Attorney-General
Now, it becomes perfectly clear that at this moment matters were approaching an immediate crisis. What was Mr. Palmer to do? He had no source to which to turn for money. It is clear that he could not go to his mother. I presume that source had long since been exhausted, or he would not have forged her name. What was he to do if he could not get money to satisfy Pratt’s demand? You know, although a moneylender is considerate and indulgent enough as long as he is certain of his payment, and gets his heavy usurious interest paid down on the nail, if he once becomes doubtful of the security and uncertain of payment, you may as well ask mercy of a rabid tiger, or you may as well ask pity of stones, as hope to find bowels of compassion in him. Pratt gave him fair warning that the money must be paid, or something must be paid by way of instalment on the principal, and to keep the interest down. Where was Mr. Palmer to get money from? My learned friend says Cook was his best friend, and that Cook was the man he was to look to; and that as long as he kept Cook alive he had a friend in need to whom he could resort for assistance. In what way? Was Cook to give acceptances to Pratt? Is anybody weak enough to suppose that Pratt would have taken Cook’s acceptances to keep those bills alive, unless there was a part payment of the principal and interest? It is quite clear that he would not. When even for the sum of £500 he was asked to take Cook’s security, he refused to do so, unless there was the collateral security of an assignment of his horses. Cook had assigned to him all the property he possessed. All that Cook had in the world was his winnings upon that day’s race at Shrewsbury, and what little money he may have obtained by his winnings at the races at Worcester. If you believe the witness Myatt, those winnings were exhausted, and therefore this man had nothing except his winnings at the Shrewsbury races; and you are asked by my learned friend to believe that it would have been of use to Palmer to keep this man alive. The reverse is proved by the evidence. With Pratt his personal security would have been unavailing. Pratt tells you that he would not take anything from him unless it was the real security of an assignment of his horses or other property. Just see the interest which Palmer had in securing all Cook’s effects. My learned friend says they were mixed up together in transactions in which they had a joint and common interest—they were confederates upon the turf and had joint bets together. Yes; but one man putting another on does not mean that when A puts B on and says we are likely to make a good thing, and we will share it, that B is to pay A’s losings if they do not win. They might be confederates on the turf, but that did not make Cook responsible for Palmer’s liabilities. Does any one suppose that Cook intended to find the means to enable Palmer to meet Pratt’s insatiable demands, to stave off the difficulties in that quarter? Was Cook to deprive himself of his winnings, and leave himself without money, for the benefit of his friend? That is the proposition, for the whole of which my learned friend must contend before you before he can establish anything like a case to show that if Cook had lived it would have been better for Palmer than that he should die. My learned friend says there is proof that they were mixed up closely together to be found in this, that Cook writes to his agent, Fisher, and says to Fisher, writing on the Friday after he had dined with Palmer, “There is a matter which is of importance to Palmer and to me, that £500 should be paid to Mr. Pratt to-morrow; £300 has been sent down to-night, and I request you will be so good as to pay Mr. Pratt £200 to-morrow on my account, and charge it to me.” My learned friend thought that that transaction would be favourable to his client, and he put it prominently forward. To my mind he could have adduced nothing more fatal. The explanation of it is to me as clear as the sun at noonday. Cook had brought with him some £600 or £700; at least at Shrewsbury he was seen by Fisher with a roll of notes amounting to some £700 or £800. On the same evening the parties came to Rugeley, when he had not had time to spend the money. He speaks of a £500 transaction, in which he and Palmer have a joint interest. There is only that one transaction with Pratt in which they had a common interest, that was the £500 raised by the assignment of “Polestar,” and a bill, of which we say Cook never got the proceeds; and he says, writing on that night to Fisher, “£300 have been sent up to-night, and I will be obliged to you to pay the other £200 to make up the whole.” No £300 were ever sent up that night. Mr. Pratt has given an account of the whole transaction. £300 were to be sent that night; by whom were they to be sent? Can you doubt? Where is all Cook’s money gone? I can quite understand that he handed over £300 to Palmer to send up to Pratt, and directed Fisher to pay another £200. What followed in respect to the joint transaction? What was the joint transaction? they never had but one, and that was for £500. What was it? Why, it was the money which had been got by the assignment of “Polestar” and “Sirius”; “Polestar” had just won at Shrewsbury—it was natural that the man should desire to redeem his mare; moreover, the bill was coming due; he had the cash in his pocket, and he knew that he was going to receive money at Tattersall’s, which he never did; and he says, “£300 will be sent up to-night.” It is the only matter in which they have a common interest, not only as to the £500, but in any respect; Pratt had no other dealing whatever with them jointly or with Cook, if we except the bill for £500—what does it show? It shows that £300 had been sent for the purpose—he sends up £300, but how is it applied? Pause for a moment; the £300 is not sent up, Palmer keeps it in his pocket; what is done with the other £200? Is it carried to the account of the matter in which they had joint interest with Pratt? No such thing; it goes as part of the payment made by Palmer to Pratt on account of the bills which Pratt then held—it never went to any matter of joint interest—it is an idle and false pretence to say that Cook was in any way responsible to Pratt; it may have been the intention of Palmer when Cook should be no more to represent him as so, but there is no foundation in reality and in fact for the statement. I say the transaction of the £500, so far from helping the prisoner’s case, shows conclusively that the £200 advanced by Fisher, and the £300 to be sent up that night to satisfy this bill for £500, and the assignment to release “Polestar” and “Sirius,” was £500 more taken from this young man and appropriated by the prisoner to his own use.
