A MENTALLY ill man tried to set fire to his neighbour's flat after his wife left him.

Bolton Crown Court heard how on two occasions, burning newspapers were pushed through the letter box of a Leigh flat.

Prosecutor Mark Rhind said George Smith-Whittle, 53, had lived with his wife for several years at a flat in Lilac Avenue, Leigh.

When she left him, Smith-Whittle stopped taking medication for paranoid schizophrenia and started to abuse alcohol.

He became aggressive and abusive to Karen Booth, who lived on the above floor. He broke windows and damaged the door of her flat. Last February, she woke to discover the hall outside her flat full of smoke and she saw that burning paper had been pushed through her letterbox.

Later the same evening, burning papers were again pushed through. She ran downstairs and confronted Smith-Whittle, who hid in his flat. When police arrived, Smith-Whittle was incoherent and he was arrested under the Mental Health Act.

He voluntarily entered hospital as a psychiatric patient, but later set fire to the curtains in his room. He discharged himself and tried to get back into his flat, but was arrested by a policeman who was taking statements about the fires.

The court heard Smith-Whittle had served four years in jail for arson in 1974.

Defending, Philip Martin said Smith-Whittle had a long history of mental illness.

Reports to the court indicated that he was not ill enough to be made the subject of a hospital order under the Mental Health Act, and his illness was being controlled.

Smith-Whittle admitted three charges of arson and was jailed for four years by judge Reginald Lockett, who ordered that the licence period, whereby convicted prisoners can be immediately recalled to jail, be extended to five years from the end of his sentence.