A man who mistakenly set fire to his mother-in-law’s home and then abandoned her to fate was allowed to walk free from court.
George Brown was a regular visitor to 81-year-old Ruby Batchelor’s house at Hillock Head, Clunie, Perthshire, as he acted as her carer alongside his wife Lesley.
But on August 10 last year, as Mrs Batchelor slept, he overindulged in alcohol and dropped a cigarette on an armchair.
It started to smoulder and, although the 51-year-old claimed to have made efforts to extinguish the fire, he left before it was out. Mrs Batchelor, who suffered from dementia and has since died, was eventually awoken by her smoke alarm.
She discovered that her home was rapidly filling with smoke from a burning armchair and a pile of papers in her living-room.
She flung basins of water at the fire in a forlorn attempt to put it out, before dialling 999 and being told to evacuate the house.
Brown had stumbled to a neighbours’ home to tell them Mrs Batchelor’s house was on fire. He was so drunk they could barely understand him but the neighbour made her way to the pensioner’s home.
She found Mrs Batchelor outside as firefighters arrived, suffering slightly from smoke inhalation but otherwise unhurt.
Brown was taken to police headquarters, where his story changed more than once. He repeated his denials in court until finally offering a guilty plea on the day of his trial.
The accused, of Concraigie Cottage, Blairgowrie, admitted that, on August 10 at Hillock Head, Clunie, he culpably and recklessly set fire to an armchair, which spread to a quantity of newspapers, causing damage to the property and smoke-logging, all to the danger of Mrs Batchelor, now deceased.
Perth Sheriff Court was told he was afraid his family would find out he had been smoking in the house and so had left the pensioner to battle the blaze on her own.
Sentencing Brown, Sheriff Michael Fletcher said: “Culpable and reckless fire-raising is a very serious matter.
“There was an elderly lady sleeping in this house and even if the fire was not a particularly serious one, for her the consequences could have been terrible.”
Nonetheless, the sheriff added that as the offence had arisen because the accused simply fell asleep while drunk, he was willing to deal with the matter by way of a non-custodial sentence. He placed Brown on a year-long restriction of liberty order, requiring him to remain indoors between 8pm and 7am each day.