Attorney-General
But the matter does not rest there—would it did. I come now to the transaction of the Monday, and I find £1020 of Cook’s money applied to the prisoner’s use. He goes up to London; he had ascertained by some means or other the amount that Cook was entitled to receive on the Monday—possibly Cook had told him; Fisher was Cook’s agent, and the probability is that Cook desired the prisoner to hand an account of his bets which he had won to Fisher, who would go and settle with the parties at Tattersall’s; Fisher would have to pay himself back the £200; we know that he intended his accounts should pass through Fisher, because he asked Fisher to advance the £200 upon the credit of it; but it is suggested that under the guidance of Palmer he now meditated a fraud, and that he intended to pass his account through Mr. Herring, in order to avoid paying Fisher the £200 for a time. Is it charitable to Mr. Cook to ascribe to him a fraud of this description, which, so far as we know, he was not in the habit of doing? I ask you this question as reasonable men, supposing he had disposed of his ready money, and we find none left—that he had given the prisoner £300 to send up, you cannot suppose that this man who had nothing of his fortune left, who sees ruin staring him in the face—he was not a ruined man as long as he had this money, but having parted with this money he was a ruined man—you cannot suppose that he intended to deprive himself of the whole of the money that he had won, to leave himself destitute and naked for the coming winter; the thing is out of the question—besides, if the prisoner’s representation is true which he made to Mr. Cheshire, that he had got the genuine cheque of this man for very nearly the amount, through his agents, Messrs. Wetherby, of the stakes at Shrewsbury, you are asked to believe on the one hand that he had given him his ready money, and on the other hand that he had given him a cheque to receive of Messrs. Wetherby, and that he had given him £1020, which constituted absolutely the whole that the poor man possessed—you are asked to believe that he hands it over to the prisoner to go and dispose of as he pleases—that is my learned friend’s proposition, but I do not think you will adopt it.
Attorney-General
Then, if that be not so, what does the prisoner do? He goes to London, but does not go to Fisher, who was the agent of Cook, who would, in the first place, have paid himself back the £200, and, in the second place, would not have paid the sums which he received except upon Cook’s authority and instruction, but would have sent the money to Cook, or have paid it upon Cook’s written direction as to what was to be done with it. He takes the account, therefore, to a comparative stranger, who never had acted for Mr. Cook before, feeling that that stranger would have no hesitation or repugnance in paying the money according to the direction of the man from whom he had the direction to receive it, supposing that both emanated from Mr. Cook, the person interested in the money. Accordingly he says to Mr. Herring, “Here is a list of bets which Cook will be entitled to be paid at Tattersall’s; they are so much, you dispose of it in this way; pay yourself £200”; it being the fact that Mr. Cook and the prisoner had before raised the sum, I think, of £600; £200 had been raised by Mr. Cook on his acceptance, and £400 had been raised on the acceptance of the prisoner. Mr. Cook’s portion had been paid off, but that of the prisoner remained unpaid. Palmer says to Mr. Herring, “Pay yourself £200, then go to Pratt’s and pay him £450; then go to Padwick and pay him £350.” Now, it is perfectly clear that the £450 was a debt due from Palmer to Pratt, and it is untrue that Cook had anything to do with it. The debt of £350 to Padwick was for some bet, and although it is not proved, I have reason to believe that the minor part of it was a debt of Cook’s, but the larger part was a debt of Palmer’s upon a matter in which they stood in together. There is evidence that Mr. Palmer treated the debt due to Padwick as his. He says, “I will pay you my bet of £350 at such a time.” I am giving him credit for what I believe was the fact, that a part of it was Cook’s. Why was Cook’s debt paid then? There was a warrant of attorney in the hands of Mr. Padwick, and Mr. Padwick was getting impatient for his £1000, and if this bet had not been paid to Mr. Padwick, Mr. Padwick would have resented the non-payment of the debt of honour which he had no means of enforcing, and would have come down upon Mr. Palmer, no doubt, at a very early period in respect of the £1000 due upon the bill dishonoured twelve months before. Exactly that came to pass—in consequence of Mr. Herring not receiving the whole of the money, he was not able to pay Mr. Padwick, and the result was that Mr. Padwick put the process of the law in motion against the prisoner on that bill, and brought an action against his mother. The bill for £1000 was the bill of Mr. Palmer, upon which Mr. Cook was not primarily liable. I say here was a distinct interest which the prisoner had to appropriate this money to himself, because it was the means for the moment, and the only means he could resort to, of staving off the evil hour which was rapidly