was decried among the media at the time. The Daily Herald called it a “savage contradiction to all that is reasonable and gentle in the British character”, while a Daily Mirror columnist wrote: “The one thing that brings stature and dignity to mankind and raises us above the beasts will have been denied her — pity and the hope of ultimate redemption”. The death penalty was abolished for murder in 1965, and for all crimes in 1969.
Speaking of the process of playing Ruth, Lucy Boynton told The Hollywood Reporter: “There was so much to empathise with. She was such a contradictory and complex person which again makes my job so much more interesting. It’s also just more honest when you can really lean into and don’t shy away from a person and a character when their behaviour contradicts who you think they are. It makes it all the more interesting.”
A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story airs on 5 March at 9pm on ITV1 and ITVX
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