A woman who tried repeatedly to kill her disabled husband was spared a prison sentence after a court accepted that she had been unable to cope with the strain of caring for him.

Shirley Watts, 61, first tried to strangle her husband, Michael, with a dressing gown cord on Christmas Day last year. Over the following three days she put a pillow over his face, held his head under water in the bath and put a running shower hose into his mouth. Eventually she dialled 999 and begged police to take her away.

She said: “I’m Shirley Watts. I want you to come and get me because I’ve tried to kill my husband. He’s stuck in the bath and I can’t get him out. I just tried to drown him and I couldn’t do it. Please come and get me.” Bristol Crown Court was told that Mrs Watts had looked after her husband every day for five years at their home in Leckhampton, Gloucestershire, since he had been crippled by arthritis. She was originally charged with attempted murder but that was reduced to making threats to kill, to which she pleaded guilty.

Sentencing her to 100 hours’ community service, the judge said he was satisfied that the attacks were a “cry for help” and not a serious attempt to kill her husband.

Mr Justice Richard Field said: “I’m not going to give you a custodial sentence. However, these were nasty offences.

“I do not believe that you had any intention to kill your husband, but the attack in the shower showed that the incidents were escalating.”

He added: “It seems that it all became too much for you, but what you should have done was to call social services or your GP.

“Instead, you let your feelings bubble up inside you and these three incidents were the result of this. However, I’m satisfied that these incidents were completely out of character and that they were a cry of help.”

During the first attack on Christmas Day, Mrs Watts broke down and apologised to her husband, to whom she had been married for 25 years. But the following day, she shouted, “I’m going to kill you”, and then tried to smother him with a pillow.

Derek Ryder, for the prosecution, said: “He managed to push her off and they both fell to the ground. He suffered a slight injury to his head, but that was all.”

On December 28, Mrs Watts pushed her husband’s head under water when he was in the bath and tried to drown him with water from the shower hose.

After calling the police, she returned to the bathroom where she hit him on the head with his walking stick. Mr Ryder said: “When she saw blood coming from his head, she stopped. By this time the police had arrived.”

In a statement read to the court, Mr Watts, 60, described how he had become “frightened” by his wife’s behaviour.

Martin Sheen, acting for Mrs Watts, said the attacks were completely “out of character” and that she had suffered a “mental impairment”.

He said: “The defendant was under huge pressure with caring for her husband and she was unable to cope or ask for assistance. She was not in a position to burden others with her problems. She was working full-time while looking after Mr Watts.

“She had no assistance and this led to a mental impairment, which led to the incidents which we talk of today.”

After the hearing, Tony Rhodes, of the National Carers’ Forum, said that loneliness was a big problem for older carers, as was the lack of government funding.

He said: “I feel a great deal of sympathy for this lady. Isolation is a large problem. I had no help when I was caring for my mother. There is a generation gap where the elderly don’t tend to complain, keep things to themselves and just try to get through it. Even when people ask for help there isn’t necessarily enough coming.

“The 6 million carers in this country save the Government £87 billion a year, and we are calling for the introduction of a livable care allowance. At the moment it is just £50.85 a week.”

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