A housewife who left her husband blind and deaf by poisoning him with anti-freeze was beginning a 30-year jail sentence last night.

Kate Knight, 28, used "premeditated planning of a most callous kind" when she attempted to murder Lee Knight by lacing his food with ethylene glycol on their seventh wedding anniversary, Stafford Crown Court was told.

Mr Knight, 37, spent 10 weeks in a coma and was left with brain damage, kidney failure and in need of a transplant following the poisoning in April 2005.

Judge Simon Tonking said Kate Knight, eligible for parole after 15 years, had shown a lack of mercy as she watched her husband's illness take hold.

He told her: "The devastation you have brought to his life is apparent to everyone who saw him giving evidence. But while he did so there was little, if any, sign of remorse on your part."

Knight rocked back and forth, cried, and appeared shaken during the sentencing hearing.

Judge Tonking said her offence was "committed either wholly or predominantly for gain".

Last month a jury at Stafford Crown Court took eight hours to convict Knight, of Meir Hay, Stoke-on-Trent, of attempted murder after a three-week trial.

The court was told she had planned to use the £130,000 death benefit from her husband's employer, JCB in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, to pay off mounting debts after forging her husband's signature to take out two secret loans for £17,000.

Knight, a former brewery worker, used Google to find a method of killing, settling on anti-freeze after considering ecstasy or iron tablets, the jury was told.

Knight, who married at 19, administered the anti-freeze in red wine and an Indian takeaway on their wedding anniversary.

Jurors had heard evidence Knight asked a near neighbour, Sarah Johnson, if she knew a hitman. She also told Miss Johnson about her plot to poison Mr Knight, showing her anti-freeze in her kitchen cupboard and even inviting her to smell the substance through the wine.

Yesterday the court heard Knight was "living in a world of fantasy" and her idea to kill her husband began as "idle musings of a bored and lonely housewife".

Mr Knight has virtually no sight and is registered blind.

He is profoundly deaf, has no kidney function and some paralysis of facial muscles. He is awaiting consideration for a kidney transplant from his brother, the court heard.

Mr Knight underwent an operation to restore some hearing, but still required two hearing aids and support from two specialists to give evidence.

Mr Knight spoke of the impact on himself and the couple's nine-year-old son Jack who lives with his father and paternal grandparents.