“I have your note, acknowledging receipt by your mother of the £2,000 acceptance, due on the 2nd October. Why not let her acknowledge it herself? You must really not fail to come up at once, if it be for the purpose of arranging for the payment of the two bills at the end of the month. Remember I can make no terms for their renewal, and they must be paid. I will of course hold the policy for so much as it is worth, but in the present position of the affair, no one except your mother, who is liable upon the bills, can look upon it as a security. [That was because Simpson and Field were down there making inquiries.] Do not neglect attending to this, for under a recent act bills of exchange are now recovered in a few days. You know and can appreciate my conduct in avoiding all trouble and annoyance to your mother; but to that there is a limit. I cannot by any representation be a party to inducing any body to believe that security exists where there is doubt upon the point. P. S. I cast no doubt upon the capability of the office to pay, but in the nature of things, with so large an amount in question, it is not to be surprised at, if, they think they have grounds of objection, they should temporize by delay.”
Does not this show that on the sixth of October suspicions were hanging over Palmer’s head, which would come down with irresistible momentum and crush him if there were a suspicion of another violent and sudden death? Do you think that a man who had written in his manual what were the effects of strychnine would risk such a scene as that poison would develope in the presence of the dearest and best friend of Cook—a man whom he could not influence—and a medical man, who loved Cook so well as to sleep in the same room with him, that he might be ready to attend him in case he needed assistance? Is that common sense? Are you going to enforce such a theory as that which Dr. A. Taylor propounded as to the effects which strychnine produces upon rabbits? Impossible—perfectly impossible! I will prove the position in which Palmer stood still more clearly. On the 10th of October Pratt, in a letter addressed to him, says:—
“I may add that I hear they (the insurance company) have been making inquiries in every direction.” To be sure, they had. Field the detective officer had been at Stafford, where he could make inquiries as well as at Rugeley.
“But on what they ground their dissatisfaction is as yet a mystery. In any event no step can be taken to compel payment until after the 4th of December.”
It is plain that suspicions were then rife, or that attempts were made to excite suspicions against him with regard to the death of Walter Palmer. On the 18th of October Pratt enclosed to Palmer a letter from the solicitor of the company, stating that the directors had determined upon declining to pay the amount claimed; but that, although the facts disclosed in the course of their inquiries would have warranted their retention of the premiums which had been paid, they were prepared to refund them to any one who might be shown to be legally entitled to them. Palmer determined that the money should be paid; and a case was laid before Sir Fitzroy Kelly. If anything happened to Cook by foul play he had no more chance of receiving this £13,000 than of obtaining £130,000. From all this I infer, not only that Palmer had no interest in Cook’s death, but that he had a direct pecuniary interest in his living. I think it is impossible that I should be so much mistaken as that a considerable portion of what I have advanced should not be worthy of your attention, and I therefore submit to you, to the Court, and to my learned friend, that the case as to this supposed motive for the crime has failed. We now proceed to the facts of the case, and in considering them it will be necessary to group them without entire reference to dates. I will first inquire whether the symptoms with which Cook was attacked and the appearances presented by his body after death were consistent with the theory of his having died by strychnia poison, and inconsistent with that of his having died from some other natural cause. It is under this head that I shall discuss, I hope not unduly, the medical evidence in this case, and present to you such observations as occur to me on the witnesses who have been called to support the view which the Crown takes of the effect of that medical testimony. Cook died at one o’clock in the morning of Wednesday, November 21, in the presence of Jones. It was no sooner light than Jones posted to town and saw his stepfather, Mr. Stevens. Mr. Stevens went down to Rugeley and was introduced to Palmer. Palmer went with him to the Talbot Arms, and uncovered the corpse—a bold thing to do if he had murdered him. The body was so little emaciated or affected by disease that Stevens wondered he could be dead; but he observed some little rigidity about the muscles. Stevens’s suspicions were roused; he asked Palmer to dinner, questioned him about the betting-book, got angry that it was not produced, dissembled with Palmer, cross-examined him, went up to town, met him at Euston-square, again at Wolverton, at Rugby, and at Rugeley. At last he gave him to understand that he suspected him and intended to probe the whole matter to the bottom. He resolved to have a post-mortem examination, and that examination took place.
