Ruth Ellis (no relation) was the last woman to be executed in the UK. She shot her lover, David Blakely, outside
The Magdala pub in Hampstead on Easter Sunday 1955. I knew the landlord who came out and found his body.
Albert Pierrepoint was a hangman who executed several hundred people over his career.
Click here for the Wikipedia article about Ruth Ellis.
This will be the first time I’ll have played this song to a live audience.
PIERREPOINT’S PENDULUM
Pierrepoint’s Pendulum
End of the line
Pierrepoint’s Pendulum
Looking her best when she meets her maker
It was a Crime of passion
On a street in Hampstead Town
She’s gonna go down
She’s gonna go down
Because she didn’t get much of a start in life
Trouble and strife to several losers
She’s gonna go down
She’s gonna go down
She was often in the family way
But the angels took them one by one
Chorus
Her body was the way the rent got paid
In the prefab daze of postwar London
She’s gonna go down
She’s gonna go down
It was used and abused
Max Factor covered the bruises
She’s gonna go down
She’s gonna go down
Down in the Little Club
She was a queen
Sad old men buzzed round like bees
Chorus
She kept her love
locked up in a box
She’s gonna go down
She’s gonna go down
Then a friend of a friend drove a racing car
right through her heart
She’s gonna go down
She’s gonna go down
It didn’t take long till it all went wrong
When Cussens gave her a gun
Chorus
On Easter Sunday
she stood in a door
It’s gonna go down
It’s gonna go down
She waited for David
and called out his name
He’s gonna go down
He’s gonna go down
He started to run but she lifted the gun
And fired her pain from a Smith and Wesson
Albert Pierrepoint measured her up
with a shake of the hand
And he’ll never hang a woman again
They say on the day
she looked divine
Glamour girl dressed up to the nines
Chorus