approaching. The degree of difficulty in which he was placed must not be measured simply by the amount of his pecuniary liabilities. It was not merely that he had these large bills upon which at any moment process might be issued, but he had made his mother answerable for those bills, and the moment the first of them was put in motion in the Courts the fraud and forgery would come to light, and he would be exposed not merely to the consequences of his inability to pay his debts, but to the consequences of the law which he had violated. The former might have been got rid of in the Insolvent Court or the Bankruptcy Court, but the crime of forgery could not have been got rid of; for that he would have to answer at the bar of a Court of criminal justice, and would have incurred the penalty of transportation, or of penal servitude in an aggravated form. But there is a further sum besides the £1000; he appropriated a further sum of £350, which was to be got from Messrs. Wetherby. It is said that he got a genuine cheque from Cook to entitle him to receive that money, but it is not for a moment suggested what induced Cook to give it to him. Was it a genuine cheque? That matter might have been solved by its production. It is not produced; yet it is quite clear that it was returned to the prisoner’s hands by Messrs. Wetherby when they could not get the money. It is quite clear that it was of great importance to him to get the money, because there was £100 to be paid to Pratt, which must be paid in order to stave off the evil day upon the bill of £1500, which was due on the 9th of November. Where is that cheque? If it had been produced we could have seen whether it was a genuine cheque or not. It is not forthcoming. What are the circumstances under which he presents that cheque to Mr. Cheshire? He goes to Mr. Cheshire upon the Tuesday, and, having shown the cheque to Mr. Cheshire, he asks Mr. Cheshire to be so good as to fill up the body of it. I suppose he saw some manifestation of surprise in Mr. Cheshire, and he said, “Cook, poor fellow, is ill, and I am apprehensive if I fill up the body of the cheque Wetherbys will know my handwriting.” Why should not they know his handwriting? What objection was there, if the cheque was genuine, and if the transaction was an honest one, to Messrs. Wetherby knowing that the handwriting was his? Does not it pretty plainly indicate that there was some fraud going on which he was afraid might be detected? Why, in heaven’s name, should he send for Cheshire? He had to send for Cheshire from the post office when Cheshire was busily engaged in the business of the evening, at seven o’clock in the evening. Just about that same period, a little before or a little after, as the case may be, he had to meet Dr. Bamford and Mr. Jones in consultation as to Cook’s case. Mr. Jones was his intimate friend—the trusty friend that came over that afternoon. If poor Cook intended to give him the cheque, and was at the same time so ill that he could not write, why not have said to Mr. Jones, “Jones, I do not want to bother Cook to fill up this cheque, fill it up in my favour for £350, and we will get Cook to sign it?” Why should he send to the post office to get Cheshire down to his house, alleging at the time that he was apprehensive that if he filled it up his own handwriting might be known. Does not that transaction bear fraud upon the face of it? On the other hand, it may be a genuine cheque; but, I ask again, where is it? Between the time when these matters were called in question and the time when Mr. Palmer was finally arrested, not upon the criminal but upon the civil process, which came down unluckily for him before the coroner’s inquest, which secured his bodily presence to answer not only the pecuniary matters but these charges, in the interval he had undisturbed possession of his own papers. From the moment when that freedom of action and possession ceased, we have traced the possession of the papers; and it is clear that at the time those papers were taken possession of that cheque was not amongst them; it is clear that the prisoner, who had possession of it, must have dealt with it in some manner. What has become of it? Why is it not produced? Can you help drawing the inference from its non-production that there is something in the transaction that will not bear the light? It is clear that he intended to get possession of the £350, which ought to have been given to Cook, upon false pretences. He had not a farthing himself, for when he went to Shrewsbury races he borrowed £25. As I have shown, a person made a bet for him upon the races, and, having won £200, pressed him for the debt, but could not get another shilling from him. I show you that he comes back to Rugeley, and is from that moment in the possession of money. Where could he have got that money? It is clear that he must have got it from Cook, who had not any left himself; it is clear that he had all that money to the extent of £350, probably much more, and besides that he gets £1020 as the proceeds of the betting at Tattersall’s, and he attempts to get, but does not get, £375, which ought to have been paid into Messrs. Wetherbys’ hands. This was the whole of the worldly possessions, the whole sum of the wealth of this poor young man.
