Neighbours in Rodway Road, Tilehurst, Berkshire, stopped their ears when Sydney Prickett and his wife Edith, who lived at No. 44, started squabbling. And that was regularly, very loud, and very menacing.

Mrs. Rebecca Izzard, at No. 42, knew that Prickett was very jealous of his wife. Together with Mrs. Brenda Dunn, on the other side of the road at No. 65, she heard terrible, but not unusual, screams coming from No. 44 on Monday, JANUARY 16th, 1939, and put the noise down to the Pricketts having yet another go at each other.

But at 10.45 that evening Prickett called the police to his home. He told them: “I have done in my wife. We’ve quarrelled for eight years and I couldn’t stand it any more.” They found Edith’s body lying on a bed. She had been strangled, but not without a violent struggle.

Brought to trial at Reading Assizes on Tuesday, May 16th, Prickett pleaded guilty but insane. Despite a psychiatrist telling the court, “Prickett knew what he was doing. I have no doubt. He told me so,” he was found insane and sent to Broadmoor.