LONDON - Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be executed in Britain, will receive a conditional pardon in recognition of a “profound injustice”, Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy announced in Parliament on July 8, after a decades-long campaign by her family.

Ellis, a 28-year-old nightclub hostess, was hanged in July 1955 for shooting dead her racing driver lover David Blakely as he came out of the Magdala pub in London.

The case gripped Britain and was turned into the 1985 film Dance With A Stranger, starring Miranda Richardson and Rupert Everett.

A mother of two children aged just three and 10, Ellis’ execution provoked a public outcry and helped swing public opinion against the death penalty.

Ellis’ family had argued that she was an abused woman and that a modern-day case would likely have resulted in a charge of manslaughter not murder.

“I have the honour to say that his majesty the king has accepted our advice to grant Ruth Ellis a conditional pardon,” Lammy told lawmakers as two of Ellis’ six grandchildren watched from the public gallery.