The Most Extraordinary Trial of William Palmer, for the Rugeley Poisonings, which lasted Twelve Days

by Anonymous

Now, Mr. Cook was a young man of decent family, who originally had been intended for the profession of the law. He was articled to a solicitor; but after a time, inheriting some property, to the extent, I think, of some £12,000 or £15,000, he abandoned the laborious profession of the law, and betook himself also to the turf. He kept racehorses and betted considerably; and in the course of his operations he became much connected and familiarly intimate with the prisoner William Palmer. It is for the murder of that Mr. John Parsons Cook that the prisoner stands indicted to-day, the charge against him being that he took away that man’s life by poison. It will be necessary to show you the circumstances in which the prisoner Palmer was then placed, and the position in which he stood relatively to the deceased Cook. It will be impossible thoroughly to understand this case in all its bearings without those circumstances being laid before you, and it will be necessary, therefore, that I should go into them particularly. The case which, on the part of the prosecution, I have to urge against Palmer is this—that, being in desperate circumstances, with ruin, disgrace, and punishment staring him in the face, which could only be averted by means of money, he took advantage of his intimacy with Cook, when Cook had become the winner of a considerable sum, to destroy him, in order to obtain possession of his money. Out of the circumstances of Palmer at that time arose, as we say, the motive which induced him to commit this crime. If I show you upon evidence which can leave no reasonable doubt in your minds that he committed that crime, motives become a matter of secondary importance. Nevertheless, in inquiries of this kind, it is natural and right to look to see what may have been the motives by which a man has been induced to commit the crime charged against him; and if we find strong motives, the more readily shall we be led to believe in the probability of the crime having been committed; but if we find an absence of motive the probability is the other way. In this case, the motive will be matter for serious consideration; and inasmuch as the circumstances out of which we say that the motive arose come first in order of time, I will deal with them before I come to that which is the more immediate subject matter of our inquiry. It seems to me that it would be most convenient that I should follow the chronological order of events, and I will therefore pursue that course. It appears that as early as the year 1853 Palmer had got into difficulties, and that he began to raise money upon bills. In 1854 his circumstances became worse, and he was at that time indebted to different persons in a large sum of money. He then had recourse to an expedient which it is important that I should bring before you; but, as it will become necessary for me to detail to you transactions involving fraud, and, what is worse, forgery, I wish to make a few observations to you before I detail those transactions.

Although I am anxious, where I feel it to be absolutely necessary for the elucidation of the truth, that those circumstances should be brought before you, I wish that they should not have more than their fair and legitimate weight. You must not allow them to prejudice your minds against the prisoner with reference to that which is the real matter of inquiry. I cannot avoid bringing them forward; but I would anxiously caution you and pray you not to allow any prejudice by reason of those transactions to operate against the prisoner; for, though a man may be guilty of fraud and forgery, it does not follow, therefore, that he is guilty of murder.

Among the bills on which Palmer raised money in 1853 was one for £2,000, which he had discounted by a person named Padwick. That bill bore the acceptance of Sarah Palmer, the mother of the prisoner. She was, and is, a woman of considerable property, and her acceptance being believed to be genuine, was a security upon which money could readily be raised. The prisoner forged that acceptance, and that was, if not the first, at all events one of the earliest transactions of that nature by means of which for a long period of time money was obtained by him upon bills, with his mother’s acceptance forged by him. This shows how, when things came to a climax and he found himself involved in a position of great peril and emergency, he had recourse to a desperate expedient to avoid the consequences which seemed inevitably to press upon him. He owed in 1854 a very large sum of money. On the 29th of September in that year his wife died. He had effected an insurance upon her life for £13,000, and the proceeds of that insurance were realised, and by means of them he discharged some of his most pressing liabilities. In dealing with a portion of these liabilities he employed a gentleman named Pratt, a solicitor in London, who was in the habit of discounting bills. Mr. Pratt received from him £8,000, and Mr. Wright, a solicitor of Birmingham, received £5,000; and with those two sums £13,000 of debt was disposed of; but that still left Palmer with considerable liabilities, and among other things, the bill of £2,000, which was discounted by Padwick, remained unpaid. In the course of the same year he effected an insurance on his brother’s life, and upon the strength of that policy Palmer proceeded to issue fresh bills, which were discounted by Pratt at the rate of 60 per cent., who kept the policy as collateral security. The bills which were discounted in the course of that year amounted in the whole to £12,500. I find that there were two bills discounted as early as June, 1854, which were held over from month to month. In March, 1855, two bills were discounted for £2,000 each, with the proceeds of which Palmer bought two race-horses, called Nettle and Chicken. Those bills were renewed in June, and one became due on the 28th of September, and the other on the 2nd of October, when they were again renewed. The result of the bill proceedings of the year was that in November, when the Shrewsbury races took place, there were in Pratt’s hands one bill for £2,000, due the 25th of October; another for £2,000, due the 27th of October; two for the joint sum of £1,500, due on the 9th of November; one for £1,000, due on the 30th of September; one for £2,000, due on the 1st January; one for £2,000, due on the 5th of January; and another for £2,000, due on the 15th of January; making altogether £12,500. £1,000 of this sum, however, he had contrived to pay off, so that there was due in November, 1855, no less than £11,500, upon bills, every one of which bore the forged acceptance of the prisoner’s mother.

