But now is there no other evidence in the case? Do I ask you to come to the conclusion that he administered strychnia to his friend, simply because the symptoms of that friend’s death are reconcilable with no known form of disease which the most enlarged experience or knowledge can supply? No, gentlemen, it does not rest there. Not because those symptoms are precisely those which show themselves in cases of poisoning by strychnia. No, the case does not rest there; I wish it did. But, alas! it does not. I must now draw your serious attention to a part of the case which has not been met, and has not been grappled with. My learned friend said that he would contest the ground with the prosecution foot by foot. Alas! we are upon that ground upon which, as it were, is centred the crisis of this momentous question; and, alas! my learned friend has not grappled with it for an instant. We have here a death of which the dread manifestations bore upon their face the character of strychnia poisoning. Was the prisoner at the bar possessed of that poison? Did he obtain it upon the eve of the death into which we are inquiring? These are matters of fearful moment. They are matters with which it behoved my learned friend, indeed, to have grappled with all the vigour of which he was capable and with all the means that his case afforded. But I grieve to say that this part of the case is left untouched as regards the defence. Did the prisoner at the bar obtain possession of strychnia on the Monday late? Did he get it again upon the Tuesday morning? The fact of his having got it on the Monday night rests, it is true, upon the evidence of an individual whose statement, as I said to you at the outset, and as I repeat now, requires at your hands the most careful and anxious attention before you adopt it easily. Newton tells us that on that night when Mr. Palmer came back from London, he came to him and obtained from him three grains of the poison of which, supposing it had been administered, the symptoms and effect both in life and death would have been precisely the same as those which have been described in Cook’s case. Is Newton speaking the truth, or is he not? It is open to observation—I said so from the beginning, and my learned friend has done no more than reiterate the warning I gave you—it is, I say, open to serious observation, that Newton never made that statement until the day previous to the commencement of the trial. He has explained to you the reasons which induced his silence. His employer had been for a long time upon unpleasant terms with Palmer. The young man, who knew him, however, and who appears to have been more or less upon familiar terms with him, did not hesitate to give him the three grains of strychnia. Palmer was a medical man, and strychnia is often used by medical men. There was nothing extraordinary therefore at that time of night, when chemists’ shops might be expected to be shut up, that, upon Mr. Palmer’s coming to him for three grains of strychnia, he gave them to him, and probably thought little more about it. But when afterwards the question of the mode by which this man’s life had been taken away became rife in Rugeley, and suspicions arose of strychnia, and Roberts came forward and said that upon the Tuesday morning Mr. Palmer had bought strychnia off him, and this young man was called to confirm the circumstance of Mr. Palmer having been at the shop, he heard that this question of strychnia was involved, and it began to occur to him that it might seriously implicate him with his employer, might cast even the shadow of doubt and suspicion upon himself, if he came forward and voluntarily stated that he had supplied Palmer with the poison the night before. Then he locked this secret in his breast. But when the eve of the trial came, and he knew that he was to be subjected to examination here, he felt a sort of oppression at having this secret locked up in his breast, and he voluntarily came forward and made the statement which he has repeated here. It is for you to say whether you are satisfied with that explanation. It is unquestionably true that it detracts from the otherwise perfect credibility which would attach to his statement. But then, gentlemen, on the other hand, there is a consideration which I cannot fail to press upon you. What possible conceivable motive can this young man have, except a sense of truth, for coming forward to make this statement? My learned friend, with justice and with propriety, has asked for your most attentive consideration to the question of motives involved in this case. Before you can charge a man with having taken away the life of another by aforethought and deliberate malice, it does become important to see whether there were motives that could operate upon him to do so foul a deed. That does not apply to this witness, for, even though the hideous crime of taking life by poison is not perhaps so horrible to contemplate as the notion of judicial murder effected by false witness against a man’s neighbour, can you suppose that this young man can have the remotest shadow of a motive for coming forward upon this occasion, under the solemn sanction of an oath, in a Court of justice like this, to take away the life—for, alas! if you believe his evidence, it must take away the life—of the prisoner at the bar? If you believe that on the night of Monday, for no other conceivable or assignable purpose except the deed of darkness which was to be done that night upon the person of Mr. Cook, the prisoner at the bar went to Newton and obtained from him the fatal and deadly instrument whereby life was to be destroyed, it is impossible that you can come to any other conclusion than that the prisoner is guilty, and that your verdict must pronounce him so.
