LONDON: The grandchildren of the last woman to be executed in Britain have called for Ruth Ellis to be pardoned, 70 years after she was sent to the gallows for murdering her “abusive” lover, their lawyers said on Wednesday.

Ellis, a 28-year-old nightclub hostess, was hanged in July 1955 for shooting dead racing driver David Blakely as he came out of the Magdala pub in London.

The case gripped Britain and was turned into the 1985 film “Dance with a Stranger” starring Miranda Richardson and Rupert Everett.

Four of Ellis’s six grandchildren have formally applied to Justice Minister David Lammy for a posthumous pardon.

The application highlights the “repeated and long-standing sexual, emotional and physical abuse Ellis suffered” at the hands of Blakely legal firm Mischon de Reya, which is representing the family, said in a statement.

Granddaughter Laura Enston, 46, said a conditional pardon would correct a longstanding “injustice”.

Battered woman

Enston’s mother, Georgina, was just three when Ellis was hanged at London’s Holloway Prison after the trial jury took just 20 minutes to find her guilty.

“She inadvertently played up to that sort of cold-blooded killer persona that she’d been portrayed to be, but knowing what we know now about trauma and slow-burn provocation, Ruth was traumatised... and typical of domestic abuse victims,” Enston said.

The abuse included an incident 10 days before the killing when Ellis suffered a miscarriage after Blakely, the baby’s father, punched her in the stomach.

Published in Dawn, October 23rd, 2025