Ruth Ellis: Family of last woman to be executed in UK finally get headstone for grave 70 years after death

Ruth Ellis: Family of last woman to be executed in UK finally get headstone for grave 70 years after death Ruth Ellis' family will finally have a headstone to mark her grave in Amersham after she was granted a posthumous conditional pardon earlier this year 'to recognise a profound injustice in this exceptional case' More than seven decades after her death, a headstone has been installed for the last woman executed in the UK. Ruth Ellis was just 28 when she was hanged at London’s Holloway Prison in 1955. She was sentenced to death after being convicted of fatally shooting David Blakely, with whom she had been in a relationship. Earlier this year was granted a posthumous conditional pardon after a campaign by her family which argued she was a victim of abuse at Blakely's hands. After her execution, her body was buried in an unmarked grave within the prison grounds, but her remains were later exhumed during redevelopment work, and she was reburied in Amersham in 1971. Previous memorials at her grave had since been vandalised. The request for the new headstone came from her grandson Scott Walker, who said he was determined to have something “poignant and punchy” in place at St Mary’s Cemetery, Amersham, to mark what would have been his late grandmother’s 100th birthday. The idea came after Scott visited the cemetery with his daughters in 2024. He described Ellis as “sort of lying in an unmarked grave”. He added: “People kept pinching stuff off it. A wooden cross went missing and it just looked a bit sad”. He contacted Amersham Town Council, which was pleased to support a memorial that would see "people stop and think". The plans were discussed by a family committee made up of relatives living in Dubai, Spain and Canada, and the headstone has since been installed. Ellis’s grandchildren Laura Enston, James Enston, Stephen Beard and Chloe Beard had called for a posthumous pardon for their grandmother. Their application presented Ellis as a victim of domestic, physical and emotional abuse at the hands of Blakely. They said her case was profoundly shaped by circumstances and trauma that were not adequately recognised at her trial. David Lammy confirmed Ellis had been granted a conditional pardon in July. He said: “While the pardon does not claim she was innocent of killing David Blakely, it replaces the death penalty with a sentence of life imprisonment to recognise a profound injustice in this exceptional case.” Speaking on the day, Laura said: “This pardon does not undo what happened 71 years ago. It 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 acknowledgement matters profoundly to our family.” She added: “Ruth was a victim of sustained and brutal abuse. Her children - our mother and uncle - never recovered. My uncle took his own life; my mother’s trauma left her unable to be the parent we needed. The shadow of Ruth’s execution has fallen across two generations. We have carried shame that was never ours to bear.” She previously said: “We are determined to do what we can to right this historic injustice and honour not only Ruth but all victims of domestic abuse who have been let down by the criminal justice system.” Ellis’s case has provoked public outrage since her execution. At her trial, the jury was instructed that the abuse she had endured did not amount to a defence of provocation under the law at the time. Her murder conviction carried a mandatory death sentence. A petition that called for the execution to be called off reached 50,000 signatures but was denied. Just two years later, legal changes introduced diminished responsibility as a partial defence to murder, allowing a conviction to be reduced to manslaughter. Ten years after her execution, the death penalty for murder was abolished in Great Britain in 1965. Ellis’s case helped fuel the campaign for abolition, alongside those of Timothy Evans, executed in 1950, and Derek Bentley, executed in 1953, who also received posthumous pardons. In 2015, section 76 of the Serious Crime Act introduced the offence of controlling or coercive behaviour. Kelly Thornton, the deputy mayor of Amersham, said: “Honouring [Ellis’] memory means supporting women’s rights and public services that understand trauma, recognise coercive control, safeguard children and help survivors find safety. It also means respecting her family’s privacy and wishes concerning her resting place.”