It was Thursday, August 20, 1840, at the end of a busy market day in Ludlow.

William Miller Mackreth, a Bristol merchant, retired to his room in the crowded Angel Inn.

He closed the door, blew out the candle and went to bed. The clock ticked and the hours passed until 04:00 arrived.

A sudden loud crash startled the guests and the owner, who woke up to the sound of blood-curdling screams coming from a room above.

When they rushed to see what was happening, they found Mr Mackreth on the stairs, in his bedclothes, with his blood-soaked hands clutching his throat.

He had a cut that extended from ear to ear.

They took him back to the bedroom and sat him down.

Unable to speak, the victim pointed to the bed.

They tentatively looked down and saw the figure of a man clearly marked in the dust.

A trail of blood leading from Mackreth’s room to another guest’s room led police to the suspect, a penniless 25-year-old Birmingham man, Josiah Mister.

He was arrested and tried for attempted murder, of which he pleaded not guilty.

But would he receive a fair trial? From the beginning he seemed to face it.

A Worcestershire Chronicle journalist described the defendant as he was in the dock at his first hearing.

“He has a large, fleshy mouth, with what artists call a well-chiseled upper lip, which expresses strong, very strong, animal passions and a firm determination; his eyes are peculiar, and (although rather dull on the morning in question) were bright, shining, and wild as those of a rat newly caged, the day before, when he was first taken into custody.”

There was key evidence against Mister, including the blood trail leading from the victim’s room down the hallway to Josiah’s door, and blood trails on the curtains and his shirt.

In one of the first examples of forensic evidence, a surgeon who had been at the inn examined the suspect’s room.

He saw a bowl full of water, put his finger in it and could taste alum, a type of soap used in shaving that could remove blood from clothes and stop shaving cuts.

The implication was clear: Josiah had tried to wash away the blood.

A razor blade was discovered on the patio floor, just a few feet from Josiah’s window.

And under the bed they found a match that was the same brand they had seen him with the day before.

The defense attorney argued that this was all a coincidence.

Matches were common, there was no evidence the knife belonged to his client, and the trail of blood could have gotten there from other people walking down the hallway after the attack looking for bandages.

The jury deliberated for only 35 minutes before returning their guilty verdict and Josiah was sentenced to death.

Visibly shaken and in a dull voice, he responded: “I’m not guilty of it.”

A petition was drawn up and his victim, Mackreth, even supported calls for his sentence to be commuted to transportation, but it was rejected.

Josiah Mister was hanged in Shrewsbury Prison in front of a large crowd and buried in St Mary’s Church.

Fred Hillberg is the great-great-grandson of William Miller Mackreth and has just published his own book about the attack.

He says William had just become engaged before the incident and when he returned to Bristol his fiancée still married him despite “this huge scar running down the side of his face, from his mouth to the other”.

Fred is convinced they have found the right man.

“Yes, certainly, and William thought he had done it too.

The fact that he survived (meant) that I was willing to forgive him.

William was a religious and kind man anyway and would have liked very much if he had not been hanged but deported.”

The law on capital punishment changed in 1861, making Josiah Mister the last person in England to be hanged for attempted murder, a crime he denied to the grave.