Ruth Ellis

Both Ellis's story and the story of Albert Pierrepoint are retold in the stage play Follow Me written by Ross Gurney-Randall and Dave Mounfield and directed by Guy Masterson. In a 2010 television interview Mr Justice Havers’s grandson actor Nigel Havers said his grandfather had written to the Home Secretary Gwilym Lloyd George recommending a reprieve as he regarded it as a crime passionnel but received a curt refusal which was still held by the family. In 1951 while four months pregnant Ruth appeared uncredited as a beauty queen in the Rank film Lady Godiva Rides Again.

The case attracted controversy as the anti-hanging debate was gathering momentum and Ruth Ellis might have won a reprieve had Ruth Ellis taken advice to tone down her look. The picture of the attractive blonde murderess remains one of the iconic images of 1950's London. On Easter Sunday 1955 Ellis shot Blakely dead outside a public house in Hampstead and immediately gave herself up to the police.