‘Being Ruth Ellis's granddaughter had no impact on who I am today… or so I thought'

Telegraph

20-02-2025

As the granddaughter of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to hang in Britain, life was never going to be straightforward. What happened on Easter Sunday in 1955, when Ruth, a former nightclub manager, tracked down her unfaithful and abusive lover, the motor-racing driver David Blakely, to a pub in Hampstead where she shot and killed him, has defined our family. Ruth was found guilty of premeditated murder by a jury in just 20 minutes, and was sentenced to death and hanged at Holloway Prison 13 weeks after the crime.
It set in play a cruel chain of events. My grandfather, Ruth's first husband, George Ellis, a dentist with an alcohol problem, hanged himself three years after Ruth's execution. In 1969, Ruth's mother, Bertha Neilson, was found unconscious in a gas-filled room; she never fully recovered. My mother, Georgina Ellis, Ruth's daughter, was three years old and living with an adoptive family when her mother was hanged. She led a chaotic life thanks to her childhood; she could not be the mother that my siblings and I needed, drank heavily later in life and died of cancer aged 50. Her older brother Andy, my uncle, who was 10 when Ruth was hanged, died by suicide, aged 37.
I was convinced that I had been unaffected by the Ruth Ellis association. I managed to excel at school, graduate from university, complete a master's in my 40s and have a successful career in marketing. Being Ruth's granddaughter had no impact on the person I am today or on my mental health. Or so I thought until it caught up with me.
Moving my family to Toronto, Canada, shortly before the Covid-19 lockdown gave me the opportunity to reflect. I realised I was ready to delve into my past; after 40 years, I had grown tired of hiding from it. Through the help of podcasts and books, I realised how my childhood had defined who I am. It was time for me to confront it with the help of self-discovery and professional therapy.
This has happened to me at a serendipitous time, for Ruth's story is to resurface with a new ITV drama, A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story, with Lucy Boynton as Ruth, based on Carol Ann Lee's meticulously researched book, A Fine Day for a Hanging. There have been about 20 books published about my grandmother, many with their own agendas. This narrative is different, portraying Ruth as a trailblazer in life and death. She was a single parent with two children, running a thriving business, becoming London's youngest nightclub manager. She was a modern woman living in a time when convictions were punished with medieval practices. The war triggered a shift in society; the British judicial system was slow to keep up. It wasn't ready for Ruth Ellis. For the first time in 70 years, Ruth has been portrayed on screen as the woman she was, and I have become proud of my grandmother.
The first time I became aware of my connection to Ruth Ellis, I was seven. I don't have many childhood memories – I have learnt that this is not unusual when you have experienced childhood trauma. I do remember that my mother made me watch Dance With a Stranger – Mike Newell's 1985 film, starring Miranda Richardson as Ruth – with my brother James, who was five, and sister Emma, six. It was inappropriate for children our age by any measure, but my mother was giddy with excitement as she invited us to the 'best' room in our family home in Manchester to watch it on the VHS player. I remember not understanding what I was seeing – lots of sex, violence and the murder – but I do recall that being the moment I decided I wanted nothing more to do with Ruth's story.
This was easier said than done. At that time, my mother, known as Georgie, a model and socialite, lived and breathed the connection; it defined her. She was regularly in the press. Thanks to her looks, intelligence and relationships with high-profile celebrities, including the footballer George Best and the actor Richard Harris, this appeared relatively easy. The way she conducted herself was the root cause of our fraught relationship. Her PR strategy was clear: to draw as many parallels as possible between her life and Ruth's.
Up until 1975, Mum had managed to keep her identity out of the newspapers. In March of that year, aged 23, she appeared on the front of the News of the World, styled to look like Ruth. This coverage was her first taste of the publicity she could get from adopting a 'like mother, like daughter' persona.
As Georgina's eldest daughter, I was determined not to go down the same route. Someone said to me, 'Don't let it define you' – a complex concept for a child. I thought the best way was to pretend it never happened. Primary school was tricky. My parents divorced when I was eight, and eventually my father, Eric Enston, was granted full custody of me and my two siblings. As we had been one family unit during my early years, everyone at school knew the connection. I was reminded in the playground that my grandmother was a 'murderer' and a 'prostitute'.
Upon reflection, my grievance wasn't necessarily with the Ruth association, but I knew Ruth and my mother went hand in hand. If I was open about my connection to Ruth, this linked me to my mother, and I didn't want to be associated with her behaviour. I was petrified of being tarred with the same brush.
As I've learnt more about Ruth's character, I think back to the times when I saw similar traits in my mother. Like Ruth, Mum had a blind infatuation: with the property developer David Beard, her partner following her break-up with my father. Her David had the same initials as David Blakely, the man Ruth shot.
