Whilst this is a familiar thread on the site, instead of marking the life of a musician. this time around I an remembering a famous or should that be infamous character who was failed the British legal system. Last Wednesday, the Home Secretary, David Lammy announced that by royal consent the death sentence carried out on Ruth Ellis was being commuted to life imprisonment. Ruth Ellis was the last woman to be hanged in the United Kingdom. The sentence was carried out on 13th July 1955 and was the culmination of the case in which Ellis was tried for the murder of her lover, David Blakely.
I do not intend to repeat the history here, but if you are unfamiliar with the case please do take a look her the entry on Wikipedia (other online resources are available!). It is a terrible story. Ruth, her mother and sister were physically and sexually abused by her father from a very young age. She left home for the big city where she found work in prostitution and in the clubs of Soho. In this time she also had a string of poor relationships with men characterised by physical and psychological abuse.
In 1953 she met Blakely, educated at public school and Sandhurst and a racing driver to boot and they were soon living together despite the fact that Blakely was engaged to another woman. In time Ellis started seeing another man, Desmond Cussen, and started living with him whilst the relationship with Blakely continued. Ellis went through these years often pregnant, losing one child through miscarriage after being punched in the stomach by Blakely.
On 10th April 1955 she travelled by cab to Hampstead in search of David Blakely, eventually locating him in the Magdala public house. When he emerged from the pub with a male friend and went to his car Ruth Ellis shot him repeatedly. With her abusive lover fatally wounded on the ground she was quickly apprehended by an off-duty policeman. She made no attempt to flee. Upon her arrest she stated only "I am guilty, I'm a little confused."
Tried and sentenced at the Old Bailey on 20th June she was hanged by Albert Pierrepoint at Holloway prison and buried within the grounds of the prison. Later in the 1970's Ellis's remains were exhumed and reburied in Amersham in Buckinghamshire.
Hers was a life in freefall from a young age and she was just 28 when executed. There was never a denial of culpability on Ruth Ellis's part for the crime that she committed and was thus always going to be punished for her actions. However, this was 1955, an era in which the extreme provocation of domestic abuse and coercive control held little sway in a British court of law.
The Family tragedy did not end with the execution of Ruth, subsequent to her hanging, suicide took other close members of the family, with her first husband and her son taking their own lives in 1958 and 1982 respectively. Ruth Ellis's mother attempted suicide by gassing in 1969.
If ever their was a case with extenuating circumstances this was it. The Ruth Ellis case ultimately did much to change the law in the UK, from the abolition of capital punishment to the acknowledgement of the impact of domestic abuse in criminal behaviour.
The link to Adam and the Ants is tenuous, but their 'Song For Ruth Ellis' is the only song that I am aware of that references this infamous British murder case. The track was recorded in several demo sessions that the Ants did prior to getting signed to 'Do It' records. I have said it elsewhere but as good as 'Dirk Wears White Sox' is, it is undeniably true that much of the material that preceded it is equally as good if not better. This I guess is the reason why these various demo sessions are so enduringly popular.
The BBC's reporting of the granting of a conditional pardoning can be found here.
FLAC: https://we.tl/t-DZHYE23xaWuDETEX
Artwork: https://we.tl/t-kBY8fRCP3gTEz38a
