"the fast life." Ruth and Edna eventually moved to London and lodged with Ruth's father. He continued his abuse of Ruth while engaging in an affair with Edna, which ended when Bertha made an unannounced visit and caught the pair in bed. Bertha herself moved to London soon afterward. In 1944, 17-year-old Ruth became pregnant by a married Canadian soldier named Clare Andrea McCallum. She was subsequently forced to move to a nursing hospital in Gilsland, Cumberland, where she gave birth to a son named Clare Andria Neilson, also known as "Andy", on September 15. The father sent money for about a year, then stopped. Andy eventually went to live with Bertha, while Ruth supported the child by working in several factory and clerical jobs. Career By the end of the 1940s, Ruth had become a nightclub hostess in Hampstead through nude-modelling work, which paid significantly more than her previous jobs. Morris Conley, her manager at the Court Club in Duke Street, blackmailed his hostess employees into sleeping with him. By early 1950, Ruth was making money as a full-service escort, and became pregnant by one of her regular clients. She had this pregnancy terminated (illegally) in the third month and returned to work as soon as she could. On 8 November 1950, Ruth married 41-year-old George Johnston Ellis, a divorced dentist with two sons, at the register office in Tonbridge, Kent. A regular customer at the Court Club, George was a violent and possessive alcoholic who became convinced that his new wife was having an affair. Ruth left him several times but always returned. When she gave birth to a daughter, Georgina, in 1951, George refused to acknowledge paternity; they separated shortly afterwards and later divorced. In 1951, while she had been four months pregnant, Ruth appeared, uncredited, as a beauty queen in the Rank film Lady Godiva Rides Again. She returned to sex work following her divorce from Ellis, having moved into her parents' residence with her daughter. Murder In 1953, Ruth became the manager of the Little Club, a nightclub in Knightsbridge. At this time, she was lavished with expensive gifts by admirers and had a number of celebrity friends. Ellis met David Blakely, three years her junior, through racing driver Mike Hawthorn. Blakely was a former public school boy who was educated at Shrewsbury School and Sandhurst, but was also a hard-drinking racer. Within weeks, he