The Bombshell and the Battle-Axe: Two women who killed the UK death penalty

A bombshell waits

On the evening of the 12th July 1955 a pretty 28 year old blonde sits alone in her cell. She’s writing a letter to the mother of the man she killed. Tomorrow she will hang for her crime.This is the punishment for murderers and she remains convinced it’s what she deserves. Outside she can hear the sound of protestors calling for her release

The battle-axe arrives

A Rolls Royce pulls up outside Holloway prison and a second lady gets out. Police officers grimace as a 73 year old self-confessed battle-axe steps out of the car. Heavy set and clothed entirely in black.Her presence hardly comes as a surprise to the officers. This lady has attended most public executions in the last thirty years, often with a brass band in tow.

These two women are the condemned murderer Ruth Ellis and millionaire eccentric Violet Van der Elst.

One whom history has remembered and one who has undeservedly faded into obscurity.

Two working class women….

Both women were born into working class families. Violet Anne Dodge was born in Feltham in Middlesex in 1882, the daughter of a coal porter and a washerwoman.

Ruth Hornby was born in Rhyll North Wales in 1926, the fifth of six children. Her father was a professional musician and her mother a Belgian refugee from the First World War.

Violet began life as a scullery maid before she married out of poverty. Her husband Henry Arthur Nathan was thirteen years her senior. Marrying him gave the twenty-one year old Violet freedom to begin exploring career options.

Meanwhile the Hornby family had settled first in Basingstoke. Ruth left school aged fourteen to earn money as a waitress. In 1944 at the age of seventeen a whirlwind romance with a Canadian soldier left Ruth carrying a son. Money came for a while from the anonymous soldier for a while then dried up completely.

Violet was a shrewd businesswoman and developed a form of shaving foam that didn’t need a brush to be applied. Her product Shavex made her a huge personal fortune. Her first husband died in November 1927. The wealthy widow soon remarried but not before purchasing Harlaxton Manor in Lincolnshire which she renamed Grantham Castle.

Violet’s second husband was to the manager of her estate in Harlaxton Manor. Here she and Jean Julien Romain Van der Elst lived in relative bliss until his death a few years later. From this point on Violet Van der Elst became obsessed with the both the occult and with the abolition of capital punishment.

She would publish two books in 1937. On The Gallows and The Torture Chamber and Other Stories. The first was a political manifesto about capital punishment, the latter a selection of ghost stories.

Whilst her son stayed with her mother Ruth began work as a ‘hostess’ a the Court Club in Duke Street. This was a front for high end prostitution. It was here in 1950 that Ruth met her first husband, George Ellis.

The Timothy Evans Case

In March 1950, a Welshman called Timothy Evans hanged for a crime he didn’t commit. History would exonerate him and implicate the quiet neighbour downstairs.

The serial killer John Christie would later confess to the murder of Evans’ wife and child.

Evans and Christie would both die at the hand of executioner, Albert Pierrepoint. Only one of them was guilty. It was a miscarriage of justice

In November 1950 Ruth married George Ellis, a divorced father of two. He was a possessive husband, jealous at the drop of a hat and violent. Although Ruth left him a few times, she would always come back. This became especially important when she fell pregnant. It was a pattern with the men in her life that would often repeat.

The baby would be the last straw in an already fragile marriage and the two separated soon after. Ruth moved back in with her parents and returned to prostitution.

Violet campaigned three times to become a member of parliament. First in Putney (1935) then Southwark Central (1940) and finally Hornchurch (1945). Each time she stood as an independent, each time the electorate said no.

By 1953 Ruth Ellis was the manager of ‘The Little Club’ here she met and began an affair with the man she would go on to murder. His name was David Drummond Moffat Blakely. Like many of the clientele of ‘The Little Club’ he was heavly into motor racing. He was wealthy, he was fun, he was everything that Ruth wanted in a man and she fell head over heels. She would do anything to keep him.

