A UNION Castle steward, accused of murdering his second wife by repeatedly smashing her skull with a hammer while she lay asleep, told jurors he had suffered ghostly visitations from his previous partner eight years earlier.

The fact Thomas Kirk, 39, had brutally killed her was not in dispute. His state of mind was, with a psychiatrist believing he might have been in "a state of abnormality and was auto-conscious" at the time and didn't know what he was doing.

However, prosecutor Jeremy Hutchinson QC was scornful, submitting: "Suddenly automatism descends on him, leads him out to the garage and pick up a hammer, and leads back into the house again."

He reasoned: "Why should automatism come from the sky to cause him to batter his wife to death? Can automatism strike us at any time and lead us into the bedroom to commit murder?"

The two polarised views were laid before a jury at Hampshire Assizes on December 12, 1961, when Kirk denied murdering his wife, Miriam, at their Southampton bungalow.

The prosecution claimed it was a straight forward case.

"There is some suggestion there was some money trouble between the two people but what goes on between a husband and a wife, what differences they have, what arguments they have, may be known to nobody," said Hutchinson. "Whatever caused the man to do what he did, may forever locked in his mind. It is not for the prosecution to prove any motive."

The drama happened shortly before 8am on September 18 at their home in Firtree Way, Sholing, which the couple shared with his wife's daughter from a previous relationship. That morning, she found him sitting at the breakfast table in his dressing gown and reading the paper. He said her mother was suffering from a migraine and did not want to be disturbed.

Shortly after she left home, Kirk rang Southampton Police headquarters to report: "I killed my wife."

After an inspector arrived, Kirk took him to the garage and indicated a small bloodstained hammer. Following his arrest, he said: "I haven't got the foggiest why I did it."

He then related how the alarm had gone off and he went to the garage to fetch the hammer. "I hit her two or three times. I'm not sure how many times."

Then after replacing the tool, he prepared breakfast for his step daughter.

He admitted his family had been opposed to the marriage and they had rowed about money, though they did not owe much. He then reiterated: "I don't know how this happened but it happened."

Jurors were told his 40-year-old wife had died from a fractured skull and related head injuries.

Hutchinson told the jury of 11 men and one woman there was no suggestion drink had affected his demeanour, and to the police, he appeared to be acting rationally.

Giving evidence, Kirk spoke of ghostly visitations from his first wife. "About three weeks after she died - on two occasions the same week - I felt her presence in the bedroom and tucking me into bed."

When defence barrister Norman Skelhorn QC asked if he had seen her, he replied: "No, sir."

He accepted there had been tension with Miriam over money when they went to bed. When the alarm went off the following morning, he got up and went from the lounge into the kitchen, but could not remember anything more until he opened the garage door and put the hammer back into place.

Skelhorn asked him: "Why did you tell them (the police) you had killed your wife?" to which he replied. "I assumed I must have done."

The defence then called Oxford psychiatrist James Skottowe who suggested Kirk might have been in a "state of automatism when he killed her. His story of the visitation from his former wife caused him to believe he might have been "autoconscious" when he bludgeoned her to death.

He did not consider Kane was insane but might not have known what he was doing. "In complete automatism, such as sleepwalking, a person will have no recollection, even if faced with their actions during that period."

The explanation prompted Skelhorn to ask: "If what he says is true and he came to when putting the hammer back, that would be consistent with shrouded recollection?"

Skottowe answered: "Yes."

At the end of the two-day hearing, Mr Justice Gorman posed a simple question to the jury of 11 men and one woman: "Is this loss of memory something which is true or the refuge of a killer?"

They took just one hour to convict Kirk of murder and he was jailed for life.