‘Bubble and squeak sparked fatal knif ing’
Wife tells of stabbing after birthday dish was scorned
A ROW over bubble and squeak at a birthday meal led to a wife stabbing her abusive husband to death, a jury heard yesterday.
Penelope Jackson, 66, was arrested in her pyjamas outside the family bungalow after telling police her husband David, 78, was lying bleeding on the kitchen floor.
She told a court the ‘final straw’ after 24 years of controlling behaviour was his fury over her home-made bubble and squeak.
She had fetched the mixture of cooked potatoes and cabbage from the oven during a steak meal held over Zoom with their daughter and son-in-law to celebrate Jackson’s birthday.
Jackson claimed her husband erupted in fury that she was seemingly ‘disrespecting’ the food their daughter had bought because it did not include potatoes. She told Bristol Crown Court: ‘I was just in bits inside – my whole birthday being ruined all over bubble and squeak.’ Jackson said she intended to kill herself later that evening with a kitchen knife she bought for her birthday. But when her husband told her ‘Either get on with it or go back to bed’ she felt ‘utter despair’ and stabbed him. Further blows were inflicted when he ‘goaded’ her that she ‘couldn’t do it right’, the jury heard. She added: ‘I know it is a stupid thing to have got to this and be in the dock for killing someone over bubble and squeak, but that is what happened.’
Jackson claimed the retired Army lieutenant colonel had been controlling and violent throughout their marriage. She insisted she did not remember an 18minute 999 call during which she told the operator he was ‘in the kitchen bleeding to death with any luck’. Jackson, who admits manslaughter but denies murder, told jurors she had not intended to kill him but ‘had enough and lost the plot’.
The attack at the couple’s £300,000 home near Weston-superMare, Somerset, took place in February Jackson told the jury the family had a ‘really nice afternoon’, but the mood changed over the side dish.
‘I said to David, “Shall I get the bubble and squeak out now?” ‘His reaction was, “What potatoes? What are you on about?” ’ Jackson said her husband was ‘muttering’ that ‘I didn’t think their meal was good enough’.
She said she was ‘horrified’ that he had been ‘rude and obnoxious’ in front of their daughter and after the argument she ‘cried and cried’. Jackson said she had not gone to her husband’s aid later after stabbing him as she was still ‘frightened’ of him.
She told the jury she was subjected to ‘pushing, shouting and shaking’ throughout their marriage. The trial continues.
‘Couldn’t do it right’