After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - The Murder That Changed Britain

Episode Date: August 13, 2026

Ruth Ellis made history in 1955 when she was the last woman hanged in Britain.She shot and killed her abusive lover, the racing driver David Blakely, at point blank range on a spring evening outside a pub.What events led up to this seemingly cold-blooded moment? And is it right that Ellis was recently granted a pardon for this murder?Trigger warning: this episode contains themes of abuse which some may find upsetting.This episode was edited by Hannah Feodorov. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards. Click to place your vote on the Spotify mobile app: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJaSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards. Click to place your vote on the Spotify mobile app: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello After Dark listeners. It is I, Anthony Delaney, one of your co-hosts from, of course, After Dark. Now listen, we have some good news. We have been shortlisted for the top 20 in the Listeners Choice Award category for this year's British Podcast Awards. Now, we made the top, I think it was five last year. So we are greedy historians and we want to make that top five again. This year, things are slightly different, though. You can only vote for us in this long list in the Spotify app. And you'll find a link in this week's episode that'll take you to vote for us. As a matter of fact, you can vote for us three times. So if you feel so inclined, please do that. We want to make that top five. We're going to smash it this year. I think we're going to take it, he said, with absolutely no confidence. But lend us your vote and we'll see how well we get on. Heading for the top five, I know we can do it. A glamorous nightclub hostess, a doomed love affair, multiple shots outside a London pub that led to the hangman's noose. Ruth Ellis's story has all the ingredients of a tabloid sensation,

but behind the headlines lies something far darker. A life shaped by violence, abuse and impossible choices. Her execution in 1955 made her the last woman hanged in Britain and forced a nation to confront uncomfortable questions about justice, mercy, gender, and the true cost of capital punishment. Welcome to After Dark. Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Maddie. And I'm Anthony.

Now today's episode, we're going to be covering a story that has hit the headlines again. It's the story of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain. We're going to delve into the dark story behind her crime and ask if the death penalty should have been avoided. Now, a content warning before we begin, this story contains themes of murder, sexual assault, sexual abuse and alcohol abuse. It's a story that feels very much of its time. And as we'll find out, it's set amongst the grime and glamour of post-war Soho in London. Anthony, we have spent a little bit of time researching this. It's been in the headlines again recently.

Let's start the beginning of the story with Ruth Ellis's early life. What can you tell me about that? Well, she's not Ruth Ellis at this point. She's Ruth Nielsen. She's born on the 9th of October, 1926 in Wales, as... you as it might be. It is a very disturbing family environment that she is born into. She has a sister Muriel and her mother is Bertha, her father is Arthur. And Arthur is significantly abusive towards both girls, mostly throughout their childhood and teen years. To such an extent that

Muriel conceives a child by Arthur. And Bertha presents that child as her own. So this is a very tragic, tragic beginning. Now, the police even get involved in this. This is something that's known to the authorities or something. I'm not sure how that gets to them, but certainly there is something. But Bertha says, no, this is my child. And once Ruth turns 11, she becomes the target of her father's abuse as well.

So this is something that is very much sitting within the history of this. family within the dynamics of this family and it's something that neither sister really discuss openly. So, you know, that is, that these are the foundations on which the Ruth Ellis history starts to unfold. So already we're off to a very, very tragic start. Yeah, I think so often in stories and sort of, well, in true crime cases, there is a tendency, I suppose, to look at the childhood of a killer and to draw from that certain conclusions. But I think in this case, you know, it's, you cannot have this story without that information. And it is really harrowing. Ruth doesn't stay in Wales. Does she? She makes her way to London. Yeah, the whole family,

the whole family come to London. So we are talking, you know, World War II London now as well. And Ruth leaves school at 14. She becomes an usheret in the cinema, which I kind of love this idea because of how her life unfolds and that nightlife that she becomes such a part of as the war continues in them, but more so when it ends. And it's sort of interesting that she finds a place for herself in that kind of the darkness of nighttime and evening entertainment and all of that, given the sort of, you know, the home life that she is trying to escape.

But also bear in mind, yes, the chaos and the tragedy and the hardship that she's experiencing because of the war, but also the opportunity that is that's presenting for women, especially in London. So she is seeing examples of women occupying spaces that if it were not wartime, they probably wouldn't be occupying. And of course, those women are then expected to, you know, return back in the 50s to what they were doing prior to the war. And that's a very difficult transition. but she's seeing some form of agency here, which is making its way through the air raids, the blackouts, and all of that wartime staple that we know about so well today. But she's also seeing this other opportunity that's happening there.

And she sees that in nightlife. That's how she's really honing in on it. So she's come from Wales into this very different world, as you say. And it's a city in the early 20th century that is chival. changing enormously, particularly for women. When she's in London, she becomes friends with a young girl called Edna Turvey, doesn't she? What's that relationship like? And I'm particularly interested in that thinking about, you know, the claustrophobia of her domestic setting

and finding a relationship outside of that. Yeah, so Edna is in a relationship with Ruth's brother, Julian. Yes, okay. Yeah, I know. The ties start to get very difficult. to keep up with sometimes. Well, because in this family, the usual boundaries. Exactly.

And exactly that. When I was looking into this earlier part of the life, I actually found it really difficult to keep the things in line because that's such a good I hadn't really understood why I was finding it difficult. Yeah. I was like her brother and then a son and then all of this. And I'm like, oh gosh, I'm really kind of confused about what the dynamics are. Yeah, that's why.

And Ruth moves in with Edna. but equally Arthur the father is still very present and the abuse continues because remember Ruth is only 14 at this time so this is something that

again the boundaries of proper conduct are porous in this family dynamic so we have sister-in-laws on official sister-in-laws living together but an abusive father is still pushing through those boundaries somehow she does go back to the family home

the London family home sometimes so it's really parapetetic emotionally, if not necessarily geographically. And that we do know that by 1944, Ruth has become pregnant by a married Canadian soldier. So she's 18. So, you know, she has lived a lot of a life by the time she reaches 18 in 1944. And of course, the war is raging. And it's interesting, you know, obviously within the Second War, there was a certain sort of liberalness, I suppose, in terms of relationships between men and women because, you know, war was going on and you might

die in an air aid or be asked to go and fight tomorrow. So, you know, it's not unusual for a woman to become pregnant by a married soldier, particularly a soldier who's come from Canada or the US or whatever, you know, in this moment. But thinking about Ruth specifically how she is kind of involved in, like you say, the nightlife of London and the kind of life she's maybe seeking for herself and the opportunities that are open to her

and also the limitations that come with just her life experience so far and the pregnancy obviously is one of those potentially. Then on the 15th of September she gives birth to a son named Claire Andrea or Andy Nielsen and the name might sound unusual

and again it's one of those things that I was having trouble linking up because she also goes on to have a daughter later but we'll talk about that about when everything, getting all these ducks in a row because that sounds like a girl's name

but actually he's called after his Canadian father so they really wanted to have she really wanted to have that link to who the father was so yeah she's had by what is she now? Yeah 18 she's she's a mother

and obviously the Canadian father Canadian Claire is married as we know he initially sends money for the child but that's not going to last as an arrangement I think it lasts for about a year

and then after that she's on her own. So she's 18. She has a son. She has no support from the father after a certain amount of time. Her living arrangements are dangerous, oppressive. Then she's really slipping further into the nightlife of Soho, isn't she? This is where she finds opportunity, reprieve, some world beyond really the horror of her own situation. Absolutely, yeah.

