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Ruth Ellis
Ruth Ellis was the last woman to be hanged in
Britain. She was convicted of killing her boyfriend after she admitted
shooting him to death in 1955. She was hanged days later, resulting in public
outrage. Her death, and the controversy surrounding her conviction, together
helped abolish the death penalty in Britain.
I am studying this case and hope to make contact with Ruth's sister.
S. C. Lomax reviews Ruth
Ellis: My Sister’s Secret Life.
Ruth Ellis is arguably known as much for the image created for her by
journalists and writers as she is known for being the last woman to be hanged
in Britain. She was a “peroxide tart”, it has been
claimed, a part-time hooker and her cold demeanour following the shooting of
her lover, David Blakely, showed she was an cold, evil murderer, journalists and writers have
led the public to believe. Many journalists and writers have a habit of
distorting the truth to sell newspapers and books and criminal history has
allowed the popular view of Ellis to continue to exist. Muriel Jakubait,
Ellis’ sister, however, has spent the last fifty years
fighting to clear her sister’s name and her argument for Ellis’
innocence has been presented, for the first time, in this fascinating book
which discusses the life and death of one of the most notorious names in
British criminal history, conclusively destroying many of the misconceptions
that are part and parcel of notoriety.
It was on the night of 10 April 1955 that David Blakely, a popular man who
enjoyed motorcar racing, was shot dead outside the Magdala Public House in
Hampstead, north London where he had called to buy some alcohol with a
friend, Clive Gunnell. Ellis was promptly arrested and immediately admitted
having killed her lover but later, at trial, pleaded “not guilty” to murder. Her defence team, led by Melford Stevenson,
argued that she had shot Blakely as a result of provocation. There was no
doubt he was a highly violent man who had beaten her on countless occasions,
once hospitalising her. On another occasion, whilst Ellis was pregnant, he
kicked her in the stomach. She miscarried as a result. Due to the
miscarriage, which occurred in the month before the shooting, Ruth began
drinking heavily and took tranquillisers. She was still emotionally disturbed
in April 1955. The trial judge, Mr Justice Havers, refused to allow
provocation to be a defence and so the jury had little choice, given the
admission of having fired the fatal shots, but to find the defendant guilty.
After a trial lasting only a day and a half the jury deliberated for twenty-three
minutes before they convicted Ruth Ellis and Havers donned his black cap. No
appeal took place and all attempts for a reprieve failed. On 13 July 1955 she
took to the scaffold at Holloway Prison where she was hung by the neck until
she was dead.
Her execution caused outrage among the public at how a woman beaten by her
boyfriend could be executed for having killed him. In this book we learn that
Mr Justice Havers and even the prosecution barrister, Christmas Humphreys,
felt guilty about condemning Ellis to death. Havers, gave Ellis’ son, Andre, money each Christmas, until Andre killed
himself, at which point Humphreys paid for the funeral.
What was not known at the time of the execution was that just hours before
she was due to be killed, when it was too late, Ellis revealed the identity
of the man who supplied the weapon to her and, allegedly, assisted her in
killing Blakely whilst she was drunk. The following day she was hanged, with
her statement not being released for another two decades. It has been argued
that if this information had been known Ruth Ellis might still be alive
today.
”It was never in issue that Mrs Ellis had shot Mr
Blakely.”, judges at the Court of Appeal announced in 2003 before
dismissing an appeal on behalf of Ellis, “Indeed her statement under
caution made to
the police soon after the shooting included within its first few words Mrs
Ellis saying ‘I am guilty’. However at trial she
pleaded not guilty and her very experienced defence team sought to persuade the jury that the proper
verdict was one of guilty of manslaughter by reason of provocation rather
than guilty of murder.”
This well written book offers a differing view of the incident which led to
Blakely’s death, drawing upon Muriel
Jakubait’s knowledge of her sister and the considerable research conducted by
her co-author Monica Weller, which has revealed what she believes to be
startling evidence that Ellis was not guilty of manslaughter, but that she
did not Blakely at all. Instead, it is argued, she hanged for another person’s crime, having lied to protect him, with the truth having been
concealed by a carefully constructed conspiracy involving the British secret
services during the Cold War.
I tend to be cynical when it comes to conspiracy theories, having been
presented with too many ridiculous claims about the murder of Jill Dando, and
on first sight Weller and Jakubait’s theory sounds
rather farfetched and the wishful thinking of a woman who is unwilling to
believe her sister was a callous murderer. However, her argument contains substance and demonstrates,
definitively, that the plot is much thicker than was believed in 1955. It is
not possible to briefly explain the theory. That Ellis was in
some way caught up in a world of espionage, with her having links with the
likes of Stephen
Ward (the secret service agent involved with Christine Keeler and John
Profumo, in a well-known scandal of the early 1960s), can no longer
realistically be denied, however, but does her association with the secret
service show that some other individual was responsible for Blakely’s death?
Muriel Jakubait has no doubt that her sister found herself out of her depth
in a world she could not fully understand, and was framed in order to prevent
her from exposing sensitive information that she picked up from spending time
as a prostitute and hostess, entertaining influential figures in society. It
remains to be proven that the man discussed in this book murdered David
Blakely but what cannot be dismissed easily is the very conceivable
possibility that at least one other individual was directly involved in the
tragic shooting, just as Ellis claimed before her death, and that a
conspiracy occurred in a bid to ensure the full truth was never revealed.
The reader might not agree with the argument presented but, even so, this
book is a valuable contribution to all the studies of this infamous case and
a must read for anyone interested in crime and justice; especially those who
believe that capital punishment is a just form of punishment. Ruth Ellis: My
Sister’s Secret Life shows executions to be the barbaric actions that
they are. The devastating effect of Ellis’ execution
on her family, with the fear of being intimidated by members of the public,
the ordeal of having to identify the executed woman’s misshapen body and the suicide of Ellis’ son as a result of his grief, can hardly fail to move the
reader.
The previously unquestioned assumption that Ellis pulled the trigger of the
gun which ended Blakely’s life has now had
doubt cast upon it, but what is certain is that fifty years after Ellis took to the gallows the
disquiet and controversy surrounding her death will continue to exist for
many years to come. No amount of research and arguing will reverse the cruel
act that needlessly took the life of a daughter, sister and mother, but with
this book Monica Weller and Muriel Jakubait have got so much closer to the
truth than Ruth Ellis’ defence team were able to
half a century ago.
Ruth Ellis: My Sister’s Secret Life was written by Muriel Jakubait, with Monica Weller. It is
published by Robinson and is priced £8.99. ISBN 1-84529-119-0
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