Ruth Ellis’s pardon will comfort her family, but the system still lets down abused women like her | Joan Smith
When Ellis was condemned to death in 1955, the horrific violence she had suffered was ignored. Today, vulnerable women are still fighting to be heardIt has taken more than seven...
By Joan Smith · The Guardian Opinion
When Ellis was condemned to death in 1955, the horrific violence she had suffered was ignored. Today, vulnerable women are still fighting to be heard It has taken more than seven decades, but the grievous wrong done to Ruth Ellis has finally been recognised. Ellis was the last woman to be hanged for murder in the UK, the victim of a pitiless justice system that was uninterested in her history of horrific domestic abuse. The announcement of a posthumous conditional pardon is a tribute to the tireless campaigning of her family, including her granddaughter, Laura Enston. But it also highlights continuing shortcomings in how the criminal justice system deals with women who commit crimes after being treated horrendously by their partners. In April 1955, Ellis shot and killed her lover, David Blakely, outside a pub in north London. The shock of a woman using a gun was so immense that she was portrayed as a cold-blooded killer, even though she had suffered a miscarriage – caused by a punch in the stomach from Blakely – only three months earlier. Her appearance worked against her, with her own lawyer worrying that her dyed blond hair and heavy makeup would prejudice the jury. Continue reading...