“It was my mother who drove me to do it. She told me I would never get anywhere unless I committed murder. I was going to murder the old woman yesterday.”

These are the chilling words of a laundry hand shortly after she had been arrested for an apparent motiveless attack on a Hampshire housewife in her home.

Mabel Clarissa North, 46, was slashed across the face with a pen-knife by a stranger at her home.

The victim, who had moved from Waltham Abbey, Hertfordshire, to Marchwood three years earlier, spoke to the Echo as she recovered from her horrifying ordeal.

She was alone in her sitting room when she suddenly saw a woman in green coming down the garden path. She was looking all around her. I went to the front door and asked if I could help her.

“She said she wanted some cabbage plants. I told her twice the only place she could get them would be in Totton. Then she made a complaint about her shoes. Then she asked if anyone had any tea. I told her: ‘You had better go down to the cafe at the end of the village.’”

The woman then made some remark about water in her shoes, and as she bent forward to take a closer look, the stranger slashed her across her left cheek.

“I immediately locked the front door. The woman tried to get in and smashed the window of the living room. I went to the sink to wash my face which was streaming with blood, and then ran to the back door and locked it. Meanwhile the woman was banging on the window.”

Her ordeal came to an end when two dustmen came to collect the rubbish at her home at Richmond Cottages in Hythe Road. One called the police and Mrs North was taken to Hythe Hospital where she had a stitch inserted in the wound.

She said she had endured a sleepless night and kept seeing the woman in green. The attack was witnessed by a near neighbour who saw her assailant run across the road and hail a car, driven by an unsuspecting grocer travelling with his son. It was driven off in the Southampton direction and the woman, who sat in the back of the vehicle without saying a word, was dropped off in Totton.

Police discovered the penknife in mud near Mrs North’s front door, and within hours had detained a suspect – Philomena Scannell – who was taken to Lyndhurst police station for questioning.

She had been detained at the Millbrook Road Employment exchange, passing herself off as Grace Pauline Marshall to a police officer. Told she closely resembled a woman involved in the attack, she replied: “How dreadful. Is it murder?”

Initially the 26-year-old laundry hand denied being involved, claiming she was in Shirley at the time, but as arrangements were being finalised for an identification parade, Scannell retracted her statement.

“My mother drove me to do it and told me I would never get anywhere unless I committed murder. I was going to murder the old woman yesterday.”

Bizarrely, she added: “I did it to get even with the devils. I had never seen the woman before but my mother told me to murder her, but I was not strong enough.”

As she was being charged with attempted murder, the lightly-built, pallid-faced Scannell muttered, “It’s all my mother’s fault. She told me to do it or the devils would get me.”

Scannell, of Northam Road, Southampton, appeared before Hythe magistrates the following day, December 2, 1954. Wearing a brown coat over a light blue jumper and oatmeal skirt, the woman raised no objection to being remanded in custody.

At the committal proceedings, the defence submitted the irrationality of her statements showed she was in such a state of mind she could not have formed an intention.But magistrates overruled the objection and finding she had a case to answer, committed Scannell for trial at Wiltshire Assizes in Salisbury.

But on the opening day of the sessions, January 12, 1955, a jury ruled she was unfit to plead, and she was ordered to be detained until the Queen’s pleasure was known.

The decision was taken after Dr Thomas Christie, Holloway Prison medical officer, said she was mentally deranged.