The Sun.
London, England, 1863-04-10 00:00:00

THE LEEDS MURDER.

Contrary to expectation, the military pensioner,
John Gair, charged with the wilful murder of his
paramour, Alice English, and the attempt to com-
mit suicide at Leeds, under circumstances stated in
a paragraph in our paper of Monday last, is likely
to recover from the severe wounds in his throat.

The inquest on the body of the murdered woman
was formally opened on Monday, when evidence was
given that Gair had long been disgusted with her
dissolute habits, and had found that she was in the
habit of keeping company with a fishmonger named
Davis, a married man with 10 children.
A witness said he had often heard Gair declare
that it he continued to live with her he should be
hanged.

Oa Wednesday the Leeds Coroner resumed the
inquest, and

Ann M'Manus, the wife of a shopkeeper, whose
house Gair and the deceased went to and slept at on
Thursday, deposed that up to that time she always
thought Gair and deceased a happy couple, but
they quarrelled then, and the woman said she would
no longer live with him, and he said he would be
the death of her or of Davis. After that Gair said
he loved her, and he could not do without her, for
she earned so much money in selling old clothes.
They afterwards had a quart of ale together but
soon quarrelled again. Gair said he would go to
North Shields and leave her, and they parted. No
sooner had he gone than the deceased began to re-
gret that he had gone. He returned unexpectedly
about half•past ten, and then she huddled and
fondled him. On Friday morning she began to
upbraid him with having come back, but he set
off again, and then the deceased began to say she
doted upon him. He returned once more in
the afternoon, and she being out he went to
look for her. He came back about ten o'clock
saying he had been nearly killed with a
poker at a house where he knew the deceased was
in the habit of meeting Davis. They kept jarring
until three o'clock in the morning, and then the
deceased went to bed. Witness's husbard called
out that he thought Gair was dying, but the de-
ceased only said "she hoped he would be stiff in
the morning, and she should get £7 to bury him
with, and she could have a good rant." Witness's
husband persuaded Clair to sleep with deceased, and
nothing more came under witness's attention until
about 6.10 the following morning, when she heard
something like the squirt of a ginger-beer bottle,
and saw blood flying on to the wall, and heard it
running on to the floor. She cried out that John
was murdering Alice, and her husband got up and
took a razor from Gair's hand. She saw Gair lying
on his back in bed with a razor at his throat, but
hurried out of the room and saw no more.
Other witnesses were examined to the same
effect, and the jury returned a verdict of wilful
murder against John Gair.

The alleged murderer, Gair, still remains in the
infirmary. He can now talk a little, and it appears
that he has also written on several scraps of paper
some rambling and almost unintelligible statements
of a personal nature. According to one of the local
papers one of those statements was to the effect
that "his wife (deceased) had cat his throat, and
then cut her own."
The Coroner, who has possession of the papers,
took the opportunity of stating that there was no-
thing of the kind in those documents.
It is now pretty generally understood in Leeds
that Gair and the deceased were married, although
he has a wife and she a husband living in other
parts of the country.