My mother's relationship with David, whom she never married, was passionate but volatile and led to some questionable parenting decisions. Like Ruth, her attachment to my stepfather overrode other emotional connections. This capriciousness was one of the reasons she didn't have custody of her six children (my father was her third husband). My older half-brother, Scott, had been sent away to live with relatives. The outcome of my parents' custody battle for Emma, James and I was decided following one of these parenting moments.
One night – when I was eight, James six, and Emma seven – my mother got us out of bed and drove us into Manchester city centre. She was looking for David, who wasn't returning her calls. Mum drove us to Bavardarge, a popular Manchester nightclub, and parked nearby. She left me and my siblings in the car and disappeared to find him. While waiting anxiously for my mother to return, Emma announced she was desperate for the toilet. I looked down the street and saw some construction workers and what looked like a site office with a light on. I got James and Emma out of the car, walked towards the office and asked if my sister could use their loo.
The next thing I remember is being sat back in Mum's car, talking to police officers and describing what my mother looked like and was wearing. The police officers went into the club but couldn't find her. My next memory is of waking up in the staff room of a police station, my head resting on the lap of a female police officer. When I looked across the room, I could see my little brother sitting on a pool table and a police officer showing him how to use a cue. My final memory of that night is waking up in the back of my father Eric's car.
Soon after that incident, my father was awarded custody, and my mother was granted weekend access, alternating between long and short weekend visits. This started as a consistent arrangement, but the long weekends quickly became fewer and farther between, based on my mother's social commitments. Being let down by my mother became my norm.
As a teenager, my attitude towards her came from a place of increasing frustration. I was annoyed about the opportunities she had and the path she chose to follow. We lived in Didsbury in South Manchester, home to television presenters, producers and sports personalities. She knew everyone, and everyone knew her. Parents of children at my school included Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan, and Tony Wilson of Factory Records. I remember having lunches with Manchester City footballers. My mother was beautiful, witty, sharp, well spoken and charismatic. She also had financial backing; my grandparents, her adopted parents, had set her up with a shop in Manchester called Georgie Girl. In my mind, she had it all.
Despite her positive attributes, my mother homed in on the sordid side of Ruth's life, using it to justify her behaviour – 'mirror image' was another phrase both she and the press would use. In 1997, The Independent interviewed my mother. The journalist wrote, 'It is sometimes hard to know where Ruth ends and Georgie begins,' an accurate observation. Ruth had been running a business as a single parent when she met David Blakely. Yet rather than focus on Ruth's achievements, Mum opted to revel in the fact that Ruth had occasionally turned to prostitution. I now know this played a much smaller role in Ruth's life compared with the image my mother had painted.
One weekend, I visited my mother, who was living with my stepfather David and their two young children. I was 13. It was a Saturday, and that evening, when my dad called to pick us up, my brother and I decided to stay at Mum's. I don't remember the lead-up, but David and Mum had an explosive argument. It escalated into a violent exchange initiated by my mother, with me trying to break up the fight while my distressed siblings watched on. Scared, I ran to the neighbours' and banged on the door, but when it opened, I couldn't get my words out; the panic and fear had rendered me speechless. The neighbour offered me a brandy, asking if I was the au pair. The next thing I remember is the police arriving. I consciously decided not to tell my father; I was worried he would put a stop to my mother's weekend access.
What I really craved was one-on-one time with my mother. My stepfather also had weekend access to his three children from his previous marriage, so when both sets of kids came together, the weekends were chaotic. When their relationship ended in 1994, when I was 14, she suggested we go on a girls' trip to London. We would go shopping, meet her 'friend George' for lunch and have fun. I hadn't been to London before, so I was excited to see the city and spend quality time with her. We arrived at the pub to meet George, who turned out to be the footballer George Best. As we arrived, he was sitting alone at the bar, enjoying a pint. Mum made a beeline for him, and I realised this wasn't an organised arrangement. Mum was just familiar with George's drinking haunts and knew where to find him. Feeling awkward, I took my drink and sat at a table nearby.
As expected, the 'lunch with George' never happened. That evening, we went to the Hard Rock Cafe, and afterwards she suggested we go for a drink on our way back to the hotel. From the street, we descended some steps and entered what I now realise was a gentlemen's club, full of well-dressed older men and few women. I followed Mum around as she worked the room, introducing us both to people. I remember feeling incredibly uncomfortable, so I sat at the bar and watched her float around.
When it was time to leave, one of my mother's new acquaintances joined us in the taxi. They dropped me at the hotel and travelled off into the night. She arrived at the hotel the following morning and took me to the Savoy for breakfast, before we caught our train back to Manchester. It hadn't been the girls' weekend I'd had in mind. I now wonder if Mum had enough money to make that trip. Did she need to go off with her new acquaintance to earn cash to fund our weekend?
