It has taken more than seven decades, but the grievous wrong done to Ruth Ellis has finally been recognised. Ellis was the last woman to be hanged for murder in the UK, the victim of a pitiless justice system that was uninterested in her history of horrific domestic abuse. The announcement of a posthumous conditional pardon is a tribute to the tireless campaigning of her family, including her granddaughter, Laura Enston. But it also highlights continuing shortcomings in how the criminal justice system deals with women who commit crimes after being treated horrendously by their partners.
She really did murder the bloke.
Ah, yes, sorry, this is Joan Smith, isn’t it? Feminism means strong independent wimmins aren’t responsible for their actions.
Courts should always be uninterested in the ‘history of domestic abuse’ for a woman who cold-bloodedly pumped bullets into an unarmed man lying on the floor.
No no NO !
There is too much of this. All those shot at dawn during the Great War were pardoned. There were a few injustices, but those executed were generally hard core recidivists. That is why 90% of all sentences were commuted and only the bad’uns shot.
Ellis killed the man, admitted as much and was found guilty. The fact that she was a bit glam helped the abolitionist cause. Pierrepoint said that he had executed another woman a little before, but no one made a fuss out of her.
Pierrepoint said that he had executed another woman a little before
That was his mistake, always execute them fully.
I take issue with nearly all past grievances because we just weren’t there. If it didn’t happen in the past 20 years, you might not understand the world. I even see this with the miner’s strike. Policing is hard to get the balance right, but at the time, the policing was about right. The miners at Orgreave were not quietly protesting when the police went steaming in. Maggie knew this was an attempt at insurrection, and most of the public shrugged about a few miners getting a kicking.
It’s led me to think, well, why did the people of Bavaria support the Nazis back in 1933. Why did the Southern states get rid of slavery after the Northern ones. In that last case, it was because the Northern states just didn’t have much of the economy based on slavery.
Ah, the past. My apartment building, a bit of a Le Corbusier lookalike, was architect-designed and built 60 years ago. We’ve been trying to find out who the architect was, and simply can’t. No records; no memories. And that’s only 60 years.
If it works as well as the typical Le Corbusier building, I assume you’re looking for the architect in order to hang him!
Actually, quite the opposite. It’s a great, convenient place to live.
The *Flying Pickets* were attacking men trying, peacefully, to go to work. The police and horses were there to try to protect men “going about their lawful business”. Any horses that kicked back at violent aggressors were doing so in self-defence.
Seems rather like the British Army going into Norn Iron to stop the natives beating the shit out of each other and ending up getting duffed up by both sides.
Bavaria went Nazi because of stuff like
A group of communists and anarchists declared the Bavarian Soviet Republic on 6 April 1919, forcing the government of the existing Free State of Bavaria to flee to Bamberg in northern Bavaria.[2] The members of the new government, led by playwright Ernst Toller, had no political or administrative experience,[3] and after just six days in power they were ousted in a putsch organized by the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). The new head of state, the Russian-German Bolshevik Eugen Leviné, quickly instituted communist measures such as worker control of factories. Food shortages led to popular unrest, and on 3 May the Soviet Republic was put down by soldiers of the German Army supported by paramilitary Freikorps troops. Some 600 people died in the fighting.[4] On 14 August 1919, the republican Free State of Bavaria resumed control over all of Bavaria.
And ongoing leftist agitation and violence during the 20’s.
Bavaria was agrarian/traditional on the most part, so unwelcoming to Communist shenanigans. But lack of welcoming doesn’t stop lefty shenanigans, men with clubs and rifles do, ja?
The mystery of the Nazi Party is how a highly educated, intelligent nation with tremendous resources and great prospects (Germany in 1933 had more tangible reasons to think the future would get better than Brits in 2026, who know it won’t) managed to piss away everything their grandfathers had built on insane conquer-ze-welt schemes knowing that if, for some reason, they should fail to, say, conquer Russia in a single season, the results could be existentially catastrophic for ze Reich? Nein, it’ll be fine.