It's also where she starts to invent. what we will come to know as Ruth Ellis. And I think that's really interesting in this history and sometimes a little bit too easily overlooked. So in post-World War II, she's entering into the nightclub scene initially. This is exposing her to some of London's well-heeled, who are now, you know, thinking it's time to throw off the shackles of wartime,

although there was plenty of partying happening in wartime too. But it is a new phase that London's, London makes itself into, or at least Soho Soho Nightlife does. And what Ruth does at this point, she becomes very conscious of her class background. And one of the things that others will later describe is how she invents this cook glass English accent, upper class English accent. Oh, that's so interesting. Isn't it?

By which to ingratiate herself into that part of society so that when they're coming into those nightclubs and she's hosting them because she's often a hostess in those places. She is a little bit more on par with them, but they never really see her as being, and they often comment and we'll see this later on, that when she loses her temper, the accent slips. That's so interesting. And I suppose, you know, you think about the way that the Second World War turned the world on its head quite literally. And you know, all of the kind of social norms, the rules, you know, disintegrated to a certain extent in Britain, certainly in terms of its nightlife in London,

and that there was opportunity to rise above your own circumstances or maybe reinvent yourself within the chaos of what was going on. And it's interesting that this continues for Ruth after the war, but that, I don't know, there's a sort of uneasiness about it in this moment already. The sort of the fakery is something uncanny about it. And the foundations are weak, right? Yes. So it feels like even she must have felt quite panicky at times, despite the fact, I will point out.

So not only is she doing this hostessing work in Soho, she's also working as a nude model. And she's also working as we think occasionally an escort. Well, we're pretty sure occasionally an escort, maybe at times there's been insinuations. But again, we have to take that with a pinch of salt because we know how these sources go after the fact. And most of what we know about Ruth comes out after the fact. people that did know her talked about the fact that she may have worked in sex work at times, depending on where she was in her life and what was going on. She worked at the court club, but even within that, she's finding that her managers are blackmailing her to sleep with him. So it's exploitative.

This is a dangerous world for women. It's a dangerous world for women. And yet, I suppose one of the things to bear in mind, right, is within the context of the world itself, she does carve a path. And I kind of want to give her that. It's not necessarily always on her terms, but in terms of the availability that is there for her, the boundaries that are available for her to cut through,

she's surviving. And at times she's even thriving. Because you get accounts of her in those nightclubs atmospheres, she's kind of the queen of the place. You know what I mean? She has ruled people will know her. She's starting to get a bit of a profile within this nightclub scene. but again at around this time

we know that she becomes pregnant by a client and she has an abortion and so it's again this word parapetetic keeps coming back it's like oh down we're over here we're doing this we're trying to survive we're eking out of living and there's a lot going on for Ruth

and I suppose it says so much about the position of women post second war right that we're you know we're not into the 1960s and the contraceptive pill and women's liberation in this moment however there has been some empowerment through the second World War and women doing the jobs that men away fighting would ordinarily have done, which was of course the same in the First World War.

But now there's a sort of strange interrim period in a way where there is some opportunity. You can make something of yourself, albeit in a slightly seedy underworld here in Soho. But there are not the protections in place. Your manager, your boss can still abuse you, put pressure on you, behave in ways that are inappropriate or criminal. You do not have access to women's healthcare. So things like pregnancy that's unwanted and access to abortion, you know, these are all issues that are going to come up in this world that she's living in specifically, but for women more generally in this society. Yeah. And this is, I think this is the key point, women in this society. And Ruth Ellis has recently,

we're recording this in July 26 and just this month, Ruth Ellis's case, has been back in the headlines again because, well, we'll leave that just for a second in case you're less familiar, and we'll come back to the end, but she's basically been back in the headlines. And what I want us to remember as we go through this, that our job as historians is to very much place her in her time.

And even within her time, the abuse and the neglect and the world that she's having to traverse. It's enormous. It's difficult to say the least. But I think Ruth is most tragic, most valuable, and most accomplished in her own time and less so in hours. So when we try to drag her into 2026, I think something odd happens where, you know, I always say this and I know it's boring and I'm sorry, but where we start to make her work for us rather than us working for her. And I think it should always be that way around. You say, you know, she doesn't know us anything.

and we owe it to anyone in the past to put them into the context and to understand that. So we know that she becomes pregnant and that she has an abortion. We know that potentially she is sometimes engaged in sex work, possibly. She's modelling, she's working as a hostess, sometimes as an escort, very much a peripatetic life in so many ways. the next big moment for her, I suppose, comes in November 1950 when she marries George Ellis. Tell me about how they meet. What's that relationship look like? Has she finally found some happiness and stability?

Well, it's a turning point. It's a potential turning point, isn't it? Because, and this is, of course, where Ruth Ellis comes into the picture. This is the surname that will come to define her, even though it's not been her. Which is interesting because she's been kind of defining herself so far and inventing these different versions of herself. Which is interesting, right? Because you know that thing about respectability that, you know, she invents this accent. Well, she marries George, and I think what, is he, 41 or something.

Yeah, he's older than she is. And this is in 1950. And so he's a middle class dentist, dental surgeon. Is she having to do that fake accent the entire time? She's not having to, and that other people expect her to, but she is doing it. By this point, she is doing it. I mean, in terms of meeting George and then, oh, you've married him. Like, there's like telling a lie on a first date and then.

Yeah. I mean, she's not lying about her background in that. Her parents are still her parents. She's, that's who it is. But at the same time, if you were to meet her and just interact with her. She might not present as being from that background. Exactly. And so George was married and divorced.

