As 9am approached on 13 July 1955, crowds of people began to line the streets outside Holloway prison. Some stared solemnly at the prison walls. Others prayed. Most fell silent. Inside the prison gates, Ruth Ellis received communion and drank a glass of brandy. Then, as the clock ticked round to the appointed hour, she was led to the execution chamber.
According to the News Chronicle, Ellis “looked on a crucifix for a few seconds before she died”. She was, stated the Daily Mirror, “the calmest woman who ever went to the gallows”. That equanimity wasn’t shared by thousands of people in the country at large. On that grim July morning, Ellis became the last woman to be executed in Britain – and the furore surrounding her fate would resonate for years.
By the time Ellis died, her case had already become a cause celebre. It dominated newspaper front pages, inspired hundreds of Britons to pen letters begging for clemency, and led to a dramatic 11th‑hour appeal for a reprieve.
The Ellis case gave the nation a considerable emotional jolt – and that’s because a huge number of Britons could personally identify with the 28-year-old wife and mother. Labour MP Sydney Silverman, a campaigner for the abolition of the death sentence, encapsulated this sentiment when he wrote in The Star: “She seems to most people a normal human – all too human – being, weak, foolish, hyper-sensitive.”