The appearances presented by the body after death were such as might have been anticipated by those who were acquainted with his course of life, his general health, his pursuits, and, not to say anything hard of him, his vices, and the drinking, racing company which he kept. His father had died at thirty years of age, his mother about the same age, a few years after her second marriage; his sister was dead; and he himself was affected with a pulmonary disorder. Cook had been suffering for a long time from a sore throat, and bore about him all the signs and indications of having led a licentious life. Indeed, he appears to have been about as dissipated a young man as can be well imagined. I do not mean to say that he was utterly depraved, or that he was lost to all sense of honour and propriety; but it does not admit of doubt that his manner of living was wild, riotous, and extravagant. His complaints indicated his excesses, and he was avowedly addicted to pursuits the reverse of commendable. When his body was opened there was evidence of a soreness of the tongue. I do not go to the length of saying that there was anything to lead to the inference that there was an actual sore at the time of death, but there were follicles and symptoms, if not of a recent, certainly of a not very remote ulcer. The inside of the mouth had been ulcerated, and the skin taken off on both sides. There is abundant evidence to show that Cook was himself of opinion that these symptoms were syphilitic. He could scarcely be persuaded to obey the instructions of Dr. Savage, the respectable and very competent physician whom he consulted, and, though it is admitted that he was not “fool enough to go to quack doctors,” it is very certain that he was weak enough to follow the counsels of every medical man who would venture to give him advice when coincided with his own opinion that mercury was the best thing for his complaint. The spots which are the fatal characteristics of his dreadful malady had already made their appearance on his body, and he was haunted by the apprehension that some day, as he was running about the race-course, his face would be suddenly covered over with copper blotches, which would leave no doubt on the minds of those who saw them as to the true nature of his disease. Many a man similarly affected has retrieved his position, redeemed his character and become a virtuous member of society.
Far be it from me, then, to say one word that would press with undue severity on the memory of the dead; but no false delicacy shall deter me from the discharge of my duty, and I make these remarks not in an unkind or censorious spirit, but for the sake of truth, and because the state of Cook’s health is a most important element in this inquiry. It is certain that it was his own opinion that he was suffering from virulent syphilis, and in this opinion the medical men who originally attended him did not hesitate to concur. That he did not correct his habits is evident from the fact, that within a recent period of his death he had again become diseased. When his body was opened on the second examination, there were found between the delicate membrane which the spinal marrow covers, and is called the arachnoid, and embedded to some extent in the next covering, not so delicate, termed the dogma mater, granules about one inch in extent; and I will satisfy you, upon the evidence of witnesses whose authority will not be questioned, that if the body had been opened in the dead-house of any hospital in this metropolis, those granules would have been regarded as symptoms affording conclusive explanation of the cause of death. Such, then, was the condition of Cook’s health—a condition but partially and imperfectly revealed by the first post-mortem examination. That examination was not conducted with the same minuteness and precision that circumstances rendered necessary on a subsequent occasion, and the syphilitic disease was neither ascertained nor suspected. The stomach was taken out, and you have heard the suggestion, which, were it not that the Court has ruled it to be of no significance, I should have been prepared to disprove that Palmer attempted to interfere with the operation by shoving against the medical man engaged in it. The inference sought to be deduced was, that some of the stomach escaped from the jar: but we have the evidence of Dr. Devonshire himself that such was not the fact. None of it did escape, and it was sent up in its entirety to London, there to be analysed by Dr. Taylor and Dr. Rees. Those gentlemen examined it with the knowledge that, owing to the report of Palmer having purchased a fatal drug from Mr. Roberts on the day of the death, there was a suspicion of foul play. Mr. Stevens talked of the fact to Dr. Taylor; and, with the consciousness of it on his mind, that gentleman wrote a letter, attributing the death to antimony. [Dr. Taylor intimated dissent.]
