Serjeant Shee
For this purpose let us briefly, in a sentence or two, run over the facts. Cook died on Wednesday morning, the 21st of November, at one o’clock, in violent convulsions; he died in the presence of Mr. Jones. It was no sooner light than Jones posted up to town to see Cook’s stepfather and executor, Mr. Stevens, who came down, and was introduced to Palmer. Palmer took him up to the corpse, and uncovered the corpse to the thighs—brave man he must have been, if he was a murderer, to do that—uncovered the corpse to the thighs before him. Stevens observed the body, and wondered he could have died, he looked so calm, so composed, so well, so little emaciated; he observed, indeed, some slight rigidity about the muscles. I refer to his deposition. I am not sure whether Stevens’ deposition was read—but it is evidence supplied to us. He took his hand, and wondered that he should have died; his suspicions were immediately aroused. He dined that day at Rugeley, and asked Palmer to dinner with him, and 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 afterwards at the station at Euston Square, afterwards at Rugby, afterwards at Wolverton, again at Rugeley, and at last threw off the mask, and, addressing him in a tone to which I shall call your attention presently, gave Palmer clearly to understand that he suspected him, and intended to probe the whole matter to the very core. He resolved upon a post-mortem examination, and a post-mortem examination took place. The appearances which were presented at the death of Cook were such as might have been expected by those who had been acquainted with his course of life and his general health, his pursuits—it is a pity to say anything hard of him—his vices—I will not say more than this—his vices, and the company, the drinking, idle, racing company which he kept. His father had died at the age of thirty, his mother about the same age, a year or two after she had married Mr. Stevens; his brother was delicate, his sister was delicate; he was believed by his physicians to have something of a pulmonary complaint, and, when his body was opened, his lungs were found to be emphysematous, that is, their air vessels were distended with air. On further inquiry, for I take both the examinations together, it was found that for a length of time he had been troubled with a very ugly sore throat—a sore throat bad enough to render it necessary that it should be constantly touched with caustic, as well as his tongue; he would not have been able to swallow without it. The tonsils of his throat were at the very time he left for Shrewsbury races, though much better than they had been, sore and inflamed—one of them was very nearly gone, the other was very much reduced in size; and he knew so much better about himself and the cause of it all probably than his medical adviser, that he very much preferred mercury to any other specific for his complaint. He had, besides that, traces about his person which have been so often referred to, the result of disease, that they need not be more particularly mentioned than they have been already, as to the extent of which and the character of which some little doubt exists; but they did not come by an ordinary and chaste mode of life, you may depend upon it; and altogether, as far as it went, he seems to have been about as loose a young man as one is in the habit of meeting, without being utterly lost to all sense of honour and propriety, which I do not mean to suggest that he was.
Serjeant Shee
His body was opened; the soreness of his tongue was manifest; I rather collect that it was not actually sore at the time of his death—yet that there were what they call follicles, and symptoms, if not recent, at least not very ancient, of actual ulcers; the inside of his mouth, too, had been ulcerated, or the skin taken off by some sort of soreness attributed to decayed teeth. We all of us probably have decayed teeth; but that does not happen to us which happened to him—it was sore on both sides. The sores about his mouth he thought himself were syphilitic, and could not be persuaded by the very respectable gentleman, Dr. Savage, to attend readily to his advice. He thought he was not weak enough, I think he said fool enough, to take quack medicines; but weak enough to take the advice of any medical quack who had assurance enough to give advice to him, believing that the best thing for his complaint was mercury; and he was apprehensive, I believe, that what are the worst symptoms of that disease for which mercury is given, namely, spots upon the body, would make their appearance, and that possibly (I believe such things do happen) some day or other he would find on the morning of a race his face covered with large copper-coloured blotches, which would plainly show what life he had been leading. That was the sort of man he was. Many such a man has reformed and become a good and respectable member of society. I should be sorry to say anything unduly harsh upon a man who is gone; but the state of his health is a material subject for our inquiry here. It is plain that he had in his own opinion been affected by virulent syphilis, and that that had not corrected his habits, for he had become recently diseased. The medical men who attended him before concurred in this opinion; and when his body was opened, in addition to all those plainer symptoms of illness to the eye, on the second post-mortem examination, there was between the delicate membrane which covers the spinal marrow, and which is called the arachnoid, I believe—I think I am right—there was pressing upon the arachnoid, and embedded to some extent in the next covering, not so delicate, though still delicate, called the dura mater, granules, as given in evidence, of such an extent as I will satisfy you by men competent to inform you would, if his body had been opened in the dead-house of any hospital in this metropolis, have been said and determined to be the cause of his death.
