Having thus reported the medico-scientific evidence pro and con, we pass on to the moral evidence—the purchase of poison by the prisoner, and his acts during Cook’s illness and subsequent to his death.
PURCHASE OF POISON BY PALMER.
The proof that Palmer purchased strychnia on two separate occasions immediately before the convulsive attacks of which Cook died rested on the evidence of two druggists’ assistants at Rugeley. One of these, Charles Newton, assistant to Mr. Salt, swore that about nine o’clock on the Monday evening, the 19th of November, Palmer came to his master’s shop, asked for three grains of strychnia, which he gave him, without charge, as he knew him as a medical practitioner of the town. Next morning, between eleven and twelve, Roberts, the assistant of Hawkins, another druggist in Rugeley, was asked by Palmer for two drachms of prussic acid, for which he brought a bottle with him. Whilst Roberts was preparing this, Newton, the former witness, came into the shop, and Palmer, putting his hand on Newton’s shoulder, said he wished to speak with him, and together they stepped out into the street, when Palmer asked some questions about Mr. Edwin Salt going to a farm about fourteen miles from Rugeley. Whilst they were talking, a Mr. Brassington joined them, and began to speak to Newton about some accounts for Mr. Salt, on which Palmer went back into Hawkins’s shop and asked for six grains of strychnia and two drachms of Batley’s solution of opium.
“Whilst I was preparing them,” said Roberts, “Palmer stood at the shop door with his back to me, looking into the street. I was about five minutes preparing them. He stood at the door till they were ready, when I delivered them to him—the prussic acid in the bottle he had brought, the strychnia in a paper, and the opium in a bottle. He paid, and took them away. No one else was in the shop.”
As soon as Palmer had left, Newton came in, and spoke to Roberts about Palmer’s visit, and no doubt was struck with the information he received. At that time he did not mention to his master Palmer’s purchase of the strychnia because, he said, Palmer and Salt were not friends, and he was afraid that the latter might blame him for having given Palmer the strychnia. “I first mentioned it,” said Newton, “to Boycott, the clerk to Mr. Gardner, the solicitor, at the Rugeley station, when I and a number of witnesses were assembled for the purpose of going to London. He took me to Mr. Gardner’s. I told him what I had to say, and he took me to the solicitor of the Treasury.” Counsel for the defence tried to elicit from him that he had given as his reason for not mentioning it before that he was afraid of being prosecuted for perjury. “No,” he replied; “I did not give that as a reason, but I stated to a gentleman that a young man at Wolverhampton had been threatened by George Palmer because he had said at the inquest on Walter Palmer that he had sold the prisoner prussic acid, and he had not entered it in the book, and could not prove it. I stated at the same time that George Palmer said he could be transported for it. The inquest on Walter Palmer did not take place until five or six weeks after that on Cook.”
Not only, however, did Newton[60] not mention this purchase of strychnia when before the coroner, but he did not state that on the 25th of November he was sent for about seven in the evening to Palmer’s house, where he found the prisoner in his kitchen, sitting by the fire reading.
“He asked me,” he now said, “how I was, and to have some brandy and water. No one else was there. He asked me what was the dose of strychnia to kill a dog. I told him a grain. He asked me what would be the appearance after death. I told him that there would be no inflammation, and that I did not think it could be found. Upon that he snapped his finger and thumb in a quiet way and exclaimed, as if communing with himself, ‘That’s all right.’ He made some other commonplace remark, which I do not recollect. I was with him altogether about five minutes.”
Though he appears to have related the story of the dog at an earlier date, it was not until the Tuesday before the trial that he said a word to anyone about the purchase of the strychnia.
To contradict the evidence of Newton, the inspector of police at the Euston station was called to prove that the last train for Rugeley left at 2P.M., and that if Palmer went by the five o’clock express he would not get to Stafford until 8.45, and would then have nine miles to travel to reach Rugeley. It was, however, remarked by the Attorney-General that Newton’s words were “about nine o’clock,” and “that everyone knows how easy it is to make a mistake of half an hour or three quarters of an hour, or even an hour, if your attention is not called to the circumstances within a week or a fortnight, or three weeks afterwards.” Not content with this evidence, counsel for the defence called one Jeremiah Smith, an attorney, of Rugeley, and intimate friend of the prisoner’s mother, who swore that on the night in question he saw Palmer get out of a car coming in the direction from Stafford at ten minutes past ten, and went with him to Cook’s room. The exhibition made by this fellow in the box was disgusting. For some time he declared that he had never had anything to do with the applications for the enormous insurances on Walter Palmer’s life; would not acknowledge his signature to them as a witness, and only after a most vigorous cross-examination admitted that he witnessed them on the application of the prisoner. He it was who made the application to the Midland Insurance Company for the policy of £10,000 on the life of Bate, the person whom Palmer represented as a gentleman of property with a fine cellar of wine, but whom the insurance agent found hoeing turnips in a field of Palmer’s, and with six months’ rent in arrear for the room in the farm-house which he occupied. The credit of Newton was set up by the desperate attempt of Mr. Jeremiah Smith.[61]