True crime always makes good TV – but there are few investigations which have hooked viewers quite like the case of Ruth Ellis. In 1955, she became the last woman to be hanged in Britain, and her story has been told on screen many times – namely in Dance with a Stranger (1985) as well as a 2018 BBC documentary – and it now returns to our living rooms in a four-part ITVX miniseries, A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story. 

Starring Bohemian Rhapsody’s Lucy Boynton, the series highlights the flaws in one of Britain’s landmark criminal cases – which, in turn, triggered the end of the death penalty in the UK – and the complexities of Ruth Ellis, a real life femme fatale. Based on the 2012 book A Fine Day For Hanging: The Real Ruth Ellis Story by Carol Ann Lee, Boynton told the Royal Television Society, “I was 29 when I was reading and filming [A Cruel Love], and she was 28 when she was hanged. There are so many parallels that you can identify with as a modern woman looking back at her treatment then.”

Born in Wales on 9 October 1926, Ruth Ellis, née Neilson, was raised by parents Bertha Goethals, a Belgian war refugee, and Arthur Hornby, a cellist from Manchester who played on Atlantic cruise liners, as one of six children. Ellis’ childhood was marred by her father’s physical and sexual abuse, often targeted at her older sister, Muriel, who eventually became pregnant by her father and raised their son as if he were one of the siblings. A horrendous home life enticed Ellis to leave school early and move away from the family home in Basingstoke, landing her first job as an usherette at a cinema in Reading before eventually moving to London. 

It was in the capital that Ellis became pregnant for the first time, aged 17, after meeting married Canadian soldier, Clare Andrea McCallum. She was forced to move to a nursing hospital in Cumberland to give birth to her son, Clare Andrea (Andy) Neilson, in September 1944. McCallum stopped sending money around a year after their son was born, and Andy was raised by his grandmother Bertha, while Ellis went back to work. 

By the end of the 1940s, Ellis had been sucked into the sleazy, seedy side of London, working as nightclub hostess, prostitute and nude model at the Court Club in Hampstead. She got pregnant for the second time by one of her regular clients, divorced dentist and father-of-two George Johnston Ellis, who she married in November 1950. A violent and possessive alcoholic, who convinced himself that Ellis was having an affair, the final straw of their failed marriage came when she gave birth to a daughter, Georgina, in 1951, and he refused to acknowledge paternity. Ellis divorced George shortly afterwards but it was during this pregnancy, that she appeared uncredited as a beauty queen in the Rank film Lady Godiva Rides Again, donning a dark head of hair instead of the signature peroxide-blonde curls that made her reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe. 

In 1953, Ellis was the manager of Little Club in Knightsbridge. Often showered with expensive gifts and lavish gestures by its high-end, celebrity clients, she was exposed to a world of wealth she’d never witnessed before. Here, she met David Blakely through F1 racing driver Mike Hawthorn, and Blakely quickly became borderline obsessed with Ellis, moving into her flat above the club mere weeks after meeting – and despite being engaged to another woman. 

The relationship was intense, with both Ellis and Blakely still seeing other people while living together. Ellis became pregnant again, but had an abortion, and around this time met Desmond Cussen, a former Royal Air Force pilot and accountant who gave her a taste of a life away from the nightclubs and escorts. Ellis moved into Cussen’s flat in Soho but continued to see Blakely who, desperate to get her back, proposed. Despite his violent outbursts, Ellis said yes, but in January 1955 had a miscarriage after he punched her in the stomach during an argument. 

Naturally, things cooled between Ellis and Blakely, but a revengeful streak had been instilled in her. Blakely told Ellis he wanted nothing more to do with her but, on Easter Sunday in April 1955, she waited outside The Magdala pub in Hampstead for him with a revolver – now in the Metropolitan Police's Crime Museum – in her handbag. At around 9.30pm, he left the pub with a friend in tow and she shot him five times as he grappled for his car keys. Turning to Blakely’s friend, Ellis appeared in shock and said: “Will you call the police, Clive?” She was swiftly arrested by an off-duty policeman, who heard her say: “I am guilty, I'm a little confused.”

