LONDON, July 17, 2008 (AFP) - A British man who faked his own death in a canoeing accident pressured his wife into going along with the scam due to their crippling money worries, she told a court Thursday.

Giving evidence for the first time, Anne Darwin also said that at one point she wished her husband John had really drowned himself, as well as considering taking her own life.

The 56-year-old said she initially did not take her husband's plan seriously and tried to talk him out of it, but she relented after he refused her suggestion that they declare themselves bankrupt.

John Darwin was declared dead after he apparently went missing while canoeing in the North Sea near the couple's home in Seaton Carew, northeast England, in 2002.

He turned up at a London police station last year claiming amnesia.

Prosecutors allege that his wife helped him disappear to escape mounting property debts and illegally claim life insurance to the tune of 250,000 pounds (327,000 euros, 510,000 dollars). She claims he forced her to do it.

The former doctor's surgery receptionist told a jury trying her for six charges of fraud and nine of money laundering that her 57-year-old husband was domineering.

'If there was something he wanted me to do, he would ask me initially to do it and, if I didn't do it, he would just go on and on at me until I did,' the mother of two told Teesside Crown Court.

'All the major decisions were made by John. Superficially we would discuss things because my thoughts never seemed to carry any weight. Whatever John wanted to do, he did in the end.

'He had that power to make me feel insignificant.'

She also detailed how her husband, a trained teacher, had an affair and always dealt with the family finances, leaving her oblivious to the level of debt they were getting into.

On the night of his faked drowning, he told her she had to report him missing, then later forced her into making the insurance claims and to eventually allow him to live in secret in a flat they owned next to their home.

She said she tried on a number of occasions to get him to come clean about the scam, including to their two grown-up sons, but he refused.

On one occasion she said she considered 'walking into the sea' as she had got so desperate, and also wished her husband had died.

'I ran out of the house and I crossed the road to the sea and I sat on the beach looking at the sea,' she said. 'I wished that John had drowned at sea.

'I considered walking into the sea. I got so desperate but I couldn't do it because of the effect it would have on the rest of the family... and I didn't have the courage so I calmed myself down and went back.'

Anne Darwin wept earlier this week as her sons, Mark and Anthony, told the court how she 'betrayed' them by allowing them to believe their father was dead while they were really planning a new life together in Panama.