Mum set herself alight to teach cheating husband a lesson

Dianne Staniforth, 51, discovered husband Paul had been unfaithful after spotting a text on his phone.

An inquest heard she then decided to teach him a lesson and poured turpentine over herself before putting a match to it while he and their two children were upstairs in bed.

Mr. Staniforth said he was woken by the sound of her screaming and leapt out of bed to find her staggering up the stairs ‘like a fireball’.

He told the inquest in Chesterfield: “I heard a scream like I’d never heard before. I jumped out of bed and heard the screaming again.

“I met Dianne coming up the stairs. She was on fire, the hottest, brightest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Mr. Staniforth pushed his wife into the bathroom and began running cold water over her body while their 15 year-old daughter dialled 999.

Mrs Staniforth, who worked as a civil servant at the Department of Work and Pensions, was rushed to Sheffield Hospital and then to a burns unit at Pinderfields Hospital, Wakefield.

She suffered third degree burns to 70 per cent of her body and died six days after the incident on Sunday, April 28 last year.

Her husband suffered serious burns to his hands.

Pc Michelle Witham told the coroner: “On arrival at hospital Mrs Staniforth was taken for resuscitation.

“Later she beckoned me over and asked ‘where are my kids?’. I told her they were okay and not to worry.

“She said, ‘I did this to myself. I found out my husband was having an affair and wanted to teach him a lesson. I set fire to myself.”

The court heard how Mrs Staniforth, who also had a nine year-old son, had taken an overdose in October 2012 and a few months before her death had poured petrol over her head.

Mr Staniforth said in the six months before her death his wife had threatened to kill herself between 30 and 40 times.

He said: “I’d remove tablets and wine and lock the doors to stop Dianne going out.

“If she got out she would go and get more wine or sit by the railway lines.”

Mr Staniforth, a business consultant, said he wanted to separate from his wife.

He added: “Dianne didn’t want me to leave and said she would kill herself but I never thought she would do anything like this.”

Mrs Staniforth’s sister Julie Baird said on April 22, Dianne sent her a text saying: “Paul slept with someone else. I’m done now, I don’t want to live.”

Mrs Baird urged her sister to leave her husband and build a new life.

She added: “I don’t think she would have wanted to kill herself.

“She loved her children and I don’t think she would have wanted to leave them.”

Assistant coroner Paul McCandless said: “She inflicted these burns upon herself in an effort to get back at her husband, but not in order to bring about her own death.”

Verdict: Misadventure.