Under these circumstances, a pressure naturally arose—the pressure of £11,500 of liabilities, with not a shilling in the world to meet them, and the still greater pressure resulting from a consciousness that the moment when he could no longer go on and his mother was resorted to for payment, the fact of those forgeries would at once become manifest, and would bring upon him the peril of the law for the crime of forgery. The prisoner’s brother died in August, 1855. His life had been insured, and the policy for £13,000 had been assigned to the prisoner, who, of course, expected that the proceeds of that insurance would pay off his liabilities; but the office in which the insurance was effected declined to pay, and consequently there was no assistance to be derived from that source. Now, in these transactions to which I have referred, the deceased John Parsons Cook had been to a certain extent concerned. It seems that in May, 1855, Palmer was pressed to pay £500 to a person named Serjeant. He had at that time in the hands of Palmer a balance upon bill transactions of £310 to his credit, and he wanted Pratt to advance the £190 necessary to make up £500. Pratt declined to do that, except upon security; upon which Palmer offered him the acceptance of Cook, representing him to be a man of substance. Accordingly the acceptance of Cook for £200 was sent up, and upon that Pratt advanced the money. When that bill for £200 became due, Palmer failed to provide for it, and Cook had to meet it himself. In August of the same year, an occurrence took place to which I must call your particular attention. Palmer wrote to Pratt to say that he must have £1,000 by a day named. Pratt declined to advance it without security; upon which Palmer offered the security of Cook’s acceptance for £500. Pratt still declined to advance the money without some more tangible security. Now Palmer represented this as a transaction in which Cook required the money, and it may be that such was the fact. I have no means of ascertaining how that was; but I will give him the credit of supposing it to be true. Pratt still declining to advance the money, Palmer proposed an assignment by Cook of two racehorses, one called Polestar, which won the Shrewsbury races, and another called Sirius. That assignment was afterwards executed by Cook in favour of Pratt, and Cook, therefore, was clearly entitled to the money which was raised upon that security, which realised £375 in cash, and a wine warrant for £65. Palmer contrived, however, that the money and wine warrant should be sent to him, and not to Cook. Mr. Pratt sent down his cheque to Palmer in the country on a stamp as the Act of Parliament required, and he availed himself of the opportunity now offered by law of striking out the word “bearer” and writing “order,” the effect of which was to necessitate the endorsement of Cook on the back of the cheque.