He already has two sons. So he's had this kind of other life. And so there's a world here where you might think, right, she can leave the nightclub scene, which she does initially. She can have this respectable upper middle class. life with this dental surgeon in London, but as so often happens in Ruth's history, George proves violent, destructive, and he's an alcoholic. So she is put into this situation where there is, it's another terrible meeting of things that come together and another bad look turn, to say the very least, I mean, that's underplaying it. She does become pregnant. She has a child,

Georgina and it is at this point that the marriage a year later within 18 months goes sour because George doesn't believe that the child is his. Yeah, I mean, Ruth's life in this moment is really interesting that he thinks that she's having multiple affairs but also in 1951 when she's four months pregnant, she's in a film. Yeah, Lady Glider rides again or something, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Now, listen, I have never heard of it, but yeah. But what a, you know, again, speaking to this kind of.

opportunity, this world of opportunity for women. And, you know, she's on the edge of quite glamorous existence, but on the seedyer side of it. Yeah. Yeah. And again, I wonder if in terms of those upper middle class sensibilities of a dental surgeon, whether, you know, I don't know what her role was in that film necessarily, but she's uncredited. I know that. So it's not a huge role. She's not Lady Godiva.

No, no, no. But it might not quite meet the standards of what that upper middle class life expects. Well, I wonder in, you know, 1951, if you would want your wife to be. in a film. At all, even as Lady Godiva. Yeah, you know, I don't think there's anything particularly respectable about that for this, as you say, kind of middle-class dentist's wife.

And I wonder if there's a sort of, you know, presumably her and George met through the Soho night scene, I assume. But, you know, presumably there is an expectation from George that she will step back from that world and be his wife.

And, you know, that's... And also, I suppose, you know, for a lot of women in this period, there was a feeling that once you were married, that was, especially if you'd come from a difficult background or, you know, in Ruth's case, a really abusive, diabolical situation, that marriage would be a sanctuary for you. That would be, you know, oh, thank God, okay, I've made it. And obviously that that isn't the case with George.

But I wonder if for both of them there was a sense of a fresh start, expectations on both sides that neither of them actually met. And that's not to place, blame on roof, but to say in terms of what they were hoping from this relationship, doesn't materialise for either of them. And therefore it is just doomed from the beginning. I think it is doomed from the beginning. I don't know. It's over very quickly because they do get divorced

after the birth of Georgina. And remind me to come back to the children at the end because their lives are equally tragic. I've lost track slightly. So she's got Claire. She got the boy. Who is the Canadian soldier's son. And now she's got Georgina with George.

So we've got two children. Two children. By 1951. So divorce from George. Not that he's offering her much in the way of comfort protection, but now she is on her own again. She has two children to support. Presumably she can't go back to her parents' house. Oh, God.

Yeah. Do you know this is one of those things where we fail to understand the dynamics, I think. From a modern perspective, this feels completely unfathom of all. Yeah, no, she goes back to her, initially she goes back to her parents' house with the children. And she doesn't always hold on to the children. It's probably worth saying for later on in this. story but for now and she's there but then she she's also now potentially returning to sex work to get herself back on her feet and then she returns to London nightlife and she she finds

herself in the little club and this is I think we're in 1953 now and this is where this history starts to coalesce around what we we know a little bit more about her okay we're going to take a little break now and we're going to go back into Soho and that underworld at night. Okay so you mentioned the little club in Knightsbridge that Ruth is involved in. She becomes the manager there, doesn't she? She does and she's very proud of being the manager there.

Well, I mean, that's a step up from, you know, potentially the sex work that she's doing, the modelling, even all of that stuff that she's done before, which is very parapetetic, as you say, very kind of temporary. It's a means to an end, all of that. You know, it's not necessarily offering stability. how much she enjoys any of it, you know, is, it's on, we can't possibly define that.

But I think this on paper at least offers her something in terms of more permanence. Yeah. Yeah. Again, there are times when opportunity presents itself with Ruth. And you kind of go, oh. And then it's like, oh, no, not again. But anyway, so she has this job. She is the manager.

And this is where she meets, prepare yourself for this name. David Moffat Drummond Blakely He's posh He's posh And he's a racing car driver He's privately educated And he is an absolute Listen, there's no

He's a dicket He's a dicket And he's a dicket And he's a dicket And he But they are I was going to say But they are in love

Interesting They're hot and heavy They're hot and heavy Big big time She continuously expresses Her love for him Like she's absolutely besotted by him. And again, you know, it's this kind of breaking down on the boundaries between the social classes in this part of London, in this nightlife scene that she, you know, she wouldn't have met him any other way.

That this is, you know, this is the way that you would come into contact with people like this of this social class. So he's not a good person. No, I mean, I suppose when we look for black and white, if we want to do context and if Ruth's context is important, in what she later does. David's father had a murder trial of his own. Where he had had an affair with this woman. She got pregnant. He helped her get an abortion.

And she died because of the state of female health care. And he was accused of... And he was, but he got off. And then the family split up. So, you know, it's not exactly the most stable background there either, despite the class difference. Yeah. Okay.

Interesting. And we have history repeating itself here because, Ruth becomes pregnant with his child and has an abortion again. Yes. And, you know, he's he's a heavy drinker. He is also physically abusive. It's very, very intense from her perspective. He flits in and out.

He can be intense, but he can also flit in and out. And we also have, she does. And he has the privilege to do that whereas she doesn't necessarily. He may not have the money to back it up, mind. Okay. But he still has that social privilege. And a lot of his, you know, we're. talking about again, even a notch above upper middle class with this, where his social circle

is well-educated, erudite, he's had relationships with some of them already. So when he's introducing them to Ruth, which he does, by the way, they don't accept her. They know she's acting up and putting on this voice. And it's through their descriptions that we see that that accent drops at times. And so yeah, it's not a... It's a uncomfortable history, isn't it? Yeah. It is. Yeah, the whole thing. So presumably that relationship doesn't last. No, it does. But it's interrupted, shall we say.

So David, keep David there. David's going to keep going. And he's going to become absolutely pivotal in this. He's still in the driving seat. He's all. Very good. But then we have Desmond, Desmond cousin. And Desmond is one of the people that she meets at the Little Club.

And he is a former RAF pilot. He has flown for the Lancaster. bombers. He is somebody who was a very dynamic, you know, person in the war and now his, his life has changed. This is so fascinating because, you know, it's kind of inevitable, I suppose, but the men in her life, I'm thinking about George the husband, who's no more the husband, and then we've got what's called David and now Desmond. They're sort of snapshots of different kinds of male experience in this moment as well, right? Like the racing car driver, the posh boy who's doing something a bit thrilling, You know, it's very kind of fashionable in that moment.

