A MUM who was tipped over the edge by having no money for presents set fire to her home in a bid to kill herself four days before Christmas.

Fae Woodward took the almost-tragic step in “suicidal desperation”, Chelmsford Crown Court heard yesterday.

Her suicide bid was only stopped when her 24-year-old son, Hani, burst into the home and pulled her from the blazing living room.

The 50-year-old admitted arson with reckless endangerment of life on 21 December last year.

But a judge ruled out sending the mum to jail after hearing her tragic plight and handed her a two-year jail sentence suspended for two years.

She was also ordered to attend a 50-hour rehabilitation course.

Recorder Sandeep Kainth told Woodward: “One has to be compassionate. There’s a degree of mercy in my sentence.”

During yesterday’s sentencing hearing, the court heard she told police: “That was the plan, I would die of smoke inhalation and everyone else would be safe.

“I am a coward. I have tried it with pills and tried to cut my wrist but this is the ideal solution.

“I was not in long before anyone dragged me out. Smoke was building up. It got to that level and they dragged me out.”

The fire caused £25,000 damage to the Colchester Borough Homes property.

Woodward used white spirit to set four fires in the house.

The court heard a psychiatrist had concluded she was depressed, mentally unwell and suicidal at the time.

Woodward, who had been diagnosed in 2005 with severe depressive disorder, had not taken her prescribed medication since June 2016 and was said to have relapsed.

She was said to have been receiving no support at the time and to have “slipped through the net.”

Recorder Kainth said: “It’s regrettable that you slipped through the system, through the net, and were not being provided with relevant care and attention which you clearly needed.

“If you had had that, there’s a question whether you would have caused the fire at all.”

Prosecutor Richard Potts said Woodward’s son, Hani, 24, returned home at 4.15pm on December 21 last year and was met by a large amount of smoke and a blazing fire.

He added: “He went into the living room.

"He found one of the sofas on fire and his mother sitting on the other watching it.

"She told him she had had enough.

"He dragged his mother out and called the fire brigade.

"Hani rescued her.”

The court heard that she spent six weeks in hospital after her arrest and on her release was allowed to return to the same house, owned by Colchester Borough Homes.

Evelyn Hicks, mitigating, said Woodward was considered at low risk of re-offending or being a danger to herself or others.

She now had “an extraordinary” level of support from medical professionals and others and her condition had been stable for the past few months.

She added : “She still has a good relationship with her neighbours, which is extraordinary as they could have been in danger.”

She told the court that Woodward accepted she deserved to go to prison, but asked the judge to make it a suspended term “as an extreme lenient act of compassion and mercy”.