Ruth Ellis Pardon: Could the Pendle Witches Be Next?

History is rarely as settled as we like to believe.

Every generation inherits stories that feel complete. Cases that seem closed. Verdicts that appear beyond question. Yet every so often, something happens that forces us to look again.....This week, that happened with Ruth Ellis- the last woman to be hanged in Britain.

More than 70 years after she became the last woman to be hanged in Britain, Ruth Ellis has been granted a posthumous conditional pardon. It doesn't declare her innocent of killing David Blakely, but it does acknowledge something profound: that the justice system failed to properly recognise the years of domestic abuse, coercive control and trauma she endured before she ever stood in the dock. Had she been tried under today's laws, the outcome may have been very different. 

It is a remarkable moment, not simply because it changes the official record, but because it demonstrates that history isn't fixed forever.

Sometimes we discover new evidence. Sometimes society develops a better understanding of the evidence that was always there.

For many years, Ruth Ellis became a symbol rather than a person. The glamorous nightclub manager. The jealous lover. The blonde bombshell. The last woman hanged.

Those headlines became the story. How could a woman with peroxide blonde hair, red lipstick and tight clothing be a victim?

Her family have worked tirelessly.

The first book I read of Carol Ann Lee’s was “A Fine Day for a Hanging”. From the little I knew about Ruth before reading this, I’ve always felt she was wrongly treated, she didn’t fit the mould of an abused woman.  

Carol peeled away decades of sensationalism to reveal a woman trapped in an abusive relationship whose experiences were largely ignored by the legal system of the 1950s. Her work helped challenge the accepted narrative and encouraged readers to ask whether justice had really been served. As Ruth's own granddaughter has acknowledged, reading Carol's book fundamentally changed her understanding of her grandmother's life and inspired the family's campaign for a pardon. 

It is a reminder of something often forgotten about historians and true crime writers.

They don't simply preserve history.

Sometimes they help change it.

That is one of the reasons we're incredibly excited that Carol Ann Lee will be the very first guest in our new Matinees of Murders & Mysteries series.

Carol has spent decades examining Britain's most fascinating criminal cases, separating myth from reality and asking difficult questions that others have overlooked.

Whether writing about Ruth Ellis, the Pendle Witches or countless other historical cases, her work asks us to consider not just what happened, but whether we have understood it properly.

Because history deserves curiosity.

Not blind acceptance.

Could the Pendle Witches be next?

The Ruth Ellis pardon inevitably raises another fascinating question.

If we are now prepared to acknowledge that one historic case resulted in a profound injustice...

What about others?

Take the Pendle witch trials.

Twelve people stood accused in Lancashire in 1612. Ten were convicted and executed after being accused of witchcraft in a climate of fear, superstition and political tension.

Today, almost nobody believes they were witches.

Most historians accept they were victims of the beliefs and legal standards of their age. We’ll speak to carol about what really led the accused to find themselves in the dock, all I’ll say is be carefully of falling out with your neighbours!

Yet unlike Ruth Ellis, they remain officially convicted.

Could that one day change?

There is no active government process to pardon the Pendle Witches, and any decision would raise difficult legal and historical questions. But the conversation is no longer as far-fetched as it once seemed.

Scotland has already begun asking those questions

Perhaps the strongest example comes from north of the border.

The campaign by Witches of Scotland has spent years calling for justice for the thousands of people, most of them women, who were accused and executed under Scotland's witchcraft laws.

If you haven’t read “How to Kill a Witch”, then you really should.

Their campaign has three goals:

• a formal apology

• legal pardons

• a national memorial

In 2022, the Scottish Government issued an official apology acknowledging that those accused of witchcraft were victims of injustice. Campaigners continue to press for wider legal recognition and lasting memorials. 

It's an extraordinary shift.

For centuries, these women were remembered as criminals.

Today they are increasingly recognised as victims.

History isn't about changing the past

Some critics argue that posthumous pardons attempt to rewrite history.

Perhaps the opposite is true.

They don't change what happened.

Ruth Ellis was still executed.

The Pendle Witches were still hanged.

Thousands of Scottish women were still persecuted.

Nothing can undo that.

Instead, these moments acknowledge that justice itself evolves. As society learns more about domestic abuse, coercive control, misogyny, superstition and institutional failures, we become better equipped to recognise where the law got things wrong.

Perhaps that's one of history's greatest purposes.

Not to make us comfortable.

But to make us think.

And if one woman's story, told with care and painstaking research by Carol Ann Lee, can eventually help change the historical record after more than seventy years, it leaves us wondering...

Whose story might be next?