Episode 87 - Ruth Ellis: The Last Woman to be Hanged in Britain

RedHanded

Wondery | RedHanded

True Crime

4.5 • 18.2K Ratings

🗓️ 28 March 2019

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"Six revolver shots shattered the Easter Sunday calm of Hampstead, and a beautiful platinum blonde stood with her back to the wall. In her hand was a revolver." These were the headlines that the hit the nation after Ruth Ellis, a young, welsh-born hostess shot and killed her lover - David Blakely - in broad daylight. The pair had had a violent and tumultuous affair, and there was no doubt that it had been Ruth who had pulled the trigger, but had another one of her lovers primed her to kill? Join the girls this week as they delve into the story of the last woman to be executed in the UK, and understand why her story captured the public imagination like nothing before.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Prime members, you can listen to Redhanded early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today.
0:22.5	I'm Hannah. I'm Sruti and welcome to Redhanded.
0:26.5	This case has struck quite a few chords with me in quite a weird way, almost a hometown murder in a indirect fashion.
0:34.5	Ruth Hornby was born on the 8th of October in 1926 at 74 West Parade in Rill, which is a seaside town in North Wales.
0:44.0	Ruth lived there until she was 7 years old.
0:46.5	Seven-year-old Ruth didn't know that she would change the course of British legal history forever.
0:52.5	After Ruth's death, murder would never be tried in the same way in the United Kingdom ever again.
0:58.5	But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
1:00.5	Ruth's family life was at the start, a reasonably affluent one. Her father Arthur was a cellist and he played at the cinema in Rill.
1:08.5	This is obviously the days of silent films where a cinema would have an orchestra to play along.
1:13.0	This work took him around the country a bit, so he was absent for parts of Ruth's childhood.
1:17.5	Ruth's dad used a stage name, which was Arthur Nielsen, so you'll sometimes see Ruth's name listed as Ruth Nielsen, but that's incorrect.
1:25.5	And it also isn't the name the world would remember her by.
1:28.5	When her dad was travelling around on his cello tours, Ruth lived with her mum, Elizabetha, who was a World War I Belgian refugee.
1:36.5	She also lived with her sister Muriel, who would remain a close confidant of Ruth's her whole life.
1:41.5	By the time Ruth was 15, her family had moved to London after a brief stint in Bezingstoke.
1:47.0	Ruth found work as a photographer's assistant and quickly slipped into the West End glistening club scene.
1:53.0	London was much more suited to Ruth than the seaside or Hampshire had ever been.
1:57.5	And when we're talking about London's clubs in the 40s and 50s a lot in this episode, they were quite different to the clubs we have today.
2:03.5	Just like the cinemas they had then are miles away from what we have. I mean, I just get excited when it's like, oh come to this cinema we have big velvet sofas instead of chairs.
2:13.0	You can sit in a hot tub on the roof in Dolston and watch this film.
2:17.5	Where is that real?
	...

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