What says my learned friend? He says that Newton does not speak the truth—first, because he did not come forward till the last minute; and, secondly, because he lays the time of his communication with the prisoner, and affording him the strychnia, at nine o’clock, and the prisoner was not in Rugeley until ten.
Attorney-General
Now, in the first place, I must remark upon this that the young man does not say nine o’clock. He says, “about nine,” and every one knows how easy it is to make a mistake as to time with reference to half an hour or three-quarters of an hour, or even an hour, when your attention is not till perhaps a week or a fortnight or three weeks afterwards called to a particular circumstance. A man may be sitting working in his study or his surgery, and have no clock before him, and have nothing particular to impress upon his mind the precise hour of time at which a certain transaction took place; and to say afterwards, when he comes to speak to it under the sanction of an oath, that because he makes some slight difference as to the time therefore he must be taken to be speaking untruly, appears to my mind a most untenable and unsatisfactory argument. It is due to my learned friend to say that he has sought to meet this part of the case. He has produced to-day a witness of whom all I can say is this, that I implore you, for the sake of justice, not to allow the man who stands at the bar to be prejudiced by the evidence of that most discreditable and unworthy witness who has been called to-day on his behalf. I say that not to one word which that man has uttered will you attach the slightest value. Before I come to him, however, I must make this remark—that, if Newton could not be mistaken as to the time, how is it possible that the prisoner could be mistaken as to the time? Yet he clearly was. He told Dr. Bamford (and we have it from Dr. Bamford himself) the next morning that he visited Cook between nine and ten o’clock the night before. And now there comes a witness who tells us that it was a quarter past ten that he had with him alighted from the car that brought them from Stafford, and he could not till after that have gone to visit Cook. My learned friend reminds me that it was ten minutes past ten. Then he had to go to Cook. One of the maid-servants, Lavinia Barnes, like every other witness, may be mistaken; but she asserts that on that night, the Monday evening, Mr. Palmer came to the hotel, and went to see Mr. Cook before nine o’clock. It is clear that she must have been mistaken. It is clear that he could not have been there much before ten. I am told that they get over in about an hour. There was a carriage waiting for him, and he would come over to Rugeley with as much rapidity as he could, which would not be before ten o’clock. As to the fact of the witness pretending that he saw him alight from the car, and that he went to Cook and stayed a certain time so as to cover the whole evening, I ask you not to believe a single word, and I do so because in my heart I do not believe a single word of it.
Attorney-General
It is a remarkable fact, which has not escaped your attention, I dare say, that my learned friend did not open a single word of the testimony that he was going to call. He said he hoped and thought he should be able to cover that whole period at Rugeley. Did he tell us what the witness was going to prove, that Jeremiah Smith had been upstairs in the inn, and seen by some of the people at the inn going upstairs to Cook’s room? No, he did not. If he had we should have had plenty of time between that and this to ascertain how the fact stood, and I believe have been ready to meet Mr. Jeremiah Smith with contradictory evidence. It was well to follow that course when you were uncertain what your witness would say, or what your case might be, because you might be met and confronted by contradictory evidence. I need not say that any evidence would have been better than the evidence of that miserable man whom we saw exhibited to-day. Such a spectacle I never saw in my recollection in a Court of justice. He calls himself a member of the legal profession. I blush for it to number such a man upon its roll. There was not one that heard him to-day that was not satisfied that that man came here to tell a false tale. There cannot be a man who is not convinced that he has been mixed up in many a villainy which, if not perpetrated, had been attempted to be perpetrated in that quarter, and he comes now to save, if he can, the life of his companion and his friend—the son of the woman with whom he has had that intimacy which he sought to-day in vain to disguise. I say, when you look at the whole of those circumstances, balance the evidence on both sides, and look at the question of whether Newton can by any possibility have any motive for coming here to give evidence which must be fatal to a man who, if that evidence be not true, he must believe to be an innocent man—when you see that he can have no motive for such a purpose—to suppose that he would do so without a motive is to suppose human nature in its worst and most repulsive form to be one hundred times more wicked and perverse than experience ever yet has found it—I cannot but submit to you that you ought to believe that evidence, and I cannot but submit to you deferentially, but at the same time firmly and emphatically, that if you do believe that evidence it is conclusive of the case.