It was not intended by Palmer that those proceeds should fall into Cook’s hands, and accordingly he forged the name of John Parsons Cook on the back of that cheque. Cook never received the money, and you will see that, within ten days from the period when he came to his end, the bill in respect to that transaction, which was at three months, would have fallen due, when it must have become apparent that Palmer received the money; and that, in order to obtain it, he had forged the endorsement of Cook. I wish these were the only transactions in which Cook had been at all mixed up with the prisoner Palmer; but there is another to which it is necessary to refer. In September, 1855, Palmer’s brother having died, and the proceeds of the insurance not having been realised, Palmer induced a person named Bates to propose his life for insurance. Palmer had succeeded in raising money upon previous policies, and I have no doubt that he persuaded Cook to assist him in that transaction, so that, by representing Bates as a man of wealth and substance, they might get a policy on his life, by which policy, deposited as a collateral security, they might obtain advances of money. Bates had been somewhat better off in the world, but he had fallen into decay, and he had accepted employment from Palmer as a sort of hanger-on in his stables. He was a healthy young man; and, being in the company of Palmer and Cook at Rugeley on the 5th of September, Palmer asked him to insure his life, and produced the form of proposal to the office. Bates declined, but Palmer pressed him, and Cook interposed and said, “You had better do it; it will be for your benefit, and you’ll be quite safe with Palmer.” At length they succeeded in persuading him to sign the proposal for no less a sum than £25,000, Cook attesting the proposal, which Palmer filled in, Palmer being referred to as medical attendant, and his former assistant, Thirlby, as general referee. That proposal was sent up to the Solicitors and General Insurance Office, and in the ensuing month—that office not being disposed to effect the insurance—they sent up another for £10,000 to the Midland Office—on that same life. That proposal also failed, and no money, therefore, could be obtained from that source. All these circumstances are important, because they show the desperate straits in which the prisoner at that time found himself.

The learned counsel then read a series of letters from Mr. Pratt to the prisoner, all pressing upon the prisoner the importance of his meeting the numerous bills which Pratt held, bearing the acceptance of Mrs. Sarah Palmer; and these letters appeared to become more urgent when the writer found that the insurance office refused to pay the £13,000 upon the policy effected on the life of the prisoner’s brother, and which Pratt held as collateral security. The letters were dated at intervals between the 10th of September and the 18th of October, 1855.

On the 6th of November, two writs were issued by Pratt for £4,000, one against Palmer and the other against his mother; and Pratt wrote on the same day to say that he had sent the writs to Mr. Crabbe, but that they were not to be served until he sent further instructions, and he strongly urged Palmer to make immediate arrangements for meeting them, and also to arrange for the bills for £1,500 due on the 9th of November. Between the 10th and the 13th of November, Palmer succeeded in paying £600; but on that day Pratt again wrote to him, urging him to raise £1,000, at all events, to meet the bills due on the 9th. That being the state of things at that time, we now come to the events connected with Shrewsbury Races. Cook was the owner of a mare called Polestar, which was entered for the Shrewsbury Handicap. She had been advantageously weighted, and Cook, believing that the mare would win, betted largely upon the event. The race was run upon the 13th of November—the very day on which that last letter was written by Pratt, which would reach Palmer on the 14th. The result of the race was that Polestar won, and that Cook was entitled, in the first place, to the stakes, which amounted to £424, minus certain deductions, which left a net sum of £381 19s. His bets had also been successful, and he won, upon the whole, a total sum of £2,050. He had won also in the previous week, at Worcester, and I shall show that at Shrewsbury he had in his pocket, besides the stakes and the money which he would be entitled to receive at Tattersall’s, between £700 and £800. The stakes he would receive through Mr. Weatherby, a great racing agent in London, with whom he kept an account, and upon whom he would draw; and, the race being run on a Tuesday, he would be entitled on the ensuing Monday to receive his bets at Tattersall’s, which amounted to £1,020.

Within a week from that time Mr. Cook died, and the important inquiry which we have now to make is how he came by his death—whether by natural causes or by the hand of man? and if the latter, by whose hand? It is important, in the first place, that I should show you what was his state of health when he went down to Shrewsbury. He was a young man, but twenty-eight when he died. He was slightly disposed to a pulmonary complaint, and, although delicate in that respect, he was in all other respects a hale and hearty young man. He had been in the habit, from time to time, especially with reference to his chest, of consulting a physician in London—Dr. Savage, who saw him a fortnight before his death. For four years he had occasionally consulted Dr. Savage, being at that time a little anxious about the state of his throat, in which there happened to be one or two slight eruptions. He had been taking mercury for these eruptions, having mistaken the character of the complaint. Dr. Savage at once saw that he had made a mistake, and desired him to discontinue the use of mercury, substituting for it a course of tonics. Mr. Cook’s health immediately began to improve; but, inasmuch as the new course of treatment might have involved serious consequences in case Dr. Savage had been mistaken in the diagnosis of the disease, he asked Cook to look in upon him from time to time, and Cook had, as recently as within a fortnight of his death, gone to call upon Dr. Savage. Dr. Savage then examined his throat and whole system carefully, and he will be prepared to tell you that at that time he had nothing on earth the matter with him except a certain degree of thickening of the tonsils, or some of the glands of the throat, to which anyone is liable, and there was no symptom whatever of ulcerated sore-throat or anything of the sort. Having then seen Dr. Savage, he went down to Shrewsbury Races, and his horse won. After that he was somewhat excited, as a man might naturally be under the circumstances of having won a considerable sum of money, and he asked several friends to dine with him to celebrate the event. They dined together at the Raven, the hotel where he was staying, and had two or three bottles of wine, but there was no excess of any sort, and no foundation for saying that Cook was the worse for liquor. Indeed he was not addicted to excesses, but was, on the contrary, an abstemious man on all occasions. He went to bed that night, and there was nothing the matter with him. He got up the next day, and went again on the course, as usual.

