A pub with a secret

The Magdala, in Hampstead, used to be my local and it has an interesting history. Here it comes, Fact fans:

Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be executed in the UK, shot her lover David outside this pub and he died on the spot. David Blakeley was a hard-drinking, increasingly violent racing driver who was already engaged to another woman.

The bullet holes are still in the wall. Ruth immediately gave herself up to the police, took full responsibility for the murder at her trial, and was hanged at Holloway Prison on 13 July 1955. Foreign newspapers observed that the concept of the crime passionel seemed alien to the British. Ruth's hanging helped strengthen public support for the abolition of the death penalty (which finally happened in 1965).

The story was dramatised in Dance with a Stranger, directed by Mike Newell, in 1985. Ruth Ellis was played by Miranda Richardson and David Blakeley by Rupert Everett.