Despite thorough examination at the police station, Ellis was cleared of insanity and mental abnormality. She took the stand at the Old Bailey in June 1955 wearing a black suit and white silk blouse and sporting her trademark coiffured blonde hair. The only question she was asked by prosecutor Christmas Humphreys, was: “When you fired the revolver at close range into the body of David Blakely, what did you intend to do?” To which she replied: “It's obvious when I shot him I intended to kill him.” 

The trial also presented evidence of Blakely’s repeated abuse – Ellis told the jury, “he only hit me with his fist or hands, I bruise easily” and “a few weeks or days previously, I do not know which, David got very violent. I do not know whether that caused the miscarriage or not. He thumped me in the tummy.” But her earlier admission sealed her fate, and it took 20 minutes for the jury to reach a guilty verdict. 

Outside Holloway Prison, where Ellis was interred, the trial triggered widespread media coverage. The newspapers were fascinated by Ellis’ appearance, calm demeanour, and the fact she was a seasoned prostitute while also being a mother of two, while many were also outraged at how evidence of Blakely’s abuse was not taken into account. The Daily Mail reported, ‘six revolver shots shattered the Easter Sunday calm of Hampstead and a beautiful platinum blonde stood with her back to the wall. In her hand was a revolver,’ before going on to speculate that, while she was solely responsible for firing the gun, who and what could have driven her to do such a thing? 

On 12 July 1955, the day before her execution, solicitors visited Ellis in prison to write her will. Pressed to divulge the true story – and having perhaps realised the end was in sight – Ellis made the solicitors promise not to use what she said as leverage for a pardon, before revealing that Cussen had not only given her the gun and taught her how to use it, but had also driven her to the murder scene. On the same day she wrote to Blakely’s parents, telling them: “I have always loved your son, and I shall die still loving him.”

A 50,000-signature-strong petition and a seven-page letter from Ellis’ solicitor to then-home secretary, Gwilym Lloyd George, asking for reprieve came to no avail; Lloyd George later said, “We cannot have people shooting off firearms in the street! As long as I was home secretary I was determined to ensure that people could use the streets without fear of a bullet.” 

Ruth Ellis was hanged at 9.01am on 13 July 1955 and, as per tradition, was buried in an unmarked grave within the walls of Holloway Prison. Cussen has always denied the allegations concerning his involvement in the murder, and emigrated to Australia soon after the trial. 

The sad, sorry tale does not end there. Ellis’ former husband, George Ellis, died by suicide a couple of years later; her mother also made a failed attempt on her life which left her without the ability to speak; and Ellis’ first son Andy took his life in 1982. The endless petitions for pardons and clemency didn't stop after Ellis’ execution, and the case was even referred back to the Court of Appeal in 2003 but was firmly rejected, as was a petition published on the 10 Downing Street website in 2007 asking then-prime minister Gordon Brown to grant Ellis a pardon in light of new evidence. 

This year marks the 70^th anniversary of the Ruth Ellis case – a landmark trial that continues to grip true crime fans – providing an apt time for Boynton to reimagine Ellis and all of her complexities in A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story. For executive producer Kate Bartlett, it was high time that someone did Ellis justice; speaking to the Royal Television Society, she said: “She was by no means perfect. This was a passionate, abusive, volatile relationship. But she shouldn’t have been hanged.” 

A Cruel Love screenwriter Kelly Jones added: “It feels like we have a new, truer version of Ruth Ellis which isn’t in the public consciousness. The single detail I find so moving is that she refused any sedative just before execution. She just wanted to face it. She’s a very flawed, complex, but brave and interesting person who changed our whole legal system.”

A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story is available to stream on ITVX now. 

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