We've got a man in Desmond who's served as a pilot in the Second World War and is now kind of on the way down after that, you know, kind of the excitement and glamour, I suppose, of a job like that. So we have these kind of, yeah, like snapshots into the male experience in mid-20th century. Yeah, and Desmond becomes a little obsessed with Ruth. You'll find two very different counter art, not counter, but like, tension-filled accounts of their relationship, one which is very steady in the idea that he paid for her time

and that she was an escort for him. And another in that he was absolutely in love with her. She wasn't in love with him, but was very loyal to him, didn't think he was a bad person, some say would have used him for certain things that she needed. He's certainly there in the background

the entire time that the more volatile stuff with David Blakely is going on. And she's still, as I say, very much in that relationship with him as well. And it does turn really violent, doesn't it? Again, as I've said, as soon as he has drinking him, as Blakely has drinking him, he gets quite violent. It happens more than once, but there is one occasion on which we find out later that, yeah, that during an argument, he causes her to miscarry through physical violence. So she has become pregnant again with David, we think, and yeah, he causes miscarry. marriage. So, you know, it is, it's, two things are, are happening. She is managing to get a

foothold, although precarious. People know her. She's popular. There is opportunity, but also no protection for women. No. There is, there is, there's, especially not this woman of this class. Yes, exactly. And despite her efforts to reinvent herself again and again, there is, her circumstances trap her. And there's there's just some kind of grim, it almost feels like inevitability. Absolutely. And I say that completely not placing blame at her door. No, no, no, no.

But there is this kind of repetition, this cycle of circumstances that finds her again and again. And it's partly because of where she is in the world, in terms of her social class, in terms of the experiences that she's had in terms of her role in Soho, the taking up of certain opportunities there in order to survive, in order to try and experience some glamour, to try and find some joy as well, you know, all of these things.

I mean, it's just sort of relentlessly bleak. Does, is it overwhelming for Ruth in this moment, the chaos of her life? Yeah, I mean, she's very devoted to David. So he proposes to her and she says that she will marry him and that's what she wants. And we're going to see this devotion to David really linger. But there's also this thing,

in the back of her mind that's infuriating her in that she has suspicions and well-founded suspicions. Well, David was engaged to somebody else, somebody far more suitable class-wise to his family. That breaks off or does it, he says

it does, but anyway, and he proposes to her very kind of unofficially and she says yes, but there is always this doubt in her mind that he's with other women and the likelihood is and she becomes very suspicious of aunt and Carol

Findletter because Carol has had a relationship with David in the past So these are friends these are friends yeah sorry I'm introducing new people but we'll come to them in a minute and they're posh and they're stuck up

they make her feel uncomfortable and yeah yeah yeah yeah so it's yes it's tumultuous but David is the North Star despite the abuse he's guiding her through it's perhaps kind of difficult to square that as a modern audience looking at that now you know

it's kind of hard to understand. From a modern standpoint, our initial reaction is to be like, just walk away. But of course, that's not how she feels. That's not an option for her. There is a context of this that we need to bear in mind.

With that in mind, let's move to the night of the murder that is going to shape her life and her fate. The 10th of April, 195. It's Easter Sunday. Talk us through the events. So this is what we, have pieced together because even when she was arrested

and she's arrested immediately after the murder the information is very piecemeal. She purposely withholds things but this is what we've cobbled together over the decades. She takes a taxi from 20 Goodwood Court, Devonshire Street where she is living with Desmond. So Desmond's Desmond cousins. So she's living with Desmond despite the potential engagement to blake. Yeah, but the living. arrangement with Desmond remember is often paid for. So it's not her home necessarily because she also

has a place where above work where she lives with David. Home for Ruth is a movable feast. Well, domesticity for her has been inconsistent and dangerous and yes. Okay. She doesn't have that language really, does she? She's leaving 20 Goodwood Place, which is the apartment or building in which she sees Desmond. She stays there sometimes. Yes. Is Desmond with her? We don't know. Some people say yes. Some people say no. We'll come back to that once we kind of get to the end of this story. Okay. Because there's a suggestion that he owns a taxi cab. He definitely does. And she's getting a taxi. He doesn't drive it as a professional taxi driver. He just owns a bit like Phoebe and friends who just has a taxi.

Yeah. Oh my God. What a weird comparison. But yes. Yes. Sorry. He doesn't use it as a taxi. He's not a taxi driver, but he does have a taxi. So there is a world. And the link will become even more. clear now in a minute. Okay, so there's a question mark. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't know if he's with her or how involved he becomes in the next steps,

but certainly Blakely has gone, because they've had a bus stop, and Blakely has gone to stay with Anton Carroll and remember Ruth is suspicious of Carol anyway and his involvement with her. So he's gone to their house. They're saying in Hampstead.

They live in Hampstead. Of course they do. Yes, so that's where he goes. Ruth arrives. In Hampstead. in Hampstead, sees him, sees David, because she knows where the findlatters live, by the way, she's been to that house before.

So she knows where he lives. He sees her, but he does a runner. He's like, I'm not dealing with this tonight. I'm going out. So he goes to the Magdala pub, which is local to Hampstead. Is that still there? Yes, that is still there. But they go to, he goes there in his car.

By the way, this is a different time. The driving rules. are not the same. That's the least shocking thing of this entire history. She walks and she follows the car there because she's already been dropped off, remember? And Hampstead is not a big place

as well. It's a village essentially. She sees Blakely's car outside. We are now at about 9.30pm and she sees Blakely and his friend Clive Gunnell are leaving the pub. Ellis tries to get their attention.

Well, she tries to get Blakely's attention. Again, they kind of ignore her. Now he's looking for his car keys. As he's fumbling for those, Ruth takes a pistol and she shoots him. She uses a 38 caliber Smith and Weston victory model revolver. She pulls it from her handbag. There is dispute. If you look this up online, you'll see all kinds of different numbers of shots that she said.

We're going with somewhere between four and six. You'll hear three. There are several shots. There are several shots. She fires six in total, but the first missed. So other people say five shots. Anyway, look, there's a lot of shots. It is the second shot that catches David.

That knocks him to the ground. And after that, then she probably would have been enough to kill him. She walks up to David, stands over him, and fires three more bullets into him. And she is so close to him at this point that there are gunpowder burns on his skin. Okay. So that's how close. So the goodness has been fired very close to his body. And then the next shot.

So the sixth one, ricochet is off. I think there's still a... Yeah, the pub is still there because I think the bullet mark that ricochets off the wall is in one of the tiles. You know, those pub tiles that are outside?

Is it still? Not the actual bullet, but the mark and then hits somebody else. The bullet hits a woman standing just a bystander, right? Gladys Yule, who loses the use of her right thumb,

which is such a random little side note to this story. So, such a weird anecdote to be able to tell for the rest of your life that you were here in this scenario. And Ruth has shot me and I survived. Yes. You know? Very weird.

Very weird. So David is multiple injuries dead at the scene. Yes. And an off-duty policeman arrests her. So it's always an off-duty policeman. Isn't there in Hampstead, I guess. Maybe. I don't know.

