True Crime Collection

Ruth Ellis

Ruth Ellis was born on 9th October 1926 in Rhyl, Wales. Ruth was the 5th of 6 children. During her childhood her family moved to Basingstoke, Hampshire. Her mother, Elisaberta Goethals, was a Belgian war refugee; her father, Arthur Hornby, was a cellist from Manchester. Ruth attended Fairfields Senior Girls' School in Basingstoke, leaving when she was 14 to work as a waitress. Shortly afterwards, in 1941, the family moved to London. In 1944, 17 year old Ruth became pregnant by a married Canadian soldier named Clare and gave birth to a son, whom she named Clare Andria Neilson, known as "Andy". The father sent money for about a year then stopped. The child eventually went to live with Ruth's mother. 

Ruth became a nightclub hostess in Hampstead through nude modelling work, which paid significantly more than the various factory and clerical jobs she had held since leaving school. Morris Conley, her manager at the Court Club in Duke Street, blackmailed his hostess employees into sleeping with him. By early 1950 Ruth was making money as a full-service sex worker and became pregnant by one of her regular clients. She had this pregnancy terminated in the third month and returned to work as soon as she could. 

On 8th November 1950, Ruth married 41 year old George Johnston Ellis, a divorced dentist with 2 sons, at the register office in Tonbridge, Kent. He had been a customer at the Court Club. George was a violent alcoholic, jealous and possessive, and the marriage deteriorated rapidly because he was convinced his new wife was having an affair. Ruth left him several times but always returned. 

In 1951, while 4 months pregnant, Ruth appeared, uncredited, as a beauty queen in the Rank film Lady Godiva Rides Again. She subsequently gave birth to a daughter, Georgina, but George refused to acknowledge paternity and they separated shortly afterwards and were later divorced. Ruth and her son moved in with her parents and she went back to sex work to make ends meet. 

In 1953, Ruth became the manager of the Little Club, a nightclub in Knightsbridge. At the time, she was lavished with expensive gifts by admirers and had a number of celebrity friends. Ruth met David Blakely, 3 years her junior, through racing driver Mike Hawthorn. David was a former public school boy who was educated at Shrewsbury School and Sandhurst, but also a hard-drinking racer. Within weeks he moved into Ruth's flat about the club despite being engaged to another woman, Mary Dawson. Ruth became pregnant for the 4th time but had an abortion, feeling she could not reciprocate the level of commitment shown by David towards their relationship. 

Ruth then began seeing Desmond Cussen, a former Royal Air Force pilot who had flown Lancaster bombers during the Second World War, and had taken up accountancy after leaving the service. He was appointed a director of  the family business Cussen & Co., a wholesale and retail tobacconist with outlets in London and South Wales. Ruth eventually moved in with Desmond at 20 Goodward Court, Devonshire Street, north of Oxford Street. The relationship with David continued, however, and became increasingly violent as he and Ruth continued to see other people. David offered to marry Ruth, to which she consented, but in January 1955 she had another miscarriage after he punched her in the stomach during an argument. 

On Easter Sunday, 10th April 1955, Ruth took a taxi from Desmond's home to a second floor flat at 29 Tanza Road, Hampstead, the home of Anthony and Carole Findlater, where she suspected David might be. As she arrived, David's car drove off, so she paid off the taxi and walked the 1/4 mile to the Magdala, a relatively large public house in South Hill Park where she found David's car parked outside.

At around 9:30pm David and his friend Clive Gunnell emerged. David passed Ruth waiting on the pavement when she stepped out of Henshaws Doorway, a newsagent next to the Magdala. As David searched for the keys to his car, Ruth took a .38 calibre Smith & Wesson Victory Model revolver from her handbag and fired 5 shots at David. The 1st shot missed and he started to run, pursued by Ruth around the car, where she fired a 2nd, which caused him to collapse onto the pavement. Ruth then stood over him and fired 3 more bullets into him. 1 bullet was fired less than half an inch from David's back and left powder burns on his skin. 

