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The Lady died for love

By David Cocksedge

RUTH ELLIS never enjoyed many breaks in her 28 years and 276 days of life. She was born on 9 October 1926 into a large impoverished family in Rhyl, South Wales and Christened Ruth Neilson. At the age of sixteen she became pregnant. The father was a French-Canadian soldier who soon left her to bring up her son Andrea (Andy) alone. To pay the bills, Ruth took up modeling for a camera club and then, at the age of nineteen she became a hostess at a seedy club in London's Mayfair district. Her mentor was Morris Conley (47), a con man and ponce much involved in the leisure activities of drinking, illegal gambling and prostitution.

After a brief period at the club, Ruth met and married a dentist named George Ellis and moved to Southampton. But Ellis was a violent wife-beater, and she filed for divorce almost a year after they married. Ruth returned to London and worked for Conley again. She was a hostess at Carroll's Club for a while, and then was offered the job of manageress at The Little Club in 1953. Here she enjoyed the 1950's London night scene, and soon became highly proficient at her job. She was attractive in a rather brassy sort of way, with platinum blonde hair made fashionable by Jayne Mansfield, Diana Dors and Marilyn Monroe, icons of that era. Myopic from an early age, she was too vain to wear her glasses unless they were really necessary.

It was at The Little Club that she first met David Blakeley, a handsome but degenerate youth from an upper-class family and of course an ex-public schoolboy. He was aged 23 when they first met, and trying to carve himself a career as a racing driver, which made him a romantic and exciting prospect for Ruth. Her friend Desmond Cussens introduced them to each other in May 1953, and there was instant sexual attraction between the two. Two nights later, Ruth invited Blakeley to her bedroom upstairs after closing the club at 2am, and their doomed affair was started.

Theirs was also a stormy affair, for they often quarreled, mainly when Blakeley became drunk and insulted other members of the club; which was intensely embarrassing for Ruth. Blakeley and Cussens soon came to detest each other, probably because of a mutual attraction for Ms Ellis. Because he had been introduced to Ruth by Cussens, Blakeley referred to him as a "bloated pimp", and on one occasion in the club, a fistfight broke out between the drunken youth and middle-aged man, who had known Ruth since 1944 when she was eighteen years old.

In January 1955, Ruth aborted her baby by David Blakeley, and went into a deep depression when she discovered that he had been having affairs with other women. When Conley dismissed her from her job at The Little Club, Ruth moved in with Cussens at Egerton Gardens, Knightsbridge, and soon became his mistress. There was no doubt that she was still deeply infatuated with Blakeley, however. They met occasionally, and Ruth seemed determined to marry the younger man someday, even though she was acutely aware of their widely different social status, which gave her something of an inferiority complex. When Blakeley drove her to his family's country estate in Sussex, Ruth refused to get out of the car and meet his relatives. Soon after this, Blakeley telephoned Ruth and told her that their relationship was over.

His parents wanted Blakeley to become engaged to a young lady he had known since his teenage days; and a divorced, platinum blonde ex-social club hostess was not their idea of an ideal wife for their son. In the way that women can immediately sense such things, Ruth knew this and deeply resented their snobbish attitude.

But David was still fatally attracted to Ruth. They met for brief trysts without Cussens being aware that his mistress was "cheating" on him. An arrangement was made for David to take her and her son to Brighton on Good Friday 8 April 1955. When David typically failed to turn up, Ruth was furious. She knew that he was staying with his friends Anthony and Carole Findlater in Tanza Road, Hampstead, and attempted to reach him there by telephone. Mrs Findlater lied to her that David was not there; but Ruth turned up on their doorstep at midnight, loudly ringing the doorbell. The Findlaters refused to let her in, so Ruth attacked Blakeley's car parked outside. Neighbors called the police, and Ms Ellis was strongly advised to go back to Knightsbridge or she would be charged with disturbing the peace of this quiet London suburb. Cussens then arrived to collect her, and she left, weeping hysterically.

Early the following morning, Ruth called the Findlaters again, but whoever answered hung up as soon as she identified herself. On the fateful Easter Sunday of 10 April 1955 she made another early-morning call which was answered by Anthony Findlater. She just had time to blurt out, "I hope you're all having an enjoyable holiday…" before he put the receiver down. She was going too add, "because you have ruined mine!" Her son Andy had been eagerly looking forward to the Brighton trip, and was bitterly disappointed.

That evening, Ruth armed herself with a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver, and persuaded Cussens to drive her to Tanza Road. When she did not see David's Vauxhall Vanguard saloon parked outside the Findlater's house, she asked Cussens to take her to the Magdala Tavern, further down the road in a looped cul-de-sac in South Park Hill, on the edge of Hampstead Heath.

There is some mystery as to how Ruth obtained the handgun. In her statement to Hampstead police later, she wrote: "The gun was given to me about three years ago in the club by a man whose name I do not remember. It was security for money, and I accepted it as a curiosity. I did not know it was loaded when it was given to me, but I knew next morning when I looked at it. When I put the gun in my bag I intended to find David and shoot him." In prosecution terms this was the most co-operative confession imaginable. It seems that in her statement Ruth was covering for and protecting Desmond Cussens, who may have given her what was soon to be the murder weapon. Illegal firearms were easily obtainable in London during the 1950's.

Ruth knew that David was drinking in the Magdala, as she had spotted his car parked nearby. He was with his friend Clive Gunnell, bantering with the landlord, Mr Colson. Blakeley could be very good company when he wanted to be. It was just after nine o'clock on Sunday 10 April 1955, and the Easter daylight had long vanished, making way for a murky, cold evening. Cussens drove off and left her after she got out of the car and walked to the public house. She peered through the ripple glass window to the left of the main door, and spotted David and Clive, drinking and chatting with Mr Colson. She saw them order three quart bottles of beer and a pack of cigarettes before they would leave the bar, and exit onto the street. She moved back up the road a few feet, stepping into the dark cavity of the doorway of Henshaws, a news agency next to the Magdala.