But like, yeah. It's a really shocking scene. And it's funny as well, the sort of the contrast for anyone, you know, who, Soho is, you know, an area in London that is known for its nightlife and its glamour, particularly in that moment. And then Hampstead is, as I'm sorry. He says it's like a village on the edge of the city in North London, and it's sleepy, expensive, it's all 18th century cottages, really.

It's on Hampstead Heath, the open bit of land. It's very sort of beautiful, upper middle class place, really. So you have that interesting contrast between that kind of the riotous nightlife and the sort of the grime and, you know, the mixing of the classes. And then Hampstead Heath is not that. So you have that. But the obvious thing to ask, I suppose, is, where did she get the gun?

You know, we are in 19, what year is this? 1995. This is Britain, not America. What's going on? Is it presumably unusual for a woman to have a pistol in her handbag? Yeah, I suppose one of the things that occurred to me during this is, I wonder how unusual it was to have a pistol during World War II, which I know we're not in right now.

So I know that there's a lot of service pistols from the first and the second World War that are brought back by servicemen that then, are either kept by them when they should be handed back in, but also that then end up circulating in the criminal underworld. And there's a lot of crimes, particularly armed robberies in the following decades that involve service rifles, a service pistol, sorry, from the Second War in particular. So you do see them crop up in crimes. So I wonder if, you know, that's, is this the kind of gun? Do we know, is this? Well, we don't know that it's a service gun specific. but we think, well, initially when she's arrested, she says,

I was given this gun in my nightlife role as a form of security. But when they looked into that, it just didn't add up. The facts weren't there to back that up. So what they now know is that it was most likely that Desmond Cousins gave her that gun, so the former RAF pilot man who... That makes sense. Right. So bear in mind the question you asked earlier about, is he with her in terms of,

did he come in the taxi? If he did drive her in the taxi and people say he did, absolutely, if he did give her the gun, so that's a picture that's forming there. But we think it was his gun, but we're not necessarily sure if he gave it to her. Then there's another anecdotal thing

that they had stopped in a forest on the way there and he had helped her to learn how to shoot. Oh, wow. So she tried to protect Desmond, but, you know, it is a complex relationship, triangle anyway and so there's lots

that get involved there but people are pretty confident that Desmond was more involved than the trial was able to prove he was So there are questions about this and I suppose the other question is about whether or not

this was a premeditated situation whether you know it's a crime of passion in the moment that she draws the gun out but the fact that she has the gun in her person the first place you know is significant here we're going to take a break

and then when we come back we're going to talk about her arrest and the trial Okay, so you mentioned there's an off-duty policeman on the scene pretty quickly. Ruth is arrested. How is she in this moment? Is she sort of denying that she's done it? Is she in shock?

Is she standing over the body triumphant? What's the situation? She's bizarrely stoic that would lend itself to traumatized in shock, but also could read as quite cold. and withdrawn as well. And there are times when people say all of those things about her in the coming weeks and months because obviously this is going to turn into a big media trial. But certainly there's shock is involved.

She asked Clive. Clive's the friend that David was with in the pub. She said like, you know, I'm paraphrasing here, but it was like, are you going to call the police? And some people. Yes. Yes. Some people have been like, that was a prompt to him. And other people have said that she was in such shock that she was like, oh, what happens now?

You know what I mean? Like she couldn't quite understand what was happening next. So it all depends on your interpretation of what her mind frame might have been at that time. But certainly there is an off-duty police officer who's there, as I said, he arrests her. And she is then detained and, well, she appears at the magistrate court on the 16th of April. And it's determined that she's of sound mind. So that, you know, that's one way in which she could escape. By the way, death penalty is the ultimate price that we might.

pay here. But I think there are four iterations for murder where you can not get the death penalty and just be in prison for life. I say just lunacy is one of them as they would have termed it. Provocation is another. There are other factors that can come in. Okay. So there are options

here for her defence? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We know she killed him. That's not up for question. But when she is questioned initially, she's like, I am guilty. I'm a little confused. That's interesting. Yeah.

I mean, obviously, again, we're not a psychologist, but I just wonder thinking about this kind of the confusion that she faces and this slightly cold reaction that some people accuse her of having or, you know, describe her as having, that this is someone who has, I mean, her life experiences, it's really hard to kind of add it all up in your mind and to contemplate it. But, you know, this is someone who from an early age has faced abuse of all kinds. and I just wonder if the sort of apparent coolness is a survival mechanism, if it's, you know, part of her sort of usual response that she's learned from childhood really. And I wonder if that's what we're seeing in this moment, the kind of the self-removal from the situation almost. I'm always reminded just on that point of the conversation that we had with Professor David Wilson, the criminologist who a lot of you might know from television appearances in the UK, when he said, we need to. stop trying to rationalise killings sometimes because the whole point is that

we can't, we should never be able to reach a point of understanding of such an extreme action and that often the people who commit those crimes themselves it either happens in a moment of passion or, and you know this is suggested in this case too that this is a crime of passion we always want to understand

don't we and find that definitive thing why did this happen? That isn't necessarily an option for us here. So she's arrested. She she says that she's guilty but that she's confused. It's going to go to trial. And as you say, this is a kind of newspaper frenzy. This story has so many elements that would be delicious to the press in this moment.

The sort of seedy, so-ho nightlife, the sort of femme fatale type figure, the pistol being drawn out of a handbag, the various lovers, all of this is going to, you know, just feed the media. what is the sort of initial portrayal of her to the public? You can imagine what the initial portrayal is. So Ruth is very glamorous, very well-dressed, you know, white blonde hair. We all know what Ruth Alice still looks like to this very day. Really arch eyebrows, black eyebrows, beautiful white skin, red lip. And she lends herself so easily to this narrative in the press of a femme fatale.

And then, of course, when we start putting together, it's this, oh, it's a racing driver. Oh, there's London nightlife attached to this. There's, you know, story after story after story. So, and of course, the class element, the working class mannequin, they refer to a model of an ash. Yeah, I mean, we have some headlines here. The Bradford Observer shouts with an exclamation mark, model charged with murder. Nice bit of alliteration there. But, you know, there's the kind of, again, they're sort of putting her into these different boxes.

The Daily Mirror, Classy, as always, goes with, she was a leading mannequin. He was a crack car racing driver, Ash Blonde Ruth, a former West End club manageress. Like, it's so salacious. So we have the media narrative that's building up. We've got the glamorous Ruth. We've got the sort of dashing race car driver, David, who's been murdered. And then, of course, in reality, we have poor Desmond. Well, poor Desmond, is he involved?

Is he not? He is interviewed as part of the trial. You know, he has to give his statement. What's the version of events that he gives? Because presumably if he was involved, he doesn't want to go down for this. That's, I love the way you just phrased that. And actually, it really helps tell the story. What is the version of events?

