The last British woman to be hanged, executed in 1955 for murdering her partner, on Wednesday had her sentence symbolically commuted to life imprisonment by King Charles, on advice from the government that she had suffered an “historical injustice”.
The government said the move reflected evidence that Ruth Ellis had been subject to “domestic abuse and coercive and controlling behaviour that may have been understood differently today”.
“We cannot change what happened 70 years ago. But we can recognise that this was an exceptional case,” justice minister David Lammy said in a statement.
“Today’s conditional pardon is an act of mercy. We hope it brings some measure of peace to Ruth’s family.”
The application for a pardon was made by four of Ellis’s grandchildren, although her sister, Muriel Jakubait, attempted more than 20 years ago to have the murder verdict posthumously reduced to manslaughter on the grounds of provocation.
The monarch has a prerogative power to grant pardons or commute sentences, which in practice is used only when the government requests it.
The death penalty remained in British law until 1998, but was abolished as the punishment for murder in 1965. The last executions took place in 1964, when two men were hanged for murder.
(Reporting by William James）