Still, my mother did herself no favours – her appearance on Michael Barrymore's primetime television show in 1995 being an excellent example. From the moment she stepped on set, I could see she was drunk. As I watched the interview unfold from home, I felt as though I was having an out-of-body experience. What was she doing? The thought of returning to school the following Monday was overwhelming. I was mortified when I recently discovered the interview on YouTube. I recall thinking it couldn't be as bad as I remembered. I quickly re-confirmed that it was indeed one of TV's most awkward interviews. My first instinct was to request the content be removed. However, upon reflection, I realised that it served as proof of my mother's mental state and provided validation of the struggles we endured during our childhood. It was part of my context.
A pivotal moment in our relationship was another interview she did with Best magazine in May 1995, the month I was doing my GCSE exams. I wasn't aware of the article until the morning of an exam, when one of my peers brought a copy into school. It was the first time Mum had mentioned my name in the press: 'My eldest daughter, Laura, who is 16, is very bright and will go a long way. Her only stumbling block is the family legacy. She tells me, 'People at school think I must be an easy lay because of my mum and grandmother.'' Mum had crossed the line; I felt incredibly let down. After my exam, I called her on the school canteen payphone and didn't hold back. It was a while before we spoke again.
Bullying and name calling were the norm throughout my school years. At 13, it ramped up when two close friends started making my family an issue. Their strategy was subtle. One of them would sit next to me in class, draw out the hangman word game and push the paper toward me. They would invite me to sleepovers, but I would be too scared to sleep, fearing what they might do. They would write letters and notes stating I was pretty in my 'own way'. I finished secondary school with little self-worth or confidence.
Marriage number four resulted in my mother moving to Hull, a three-hour drive from Manchester. She telephoned after the event to tell me that she had married Michael Blackburn, a retired cricketer and rugby player. I remember the relief of knowing she was taking her chaos to the other side of the country. Thanks to that distance, our relationship improved, and I would visit her regularly. I had learnt from experience to take everything she said with a pinch of salt, and I treated her cancer diagnosis in the same way. It was only when she started to do short stays at a hospice that I realised things were serious. She died on the day I was due to move house. After a call from the hospice, I left my father, Eric, to move me in by himself and bolted to Hull, missing her by hours.
I always knew Mum would never live a long life. In her later years, she drank heavily, which helped to mask the cancer until the point where treatment was futile. There's no question in my mind that her early death, in 2001, was a direct result of Ruth's execution. There is plenty of neuroscientific research to show how untreated trauma leads to unhealthy behaviours, which result in chronic illnesses.
Lately, my attitude towards my mother has shifted to a more compassionate place. The government allowed Ruth to hang for her crime, and my mother never received any mental health support. I am guilty of underestimating the devastating impact this had on her. As a teenager, I thought she had choices; I now see how hardwired she was into the tragedy. When Judge Cecil Havers (played by his grandson Nigel in A Cruel Love) announced Ruth's punishment, he didn't just hand out one death sentence; he handed out three. He started the clock on Ruth's life and those of her children.
Undoubtedly A Cruel Love will reopen the conversation around the stability of Ruth's conviction. In 2003, an appeal to get it overturned, led by Ruth's sister Muriel Jakubait, was lost. I was not surprised by the result. Despite Ruth's trial being a complete shambles, the judicial system looked very different in 1955; battered woman syndrome and diminished responsibility were not recognised defences. Carol Ann Lee's book and the spotlight ITV is shining on the case will have a far more wide-reaching impact than a court ruling. Like me, the British public will be re-educated about the events leading up to the shooting, the disgraceful handling of the case, and who the true villains really were.
Of course, Ruth's death has always influenced my decisions. My childhood taught me everything I didn't want to be as a parent. I don't profess to be the best mother, but I work hard to offer mytwo girls the things that I missed. As a parent, I make a conscious effort to be present; I'm not sure how much the kids will remember, but I hope they will have recollections of me being there at the school gates and at bedtime. I strive for consistency; I don't go back on promises. I am determined to raise two confident young women with firm personal boundaries. In 2001, when I received the call to say my mother had died, I'm ashamed to say that I was relieved. I don't want anyone to feel relief when my time comes to check out of this world.
For the first time in my life, aged 46, I am at peace with my bloodline; I no longer carry the shame for what my grandmother did or the path my mother 'chose' to take. Ruth lost her life in 1955 due to misogyny, discrimination and judgment, and this reality has shaped who I am. Ruth's legacy of strength will continue to live on through me and my daughters, which is the least we can do for my grandmother, whose death saved the lives of others by triggering the abolishment of the death penalty in Britain.
A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story starts on ITV1 on March 5, and is available as a box set on ITVX the same day