“She was a brave woman,” recalled hangman Albert Pierrepoint.
Ruth Ellis walked to the trapdoor, “flicked her eyes” and “tried to smile”, added Mr Pierrepoint, public executioner between 1930 and 1956, in an interview in 1977.
“She never spoke to me.”
The Bishop of Stepney, Joost de Blank, had visited Ellis shortly before her execution around 9am on July 13, 1955, at London’s Holloway Prison.
She was the last woman to be hanged in Britain.
Soho nightclub hostess Ellis was hanged after being convicted of murdering her lover David Blakely.
She shot Blakely outside The Magdala pub in Hampstead, north London, following a fraught and troubled relationship involving infidelity on both sides.
Originally from Rhyl in north Wales, Ellis was physically abused by racing driver Blakely and had an abortion, which was illegal in the UK at the time.
He punched her in the stomach during an argument that led to her miscarriage.
Ellis had become the manager of the Little Club, a nightclub in Knightsbridge in 1953, and later met Blakely through another racing driver.
Their tumultuous relationship escalated and on Easter Sunday, 10 April 1955, she tracked him down to the Magdala pub in South Hill Park.
After he emerged with a friend and searched for his car keys, Ellis is said to have taken out a .38 calibre Smith & Wesson Victory Model revolver from her handbag and to have fired five shots at him.
The first one reportedly missed and he ran around the car before collapsing after a second shot.
Ellis is then said to have stood over him and discharged three more shots.
She was swiftly arrested by an off-duty police officer and is reported to have said: "I am guilty, I'm a little confused."
Wearing a black suit and white silk blouse, Ellis appeared at the Old Bailey in Court Number One on 20 June 1955.
The prosecution put one question to her: "When you fired the revolver at close range into the body of David Blakely, what did you intend to do?"
She responded: "It's obvious when I shot him I intended to kill him."
These words sealed her fate, leading the jury to take just 20 minutes to find her guilty of murder, and a mandatory death sentence.
“She was telling the truth...unfortunately the truth for her was fatal,” Mr Justice Havers later recalled.
More than 70 years later, Ellis was granted a pardon by the King, replacing her death penalty with a sentence of life imprisonment.
Justice Secretary David Lammy, standing in for Sir Keir Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions, said the move was “to recognise a profound injustice in this exceptional case”.
He added: “We hope this brings a measure of peace to Ruth Ellis’ family, who have carried the weight of what happened to her for over 70 years.”
Under modern law, it is possible that Ellis could have argued the partial defences of loss of control or diminished responsibility applied to her.
These defences might have reduced her conviction from murder to manslaughter, and could have been considered by a jury had the case been heard today, according to the Ministry of Justice.
In a statement, her grand-daughter Laura Enston said: “This pardon does not undo what happened 71 years ago. It does not restore the lives that were broken – the children left behind, the years lost.
“But it says, formally and finally, that Ruth should not have been executed; that the justice system failed her. That acknowledgement matters profoundly to our family.”
