Joan Smith, in her book Misogynies, reports on the case of Nicholas Boyce, who in 1985 finally snapped after too much nagging from his allegedly "impossible" wife, Christobel. Boyce "killed her, filleted the flesh from her bones, and cooked it so that it would look like someone's Sunday lunch"; he then distributed the parcels of cooked meat around London. Sentencing Boyce to six years for manslaughter, the judge, Sir James Miskin, said: "Before these dreadful events, you were hard-working, of good character ... you were simply unable to get on with your wife."

Boyce got six years despite the aggravated nature of his concealment and disposal of the body. Just six years, with the judge's words that "a man of reasonable self-control might have been similarly provoked" ringing pleasantly in his ears.

Economist Gets 6 Years for Dismembering Wife

Los Angeles Times

October 10, 1985

LONDON — Economist Nicholas Boyce was sent to prison Wednesday for dismembering his wife and dumping the pieces of her body around London in a court case linked to a British aristocratic mystery, the 1974 disappearance of Lord Lucan.

A jury at London's Old Bailey court cleared Boyce, 37, of murdering his wife, Christabel, but convicted him of manslaughter in a furious domestic row over his sexual prowess. He was sentenced him to six years in jail.

Christabel, 32, was a former governess to the children of Lord Lucan, who vanished without a trace after another nanny was battered to death at his home in London's Belgravia district. Police the world over have sought vainly to track down the missing peer.