And the version of events that comes to us from Desmond via Ruth's solicitor. Okay. So this is how we know this, or this is how we have this information, or as you said, this version of events, is that Desmond gave her the gun. Okay, so, hold on. So Ruth's defence lawyer, of course he's going to go after Desmond to try and lessen the blow to Ruth. Exactly. This would mean that she didn't. And this isn't to say that Desmond didn't do what we're about to say.

Absolutely. Okay, that's the context. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That he gave her the gun. He gave her the ammunition. He drove her there and on the way with her son in the car, by the way. And on the way there, they stopped in this forest that I mentioned and did target practice before she was to go to actually shoot Blakely. And then they dropped Ruth's son back to her flat.

So think about all those different houses we're talking about there. There's Ruth's flat, Desmond's flat. Well, Blakely usually comes to Ruth's flat because that's just the original. And once again in Ruth's story, there's a poor child. at the centre of all this horror. Yeah. And so, but that doesn't make it to the trial. Desmond is more protected than that.

And she goes to trial on the 20th of June, 1955. And it's at the number one court in the old Bailey. There's a really great book. I think we've probably mentioned this before, which I think it's just called number one court, the old Bailey, maybe. And it's about the biggest trials in British history that have happened in that room.

And I'm pretty sure Ruth Ellis's trial is one of the last chapters in that. Right. I think. But I read it a long time ago, but it's great. I'd really recommend that. Okay, I'll look that up. That sounds good.

It's very good. And it's, yeah, every chapter is a different trial and how it's changed Britain, change the law. And yeah, it's great. Anyway, so she goes to trial. I need to just for a second remark on the fact that Desmond is not called as a witness and mentioned in the trial. Like he is a lover of Ruth. The nature of that relationship is somewhat unclear. There's a question over, I mean, Ruth is saying, or at least.

at least her solicitor's saying he provided her with the weapon, the ammunition, taught her how to fire the gun and drove her to the crime scene. There are times when Ruth herself is not saying that just to say, just to point in. Okay. But there's also a world which she's protecting him. Yes, but also, you know, her solicitor is putting that on the record and he's still not. He doesn't put it on the record. The version of events that the solicitor gathers is that Desmond is involved and that he doesn't

put it on the record. He releases it afterwards and there's a world in which he allows Ruth to perjure herself. He comes in for a lot of flack because he betrays her client confidentiality. He betrays that and tries to leak this information. The barrister is kind of outright because he doesn't stand up in court, by the way, this particular solicitor. It's a barrister that does that. And so, yeah, it's messy. Ruth doesn't want nice of, she's saying potentially that he, the Desmond was involved.

She doesn't want that out there. She wants to protect him. It's probably the likely version of events maybe. Yeah, in terms of putting all the different things together. But here's the other thing. It turns out that Ruth's defence is probably being paid for by a newspaper. And so this guy appears, this solicitor that comes to her, is probably getting some of that money. In the pay of some, yeah.

So it's a mess. It's a mess. Let's imagine the space of, you know, number one, the old Bailey. It's, you know, intimidating. It's iconic. It's the home to, as I've said, you know, the huge trials that have changed Britain. already and will continue to do that throughout the 20th century. It's a sort of oppressive, important space, the actual architecture of it and what it would

feel like to stand in that room. Ruth entering that space on trial, we think about the sort of media storm, the portrayals of her in the media. How does she appear? How does she present herself? Because she, you know, she's been the mistress really of self-presentation and self-reinvention all this time. And, you know, the murder trial is another stage for her, and she's fighting for her life potentially here. How does she appear? Ruth from most of the time since she's arrested is very resigned. And there are two different theories about this. A, she's, again, so traumatized from her entire life that she has no...

She's just given up. She's just like, well, this is going to go bad. Everything goes bad. The other way of thinking about it is that she killed David knowing that she'd be arrested. Are you not going to call the police? She says something. She'd be arrested. Go to trial and she'd be hanged.

Her and David would be together in the next life. Oh. Now look, this is all pop psychology interpretations on both sides of that argument that come out during and after the trial. But there is that kind of intensity to their relationship potentially. She never denies anything. She's like, as we're about to see, like there's at one point at which the prosecutor, Christmas Humphreys, by the way, what a name. Yeah.

He says, you fired the revolver close range into the body of David Blakely. What did you intend to do? It is obvious that when I shot him, I intended to kill him. Wow. To the point. Yeah. Wow. And she remains like that quite a lot.

There's a few times during her incarceration before the trial that she starts to mention Desmond and like, oh, there might have been something else going on. And I think the family dynamic might present itself. And I mean that in terms of all her different iterations of family and and that the solicitor is trying to get that to come to the fore. But she's very like focused on. She's like I killed him. I killed him. What are you talking to me about?

And I'm perfectly sane. Like I knew what was going on here. But again, nowadays we talk about that in terms of her trauma and what else. Yes. Yeah. In the context of the time people were definitely. I think the only time she gets a little bit of. upset us when she starts talking about David on the stand.

And I think so in there's a TV show called A Cruel Love about this. It's recent and it's really good. And the guy who plays the judge in the case is Nigel Havers. And Nigel Haver's grandfather was the actual judge in the actual trial. No way. Oh my God. Yeah. Anyway, they say like, you know, you can take a seat and she's like, no, no, no, he's

sit down. I've got my shit together again now. I got upset there for a second, but I'm back on it. So she's utterly traumatised, very, very stoic and looking down the barrel of a gun knowingly or a combination of all of those things. Maybe who knows. So she's presenting a very simple narrative to the jury into the court, which is, I did it. I'm guilty.

That's it. The jury really do lean into that. They accept this version, don't they? I mean, 20 minutes? 20 minutes? In the 1950s, that's 1860s. century deliberation time. Yeah, it's presumably unusual in this moment.

Yeah, like they were shocked at how quickly this came back. And by the way, this is a big trial by now. Like the media, as we said, all over this. So everyone's waiting for this verdict. But the jury just didn't think there was anything to. And the judge advised them the only thing to do is find her guilty. And they did. And she was sentenced to death.

So she's taken from the old Bailey and she's incarcerated. Holloway prism. And almost immediately there is a campaign for her reprieve, right? She doesn't want it. She has no part in it. Or no interest in it.

But the public are like... Yeah, now it's part of a much larger in research for this. I watched a Pathay newsreel of this the day before she was hanged, I think. And it's so interesting to see there are people out in the street with placards. There's a lot of conversation around

the death penalty now anyway. So we're coming to what will be a pinnacle of this either way. And they're going to take governmental steps on this to eradicate the death penalty. But it's still here right now and it's still a legitimate form of punishment. But she doesn't want this. And so this then goes the whole way up to the home secretary. So essentially the very top of government. Yeah.

