Depressed Dianne Staniforth doused herself in white spirits after she discovered husband Paul had been unfaithful after spotting a text on his phone.
An inquest heard she then decided to teach him a lesson and poured turpentine over herself before putting a match to it while he and their two children were upstairs in bed.
Mr Staniforth said he was woken by the sound of her screaming and leaped out of bed to find her staggering up the stairs ‘like a fireball’.
He told the inquest in Chesterfield, Derbyshire: “I heard a scream like I’d never heard before. I jumped out of bed and heard the screaming again.
“I met Dianne coming up the stairs. She was on fire, the hottest, brightest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Mr Staniforth pushed his wife into the bathroom and began running cold water over her body while their 15 year-old daughter dialled 999.
Mrs Staniforth, who worked as a civil servant at the Department of Work and Pensions, was rushed to Sheffield Hospital and then to a burns unit at Pinderfields Hospital, Wakefield, West Yorks.
She suffered third degree burns to 70 per cent of her body and died six days after the incident.
Assistant coroner Paul McCandless said: “She inflicted these burns upon herself in an effort to get back at her husband, but not in order to bring about her own death.”
Verdict: Misadventure.