The Nazis, eh? A mixed bag. On the one hand, autobahns are good. On the other, attempting to exterminate entire races of people through starvation, gassing, shooting and bombing was not the most rational solution to German factories’ lack of native strategic resources. And the Germans (and Japs, perhaps even more so) never seemed to think the rest of the world would have a problem with their conquest and cruelty.
Funny not funny thing in the news: German carmakers, the crown jewels of their manufacturing industry, are sacking massive numbers of workers. Like the rest of German industry, no more cheap Russian gas and no alternative, only Net Zero, means no chance of competing in global markets. But I saw elsewhere that German industry was demanding MORE IMMIGRATION because of “skills shortages”. Absolute Clown Welt.
I assume they’re sacking blokes in their 40s, 50s and even 60s who are expensive and know their own minds?
What they want is young blokes who are generally a bit more cheap and malleable.
That’s why the Oceangate CEO is 2D now.
Volkswagen looking at 100,000 job losses and four major German factories kaput. That means those places are soon going to be depressed ghost towns, it won’t just be the competent white men who are laid off.
Their country is swimming in black guys and mosques, but there’s a “skills shortage”.
People rather forget the post-war communists, and why some people in Britain looked quite favourably on the Nazis as the least worst option.
I also reckon everyone is gradually realising that German cars ain’t nothing special now. 40 years ago they were the best made cars, but everyone else caught up.
Rose West had an appalling early life, so I suppose we can expect a pardon for her any time now.
It does all help drive that wedge deeper between men and women, though, so it’s not entirely pointless.
It’s all part of judging the past by current mores. Which is a fool’s errand and causes all sorts of trouble we could do without.
What current mores would pardon a premeditated murder by shooting someone, who posed no threat, in the back with a pistol?
Well, if he was, say, a Tory or a Jew….
Woman, history of abuse, “psychotic episode”, possibly egged on by lover, Jooman Rites Lawyers, Feminazi Rallies under the Rainbow Banner…..
Plenty of mores that are quite different now ( good *and* bad… some mad.. ). Including the fact that there’s no death penalty anymore..
So yes… the result of a trial would have been *vastly* different..
History of abuse only records one blow by Blakeley (lots of abuse by previous “lovers”). No sign that Blakeley was psychotic: he was glamorous and wealthy (the latter very important to Ellis who took up nude modelling because it paid better) but better behaved than Ellis’ earlier partners.
His offence was to have another partner while she was playing two ways, himself and Cussen. If that “justifies” premeditated murder I am in the wrong universe.
If she’d shot him while he was attacking her, well maybe there’d be something to it. But she wasn’t ‘trapped’, unable to flee the relationship. She was, at the time, living with another man although she continued to see Blakely.
On the day of the murder, she went looking for Blakely, travelling first to a property where she thought he was. Apparently she just missed him as he left. She then tracked him down to a pub, hid in a doorway and ambushed him as he came out.
She seems like the sort of woman that liked the stability of an accountant, but the fun of the other bloke.
A lot of women that get abused pick ’em. They like dangerous men, and don’t even leave the first time they get a slap. Not all, but women don’t get black eyes from librarians and actuaries. They tend to be men with previous convictions.
I just was reading a report this morning of an American woman who got involved with a Middle-Eastern illegal migrant in the Irish Republic, who was just found beaten to death in the home they shared. He is, of course, on his toes in the Middle East somewhere. I refuse to believe that he went from loving, supportive partner to violent murderer in the blink of an eye one day. In the dim and distant past, when I was some sort of a copper here in the US, even though it definitely wasn’t my beat, I heard enough ‘But I love him . . . .!’ tales to learn that I will never, ever understand the choices that some women – and some men – can make.
llater,
llamas
Coincidentally, my Paddy mate was telling me about it earlier. (The latest part of his continuing saga on the dire straights of the Republic. Another exile with cause) He has it the scrote’s gone to ground in Georgia. The Black Sea one not the Yank. Georgians are supposed to have invented wine.
Georgian wine can be very good. It was pretty much the only drinkable thing the USSR produced.
Moldovan wine was drinkable in the Yeltsin era.