Well, if the letter is not to be so understood, it is at all events susceptible of this interpretation—that the death may have been caused by antimony. Dr. Taylor attends the coroner’s inquest, which, in all probability, is held in consequence of his own letter. He hears the evidence of Jones, Roberts, and Mills, and it is but natural to presume that these are the witnesses whose testimony has the greatest influence on his opinion. He forms his judgment on the evidence of chambermaids, waitresses, and housekeepers, and contrary to the opinion of the medical man who attended Cook in his last illness (for be it remembered he had no encouragement from Mr. Jones, the surgeon, of Lutterworth, a man of age and character to form a sound decision on the case); he comes boldly and at once to the conclusion that his original notion about antimony having been the cause of death was a mistake, and then he has the incredible imprudence—an imprudence which has necessitated this trial, or at all events rendered it necessary that it should take place in this form and place—to declare upon his oath to the coroner’s jury that he believes that the pills given to Cook on Monday and Tuesday contained strychnine, and that Cook was consequently poisoned. That evidence of his is carried on the wings of the press into every house in the United Kingdom. It becomes known throughout the length and breadth of the land that Dr. Taylor, a man who has devoted his life to science, a man of the highest personal character, and who stands well with his medical friends, has declared—not as a conjectural opinion, mark you, nor as a reserved opinion delivered in a private room to a few men whose discretion might be relied on—but, that in the public room of a public inn, in a little village, where everything that occurs is known, he has declared upon his solemn oath that it is his belief that Cook died because pills containing strychnine were administered to him on the nights of Monday and Tuesday. He had himself failed to discover the faintest traces of strychnine, yet, at the coroner’s inquest he had the hardihood to declare his conviction that the pills contained strychnine, and that Cook died of them. His evidence is neither consistent with itself nor with the opinion of Mr. Jones. He takes upon him to pronounce positively, in the face of the world, that Cook’s disease was nothing else than tetanus, and tetanus, too, of the kind that can be produced by poison only, and that poison strychnine.
Such was Dr. Taylor’s testimony; and on such testimony the coroner’s jury returned their verdict. But, merciful heaven! in what position are we placed for the safety of our own lives and those of our families, if, on evidence such as this, men are to be put on their trial for foul murder as often as a sudden death occurs in any household! If science is to be allowed to come and dogmatise in our courts—and not science that is successful in its operations or exact in its nature, but science that is baffled by its own tests, and bears upon its forehead the motto, “A little learning is a dangerous thing”—if, I say, science such as this is to be suffered to dogmatise in our courts, and to utter judgments which its own processes fail to vindicate, life is no longer secure, and there is thrown upon judges and jurymen a weight of responsibility too grievous for human nature to endure. If Dr. Taylor had detected the poison by his own tests, he, with his long experience in toxicological studies, would have been an excellent witness for the Crown; but he has not found the poison, and not having seen the patient, and knowing nothing of his death-bed symptoms beyond what he gathered from the evidence of an ignorant servant girl, and of Mr. Jones, whose testimony does not show that he agrees with him in opinion, Dr. Taylor thinks himself justified in declaring upon his oath in a public court that the pills contained strychnine, and that Cook was poisoned. If verdicts are to be moulded on testimony such as this, what medical practitioner is safe? On what ground does Dr. Taylor vindicate his opinion? He does not appear to have ever seen one solitary case of strychnine in the human subject, yet, with the full knowledge that the consequences of his assertion might be disastrous to the prisoner at the bar, he has the audacity to assert that the pills, which for anything he knows to the contrary were the same that Dr. Bamford prepared, contained strychnine, and that Cook was poisoned by it. I have quoted the sentiment, “a little learning is a dangerous thing,” and assuredly to no science is that maxim so applicable as to the medical. Of all God’s works there is no other which so eloquently attests our entire dependence on Him, and our own nothingness, as that mortal coil in which we live, and breathe, and have our being. We are struck with amazement as we contemplate it. We feel, we see, we hear; yet the instant we attempt to give a reason for these sensations our path is crossed by the mystery of creation, and all we know is that God created man—that he is our Omnipotent Maker and we the work of His hands. Yet we fancy that we can penetrate all mysteries, and there are no bounds to our arrogance. There has been much talk in this inquiry of the two kinds of tetanus—idiopathic and traumatic. Dr. Todd, urged by the Court to explain the former, described it as “constitutional.” Perhaps “self-generating” would have done as well, but let that pass. But how is our knowledge advanced by translating “idiopathic” as constitutional? It is easy to give an English translation of that Greek compound, but the thing is to explain what the translation means. What is the meaning of the phrase “constitutional tetanus?”
Lord Campbell: Tetanus not occasioned by external injury.