IT was a house of horror. The kitchen walls were splattered with blood and on the floor lay a body with horrific injuries. Leaning against a nearby door was a heavily bloodstained felling axe.

The perpetrator was nonchalance personified. As Pc Trigg tried to question her, Eva Lane casually carried on trying to mend her son's pants. "Do you mind if I go on with my knitting?" the mother-of-six asked.

Eventually, she confessed to Det Inspector Walter Jones: "Naturally I hit him with the axe. He has not done his duty to his kids and his home."

Don't miss out: Get our weekly heritage and nostalgia newsletter >>> 

Lane, 36, had crept up behind her husband, Stanley, who had been sitting in a chair, and rained blow after blow on his skull, and when he slumped to the floor, she struck him again.

But was the killing premeditated or had she lost her mind?

What was to emerge was the harrowing story of a woman whose husband not only flaunted his extra-marital affairs and his attraction to other women in front of her, but also squandered their money on cigarettes and not spending it on their family.

That fateful day, April 22, 1946, Sarah Lewis overheard a row with her daughter demanding he must stop writing to his mistresses in front of her. He refused and was prepared to argue the point with her.

Hours later, a son saw the grandmother and when Lane came to her house, she asked her: "David said you hit Stan over the head with an axe." Lane replied: "Yes, I did. In self-defence."

Lewis noticed her dress was torn but she appeared calm and normal, and Lewis dismissed it as another quarrel. The pair then bathed the children and after getting them ready for bed, took them back to Lane's terraced home in Norton Green, Freshwater, making sure they did not enter the kitchen.

Daily Echo: Norton Green, Freshwater.

But Lewis sensed something was wrong and suggested her daughter should get the doctor. When Dr Carlisle Kelly arrived, he found Lane standing outside the front door where she told him: "I think my husband is dead."

He was met with a horrific sight - her husband lying on his back in a corner of the kitchen in a pool of clotted blood. He had suffered extensive head and facial injuries and the doctor estimated he had been dead for some three hours.

Lane was charged with murder and appeared before Mr Justice Morris at Hampshire Assizes on July 22 when prosecutor Clarke Burt in his opening statement referred to her extraordinary attitude when Pc Trigg spoke to her.

"A feature of this case you might strike you as being peculiar," he remarked. "She said 'Do you mind if I go on with my mending?' She was still doing that when Detective Inspector Jones arrived at the house where she pointed to her torn dress and handbag. 'Yes, look at what he has done to me."

When cautioned, she admitted: "Naturally I hit him with the axe,. He has not done his duty to the kids or his home. It happened at tea time, between 4 and 5. I have nothing to hide."

At Yarmouth police station, she claimed they had rowed and struggled but she had only used the axe to defend herself. However, five weeks later, she changed her story because her conscious had been troubling her.

"I cannot go with it," she confessed to Jones. "It has been playing on my verves. I have been telling you a pack of lies. There was no struggle that day. I struck the blows while he sat in the chair. I intended to kill him, though I had been nursing my temper. I have told you to clear my mind."

Daily Echo: Winchester Prison

In a statement, she referred to letters her husband had received from other women, which were handed to the judge and jury but were not read out. "During the taking of the statement, she adopted a most calm and self-possessed attitude," said the officer who revealed Lane's mother had been a mental patient and had been admitted to hospital with homicidal and suicidal tendencies.

Defence J Scott Henderson did not call Lane to give evidence, asking jurors to picture "a woman of tragedy" and what she had to endure from "this worthless husband." Her marital life had been extremely unhappy, not just because of his extra-marital affairs but also because of his excessive marital demands and his accounts of "vile practices" other women were prepared to follow with him.

The writing to another woman in her presence had been the provocation for the attack. "It appears she could stand it no longer. She made a violent and frenzied attack on him, and she continued to rain blows on him when he was dead."

Dr James Flynd, a Harley Street psychiatrist, said during a clinal examination, Lane had told him "something snapped" and he considered she had suffered an epileptic outburst and did not know what she was doing was wrong.

Dr Thomas Christie, medical officer at Winchester Prison, agreed with Flynd's assessment and she was suffering from aggressive psychopathy. "Her answers to my questions in a chattering monotone was symptomatic of her mental instability. If I had been called upon to examine her, apart from this charge, I would have had no hesitation in recommending her for admission as a voluntary patient in a mental hospital.

Jurors retired for just 15 minutes before returning with a verdict of guilty but insane, and the judge ordered her to be detained until His Majesty's Pleasure was known.