The Sun. — 1863-04-10 (London, England)

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 commit 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 regret 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 deceased 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 nothing 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.