Can I ask you a question now? You can. Who is the home secretary at this time? It is Lloyd George. Yeah. But I only know that because it's in my notes. Well, do you want to know? That's surprising.

Well, hold on now. He says no. He says that she has to be killed. This is the law and she has to be killed. Who is Lloyd George's? We know that said about Nigel Havers. Who is Lloyd George's great, great grandson? Oh, I know this.

It's the big boss man. It's done snow. What it only, Dan Snow? We're making all the connections on this podcast today. Wow. That's, yeah. Wow. So, you know, we have, he declined.

the request, but he declines the request within the parameters of what is law at that time. You know, this is again what I said at the start of this thing. We are in a specific time period here. So we have to remember that. Well, I mean, also, what's the argument for the reprieve? Because, I mean, I know obviously her life is awful and dark and horrible. But is it not a clean cut situation that she takes the gun and she... I tend to agree with you.

Listen, I'm not saying I agree with the death penalty. I don't. No, no. But in the context of the time... Guilts in law in this moment. This is what I... Like, genuinely, what are the grounds for the...

Well, they're arguing that... The team around her try to argue that it was a... So the barrister wants to argue that it's a crime of passion. Okay. The solicitor wants to argue that there is co-conspiracy between her and cousins. So even the team are not convinced as to exactly what they're trying to... There's no united fronter. No.

She on them at the same time is going, kill me. I want to die. I did it. I want to die. I knew what I was doing. This is the punishment. And that's, I think, where maybe this theory comes from of going, she had this kind of death wish.

That's not starkly accurate to say that. And it's not. Well, I mean, she supposedly tells her sister she wants to die to be with David, right? So like there is anecdotal evidence that that is her reasoning. The reprieve doesn't work. It doesn't work. An friend of the pod, Albert Pierpoint, is where, so he's the... That's not a friend that you want.

No. He's the executioner, of course, at this time famed executioner. Yep. He hangs her. And there is a hoax call. I thought of you when I was looking at this. There's a hoax call at the last minute that she has received a reprieve. And so it has to be stopped for a few moments.

Yeah. I was going to say 9.01 a.m. is a really weird time. Random time. But they figure out that it is a hoax. And yeah, so she dies. Okay, that's, that needs to be the opening. I'm sure there's lots of films about this, but there needs to be an opening that is that.

Yeah, is it going to happen? It's not going to happen. Yeah, yeah. But she does die. I mean, that's, that's fascinating. And that says so much about, you know, the impact that this media storm has had on the public and this kind of parasocial buying into the story. and also the fact that people feel they can have some fun with it

or whatever the motivation for the hoax call is. There's a kind of attempt to, you know, is it a hoax call because someone wants to be cruel and delay things or complicate things? Or is it a hoax call because someone is genuinely trying to fake the reprieve in order to stop her from being killed? Yeah. The weird thing about it is for me is that at this,

as I say, she is hanged, she does die. there are lots of stories about how she interacts with Pierpoint and you can go on YouTube and watch an interview with Pierpoint about this execution. Look, we've done an episode on Paypoint. He loved to self-mythologize. He loves to tell a good story. He does, but this is an interesting one.

He takes away that story. So there is this story that she comes out and is a bit flirtatious with him and it's whatever else. He goes, no, that didn't happen. She didn't say word to me. She didn't say anything. She just stood on the tea and that was it. So it's weird.

You would expect him to be a bit self-exam. apologising and he doesn't with that. Well, in this particular interview. Yeah, but is that because he, he's probably someone who doesn't like to feel that someone's got the better of him and a woman flirting with him in that circumstance might. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway. But that's, okay, that's very interesting.

Yeah. So, you know, she's, okay, so she is, she is hanged and she's only, I mean, she's 28 years old. Maddie, this is a life. I would like, when I got to the end of this, I was like, what is she, 40 something now at this point? 28. 28. And a mother of two.

A mother of two. Yeah, has had a lot of pregnancies and child loss in that time as well. And she writes a letter to David Blakely's parents. And when before she's waiting for her execution, she says, I've always loved your son and I shall die still loving him. So it's, again, she's, she's hard and fast in the, the reasoning that she has done this and the fact that she loves him and that maybe there is something in this idea that now they can be together in whatever way.

I have also seen in my research on this, this is terrible, don't bother watching it, but just anecdotally, a psychic medium on YouTube, this came up as I was doing the research for this, saying that he's talking to Ruth Ellis and she's going,

oh, me and David made it up. We're great now on the other side. We have this lovely life together, blah, blah, blah. That's gross. But it just goes to show about that kind of level of exploitation. This is a 21st century thing, by the way. still, you know, big business for some people. Okay, so what I think is interesting is I think on paper it's, I mean, it's obviously a very

hard, hard history to go through. It's just for all this human tragedy and sadness and bleakness and also passion and aspiration and glamour and, you know, sort of a yearning for a better life, all of that for freedom. And then you have this seemingly clean cut murder, the heart of it, that actually once you consider the sort of the context around it

and the possible involvement of Desmond, you know, you've got these kind of these question marks. But thinking about how passionate people were about the campaign for the reprieve, once Ruth is hanged, there is sort of an outcry of public outrage, really, immediately. Yeah, it feeds into kind of an ungrieved.

conversation because, you know, Ruth Ellis is the last woman hanged in Britain. So this is one of the way, well, there's so many reasons she's famous, but this is also one of the last because she is the very last. But it's almost a decade before the death penalty is taken out. So it's like, you know, public hangings have stopped from the, you know, 1868. Yeah, this happens within the privacy of the prison. Yeah. But the actual hangings don't stop until 64, 1964. So, you know, like it's still almost a decade afterwards. I think one of the reasons why Ruth's case initially causes that much uproar is that 90% of women's cases are reprieved, even when the death penalty is still there. Yes, the proportion of men who are sentenced to death and then hanged is much higher than that of women, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And even then, they're not all hanged, even if they're sentenced, that they get that reprieve.

So there's that, you know, it's, it's, here we have a quote from the Daily Mirror talking about that execution. This is on the day of the execution. And again, go and watch that paté newsreel because it's short, but it's really interesting. It says the one thing that brings stature and dignity to mankind and raises us above the beasts will have been denied her. Pity and the hope of ultimate redemption. So there is, you know, contemporary idea that this is wrong now. So we've gotten to that point in the supposed progress narrative of the death penalty. We've looked a lot on the show at women who have committed murder across the centuries,

murder of different types of people in different relationships to them, who've, you know, servants who've murdered their masters and mistresses, women who've killed children, women who've killed lovers, who've killed friends. and I wonder in Ruth Ellis's case if there would have been such public outcry had she not been part of a glamorous part of society and you know there's even the anecdote about her being flirty with Pierpoint at the end of her life

there's a projection onto her of this kind of glamorous a slight availability you know, in her in the press, her lifestyle is reported extensively. And I don't know. I don't know if there's, had she,

God forbid, committed a different type of crime or killed a person to whom she had a different relationship. Would it have garnered such attention and would it have garnered such sympathy? Isn't it interesting? I mean,

I think about if this was even 100 years before, even 50 years before. I think there's something about It's a perfect meeting of streams, right? Where media is doing a certain thing. It's post-war. She belongs to that nightlife. They're talking about getting rid of the death penalty anyway.