Attorney-General
But he is not satisfied with that—it is clear that he meditated another fraud of a different description. On the Friday, almost as soon as the breath is out of the man’s body, he intimates that he has a claim upon him for £3000 or £4000 in respect of bills which had his (Palmer’s) name or acceptance upon them, but which, in fact, had been negotiated for Cook’s purposes. He tells the same story to the father-in-law, but it is as clear as the sun at noonday that he endeavoured to fabricate an instrument to give a show of colour to those representations. He goes on the Thursday or the Friday to Mr. Cheshire, and brings to him a document which he asks him to attest, that document bearing the signature “J. P. Cook.” The man having left the body, and living only in the spirit eight-and-forty hours before that signature had been brought to be attested, who can fail to see that here was some great fraud and design meditated? What was the document? It was a document which purported to be an acknowledgment from Cook that certain large bills which had been negotiated were for Cook’s benefit, and for Cook’s benefit alone, and that he (Palmer) had had no part of the proceeds. Now, there are no such bills in existence. We have exhausted the bills pretty well, I think, and none such are proved to exist; but if there be any such bills in existence, who would know it better than the prisoner at the bar? He could have no difficulty in satisfying you of the fact, and of removing this great stumbling-block in the way of his defence; but he produces this document; and on the same day, the day that followed this poor man’s death, he writes to Pratt, and says, “Mind, I must have ‘Polestar’ if it can be arranged.” What was this scheme? Having got every shilling of the man’s money, his purpose was to secure the little property that remained in “Polestar,” the value of which he may perhaps to himself have considerably exaggerated. The mare had just won, and she might be supposed to be worth more than she had been, or he had in view speculating at other races to bring about results of benefit to himself. Further, he may have intended to pay out of Cook’s estate some of those bills, under the pretence that Cook had had the money for them. For all these purposes, from the beginning to the end, it was necessary that Cook should be put on one side. Then with this document in his hand he goes to Cheshire, and he asks Cheshire to attest the signature of a man who was then dead. If Cheshire had had the weakness and wickedness to comply he would have had him in his power; and the next thing would have been that he would have brought him trembling and reluctant into the witness-box of some Court of justice to swear to the fact that he had seen the dead man put his signature to that piece of paper. But it may be suggested that, after all, the document was a genuine one, and that the signature was not a forgery. Then produce it and we can judge. Here, again, I point out, and there is no escape from it, that the papers of the prisoner were in his possession till the time of his arrest, and they have been taken care of since then, and are here one and all, either to be answered for or produced in his presence, or they have been handed over to his brother. Who would not fail to notice that this paper has never been found or asked for? Who can doubt that that paper brought to Cheshire remained in the possession of the prisoner? Who can doubt that it is either destroyed or is purposely withheld? Under these circumstances who can doubt that in it is to be found proof of some meditated act—of some vast design of a fraudulent and flagitious character, for the full completion of which the death of Cook was a necessary thing?
Now, gentlemen, I have gone through that part of the case which relates to the motives of the prisoner, and it will be for you to say whether you are satisfied that this was a death by strychnia—that the prisoner was in possession of strychnia—that he had access to the dead man’s bedside, and that he administered pills to him at a period short enough to be capable of being connected with the catastrophe that afterwards happened; and it will be for you to say whether you do not find that the state of things with reference to pecuniary matters to which I have been just alluding is sufficient to account for the act which is ascribed to the prisoner.
Attorney-General