Attorney-General
But it does not stop there. On the morrow of that day we have the clearest and most unquestioned evidence that Mr. Palmer bought more strychnia. He went to Mr. Hawkins’ shop, and there purchased six grains more, and the circumstances attending that purchase are peculiar in the extreme. He comes to the shop, and he gives an order for prussic acid, and, having got his prussic acid, he gives an order for strychnia. Before the strychnia is put up, Newton, the same man, comes into the shop. What does the prisoner do? He immediately takes Newton by the arm, and says he has something particular to say to him, and takes him to the door. What was it he had to say to him? Was it anything particular? Was it anything of the slightest importance? Was it anything that might not have been said in the presence of Roberts, who was putting up the strychnia? Certainly not. It was to ask a most unimportant question, namely, when young Mr. Salt was going to the farm which he had taken at Sudbury. In that question there could be nothing which might not be put in the presence of anybody, no matter who. He takes him to the door, and then puts this question. At the same time a man of the name of Brassington, a cooper, comes up, and Brassington had something to say to Newton upon business, having some bills against Newton’s employer, Mr. Salt. Upon that Brassington and Newton get into conversation at some little distance from the door. The prisoner immediately takes advantage of those two being in conversation, and he goes back and completes the purchase of the strychnia. But while the strychnia was being made up he stands in the doorway with his back to the shop, and his face to the street, where he would have a perfect command of the persons of Newton and Brassington, and where, if Newton had quitted Brassington to return into the shop, the prisoner would at once have been in a position to take every possible step for not letting Newton go in, by renewing the conversation with him until the strychnia had been taken away. I ask you, having this description of the transaction given to you by Roberts, in the first place, confirmed by Newton afterwards, can you entertain any reasonable doubt that the prisoner was desirous of not letting Newton know that he was purchasing strychnia there? You can very well understand that he would be desirous of keeping that fact from Newton, because, if it be true that Newton had let him have three grains the night before, Newton’s attention would be naturally immediately aroused by so strange a circumstance, because nine grains of strychnia were enough—three grains were enough—to kill three, perhaps six people. What could a man want with nine grains of strychnia in so short a space of time? It would attract Newton’s attention, and it did; for Newton immediately went and asked what he wanted there, his attention being, in the first place, directed, not so much to what he had come to purchase as to the singularity of his coming there at all, because for two years past the prisoner never bought an article of any sort or kind at the shop of Mr. Hawkins. His former assistant, Mr. Thirlby, had two years before set up in business as a chemist, and from that time, naturally enough, Mr. Palmer had withdrawn his custom from Mr. Hawkins, and had given it to his former assistant, Mr. Thirlby. It was a remarkable thing that he should go to Mr. Hawkins’ shop upon this occasion to get strychnia. Why did he not go to Mr. Thirlby? I will tell you. Mr. Thirlby would have known perfectly well that he could have no legitimate use for such an article. Mr. Thirlby had taken his practice. Mr. Palmer was no longer in practice, except in the circle of his relatives and his own immediate friends; and if he had gone to Mr. Thirlby for strychnia, Mr. Thirlby would have said, naturally enough, “What are you going to do with it?” and therefore he did not go to Mr. Thirlby. Why he should have gone to purchase strychnia (I agree with my learned friend it is one of the mysteries of this case) on two successive days I cannot tell; but that he did is undeniably true; and if on the one hand some little difficulty arises, on the other hand is not the difficulty infinitely greater in accounting for the motive that induced him to go and get this strychnia