Ruth was seen to stand over David as she repeatedly tried to fire the revolver's 6th shot, finally firing it into the ground. This bullet ricocheted off the road and slightly injured a bystander. 

Ruth, in apparent shock, asked Clive, "Will you call the police, Clive?" She was arrested immediately by an off-duty policeman, who heard her say, "I am guilty, I'm a little confused." David's body was taken to hospital with multiple fatal wounds to the intestines, liver, lung, aorta and trachea. Originally taken in as evidence, the revolver is now in the Metropolitan Police's Crime Museum. 

At Hampstead police station Ruth appeared to be calm and not obviously under the influence of drink or drugs. She made a detailed confession and was charged with murder. She made her first appearance at a magistrates' court on 11th April 1955 and was ordered to be held on remand. 

Ruth was twice examined by principal Medical Officer, M.R. Penry Williams, who failed to find evidence of mental illness; an electroencephalograph examination on 3rd May found no abnormality. While on remand she was examined by psychiatrist Dr. D Whittaker for the defence, and by Dr A. Dalzell on behalf of the Home Office. Neither found evidence of insanity. 

On 20th June 1955, Ruth appeared in the Number One Court at the Old Bailey, London, before Mr Justice Havers. She was dressed in a black suit and white silk blouse with freshly bleached and coiffured blonde hair. Ruth's defending counsel, Aubrey Melford Stevenson, supported by Sebag Shaw and Peter Rawlinson, expressed concern about her appearance but she did not alter it to appear less striking. 

The only question put to Ruth 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?"; her answer was, "It's obvious when I shot him I intended to kill him." This reply guaranteed a guilty verdict and the mandatory death sentence. The jury took twenty minutes to convict her. 

Ruth remained at Holloway Prison while awaiting execution. She told her mother that she did not want a petition to reprieve her from the death sentence, and took no part in the campaign. However, at her relatives' urging her solicitor, John Bickford, wrote a seven page letter to Home Secretary Gwilym Lloyd George setting out the grounds for reprieve. Gwilym denied the request. In a 2010 tv interview, the grandson of Mr Justice Havers, actor Nigel Havers, said his grandfather had written to Lloyd George recommending a reprieve as he regarded it as a crime passionnel, bit received a curt refusal. 

Ruth dismissed John and asked to see Leon Simmons, the clerk to solicitor Victor Mishcon. Before going to see her, Leon and Victor visited John, who urged them to ask Ruth where she had obtained the gun. On 12th July 1955, the day before her execution, Victor and Leon saw Ruth, who wanted to make her will. When they pressed Ruth for the full story, she asked them to promise not to use what she said to try to secure a reprieve; Victor refused. 

Ruth then said that she had been drinking with Desmond for most of the weekend and that she had given her the gun and some shooting practice. Desmond had also driven her to the murder scene. Following a two hour interview, Victor and Leon went to the Home Office; the Permanent Secretary, Sir Frank Newsam, was summoned back to London and ordered the head of CID to check the story. George later said that the police were able to make considerable enquiries but that it made no difference  to his decision, and in fact made Ruth's guilt greater by showing the murder was premeditated. George also said that the injury to the bystander was decisive in his decision: "We cannot have people shooting off firearms in the street!" 

In a final letter to David's parents from her prison cell, Ruth wrote, "I have always loved your son, and I shall die still loving him."

The Bishop of Stepney, Joost de Blank, visited Ruth prior to her execution. Just before 9am on 13th July the hangman, Albert Pierrepoint, and his assistant entered Ruth's cell and took her to the adjacent execution room where she was hanged. As was customary in British executions, she was buried in an unmarked grave within the walls of Holloway Prison. In the early 1970s the remains of executed women were exhumed for reburial elsewhere; in the churchyard of St Mary's Church in Amersham, Buckinghamshire. Her headstone was inscribed "Ruth Hornby 1926-1955". Her son, Andy, destroyed the headstone shortly before he committed suicide in 1982.