That night, Wednesday, the 14th November, a remarkable incident happened, to which I beg to draw your attention. A friend of his, a Mr. Fisher, and a Mr. Herring, were at Shrewsbury Races, and Fisher, who, besides being a sporting man, was an agent for receiving winnings, and who received Cook’s bets at the settling day at Tattersall’s, occupied the room next to that occupied by Cook. Late in the evening Fisher went into a room in which he found Palmer and Cook drinking brandy-and-water. Cook gave him something to drink, and said to Palmer, “You’ll have some more, won’t you?” Palmer replied, “Not unless you finish your glass.” Cook said, “I’ll soon do that;” and he finished it at a gulp, leaving only about a teaspoonful at the bottom of the glass. He had hardly swallowed it, when he exclaimed, “Good God! there’s something in it, it burns my throat.” Palmer immediately took up the glass, and drinking what remained, said, “Nonsense, there’s nothing in it;” and then pushing the glass to Fisher and another person who had come in, said, “Cook fancies there is something in the brandy-and-water—there’s nothing in it—taste it.” On which one of them replied, “How can we taste it? you’ve drank it all.” Cook suddenly rose and left the room, and called Fisher out, saying that he was taken seriously ill. He was seized with most violent vomiting, and became so bad that after a little while it was necessary to take him to bed. He vomited there again and again in the most violent way, and as the sickness continued after the lapse of a couple of hours a medical man was sent for. He came and proposed an emetic and other means for making the sick man eject what he had taken. After that, medicine was given him—at first some stimulant of a comforting nature, and then a pill as a purgative dose. After two or three hours he became more tranquil, and about 2 o’clock he fell asleep and slept till next morning. Such was the state of the man’s feelings all that time that I cannot tell what passed; but he gave Fisher the money which he had about him, desiring him to take care of it, and Mr. Fisher will tell you that that money amounted to between £800 and £900 in notes.

The next morning, having passed a quiet night, as I have said, and feeling better, he went out on the course; and he saw Fisher, who gave him back his notes. That was the Thursday. He still looked very ill, and felt very ill; but the vomiting had ceased. On that day Palmer’s horse, the Chicken, ran at Shrewsbury. He had backed his mare heavily, but she lost. When Palmer went to Shrewsbury he had no money, and was obliged to borrow £25 to take him there. His horse lost, and he lost bets upon the race. He and Cook then left Shrewsbury, and returned to Rugeley, Cook going to the Talbot Arms Hotel, directly opposite the prisoner’s house. There is an incident however, connected with the occurrence at Shrewsbury, which I must mention. About 11 o’clock that night, a Mrs. Brooks, who betted on commission and had an establishment of jockeys, went to speak to the deceased upon some racing business, and in the lobby she saw Palmer holding up a tumbler to the light; and, having looked at it through the gas, he withdrew to an outer room and presently returned with the glass in his hand, and went into the room where Cook was, and in which room he drank the brandy and water from which I suppose you will infer that the sickness came on. I do not charge that by anything which caused that sickness Cook’s death was occasioned; but I shall show you that throughout the ensuing days at Rugeley he constantly received things from the prisoner, and that during those days that sickness was continued. I shall show you that after he died antimony was found in the tissues of his body and in his blood—antimony administered in the form of tartar emetic, which, if continued to be applied, will maintain sickness.