She becomes this kind of figurehead, especially where women are concerned, but this is not how we should do this. I think as well, she's not necessarily punished for her social class in the way that she would have been 50 years earlier or 100 years earlier. You know, the thought of someone from the working classes who lived and worked as she did, then killing a man of a higher social class

would have been considered worse in some ways or more shocking if it were in the Victorian period compared to this moment. But yeah, I mean, it's a really complicated case and I think it actually leaves a lot of questions. I do. Just tell me a little bit about the afterlife of this case then because the calls for reprieve and to kind of re-

reassess this. Don't stop. Yeah. I think this is almost, for us, this should be the most, I don't mean you and me. I mean,

but for contemporary audience, this is almost the most interesting part because this is where I ask for that caveat to come back in of us working for her, her working for us. What are we trying to do here? Before I do that, I just want to point out that her children

have very tragic lives and are not very complimentary about their experiences with their mother. So, although, you know, that's also shaped by media perception and all those kind of things. Her son dies by suicide and her daughter dies through complications through extreme alcohol. I think she dies at 50. Her son, I think, is 37 and they don't, they don't take pity on Ruth. They don't think, oh, you know, whatever else.

So they have, I'm just interested in that viewpoint and how that to shape their lives. But it's not just Ruth shaping that. It's the media and people around her. Yeah, and, you know, I think as well, like something to hold in our minds as well is we have to remember the context in which Ruth lived and the way that she, you know, was subjected to various abuses, coercive control by Blakely and probably other men as well in her life. Oh, definitely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we get the first attempt to reprieve is 2003. The Criminal Case's Review Commission refers Ruth's case to the Court of Appeal.

And the CCRC then rejects that because they say when she was punished under the law as it stood in 1955, it added up. It made sense that that's what the punishment would be. It has a historical context. We're not going beyond that. Within the historical context, the ruling is sound essentially. Then 2007, it is presented to the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown asking him to grant a pardon. It wasn't. That was just kind of skipped it left.

It wasn't used. But now we come to this month, July 2026. So this history is still unfolding this month. And it was announced that King Charles III had granted, and I want to talk a little bit about this, a conditional pardon reducing her sentence from execution to life imprisonment. And funnily enough, I heard her very articulate granddaughter

talk about, A, her relationship to Ruth, who obviously she didn't know, but the legacy of Ruth. Well, yes, I mean, as a family legacy, presumably that's a shadow that has loomed large. Yeah. And then this kind of judgment. And it was fascinating. Again, it's available online.

And this is just from this month. So, you know, it's there. But I was reminded throughout of Merlin Holland, Oscar Wilde's grandson, who has been on this podcast and who has been offered a reprieve for Oscar. And he won't take it because he says, no, you did what you did. Who's that reprieve for? And I was just like, oh. that's so interesting.

I never thought about it like that before before it would have been like, of course reprieve them. Of course hand them. But sure the reprieves no use to them? Yes. They're dead. And they suffered and struggled through the social stigma, the legal implications of what that was then. And I just, Merlin's mind saying, a very smart man, you know, being a wild, of course he is. But it was like, I just thought it was really interesting going, no, I'm not letting you off, actually.

You don't get to give that reprieve. You're doing it to wipe that slate. Exactly. And kind of dust off your hands. But on the flip side, it's really useful. I know Ruth Ellis's granddaughter is glad of it. So I guess there's different ways of looking at it. But I just think, again, it feeds into what you're saying about how complex this is, how nuanced this is.

You know, we're not talking about David Blakely's family who have also lost a son. Granted, he was a very violent man. But again, once again, context. He had his own very troubled upbringing. So it's messy. It is messy. Well, Anthony, thank you very much for bringing this to our attention. I think it's relatively rare that a piece of history like this comes into our own moment.

And occasionally we get flashes of things, especially with legal cases that are being overturned or revised in some way. But I think this, we've done this a little bit in recent episodes, actually, thinking about 20th century histories, the legacy of which we can. still feel very keenly. And I think this is one of them. And I think there is a wider conversation here about women's experiences in the 20th century. You know, this opens up conversations about domestic abuse, about protection for women, about women's health care, opportunities for women that are so important. And actually, you know, this is, you talk about the fact that Ruth Ellis's granddaughter is now talking on television about this.

that this is two generations away from us. We are living with the effects. Our parents are living with the effects of what happened in the early and mid-20th century. It's still here in our world. It's still worth talking about. Is this one of our latest topics that we've ever done in After Dark?

We tend to be very wary about going into the 20th century. I think we've done something in the 60s. We've done something in the 60s. I think we did a UFO thing. But this is the first crime thing, I think. I know when I saw her granddaughter or talking. I was like, oh, we've never had, I've never.

And this is like this month. And it just made me feel a little uncomfortable because it's like, oh, this is still somebody's life. And I'm like, we've never really been confronted with that. Yeah. And I think, I think as well, it shows that history is an ongoing thing. It's not over. History's never over.

And it's this constantly rolling thing. And we, we have to constantly talk about it and reassess it. It's important. but also it's a reminder that, you know, when we talk about people who are hundreds of years removed from us, it's easy to forget their humanity and that they were people. And I think what this reminds us is these are complex, nuanced human beings who made mistakes, who made choices, who were passionate,

who were angry, who felt aggrieved, who committed crimes, who loved all the rest of it. It's all in here. And when it's a bit more proximate to us, that feels even more powerful. Aren't we very lucky to get to do this podcast and have these little chats on a, what is a Thursday afternoon?

It's just like, yeah, but it gets the brain thinking, doesn't it? It does. What are the boundaries of the kind of morality of all of these conversations? And yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's interesting, but yeah, say goodbye to the people now. Well, thank you very much for watching along

if you're watching on YouTube or listening wherever you get your podcasts. If you would like us to cover more 20th century history, actually. That would be interesting. not looking No, no, I'm Tokyo up for it. No, I am, I am, I am.

Well, if you, if you want that, you can write into us at after dark at history hit.com. I went very Mrs. Doyle there. I am, I am, I am, I am. I am. Good Lord.

Bye.