Ruth Ellis. What are your thoughts?

She didn't deserve to be hanged. I'm glad we no longer have the death penalty and her case was important in abolishing it.

I didn't watch this drama but seen others like it.

I think too that her case was a turning point.

Many people were against the hanging. I was told my mum joined protesters outside Holloway prison on the day she was hung and mum, who was working class, wasn't one for demonstrating her true feelings.

I haven't seen the TV drama but will watch it to try and get some idea as to how and why the Ruth Ellis case mattered to so many ordinary people.

Years ago I had an internet friend who was related to her. I wish he was still with us so I could ask him about her. On the Must Watch podcast they said that she didn’t want a reprieve; her lawyer kept trying to get her to say things that might save her from hanging but as far as she was concerned she’d killed someone and was prepared to face the consequences.

Yes, that is right. She almost certainly would have not hung if she had stated that she killed him because of the violence she had endured throughout her married life.

My mother remembered it well. She was a great supporter of the death penalty, but she was adamant that Ruth shouldn't have been hanged. She believed that a woman who had recently suffered a miscarriage wouldn't be responsible for her actions. Of course the case had a great effect on Pierrepoint the hangman.

There is absolutely no doubt that Ruth Ellis shot David Blakely.

Hanging was the statutory punishment for murder in 1955.

Having said that it was completely wrong and barbaric that she ended up being hanged. Ruth Ellis had a succession of violent men in her life starting with her father who sexually abused her and ending with David Blakely who was also abusive. Ruth Ellis had miscarried in the January before the murder in April. She had miscarried following a punch in the abdomen from Blakely. All in all the 28 years of her life had been very difficult and traumatic.

Awful awful story
We must never ever have the death penalty again

I remember the talk going around from parents and their friends afterwards. I was 5, yet I never forgot her . I watched the drama and it made me cry . Nigel Havers who was the judge in the drama spoke on TV recently saying his own grandfather was the actual judge who was in the court for the trial . I can't remember which show / channell but it was interesting. I wonder about her children they will be about my age . I wonder how their lifes turned out . All very sad

Her son committed suicide and her daughter died age 50, her son use to put a memorial of her death every year in a newspaper

I’m not certain but think Nigel Havers grandfather, the judge brought up her children.

The judge paid money annually for the son, and the prosecution council paid for the sons burial

I only watched the first episode.

I didn’t find it very interesting, and felt how she was portrayed unrealistic.

Thankyou for your answers regarding Ruth's children . How very sad . To think the judge helped them is just so heartwarming . Injustice for sure . Thank God there is more help and support for victims of DV now .
Just to add I remember when the police ignored violence towards a wife /partner as it was called a domestic.

Thank you Toetoe I have followed much of the Ruth Ellis tragedy, I knew the sister of Timothy Evans and of the distress she suffered

She wouldn't allow a proper defence which would have enabled her sentence to be commuted to life imprisonment.

Timothy Evans was innocent; Ruth Ellis was guilty but there were extenuating circumstances that the judge couldn't use in her favour because she wouldn't allow it.

I watched a programme about Ruth Ellis years ago. It was premeditated murder at the time capital punishment was the law.
Murder in the past was national news people were shocked. These days, a murder occurs nearly every single day unfortunately there is no deterrent.

I don’t agree with the death penalty full stop.

There’s been a few programmes about Ruth Ellis, I think she was as much a victim as the one she killed, but that’s no excuse.

Redhead56

I watched a programme about Ruth Ellis years ago. It was premeditated murder at the time capital punishment was the law.
Murder in the past was national news people were shocked. These days, a murder occurs nearly every single day unfortunately there is no deterrent.

It may surprise you to know that murder was not always national news in 1955. For example the murder of a policeman's wife that year went unreported even by the local newspaper, it was never solved.

Hundreds of people died that year under suspicious circumstances many of them but by no means all, women killed by their partners, gangland criminals and prostitutes.
Very few of them featured in the national news.

I remember the case very well,; I was nine at the time and the trial and punishment exercised a horrid fascination over me. It was all over the newspapers, screaming headlines on the hoardings and much discussed by adults.
My parents were very sympathetic towards Ruth Ellis, and i remember my mother taking issue with two women who said, if there were no bad women like her, there would be no bad men; it was all her fault. Blakely's treatment of her was known during the trial, but Ruth Ellis insisted that she knew what she was doing and she intended to shoot him, to kill. Therefore, premeditation.
The Judge, Cecil Havers, had no alternative but to deliver the death penalty, but wrote following the trial to the Home Secretary and other politicians asking for the sentence to be commuted to Life imprisonment but without success. He sent money for the upkeep of her son every year; I believe the daughter was adopted.
I think, had Ruth Ellis been spared the death penalty she would have probably committed suicide, because she accepted her guilt and did not ant to live. It was truly a crime of passion, but that defence was not accepted in Britain. Social mores were very different then

There is a call for Ruth Ellis to be given a pardon, how can this be granted ?

I haven't seen all of it. There was another film about her a while ago, her life was desperate and sad. The legacy of her execution, I imagine was a terrible cross for her children to bear. I've always felt that the trio of Timothy Evans, Derek Bentley and Ruth Ellis are the three hangings that resonate with the British public as the most horrifying. My personal opinion is that capital punishment is appalling it makes my blood run cold, state sanctioned and cold blooded in the extreme.

I don't agree with the death penalty for anyone so obviously I don't agree with it for her.

I find it fascinating that at the same time another woman who killed was reprieved.

Sarah Lloyd convicted of beating her 86-year-old neighbour to death with a spade.
Virtually no publicity, no pressure from the public.
As I once read, was Ruth crime any worse than Sarah's? No (unless we consider the life of a 25-year-old man to be more valuable than the life of an 86-year-old woman). For Ruth, it was her failure to meet standards of conventional morality that proved fatal.

Ruth Ellis was a nightclub hostess and living in sin, and pregnant but not married , and we are speaking of the 50’s, a
time of mother and baby homes