In 1953 both women would have been made aware of the Derek Bentley case. Ruth would have read about it. Violet was almost certainly one of the protestors at the prison gates.

The Derek Bentley Case

Bentley had taken part in a botched burglary with a younger accomplice. The panicked youngster, Christopher Craig, had fired a revolver and killed a police officer. This happened after Bentley had already been apprehended and was sitting in the back of a police car.

The sixteen year old Craig was too young to face the death penalty. Bentley, however, was nineteen and this made him liable for the full weight of the law.

Because they had undertaken a joint enterprise Bentley was deemed responsible for Craig’s actions.

The appeals for clemency were ignored by the Home Secretary.

Abolitionists like Violet Van der Elst pointed out that Bentley had learning disabilities, an IQ of 77 and a mental age much closer to that of a twelve year old. It didn’t sway the decision of the Home Secretary not to ask the young Queen Elizabeth to grant clemency.

Bentley hanged on 28th January 1953 at Wandsworth prison.

The Murder of David Blakely

Ruth Ellis and David Blakely’s relationship was, at best, tempestuous. David could not handle Ruth seeing other members of the club. Likewise she struggled with jealousy and insecurity when the two spent time apart.

It was a match made in hell. In January of 1955 during one of their frequent altercations, he punched her in the stomach, causing her to miscarry.

Over Easter weekend in April 1955, David promised to spend time with Ruth. Instead he went out drinking with his friends. Ruth had long suspected that he was having an affair and was determined that he wouldn’t leave her. If she couldn’t have him, nobody could.

She borrowed a gun from another one of her lovers and asked him to drive her to the where she knew David would be. She laid in wait and then when he came out of the pub Ruth called to him. He ignored her.

Ruth shot at him once, and missed. He attempted to run. The second shot hit him and he fell to the floor. Standing over him she fired another four shots into his body. The gun clicked a few time and then the final shot missed, hit the pavement and ricocheted into the hand of a passer-by.

An off duty policeman on the scene arrested her. She didn’t resist. She found herself in HMP Holloway very soon after on a charge of murder.

The Trial

“Mrs. Ellis, when you fired that revolver at close range into the body of David Blakely what did you intend to do”

“It was obvious that when I shot him I intended to kill him.”

It was suicide by legal system. Although she would have been extensively coached by her defence lawyer Ruth openly incriminated herself in court. She appeared dressed in a smart black two-piece suit with her hair re-dyed to platinum blonde. She was doing everything possible to avoid public sympathy.

A naturally beautiful woman Ruth Ellis had always been photogenic. She was the perfect poster girl for the femme fatale.

The verdict

As the case drew to a close the judge, Sir Cecil Havers, was unable to give the jury the option of finding Ruth guilty of manslaughter by provocation. The defence team had been unable to successfully make the case for this and so the choice was simple.

Ruth Ellis would either be guilty of murder and hang. Or she would be found innocent and released. The jury returned their verdict in 23 minutes. Guilty. The mother of two young children would hang.

Ruth Ellis replied with two words

“Thank You”

She walked back down to the dock, smiled at her friends and family and returned to Holloway. Judge Havers, the grandfather of actor Nigel Havers, requested a reprieve from the home office, it wasn’t granted.

Ruth Ellis maintained her guilt over subsequent meetings

“I am now completely composed. I know that I am going to die, and I’m ready to do so. You wont hear anything from me that says I didn’t kill David. I did kill him. And whatever the circumstances you as a lawyer will appreciate that it’s a life for a life. Isn’t that just?”

It is somewhat ironic that Ruth’s death would lead to political change against the death penalty she supported so vehemently. She would only cry once during her time in prison, after an MP acting on behalf of a close friend tried to browbeat her into appealing for clemency.

Ruth, it seemed, wanted to die.

