IN A FRENZY of suspicion and jealousy, Ruth Ellis gunned down her lover, David Blakely, with a .38 revolver at point-blank range. She was the last woman to be hanged in Britain. Her executioner, Albert Pierrepoint, resigned. So goes the story, as narrated in Tim Healey’s ‘CRIMES OF PASSION’, a book in the ‘The World’s Greatest’ series.

The sensational case made headlines all over the world, including British Guiana. There are actual newspaper accounts from the year 1955, from this newspaper’s predecessor, the Guiana Graphic.

In her personal story, ‘My Love and My Hate’, Parts One and Two published in the   July 3 and 10, 1955 editions of the Sunday Graphic,  Ruth tells how it all began.

By telling her side of the story, Ruth hoped she could save other women from falling in the same ‘trap’ as she did, a trap she said she could not escape at the time.

According to the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, Ruth was born in the Welsh seaside town of Rhyl, the third of six children. The family moved to Basingstoke while she was still a child. Her mother, Elisaberta Goodall, better known as Bertha, was a Belgian refugee, and her father, Arthur Hornby, a cellist from Manchester, who had spent much of his time playing on Atlantic cruise liners. Arthur changed his surname to Neilson after the birth of Muriel, Ruth’s elder sister.

Ruth attended Fairfields Senior Girls’ School in Basingstoke, leaving when she was fourteen to work as a waitress. Shortly afterwards, in 1941to be precise and at the height of the Blitz, the Neilsons moved to London. In 1944, Ruth, now aged 17, became pregnant by a married Canadian soldier (she would give a different version of this in ‘My Love and My Hate’), giving birth to a son, Clare Andrea Neilson, known as ‘Andy’.

The father sent them some money for about a year, and then ended all contact. Ruth  became a nightclub hostess, via nude modelling, which paid significantly more than the various factory and clerical jobs she’d held since leaving school.

In her memoir, Ruth describes her first taste of ‘ecstasy’. “My first serious date became my first love, my first taste of ecstasy, and my first experience of absolute and bitter misery.”

Ruth worked with a woman friend several years older than she, and went to dances and parties with Servicemen. According to her, one day, the friend had a date who was bringing along a friend with him. She asked Ruth if she would like to join them. Ruth says she initially   refused, as she had been warned by her parents against blind dating. But eventually, she gave in, since it was wartime and friendships were rapid and casual.

After that first meeting, Ruth was excited, happy, and looking her best. In the book she says: “I liked my boy, Mac, from the start. I liked his soft Canadian drawl, and the warm way he said ‘Hello, honey,’” she said. Mac looked “wonderful” in his army uniform and was a feather- light dancer. Gliding around the floor, Ruth danced as she had dreamed, in the West End of London.

By the end of the evening, Ruth says she was hopelessly in love for the first time with this handsome man of 23 whom she had just met. Just when she was wondering how she was going to get home, Mac whispered: “Honey would you like some dinner?”

Ruth thought that they would eat somewhere simple. But little did she know wartime Canadians were determined to blow all their pay on their leave. For the first time in her life, she said, she went to a nightclub and ate, danced, and drank champagne.

She claims this was her first tasted of alcohol.  “Oh Mac,” she gushed. “Now I know why Champagne and romance go together.” When Mac finally drove her home, she felt so happy that she wanted to cry.

Weeks of rapture followed. According to Ruth, Mac loved her devotedly, and when he was with his unit, he would write, not once, but often twice a day. She would sit and dream of the home they would have and the children that would be theirs.

It seemed that the war could not last much longer, and Ruth prayed that it would end before Mac was sent abroad. Her prayers didn’t work apparently, as he was posted to Belgium.

As the story progresses, she talks about how his leaving affected her. Ruth says she’d always felt that while he was in England, she could protect Mac in some way, but once he was abroad, she felt lost. She read and re-read his letters, feeling that nothing could happen to him while she read them.

Then one November morning, the telegram came. Mac was dead. All that was left of their love was her unborn son. Ruth cried and cried for nights; there seemed nothing worth living for. But when her son was born, she found some comfort and peace in him. Ruth’s father had been injured in the Blitz, and her brother, Granville, had lost an eye while serving in the army. To keep her family and her child, she had to find a job.

She left the child with her mother while she worked. At this point in her life, she said, she no longer felt any emotion about men. Outwardly, she   was cheerful and gay; inwardly she   was cold and spent. She ended up posing at a photographers club after responding to an advertisement. The fee was good (about £1 an hour), but the job also meant that she sometimes posed nude before as many as 20 men. At first, she was terribly embarrassed. But they were all professional photographers who soon put her mind at ease.

Then one night, one of the photographers invited her out for a drink in the Court Club on Duke Street. That drink took her right into the heart of the nightclub world. The club’s owner, she said, monopolised her the entire evening, and ended up asking her if she would like to work for him as a hostess.

