Fortunately murders in Kingston are few and far between, but when a mother and her two daughters were brutally murdered it caused a ripple effect felt throughout the whole community.

One such case from June 1950 involves a New Malden husband and father who, after racking up gambling debts was given notice to leave the family home. He went on a murderous rampage that would see him on the wrong end of the hangman’s rope.

Albert Price and his wife Doris were well known in the area. Their children three-year-old Maureen and 17-month-old Jennifer played with other kids from the council estate. Although the couple often complained of money worries, neighbours and friends described them as extremely devoted to one another.

So when Doris’s cousin Jean popped around for a chat on a glorious summer’s morning to find the back door locked and a toe protruding from the bed covers in the family bedroom, she had no idea of the horror that had unfolded inside.

Price’s financial troubles began in May 1948 with a gambling debt and he had since run up further debts with bookmakers.

He had recently been given 10 days’ notice to quit his prefab in Grange Close because of rent arrears. That, he later said in his statement, “was the final blow”.

Price was concerned about what would happen to his family when the bailiffs arrived to evict. In a fit of panic he took an axe to his 26-year-old wife and crushed her skull.

The painter and decorator who was described locally as “quiet, even-tempered and certainly not violent” then took their two children on trips to Hampton Court and Richmond before finally taking them to Bognor Regis.

The seaside trip, amidst thousands of oblivious holiday makers, would be their last.

After two days watching his children playing in the sand he dosed them with sleeping pills he had bought in Esher, suffocated them while they slept and dumped their bodies in a bush.

He later told police that he had wanted them to have a good time before he killed them.

In an interview given after his arrest, he said: “Knowing what I had done was wrong. I did not want them to suffer from my misdoing.

“I know they are better off in the next world, where I hope to join them. I did love them – everybody knows that.”

After two weeks on the run Price was eventually picked up sleeping rough in Green Park, in Piccadilly, a place frequented by drunks.

When asked his name he is said to have replied: “I don’t know. I don’t care.

“It will soon be all over. I have done my family.”

He pleaded guilty at his Old Bailey trial citing insanity as the reason for the gruesome act.

But a call for mercy from the presiding judge was ignored and Price was sentenced to death on July 13, 1950.

A subsequent appeal upheld the conviction and on August 15, 1950, Price was hanged by the infamous executioner Albert Pierrepoint at Wandsworth Prison.