King Charles III has granted a conditional pardon to Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in the United Kingdom. Lord Chancellor David Lammy described the decision as “an act of mercy recognising the historic injustice of the death penalty in this exceptional case.”
Ellis, a nightclub hostess, was executed in July 1955 after being convicted of murdering her partner, David Blakely. Her family, supported by the law firm Mishcon de Reya, had long argued that evidence of the abuse she suffered at Blakely’s hands was never presented during her trial. The Royal Prerogative of Mercy, an historic power exercised by the monarch on ministerial advice, allowed the king to substitute the original death sentence with a lesser penalty without overturning the conviction itself.
What changed under modern law
The Ministry of Justice said that under current law, Ellis could have raised partial defenses of loss of control or diminished responsibility. Those defenses, if accepted by a jury, would have reduced her conviction from murder to manslaughter. The department noted that the case was heard two years before the Homicide Act 1957 introduced those legal options.
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Grace Houghton, an associate at Mishcon de Reya who represented Ellis’s grandchildren, said the application showed that “Ruth suffered from what is now understood as battered woman syndrome, and that the cumulative impact of the abuse she sustained would, under the law as it stands today, have supported defenses of both diminished responsibility and loss of control.” Had Ellis been tried after 1957, she added, “the outcome would have been very different.”
Lammy said in a statement: “For 70 years, the family of Ruth Ellis have fought for her story to be heard. We cannot change what happened 70 years ago. But we can recognize that this was an exceptional case. Today’s conditional pardon is an act of mercy. We hope it brings some measure of peace to Ruth’s family.”
The pardon arrives more than seven decades after the hanging. While it cannot undo the execution, it signals a formal acknowledgment that the justice system at the time was flawed. The legal framework for domestic abuse victims has shifted considerably since the 1950s, and the decision shows a broader willingness to revisit historical convictions where the original proceedings were incomplete. Whether other similar cases might follow remains unclear, but the precedent is notable for its rarity.
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Family’s reaction to the pardon
Laura Enston, Ellis’s granddaughter, said justice had finally been done for her grandmother but added that the pardon “does not restore the lives that were broken — the children left behind, the years lost. But it says, formally and finally, that Ruth should not have been executed, that the justice system failed her. That acknowledgment matters profoundly to our family.”
Mishcon de Reya has a personal connection to the case. Lord Mishcon, who founded the firm, was instructed by Ellis shortly before her execution to seek a reprieve. Katy Colton, the firm’s head of politics and law, said he would have been “immensely proud” of the outcome.
Ellis remains the last woman executed in the United Kingdom. The death penalty for murder was effectively abolished in 1965 and fully abolished in 1998. The conditional pardon does not change the conviction, but it replaces the death sentence with a lesser penalty — a symbolic step that the government and the family hope closes a painful chapter.
