Norman had a lot to answer for that Christmas!”įor some reason I was reminded of the bizarre story recently while on the way to visit the National Archives, so while I was there enquired as to whether the file on the case was now open. He ignored her and she ‘lost it’ and went in to the living room and stuck him with a carving knife. Pretty was stressed out with all the work she was doing and kept telling him to stop laughing. Norman was in great form and the husband was roaring with laughter. This is one of many which caught my attention:ġ967: “ Mrs Pretty stabbed her husband at their home in Chiddingfold on Christmas Day whilst rowing over who was going to carve the turkey, he was fatally killed… she had been slaving away in the kitchen preparing the Christmas dinner and her husband was watching Norman Wisdom in a variety show on TV.
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Some of the tales recollected are routine, some inexplicable, and some read as black comedy. Unlike those huge, high-profile cases that earn themselves books and documentaries, the site is a vivid and frightening look at the everyday business of crime, which is still, more often than not, an extraordinary business.
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It’s a fascinating, if disturbing, resource, an aural history of the last half-century of policing the county in the words of the officers themselves. For my book, A Dangerous Place, I spent a lot of time talking to officers from Surrey CID, and through that research also discovered a remarkable website detailing the history of the constabulary.