Who Was Ruth Ellis? Learn the True Story Behind BritBox’s ‘A Cruel Love’

The British miniseries A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story, premiering on the streaming service BritBox on February 17, “exposes the timeless British obsessions of class, sex, and death” through the story of Ruth Ellis, according to its logline.

Ellis, as viewers will see on screen, was a nightclub hostess and convicted murderer whose 1955 hanging marked the last time a woman was executed in the United Kingdom. But A Cruel Love’s logline says Ellis was “condemned … by a system which judged her for far more than her crime.” Here’s the backstory.

Who was Ruth Ellis?

Ruth Ellis was a Welsh mother of two who worked as a nightclub hostess, model, and one-time background actor. (She had an uncredited role in the 1951 film Lady Godiva Rides Again.) On April 10, 1955, Ellis, then 28, fatally shot David Blakely, a 25-year-old racing driver with whom she’d been in a relationship, outside a pub in the Hampstead area of London, as The Guardian reported.

Ellis was arrested, and her ensuing trial lasted little more than a day. “It is obvious when I shot him I intended to kill him,” Ellis told the prosecutor, per The Guardian.

But Ellis also told the jury that Blakely had been violent with her, saying that he “only hit me with his fist or hands” and that he “thumped [her] in the tummy” shortly before she had a miscarriage.

Nevertheless, the jury convicted Ellis, the judge sentenced her to death, and Ellis was hanged on July 13, 1955. Gwilym Lloyd George, the home secretary of the U.K. at the time, denied petitions for a reprieve in Ellis’ case.

Capital punishment for murder was fully abolished in the United Kingdom by 1973, making Ellis the last U.K. woman to be executed.

However, there’s ample evidence that Blakely had abused Ellis — which, in another era, might have downgraded Ellis’ murder charge to manslaughter — and there are suspicions that another lover named Desmond Cussen had urged Ellis to kill Blakely, per The Guardian.

In 2003, however, a U.K. court dismissed an appeal filed by Ellis’ sister to overturn the conviction. The judges of that appeals court decided Ellis was rightly convicted of murder under the law at the time.

What is A Cruel Love: The Lucy Ellis Story, and who’s starring?

A Cruel Love: The Lucy Ellis Story is a four-part dramatization about Ellis’ life and death, debuting on BritBox on Monday, February 17. Lucy Boynton (Bohemian Rhapsody) plays Ellis, while Toby Jones (Mr Bates vs the Post Office) plays John Bickford, Ellis’ solicitor.

Other cast members include Laurie Davidson (Will), Mark Stanley (Game of Thrones), Joe Armstrong (Happy Valley), Arthur Darvill (DC’s Legends of Tomorrow), Juliet Stevenson (Professor T), and Toby Stephens (Percy Jackson and the Olympians).

Lee Haven Jones (Passenger) directed all four episodes and serves as executive producer alongside Kate Bartlett and Antonia Gordon for Silverprint Pictures. Kelly Jones (The Long Call) wrote all four scripts with input from Carol Ann Lee, on whose book A Fine Day for a Hanging: The Ruth Ellis Story the series is based.

A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story, Series Premiere, Monday, February 17, BritBox

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