A DOCUMENTARY about one of Basingstoke's most notorious residents is being shown on BBC Four this week.

The Ruth Ellis Files: A Very British Crime Story looks into the killing of David Blakely by Ellis in April 1955.

Ellis, who grew up in Basingstoke and also lived in Baughurst, Tadley and Bramley, shot her lover four times outside a Hampstead pub.

She was convicted of murder and became the last woman to be hanged in Britain.

The programme, being shown over three consecutive nights, exposes the snobbery and sexism of 1950s Britain in the way Ellis was treated.

The fact that Blakely, a racing driver, regularly beat her was overlooked by police.

Gillian Patcher looks at the forensics and police investigation, discovering worrying assumptions and problematic omissions.

Ellis was born on October 9, 1926 in Rhyl, Wales. Her father, a cellist, made a good living playing for the silent movies in Wales.

In the early 1920s he worked on ocean liners and became quite wealthy but due to the innovations in sound movies he found himself out of work.

The Grand Theatre (Haymarket Theatre) in Basingstoke still ran silent movies so, at the age of three, Ruth, along with her father, Arthur Neilson (previously Hornby), mother, sister and brothers moved to Basingstoke where her father continued his career in music.

The family moved to rented accommodation in Bramley after becoming destitute when Arthur lost his work with the arrival of sound movies in the town.

He eventually secured a job at Park Prewett hospital in Basingstoke as a book keeper and the family moved to Dunsford Crescent, one of the houses allocated to employees.

In 1938 the family lived in a cottage in Sherfield-on-Loddon, where Ellis went to school.

Aged 12, she moved to Fairfields School in Basingstoke.

The family left Basingstoke in 1941 when Ellis was 14.

She was hanged on July 13 1955 at Holloway prison, in London.