THE facts were short but contested.

Charles Rose, a recently discharged army private, sat in the dock at Hampshire Assizes in 1919 but how much of the case he understood was perhaps open to conjecture.

He had admitted murdering his two young sons – one two years old and the other just two months – as they blissfully slept in their beds at their Portsmouth home on the previous Boxing Bay. He had slit their throats.

The only question facing the jury was determining his state of mind at the time.

Lt Col Maurice Craig, RAMC, who was called by the Crown, said he had examined the prisoner at Winchester Prison and deemed him to be mentally sound.

However the Harley Street expert accepted the defence’s submission that on the day of the tragedy, he might have been suffering from “impulsive insanity,” a very transitory form of mental instability.

His evidence was at odds with Dr James MacGregor who had witnessed Rose under observation in prison in Portsmouth and was convinced he was of “unsound mind”.

After a short deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of murder with the rider that at the time he was of “unsound mind”.

Rose, who remained totally impassive throughout the proceedings, was committed to Hampshire’s Lunatic Asylum during His Majesty’s Pleasure.

Mr Justice Lawrence then had to deal with an equally horrific case.

Before him stood Sarah Butcher, 28, who had been charged with murder after throwing a baby boy – not one of her own – down a well at Tytherley, near Romsey, Dr T Decimus Richards, the Winchester Prison-based doctor, testified she was unfit to plead, assuring the court she had demonstrated signs of “imbecility” and would not understand the proceedings.

Jurors agreed and she was ordered to be detained.

It was one of the quietest Assizes on record and the only other case that attracted much public attention was that of two Germans who had been captured during the First World War. They had admitted forging and uttering false £5 notes which they sold on to fellow prisoners at a north Hampshire internment camp.

The prosecution said the notes had been successfully negotiated at the army canteen but were easily detected at a bank, though an expert described as good forgeries in a bad light and had been cleverly drawn.

The judge jailed the pair for three months with hard labour.