I find it ludicrous that something like this from 70 years ago is still consuming resources.
If a government has painted itself, or been painted, into a corner to the point where it has very little control over things that matter, it concerns itself with headlines and fripperies, I guess.
Oh yeah. But are you surprised that this government.and this justice secretary finds the time and resource.for.ot?
If you are, here’s some coffee for you.
And how, exactly, does commuting the sentence of a 70 year old murder case “highlight continuing shortcomings”?
It is intolerable, to Guardianistas, that the same laws apply to both sexes, that women may be cross-examined in court, …
Remember that it’s not only about sexes. It’s intolerable to the Guardianistas that the laws that apply to white heterosexual males also apply to anyone not being a white heterosexual male.
They are evil
As grist righly points out below I forgot to add the political belief, corrected version should be: “right-wing” white heterosexual males
This is by, I think, general consensus now a government whose evil is not something ever before seen in the UK – it’s almost like Randall Flagg in Stephen King’s ‘The Stand’.
I always flip things now to see if the principle is sound or whether it’s just pointless posing.
Donald Trump pardons Lee Harvey Oswald because it turns out a DNA test on his remains prove he was a non binary trans and anyway JFK was an adulterous womaniser and deserved it. Headlines in the Graun would be?
Cold-blooded, premeditated murder. Dig ‘er up and ‘ang ‘er again.
Conditional? WTF?
Gamecock assumes Ms Enston is a screech owl and the government did it to get her to STFU. Perhaps that is the condition.
You are talking someone close to Starmer level of evil – someone who wanted the possibility of a not guilty plea for an accusation of sexual assault removed. She will need to be subject to a socialist tax and the restriction of the franchise, as will all like her.
It’s just dawned on me, the pardon is concerned with the judgement; not the sentence.
Fine if we had acknowledged the sentence was to harsh, but a pardon!?
In the U.S. today it would still be 1st degree. There tree isn’t and wasn’t.any defence available based upon diminished responsibility. And “he had it coming” isn’t a defence, even if completely true.
Poor little lady. And nasty men on this thread, expecting the same standards to be applied as they would to us. Shame on you all!
She admitted to murder, knowing full well what the penalty was. You can argue mitigating circumstances for a reduced sentence, but not the original charge.
Heh.
Some blog link titles are just too good to explore further.
“Adolf Hitler baby photo in New Jersey middle school yearbook sparks investigation“
Why does Labour do stuff like this, and other things like the stupid and evil law to permit abortions up to 8 and 3/4 months?
Because it doesn’t cost any money – and the British state is effectively bankrupt now, deep into Laffer territory and flirting with IMF bailouts down the line – we still have money for important things, such as infinite brown immigration, Net Zero and welfare spaffing, but we can no longer afford Tesco Basics such as a Royal Navy.
Because they’re desperate to change the conversations women are having away from 250,000 victims of Islamic rape, British women no longer safe walking the streets in formerly British towns and cities, to harmless legbeard talking points such as “revenge porn” and is the plumber who stood in the Makersfield by-election sexist?
So, virtue signalling on the cheap.
Women can’t expect potholes to be filled, police to arrest criminals, affordable living costs, or a future for white children under Labour. But maybe if we say Myra Hindley was a victim of the Patriarchy, the Gayest Parliament in the World will get to enjoy SW1 foam parties for another 5 years?
Ho yes, and anudder thing here is the rotten sentimentality of middle aged middle class white women, of both sexes.
Always willing to believe sob stories from the worst fucking people.
Like chavs. Working class people hate chavs, criminals and dolescum. The lanyard class loves em, can’t do enough for them. They think scum *are* the working class. It’s very insulting.
Working class people, and coppers back when they had some sense, are less immediately apt to believe 100% of everything you hear from the woman in one sided accounts of domestic violence. That’s because the kind of girls who seek out violent bad boy boyfriends and stay with them after months and years of abuse are not usually Little Nell.
