"We're finished," James Bench told his common law wife Emily Cornish over the breakfast table.

Furious, she followed up the road and as a row intensified with them pushing and shoving each other, she grabbed a chisel from his bag of tools and stabbed him, snarling: "I'll kill you before the day's out" and then walked off.

But that was not the end of the drama. As he fell, she ran back and kicked him before farmer Robert Tate, who was fortuitously passing by, swiftly intervened.

"I jumped out of my trap and told her she should be ashamed of herself to kick a man when he was down. He was in a fainting condition and I and another man went to the police station and returned with Pc Kemp. We then saw the woman kick him again."

Kemp seized the bloodstained Chisel and realised he had been stabbed in the chest. Cornish made to attempt to divert blame, admitting: "I intended to do for him."

With blood oozing on to his clothes, Bench was carefully carried to the trap and taken to the police station to be examined by Doctor Buckle who found a chest wound an inch long but not life threatening.

"Had they been drinking?" prosecutor Temple-Cooke asked Tate at Cornish's trial at the Hants, Wilts and Dorset Winter Goal Delivery in 1881.

"Yes, sir," replied Tate. "Both of them were worse for liquor."

It transpired the couple had been living together as man and wife in Romsey for six years but that morning, Bench, a carpenter and builder, told her their affair was over. He then collected his wages from his employer and paid their landlady for the rent.

"I got my things together and went up the station road to catch a train but she followed me. I asked her to come into the Fleming Arms and have a glass of ale and not have a row in the street. She did so and then she went away to the lodgings but I met her again and she followed me about all the time and I had several glasses of ale on purpose to keep out of her way."

Bench told jurors that as he walked up the road, she suddenly grabbed his bag of tools off his back. "She then stabbed me and I became unconscious," admitting in cross-examination that he had sworn at her in the row. "Yes, I did call her a filthy name."

Cornish, described in the press as well dressed and well spoken, listened intently as her statement taken before magistrates was read out in which she accused him of having frequently sent to prison for knocking her about when drunk. That, she admitted was untrue.

She however denied snatching the bag of tools off his back, claiming he had dropped them and they had scattered over the road.

Mr Justice Watkin Williams then directed jurors as to the law in relation to the charge of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm which Cornish, a 36-year-old seamstress, faced.

Telling them they could consider the lesser charge of wounding, he remarked: "The language spoken was probably used in a passion and of a character which you should not hold her too closely to, but if you believe she meant what she said, and did what she intended to do, you must convict her of the full offence."

They immediately convicted of the lesser, charge with which the judge agreed: "That is a just view of the case."

Addressing Cornish, he told her: "I have no doubt you were greatly aggrieved and I have no wish to say anything than make your distress greater than it appears to be. You have been in jail for two months (on remand) and I think justice will be met by another month's imprisonment with hard labour."