Rapist claimed he was at St Denys Station and not Southampton Common

Suddenly she had that uneasy feeling she was being followed.

Seconds later, a prowler pounced, pulling a rolled handkerchief over her mouth and tying it at the back of her neck to prevent her from screaming. The sex fiend then thrust his other hand over her eyes and flung her onto the ground.

For a fleeting moment, the maid was able to pull the handkerchief away in a desperate plea for help, but he overpowered her once more, shoving fingers into her mouth as though to pull her tongue out.

Overcome, she was dragged into furze where he raped her and beat her about the head, sneering over her violated body: "You bloody swine, you can go now." But only with a terrifying threat: "If you scream, I'll blow your bloody brains out."

He then bolted into the darkness, leaving his traumatised victim slumped on the grass.

But who was he? According to the prosecution at the quirkily named Hampshire, Wilts and Dorset Winter Jail Delivery, the villain was 24-year-old Charles Hatch, a bricklayer's labourer.

"She is a woman of spotless character," said Mr Warry stressing her virtues as he opened the Crown's case to the jury on November 17, 1880. "There can be no doubt a gross outrage was perpetrated and the only question for you to decide is whether the defendant is guilty of it."

Hatch sympathised she had been put through a horrific ordeal but claimed he was elsewhere in the town and had witnesses to support his alibi.

The woman, however, was unflinching. "That's him," she told PC Sharp in an identification parade with a difference - she was standing at her front door in King's Terrace when Hatch passed after being arrested for an unconnected offence.

Hatch fiercely denied it: "You're a bloody liar."

But she stuck to her word when questioned by Mr Justice Denman.

"Is that the man?" he asked. "Yes," she firmly replied.

Alfred Welsh, who ran the Basset Hotel where the woman had worked for six years, found her sitting in his kitchen, her head lying sideways to the table.

"I raised her head to look at her face and asked her who had done it, but she did not reply.

"There was furze in her hair, dry grass between her teeth, blood was coming from under her tongue, and there was a blue mark in the centre of her forehead, her face being very swollen and her hair dishevelled.

"The hair from her ears to the poll had been pulled out by the roots, the plait being quite loosened.

"She seemed quite exhausted and could not say anything till she had some brandy and water given to her.

"Her dress and under clothing had been partially torn from her body and her skirt was hanging loosely from her."

Charles Knowlton had been drinking with his wife and friends at the hotel before they walked back across the Common when he saw Hatch suddenly emerge from a bush. "I had not seen...(her) then. He followed behind us for a short distance and then we lost sight of him."

Knowlton later identified Hatch at the police station.

"No hesitation about it?" the judge asked.

Knowlton replied: "No. He had more whiskers about him now than he had then."

The prosecution's case ended with Sharp detailing how he had arrested and interviewed Hatch who protested he had not been to the Common for a fortnight. "I've not been there since the bank holiday."

Hatch did not give evidence but called three witnesses who testified that at the time the woman was brutally attacked he was at the St Denys railway gates, one saying they spent the evening together and had gone to see their boss about work.

In his summing up, the judge told jurors it was a question of who they believed. "(The woman) has given a most terrible account and her story has been corroborated to the hilt."

But he pointedly added: "As regards to the defence, it is not altogether satisfactory that the witnesses did not come forward before the magistrates (at the committal proceedings), as they have done now.

"If there was a good alibi, why was it not set up before the magistrates when all the facts were in recent memory?

"If you think the evidence for the prosecution is not wholly to be relied upon, you must acquit the prisoner.

"If on the other hand, you consider the testimony called on his behalf to be shaky and suspicious, you must convict him."

The panel retired for just five minutes to find him guilty and then learnt he had a conviction in 1875 for indecently assaulting a girl.

"That makes your case worse," the judge told Hatch condemning him to a sentence of 20 years penal servitude.

"It is one of the clearest cases I have tried and I have no doubt you cruelly and brutally raped that poor young woman.

"The jury would have been incredulous indeed if they had believed that most unsatisfactory testimony brought forward by your partisans and friends who ought to have been ashamed to keep you company after knowing your antecedents and what sort of a fellow you are."