UK grants posthumous pardon to Ruth Ellis, last woman executed

Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy announced on Wednesday that King Charles III has granted a conditional pardon for Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be executed in the United Kingdom. Ellis was hanged in July 1955, aged 28, for shooting her racing driver lover David Blakely outside a London pub.

Ellis's family, including four grandchildren who applied for the pardon, argued that she was an abused woman and that her case would likely have resulted in a manslaughter charge rather than murder under modern legal understanding. Lammy stated that the pardon replaces the death penalty with a sentence of life imprisonment to recognize a "profound injustice" in this exceptional case, though it does not claim innocence of the killing.

Ellis, a mother of two, was executed despite the case provoking public outcry and contributing to a shift in public opinion against the death penalty. Her granddaughter, Laura Enston, stated that the pardon formally acknowledges that Ellis should not have been executed and that the justice system failed her.