THE murder bid was as deliberate as it was sudden, James Harris grabbing his former paramour by the neck and slashing her throat with a razor.

Having bolted from the Winchester pub, he lamented to a friend: "I have murdered a woman and I shall do away with myself within 10 minutes."

Neither though happened - miraculously Caroline Wilkins survived and Harris fled as far as Bristol where he was arrested.

The couple had been cohabiting at the Pheasant Inn for seven months until they fell out, she finally tired of his ill-treatment.

That night, a week later, he sat alone in the tap room, brooding. Wilkins went to the popular St Giles Hill fair where she picked up a local soldier, the pair returning to the inn to freely indulge in beer and wine.

Whether she then went to her room alone or in the serviceman's company is not clear but shortly afterwards she went to the tap room where Harris was still without company and festering in anger. It was by now past closing time and the landlady left them alone.

"I sat down, he was on my right side when he took hold of my neck without saying a word, held my head back and cut my throat with a razor in his right hand," Wilkins recalled of her ordeal. "I got away from him as best I could into the passage, he following me and catching me, cutting my throat more than once."

Mrs Hales, the publican, was in bed when she heard Wilkins cry out.

"I found her in the passage, leaning against the wall. Blood was flowing. He was by the tap room door. I said: 'Jim, you've done it' and he replied, 'Yes, missus, I have."

Surgeon Robert Smith feared the worst when he reached the scene. With gaping holes in her neck and her clothing saturated in blood, he thought she was if not dead, then dying.

"I held her neck head forward to prevent, as much as possible, the loss of blood and took her to hospital where I treated her and dressed her wounds," discovering two external jugular veins on each side of the neck had been cut and the sheath of the left carotid artery laid bare.

"A little more injury would have destroyed her instantaneously. The directions of the wounds and the crossing at the centre leads me to the presumption they were inflicted at two different times, from each side of her. She lost a great deal of blood and was insensible for some time. I put in 40 stitches and she was in hospital at least a fortnight."

Realising the enormity of what he had done, Harris did not await the arrival of the police and made good his escape, calling on a friend the following day, September 13, 1854, at the hamlet of Headbourne Worthy.

"He called me while I was at my window," labourer George Green recalled. "He said he had murdered a young woman and he should go and make away with himself in less than 10 minutes."

Pc William Hales was put in charge of the search for Harris and traced his movements for three days until he arrested him in Bristol indifferent to his fate.

"He said he did not care what he was charged with. He hoped he would never live to get to Winchester."

But to Winchester he did return, appearing at Hampshire Assizes on March 3 the following year, charged with cutting and wounding with intent to kill and murder. The evidence was so overwhelming jurors did not leave their seats to return the verdict of guilty.

"Your attack on this young woman was a ferocious one and the jury have arrived at the only conclusion to which they could come," Mr Justice Crowder told him, passing a sentence of transportation overseas for life.