Ruth Ellis became the last woman to be hanged in Britain on July 13 1955. Her execution was a national event. A crowd, reported to be 1,000-strong, gathered outside Holloway Prison in London that morning. Anti-death penalty protesters held signs, some people prayed and some wept. Ellis’s story had deeply moved the public.
Over 70 years later, the deputy prime minister, David Lammy, has announced that Ellis has been granted a conditional pardon due to the “exceptional circumstances” of the case – one in which he said there was a “profound injustice”. The pardon replaces Ellis’s death sentence with life imprisonment. It also recognised that the outcome of the case may have been different under modern law.