The Execution

On Tuesday the 12th of July the Governor of HMP Holloway called the police for reinforcements. A crowd of more than 500 people including Violet Van de Elst had gathered outside the prison and were singing and chanting. A few braved breaking the cordon and were quickly arrested.

By the morning of Wednesday 13th July the crowd had grown. A 1000 people, many of them young mothers with prams stood and waited. In her cell Ruth finished her letter to David’s mother.

“I have always loved your son, and I shall die still loving him.”

Weighing 103lbs, her head hooded, her legs pinioned together and her hands behind her back, Ruth Ellis hanged.

At 9.18am the execution notice was posted on the gates of the prison and the crowd dispersed. The death of this young mother of two children had been a sickening episode for many. With Timothy Evans, Derek Bentley and Ruth Ellis happening in quick succession the public appetite for execution began to drop away.

As always, Violet Van der Elst climbed back into her car and returned home to Lincolnshire. Her tireless campaigning had whittled away her fortune and by 1959 and aged 78 she was forced to sell her beloved Grantham castle to cover the costs. She had sacrificed everything. She would move into a flat in Knightsbridge, not far from where Ruth Ellis had worked at ‘The Little Club’.

Violet would live to see the house of commons approve the Abolition of the Death Penalty Act in 1965. It was brought as a private members bill by Labour MP Sydney Silverman.

The act was temporary and contained a ‘sunset clause’. Parliament had five years in which to change their mind. They didn’t and the bill was given a full ascent in 1969. Except in cases of High Treason the death penalty no longer applied. It was completely removed from UK law in 1998. This was a formality.

Nobody had faced the death penalty since 1964.

The aftermath

Timothy Evans received a posthumous pardon in 1966 and Derek Bentley received a posthumous pardon in 1998. A campaign to have Ruth Ellis pardoned was less successful. In a review of the case, it was decided that the legal system had been applied successfully but that the correct decision had been reached at the time. It was a crushing blow for the family of Ruth Ellis.

Ruth Ellis’ son was ten when his mother was executed. He would end his own life in a bedsit in 1982, his final act was to desecrate his mother’s grave. Sir Cecil Havers and Christmas Humphreys QC contributed to his funeral costs. The death of Ruth Ellis had clearly weighed heavily on their minds.

Violet Van der Elst died in 1966 aged 84. Her life-long campaign to end capital punishmet complete. She died quietly and alone in a care home in Ticehurst in Sussex. Her legacy all but vanished into historical obscurity and her substantial fortune whittled down to a little over £15,500.

Both women played their part in abolishing the death penalty in the UK. Both mistreated by the society and the men around them in many varied ways.

If Violet had entered parliament in the 1930’s as she had intended, then Ruth’s life may have been saved. It is likely that she would have raised a private members bill long before 1965 and found a great political ally in campaigner Sydney Silverman.

Society viewed her as an eccentric outsider and dismissed her completely.

Whilst she may have been eccentric, she was a progressive voice way ahead of her time. She was a strong woman whose story deserves to be told

Convincing the general public she was right cost her a fortune. I suspect she thought it was worth every penny.

Ruth Ellis became the poster girl for abolishment and went down in history as the last woman to be hanged in the UK. It looks to the eyes of history that she had a clear determination to die.

If the case were re-tried today Ruth Ellis would have been released after serving a long sentence. There is a chance she would have been able to rebuild her life. She would’ve been offered psychiatric help to cope with her miscarriage and her many emotional issues. She went to her death willingly and bravely and in doing so saved thousands of other lives.

Perhaps she thought death was the only thing she deserved. We’ll never know what she thought. There are no second chances.

The death penalty doesn’t allow for follow up interviews.

These two women showed remarkable bravery and courage in the face of huge adversity. The Bombshell and the Battle-Axe were instrumental in forcing the decline of capital punishment.

As we stumble into the 21st Century in a country that has rejected state sponsored murder, we should ensure that history remembers both these women with the kindness and compassion that they deserved.

Without them both, the world would be a very different place.

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