He offered her £5 a week and a ten per cent commission on all the drinks she persuaded customers to buy. Soon, she was earning between £15 -20 a week. She had lovely dresses and loads of presents from the customers who were to become her friends. There were six other hostesses, among them Vicki Martin, who would later die in a car accident.

By the end of 1951, London was full of northern manufacturers loaded with money, and Vicki and Ruth were ready, willing and able to help them spend it.   After all, it was their job to do so.

The girls went to the best parties that Mayfair could offer. At weekends, they toured the exclusive country clubs and hotels in a fleet of Rolls Royce’s. Vicki never had a worry or a care about tomorrow. When things went wrong, she just laughed and told Ruth: “Gosh, dear, now you’ve done it!”

Once, the young women decided to take a 30 guinea flat together. It was exquisite but they couldn’t afford it. Ruth says the real reason she became so friendly with Vicki was that they were both girls from modest homes who became successes in London’s gay spots. Like Vicki, Ruth never kept any of the money she earned. But she was soon tiring of all the bright lights.

It was in this frame of mind that she met George Ellis. He was a 41-year-old hot-shot dentist who was recently divorced, and opting to lead a hectic life so as to put his past behind him, he tended to spend money recklessly. While Ruth was with him, he would spend up to £50 a night on entertainment. But he could afford it. His practice at Sanderstead, in Surrey, was worth thousands a year to him.

One night, Ruth went out with Vicki and forgot to keep a date with George. Next morning, she heard that he had been injured in a brawl at another club. She   felt that if she   had kept her date with him, this would not have happened, so she went out of her way to be nice to him. They went to so many parties, that Ruth soon  felt worn out. George suggested that the
y go to Cornwall for a six-month holiday. The hotel bill came up to £100 a week. They had champagne and caviar for breakfast, and Vicki came down to share in the fun.  Once George took her on what he called a fishing trip. They took a case of scotch with them. A storm blew up suddenly, and the engine went dead.    Both George and the skipper started to pray. Ruth   prayed, too, but did some bailing as well and took credit for keeping the boat afloat until they were rescued. George had a pilot’s licence, and she enjoyed flying with him until one day he took her up and started doing crazy acrobatics, giving her what she described as the fright of her life.

Ruth admitted that she was not in love with George, but one day he suggested that they should get married. She agreed;  she wanted a home for herself and her son, and thought her company was “doing George well.”

On November 8, 1950, she married George Ellis at the registry office in Tonbridge, Kent. Reputedly jealous and possessive, he became convinced that Ruth was having an affair, and   the marriage deteriorated rapidly. Ruth left him several times, but always returned. In 1951, she gave birth to a baby girl, whom she named Georgina, but George refused to acknowledge paternity and they separated shortly afterwards. Ruth moved in with her parents, and went back to hostessing to make ends meet.

She was offered the job of managing a place called ‘The Little Club’ out in Knightsbridge which she accepted. The job paid £15 a week, and a £10 entertainment fee to encourage customers to spend freely. She also had a furnished luxury flat over the premises.

The day she took over the club, she opened the bar and waited for her first customer. It turned out to be David Blakely, the man she would eventually kill in a fit of jealous rage. Jackie, the barmaid, had introduced them formally. Said Ruth to David: “Ah! I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?” He smiled in response, saying: “Well, we must improve on that at any rate. Have a drink?”

That was how it all began: Over a glass of gin and tonic. David stayed talking with her until closing time at 11pm. He was interested. He didn’t bother to eat.  Ruth said she was not exactly stirred by him, but was faintly interested, as she had seen him play  “hard-to-get” with other girls in the clubs, and was wondering how she would make out.

They’d talked mainly about racing cars, and friends they had in that world. He was, when he wanted to be, completely charming; almost shy. He was certainly better dressed; a neat pin striped suit. She noticed that he had dark brown eyes and curly lashes. When he left at closing time, she couldn’t help wondering if he would ever return and half hoped he did.

“I suppose it would be in the best storybook tradition,” she wrote, “if I told you that I fell helplessly in love with David Blakely after he spent the evening chatting with me in the bar of a little club. Well, I am afraid that I certainly didn’t fall for David at first sight. To me, he was just an intriguing young man. His years at Shrewsbury School had left him with the arrogant attitude of the East of the Public School man.”

But she sure liked the way he dressed. It was good to see a man in a suit without “a built-in coat hanger look.” That first night David came to ‘The Little Club’, he spent a lot of money. This caused Ruth to believe he was a customer to be encouraged. But David needed no encouraging. Promptly at opening time the next day, he was back at the bar. He was the first and last customer, day after day. This caused one of Ruth’s friends to remark: “I hear you are seeing quite a lot of David Blakely.” In response to Ruth’s careful rejoinder that “he’s just another customer,” the friend laughingly said: “I suppose you’re going to tell me you don’t know that half the girls in London’s clubs are crazy about David, and he doesn’t date any of them.”

