4.6 • 5K Ratings
🗓️ 8 September 2025
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
In this final installment of our seven-part series, we follow Ruth Ellis through her last days and hours at Holloway Prison. Convicted of the murder of her lover, David Blakely, Ruth became the last woman hanged in Britain.
We trace the frantic efforts made by friends, family, and even members of the public to win her a reprieve—and the powerful voices calling for her execution to go forward. We recount the haunting details of her final letters, her last walk to the gallows, and her shocking confession on the eve of her death that suggested she did not act alone.
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Sources:
A Fine Day for a Hanging: The Ruth Ellis Story, Carol Ann Lee, Mainstream Publishing, 2013.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Ellis
https://realcrimes.co.uk/ruth-ellis-jealousy-rejection-and-a-hanging/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/sep/12/ukcrime.claredyer
https://www.hampshirelive.news/news/history/woman-hanged-ruth-ellis-hampshire-4192091
https://www.crimemagazine.com/ruth-ellis-love-lust-and-death-gallows
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| 1:34.0 | Thank you for joining me for today's episode of Once Upon a Crime. |
| 1:40.9 | And welcome back to Once Upon a Crime's first seven-part series, Hanged, Ruth Ellis, and The Price of Passion. |
| 1:47.3 | In part six of Hanged, we followed Ruth into the courtroom where her fate was sealed. Despite the evidence stacked against her, Ruth's own words, and the way she delivered them, |
| 1:52.7 | did the most damage. |
| 1:54.6 | On the witness stand, she was calm, cold, and almost detached, as she described firing |
| 2:00.4 | the fatal shots. |
| 2:02.5 | Any hope for sympathy from the jury evaporated. |
| 2:05.8 | The verdict was swift, guilty of willful murder. |
| 2:09.9 | And with that, the judge passed down the mandatory sentence, death by hanging. |
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