Notorious pub bullet holes credited to Ruth Ellis – the last woman to be hanged in Britain – ‘were DRILLED into the wall by the landlady to attract tourists’
Scheme cooked up during lock-in 50 years after murder, it has been claimed
THE BULLET holes in a pub wall credited to the last woman hanged in Britain were faked, it was claimed today.
Ruth Ellis was sentenced to death for shooting her cheating boyfriend outside The Magdala in Hampstead, north London in 1955.
Since then thousands of visitors have flocked there – attracted by the visible reminder of its grisly past.
But it has been revealed the holes were created by a drill – as part of a bid by landlady Mary Watson to boost sightseers nearly half a century after the murder.
Actor Neil Titley, who has researched the history of the pub, which closed in 2014, claims he was at a lock-in late one night when the plan was concocted
The 71-year-old said: “It was about 25 years ago in the 1990s and I remember it well. The pub had just been added to the Murder Mile tours.
“These included the Kray brothers pubs and Jack the Ripper areas and a Japanese company decided to include the Magdala.
“It was about two am in the morning and we were having a bit of a lock-in and the landlady said, ‘There’s not much to look at here, it’s just a bar’, so they decided to change that.
“She got her brother to go upstairs and get her a drill. He then went outside and put up some bullet holes in the wall.
“All of us drinking in the pub went outside as well as watched it all happen. And this was 30 years after the murder happened.
“It was all a bit of fun after a few late night drinks.”
Ellis became notorious as the last woman to be hanged in Britain, aged 28, after she shot David Blakely outside the pub on Easter Sunday 1955.
Her execution in Holloway Prison became a focus for campaigners and finally helped end the death penalty in Britain.
Neil has started a blog of memories of the pub as part of his campaign to get it re-opened, explaining how the urban myth had developed over the years.
He added: “These things gather a momentum as they go along and become more famous as years go past and the myth grows.
“The strange thing was that there was actually bullet holes in the door next door. Ruth Ellis was spraying bullets everywhere and bullet were left in every building except the pub.”
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