Ruth decided that if David was going to play ‘hard-to-get’, she would do the same. After all, her experience in dealing with men in the clubs where she worked made her feel like a “mistress of that game.” Later on, she would realise that this was merely an act.

About a fortnight after David came to the Club, Ruth said to Jackie Dyer, the barmaid, at closing time: “Come upstairs for a drink.” This she did in David’s presence, since, as usual, he was in the club. She had purposely not included him in the invitation, wanting to play ‘hard-to- get too. At this, David turned to her and said: “Aren’t you going to ask me?”  To which she coldly replied: “Would you like to join us upstairs for a drink, Mr. Blakely?”  Unfazed by her hauteur, he grinned and said: “I’d be delighted.”

Losing the Game
After Jackie went home, David stayed at Ruth’s apartment, drinking. Alone with David, she found that she could no longer resist him and realised that she had lost the game. She let him stay. She fiercely defends her action. “That is something that people might not be able to understand.  But they have not led the life that I have led. And as every woman knows, you can feel passionate about a man without being in love.”

David got into the habit of staying the night, and this did not sit well with the club’s owner, who told Ruth that he did not approve of this. Her response to him was that her private life was her own, and promptly asserted her independence by paying him £10 a week for the flat which she had previously occupied rent-free. She and David very seldom went out together in those days. Ruth admits that she knew he was engaged to Linda Dawson, the daughter of a wealthy Northern manufacturer.

According to reports in some quarters, Ruth was also seeing one Desmond Cussen, an ex-RAF pilot who had flown Lancaster bombers during World War II. When she eventually lost her job as manager of the ‘The Little Club’, it was to him that she turned, moving in with him at his residence in Egerton Gardens, Knightsbridge, and becoming his mistress. She became pregnant for the fourth time in 1955 but miscarried, allegedly following a row with David Blakely when he punched her in the stomach.

At around 9:30pm on the night of April 10, 1955, which was an Easter Sunday, David Blakely and his friend, Clive Gunnell, emerged from ‘The Magdala’, a four-storey public house in South Hill Park, Hampstead. As Blakely left the pub, he passed Ruth waiting on the pavement. He pointedly ignored her when she said: “Hello, David.” She said “Hello, David” again, louder this time, but still he ignored her.

Then, as Blakely searched for the keys to his car, she took a .38 Smith & Wesson  revolver from her handbag and fired five shots at him. The first shot missed, and he started to run, with Ruth in hot pursuit around the car. She fired a second time, which caused him to collapse onto the pavement. She then stood over him and fired three more bullets into him. One bullet was fired less than half an inch from Blakely’s back and left powder burns on his skin.

Witnesses reported hearing several distinct clicks as she tried to fire the revolver’s sixth and final shot, before finally firing into the pavement. This bullet ricocheted off the wall of the pub and injured a woman at the base of her thumb as she walked past ‘The Magdala’.

Ruth Ellis was arrested immediately by an off-duty policeman, Alan Thompson, who took the still-smoking gun from her, put it in his coat pocket, and heard her make the implicating statement: “I am guilty; I’m a little confused.” Blakely was taken to hospital with multiple bullet wounds to the intestines, liver, lung, aorta and windpipe.

Trial and execution
On Monday, June 20, 1955, Ellis appeared in the Number One Court at the Old Bailey, London, before Mr. Justice Havers. She was dressed in a black suit and white silk blouse, wit
h freshly bleached and coiffured blonde hair. Her lawyers had wanted her to play down her appearance, but she resisted, determined to have her moment. Many contemporaries formed   the opinion that her fixation with being the ‘brassy blonde’ was at least partially responsible for the poor impression she made when giving evidence. The jury took 14 minutes to convict her, and then she was taken to the condemned cell at Holloway Prison after her sentence.

The hanging helped strengthen public support for the abolition of the death penalty, which was halted in practice for murder in Britain ten years later (the last execution in the UK occurred during 1964).

Ruth’s husband, George Ellis, hanged himself in 1958 after a descent into alcoholism. Her son, Andy, who was only 11 at the time of his mother’s hanging, suffered irreparable psychological damage and committed suicide in 1982.

The trial judge, Sir Cecil Havers, had sent money every year for Andy’s upkeep, and at Christmastime. The prosecution counsel in his mother’s trial paid for his funeral.  Ruth’s daughter, Georgina, who was three when her mother was executed, was adopted when her father hanged himself. She eventually died of cancer in 2002. She was just 50.

Ruth was buried in an unmarked grave within the walls of Holloway Prison, as was customary for executed prisoners. In the early 1970s, the prison underwent an extensive programme of rebuilding, during the course of which the remains of all the executed women were exhumed for reburial elsewhere. Hers was reburied at St Mary’s Church in Amersham, Buckinghamshire. The headstone in the churchyard was inscribed: ‘Ruth Hornby, 1926–1955’. Her son, Andy, destroyed the headstone shortly before he died. Ruth’s grave is now overgrown with yew trees.

To be continued next week…