Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged for murder in Britain, has been granted a posthumous pardon by the King, some 71 years after her execution. The decision, announced in the House of Commons by Justice Secretary David Lammy, follows a long campaign by her descendants, who argue that she was a victim of domestic abuse and would today have been able to plead diminished responsibility. Her family regard the pardon as an acknowledgement that the justice system "got things wrong" and treated her as an example rather than affording her a fair trial.

Ellis was executed at Holloway Prison in July 1955, aged 28, having shot dead her lover David Blakely, 25, outside the Magdala pub in Hampstead following a turbulent, abusive relationship that included a miscarriage after he punched her. At her Old Bailey trial in June 1955, the judge directed the jury to disregard the abuse as a defence, she admitted intending to kill Blakely, and the jury convicted her in just 20 minutes under a mandatory death sentence. Her granddaughter, Laura Enston, 47, who described the trial as "a disgrace", is now also urging Madame Tussauds to remove Ellis's figure from its "Chamber of Horrors", where she stands alongside figures such as Jack the Ripper, Dennis Nilsen and the Kray Twins; the museum has not responded to her request.