either on the Monday night or upon the Tuesday? If it was for the purpose of professional use for the benefit of some patient for whom small doses of strychnia might have been advantageous, where is the patient, and why is he not produced? My learned friend did not even advert to the question of the second purchase of strychnia in the whole of his powerful observations. He passes it over in mysterious but significant silence. Account for that six grains of strychnia, the purchase of which is an undoubted and indisputable fact. Throw doubt if you please—I blame you not for it—upon the story of the purchase on the previous night; but on the Tuesday it is unquestionably true that six grains of strychnia were purchased. Purchased for whom? purchased for what? If for any patient, who is that patient? Produce him. If for any other purpose, at least let us have it explained. Has there been the slightest shadow of an attempt at explanation? Alas! I grieve to say, none at all. Something was said, in the outset of this case, about some dogs that had been troublesome in the paddocks where the mares and foals were, but that proved to have been in September. If there had been any recurrence of such a thing, where are the grooms who had the care and charge of those mares and foals, and why are they not here to state the fact? If this poison was used for the purpose of destroying dogs, some one must have assisted Mr. Palmer in the attempts which he resorted to for that purpose. Where are those persons? Why are they not called? But, not only are they not called, they are not even named. My learned friend does not venture to breathe even a suggestion of anything of the kind. I ask, gentlemen, what conclusion can we draw from these things, except one, and one alone? Death, with all the symptoms of strychnia—death in all the convulsive agonies and throes which that fatal poison produces in the frame of man—death with all the appearances which follow upon death, and mark how that death has come to pass—all these things, in the minds of those who can discuss and consider them with calm, dispassionate attention, who do not mix themselves up as advocates, partisans, or witnesses, leading to but one conclusion; and then the fact of the strychnia being purchased by the prisoner on the morning of the fatal day, if not obtained by him, as was sworn to, on the night before, is left wholly uncovered and wholly unmet, without the shadow of a defence. Alas! gentlemen, is it possible that we can come to any other than one painful and dread conclusion? I protest I can suggest to you none.
It is said by my learned friend, “Is it likely that Mr. Palmer should have purchased strychnia at Rugeley when he might have got it in London?” I admit the fact. I feel the force of the observation. If he could have shown that he had done anything with this strychnia—if he could have shown any legitimate purpose to which it was intended to be applied, and to which it was afterwards applied—then I should say that it would be an argument worthy of your gravest and most attentive consideration. But just see on the one hand how the fact may stand. He was in town on the Monday, and he had the opportunity, as my learned friend suggests, of purchasing strychnia there. But on the other hand he had much to do; he had his train to catch by a certain time; he had in the meanwhile his pecuniary embarrassments to solve if he could. Time may have flown too fast for him to be able to go and obtain this strychnia; and even if he had had time, I do not believe it is sold in chemists’ shops in London without the name of the party purchasing it as a voucher. If he had given his name, of course, it would have been still worse if he had bought strychnia in London than if he had bought it in Rugeley. I do not say that it is not worthy of your consideration, that it is not a difficulty in the case; but I say there is plain, distinct, positive proof of the purchase of strychnia, and under circumstances which cannot fail to lead to the conclusion that he shrank from the observation of Newton at the time he was buying it; and there is a total absence of all proof, nay, of all suggestion, of any legitimate purpose to which that fatal poison was to be, or was in point of fact, afterwards actually applied.
Attorney-General