Stanley, 39, was happily married, his young daughter the apple of his eye and he had just acquired a better job.
But inexplicably one October morning, he tried to slit his wife's throat and attacked their daughter as they slumbered in bed.
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"I don't know what I have this for," he wrote in a letter to the police after his arrest. "There is no insanity in my family."
The boilermaker and his wife Ellen had been wed for six years. Two years earlier in 1908, he had moved to Portsmouth to begin work in the dockyard. Sadly, after 18 months and two months before the drama, he was made redundant.
Depressed
He was entitled to a meagre 7s 6d a week from the Trade Society for 11 weeks but being out of work seemed to profoundly depress Stanley. But then he suddenly got a job in the dockyard again as a contractor and his spirits apparently soared.
Nothing appeared out of the ordinary when he got up that morning to go to work and made a cup of tea and some breakfast for his wife who was still in bed.
Prosecutor Talbot Ponsonby told Hampshire Assizes: "He left her but a few minutes later he returned to the room and struck her on the head with a rolling pin and cut her throat with a razor. He was also found with his throat cut and he had also wounded his little daughter. His wife heard him say as he was attacking her, What am I doing now?' The wounds thankfully were not serious."
Insane moment
Two prison medical officers, one based at Kingsgate and the other from Winchester, said from their examination the defendant was insane at the time, although he was now in a right mind.
Jurors found him guilty of attempted murder but found he was of unsound mind at the commission of the offence. Mr Justice Lawrence said there was only one sentence he could pass and ordered him to be detained during His Majesty's Pleasure.
Thomas Garnett, defending, expressed the hope the judge would see his way to recommend an early exercise of the Royal prerogative.
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