The saintly soap opera victim, silently suffering a male monster, she might exist in real life but that’s not how these dysfunctional relationships usually go. It’s usually two troubled people, often codependents in alcohol or substance abuse and possibly with undiagnosed mental illnesses, torturing each other emotionally and physically until one kills the other. And if you try to intervene she’ll scratch your eyeballs out. Most of these gels, sadly, are not “trapped” in an abusive relationship, they’re addicted to the thrill. They like violent bad boys because violence excites them.
Such as in this case. A normal woman would have just left him, but in the unlikely event they’re the victim in a Victorian penny dreadful, if she felt compelled to kill it would be poison. Women love to poison, it’s their favourite all time murder method, because it plays to female strengths (cunning, smooth lying, and access to your food) and negates male strength.
This lady chose the most masculine form of murder that’s available to a woman. Gotta respect that, but it’s psychologically interesting. What drives a woman to physically seek out a man with the intention of shooting him in public? She didn’t just murder him, this was also a cold-blooded emasculation of her tormentor/victim via assassination. She used his own methods (direct physical violence) against him and the tactics of an ambush predator. (This girl is a self-starter with upper management written all over her!) She went there, wasn’t cornered there, seemingly prepared to look him in the eyes while she killed him? Hmm.
So there’s physical courage there, almost virago like if she wasn’t a murderess, and a capacity for physical confrontation we don’t normally see in women. The sad likelihood is, if she hadn’t been in a relationship with this guy she’d have picked another loser to knock her around. Like the homeless, some problems just can’t be solved.
Like the homeless, some problems just can’t be solved.
Precisely. And in reality, only some of them can be contained.
Like the homeless, some problems just can’t be solved.
Lanyard-wearing managerial technocrats believe all such problems can be solved – given enough “resources”.
Sadly, those fuckers can’t even walk and chew gum simultaneously.
OMT. People are horrified by the appearance of mutilated humans. One reason why mass shooters often shoot themselves, even though they are the ones who did the mutilation. Unless there is contrary evidence, she was just fine with seeing a person splattered.
Ellis was the last woman to be hanged for murder in the UK
Uhhh . . . somebody had to be last. Is this supposed to give her some kind of status?
Yes.
Most of us find it ridiculous.
One of my friends grants me some kind of status for the being the oldest person to do X for the first time (other older people have done X, having previously done it while younger) so it is ridiculous and I try to avoid discussing it.
The one that gets me is when they add “… for your age” to a complement. I challenge the “for your age” schtick immediately.
I always tolerate it because the guy/gal is trying to be friendly. I know that I am slower than I was 30 years ago and I am nowhere nearly as good as the best guys. That I score a lot of points for my team by being the best “second string” over 35 or the best “male over 50” (I got lapped by a particularly good over-50 female on Monday, but beat all the other over-50 males, so it didn’t affect the team’s score).
If someone tries to say I am as good as Peter B, let alone Ian R, then I challenge it (I filed a complaint with “Power of 10” when it said I was second-best for my age instead of Peter – I am not even third)
One thing I find about advancing age is “the older I get, the better I was”. 🙂
But it also highlights continuing shortcomings
No it doesn’t! It was 7 decades ago; it says double ought nothing about what happens today!
in how the criminal justice system deals with women who commit crimes after being treated horrendously by their partners.
What legal concept are they presenting? “He looked at me funny” is a valid defense for murder? If muttered by a woman. What about a woman with a penis?
Not sure why feminists care about her execution anyway, she was just a clump of cells.
Interesting. At what point does that clump of cels become a womaaan with sex-based rights?
“When the tip goes in.”
‘But it also highlights continuing shortcomings in how the criminal justice system deals with women who commit crimes after being treated horrendously by their partners.’
Being a bloke, I’d only agree with this if men had equal rights!!
after being treated horrendously
“Does this dress make me look fat?”
“No, your big butt makes you look fat. The dress is fine.”
[Blam! Blam!]
[Reloading.]
[Blam! Blam!]
Ah, G. No wonder you struggled. “Does my butt look big in this?” “It’s a lovely day, dear, and you always look fabulous!”
I’ve got an idea: let’s litigate the past!