I have been watching the ITV series about the story of Ruth Ellis, who is notoriously remembered as the last woman to be hanged in Great Britain, and I was reminded of the time I was sent by The Mirror newspaper to photograph a woman who was her prison warder while she was awaiting her execution.
In the article she said that she became incredibly close to Ellis during her final days and she still had a memento of a cigarette lighter that the condemned prisoner gave her.
I found Evelyn to be quite unassuming and living an anonymous life in the north east of England but when I started to photograph her she wanted to obscure her identity and used a pair of spectacles to partially obscure her face. I am fairly sure she was traumatised by seeing the petite platinum bionde being led to her doom by the legendary executioner Albert Pierrepoint.
And the story was used a couple of days later by the Evening Chronicle, the evening paper for the Newcastle area, which featured her less obscured portrait as well as a nice detail shot of the cigarette lighter.
While I was watching the second episode I thought the actor playing the role of the judge looked familiar and it was none other than Nigel Havers. But I was surprised to learn that he was actually portraying his own grandfather the Sir Cecil Havers who heard the case.
Ian Duncan Media 
why portray her as black
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i agree fully with Mr Taylor…
WHY feel the need to do this.
spoils the authenticity of the true story.
needs to stop
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Why was the warden black in the programme? Woke strikes again. Sick of it.
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Apparently blind casting is a thing and to be honest it does not matter that the actors in a drama need to faithfully represent the original ethnicity of the people portrayed in the drama. I mean after all it is a fictional portrayal of actual events…
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it’s not “blind casting”: we never see white actors cast in black roles. The producers took care to cast other actors who resemble the people they are portraying. So why such a glaringly inappropriate selection for this particular role?
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If you are trying to portray an authentic true drama, why switch a white prison warden for a black one, which we know would have been virtually non existent at that time ,I find this extremely irritating and unfortunately it happens far to often because of woke directors and producers, these needs to stop.
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When the black prison warder first appeared in the drama, I immediately turned to my wife and said, ‘In 1995?’
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Everything else in the series is set in England & is period-specific. Except the warder. If we have to be inclusive – either mix-it-up a lot more – but don’t have a ‘toke’ – it’s like the Black Actor in “Blazing Saddles” ( Mel Brooks spoof western movie) – he was the token black actor in the film- hence his name.
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Everything else in this drama is in-period. Except that the writer / producer /director HAD to be seen to be inclusive. And so blew the authenticity of the whole piece in one blast of wokeness.
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As soon as I saw the black warder I thought “Oh, here we go…”. Woke casting again. I didn’t watch anymore. I think there was an Asian reporter as well. Quite ridiculous. I doubt that there were any black prison warders in 1955, and if there were actually any then it’s unlikely they would have been guarding the most notorious and talked-about prisoner at the time.
The reason that colour-blind casting is completely wrong is because the optics are everything in a period drama. If you use black actors to play parts that, in real life, would have white people, then why bother being authentic in any other regard?
Why not, for example, just have characters in a Tudor-era drama wearing jeans and trainers? And of course, if a white actor plays someone who was black, or who you would expect to be black, then all hell breaks loose.
Veronika
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If the programme is to be believed , then Ruth, regardless of mitagating circumstances sadly had a death wish
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awesome! Reports Emerging of [Significant Event] in [Region] 2025 sublime
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