A MURDER victim's distraught mother has made an emotional appeal for an end to the knife culture sweeping Britain.

Mary Hamilton spoke of her heartache as 30-year-old Alison McDonald, from Elizabeth House, Blackburn, began a life-sentence for stabbing her daughter to death in a town centre pub last year.

Barbara Hamilton, known as Jan, was her killer's ex-lesbian lover and died after a row at Sam's Bar pub.

Mrs Hamilton said: "This thing of everyone carrying knives can't go on or there will come a time when the prisons are full of people who have carried out stabbings.

"Things are supposed to have improved in the last year, after the stabbing of the headmaster Philip Lawrence and the knives amnesty. "But I don't think anything has changed. I heard of another stabbing over the last weekend."

Mary, 62, lives with her husband Bernard, 69, in Newton Heath, Manchester, where Barbara grew up.

She said: "She was a lovely, happy girl. The October before she died we had a lovely family holiday together in Spain. I have seven children and none of us thought any less of her because she was gay.

"She was still one of us, still my girl. She was very loving and caring and used to phone every other day. She was our second child and my husband wanted to give her a name beginning with "B" just like him.

"But I always called her Janet or Jan. She had a lot of friends in Blackburn and a lot of good friends in Manchester. We met a few of them and they were really nice.

"I don't know why she went to Blackburn. It was about five years ago. She was a qualified hairdresser but there wasn't much doing around here and I think she just fancied a change."

Mary said she was satisfied with the life sentence handed out to her daughter's killer.

She added: "I think they should bring back capital punishment but the sentence was what she deserved."

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