The two men said their good-byes to their friends and left. As they came onto the street, Clive walked to the passenger door and David, a bottle of beer under one arm, fumbled with his car keys. Ruth now stepped out of the shadows and shouted out his name: "David!" Blakeley chose to ignore her, and carried on trying to unlock the car door. Ruth shouted again - "David!" louder this time, and took the revolver from her handbag.

When Blakeley turned and saw the gun, he backed away, around the back of the car towards the protection of his friend Clive. As he drifted past her, Ruth fired twice, and David jerked as the slugs tore into him. His blood spurted onto the car panels as she followed him around the vehicle.

"Get out of my way Clive!" Ruth spat at Blakeley's horrified friend, whose brain was still trying to absorb what was happening. Her victim staggered and turned to run away, this time in front of the car and up the hill, away from this terrifying danger. Another round caught him in the back, and he fell face down, his blood pumping over the pavement. Ruth fired again, and then as she stepped up to the twitching body, she fired the fifth .38 round at point blank range. She held the gun three inches from his dark grey jacket and blasted a bullet into his left shoulder.

There was now a lot of blood everywhere, flowing across the pavement, and on his clothing, mixed with the beer spilling down the street in a small torrent from the quart bottle that he had dropped and smashed. At least four of the five rounds had found their target. Blakeley was rapidly dying from bullets smashing through intestines, liver, lung, aorta and windpipe.

Ruth stood over his sprawled figure, and then lifted the gun to her head and pulled the trigger. There was a click as the weapon misfired. Slowly she lowered the gun, and then fired into the pavement. This time the gun worked, and the .38 slug ricocheted and struck the hand of a bystander, a woman named Gladys Yule, aged 53. The fragmented bullet tore off the poor woman's left thumb. Her husband rushed her to hospital by taxi.

Witnesses later testified that they saw Ruth standing over Blakeley and heard two or three distinct clicks as she continued to pull the trigger on an empty chamber. Ruth then turned, trembling and shaking, and said to Gunnell, "Go and call the police, Clive."

Inside the main bar, an off-duty policeman, PC 389 Alan Thompson, was having a drink, and rushed out of the pub when someone shouted, "A bloke has been shot outside!" He walked up to Ruth, who was now trembling violently, and gently removed the handgun from her. "Will you call the police?" she whispered. "I am the police", he replied as he stuffed the weapon into his pocket. Ruth looked up at him and said, "Will you please arrest me?" Thompson did so, giving her the first of three cautions that she would receive that night. She ignored Clive Gunnell who was now screaming hysterically, "Why did you kill him, you bitch! What good is he to you dead?"

Within minutes police cars arrived from Hampstead Police Station and an ambulance crew picked up the victim, who was accompanied to New End Hospital by Gunnell. David Blakeley was pronounced DOA (dead of arrival) minutes later.

Ruth was taken to Hampstead police station where Detectives interviewed her. After finishing her statement at 12.30pm on Monday 11 April 1955, she was charged with the murder of David Blakeley. The next day, after a brief appearance at Hampstead magistrate's court, she was removed to Holloway Prison in North London, where she became Prisoner 9656 awaiting trial for murder.

With her full confession, Ruth Ellis was predictably found guilty of murder, and, according to British law of the time, sentenced to death. These were the barbarous days when a capital sentence was mandatory for murder, and Ruth rejected all attempts to persuade her to appeal. Despite many petitions calling for commutation of the sentence, she was hanged by the Queen's official executioner Albert Pierrepoint at Holloway Prison at nine o'clock on the morning of 13 July 1955. On being told that thousands had signed a petition on her behalf, Ruth had said, "I am very grateful to them. But I am quite happy to die."

There remains to be fully explained the murky and sinister motives of Desmond Cussens in this tragic drama. He may or may not have supplied Ms Ellis with the murder weapon, but he certainly drove her to where she planned to execute her lover - a man that he had every reason to hate. Like a submarine, he launched a deadly torpedo, and then quietly sped away from the scene. He was back in Knightsbridge when Blakeley was mercilessly shot to death outside the Magdala public house just after 9pm that night.

The 1985 British movie 'Dance with a stranger', directed by Mike Newell, tells the tragic story of Ruth Ellis in great detail. Miranda Richardson put out a superb performance as Ruth, and the supporting cast included Rupert Everett, who was totally convincing as the spoilt and degenerate David Blakeley. Ian Holm played Des Cussens, and Stratford Johns was Morris Conley.

Among the many fascinating photos on the walls of the famous 'Winchester Club' (now renamed 'The Blind Beggar') in Jomtien, south of Pattaya, there is a framed picture of a copy of the death warrant of Ruth Ellis, signed by the Home Secretary, Major Gwilym Lloyd. She was the 15th woman to be executed in Britain during the 20th century, and also the last.

Ironically, if Ruth had not aborted her child by Blakeley in January 1955, she would never have hanged. For centuries in Britain, there was a tradition that pregnant women charged with capital crime could escape the gallows by "pleading their bellies." But then again, had Ruth been pregnant in April 1955, it is doubtful that she would have taken a gun to her lover and killed him so brutally. A decade later with the double execution of Peter Allen and Gwynne Evans in 1965, executions ceased in the United Kingdom.

In a final letter to Blakeley's parents written from her prison cell, she wrote, "I have always loved your son, and I shall die still loving him." Perhaps the real tragedy of Ruth Ellis was that she died for love of a man who did not deserve it.

(Research: 'Ruth Ellis - the last to hang' by Thomas L Jones, crimelibrary.com).

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