Such was the condition of Cook, only partially discovered on the post-mortem examination which took place at the desire of the executor, Mr. Stevens. That examination was not conducted with that entirety, so to speak—with that thorough determination to investigate the whole matter—that afterwards was thought to be necessary.
Serjeant Shee
Dr. Taylor attends the coroner’s inquest, which is held in consequence, I presume, of his letter. I do not know whether that is so or not, but in consequence of suspicions entertained, and probably in consequence of the letter which he sent in answer to Mr. Stevens’ inquiries, and he hears the evidence of Jones, and of Mills, and of Roberts, and of others; but I call your attention to the evidence of those three witnesses, because I think, in fairness to Dr. Taylor, it must be presumed that they principally influenced his opinion. Now, then, I say that upon the loose evidence of chambermaids, and waitresses, and housekeepers, against the opinion of the medical man who attended Cook in his last illness, or, at any rate, with no encouragement, as I will satisfy you presently (for there is an observation to be made upon that)—with no encouragement from the medical man, Mr. Jones, the surgeon at Lutterworth, who was of an age and character, having seen the whole illness, to form an opinion upon the matter—Dr. Taylor, having heard the evidence of Elizabeth Mills, and the evidence of Mr. Jones, and of Roberts, came at once boldly to the conclusion that his notion that antimony was the cause of death was a mistake; and he had the incredible imprudence—an imprudence which has led to all this dreadful excitement—an imprudence which has rendered it necessary that this inquiry should take place in this form and in this place, if at all—to state upon his oath before that jury that he believed that the pills which were administered to Cook on the Monday and Tuesday night contained strychnia, and that Cook was poisoned by it.
Serjeant Shee
Allow me for a moment to ask your attention to what the real character of that opinion was. That opinion as delivered was irrevocable. By it Taylor’s reputation was staked against Palmer’s life. Instantly followed by the verdict of wilful murder it flew upon the wings of the Press into every house in the United Kingdom. It became known that, according to the opinion of a man whose whole life had been devoted to science, a gentleman of personal character perfectly unimpeachable, a man who stood well with his friends in the medical profession—that on his opinion, not conjectural, not delivered, as an opinion of the kind might properly be delivered, in a private room, to persons on whose discretion reliance was placed, but delivered upon oath in a public room, in the public inn of a little village where everything that took place was known—and he must have known, I cannot but think, that suspicions had been, as I say, and as I think you will be satisfied unduly, excited about the death of Walter Palmer—that, according to his opinion, Cook’s death had been caused by strychnia. “In fact,” said Dr. Taylor, “though I find no trace of strychnia, and though there is nothing to induce me to believe that there is strychnia in the body, except the suggestion that on the Tuesday Palmer bought it off Roberts” (which would not account in any way, supposing the mere purchase of strychnia could account for anything, for the paroxysm on Monday night), “yet, having heard that evidence, knowing that I have failed to discover the presence of strychnia, I will undertake upon my oath to say, and on my credit publish to the whole world, that the pills which were given to him on Monday and Tuesday night contained strychnia, and that he died from that poison.” Observe what it amounts to. It ascertains, not upon scientific, or well-informed, or consistent testimony, but upon testimony ill-informed, of the humblest class, the least fitted to detail accurately the symptoms of such a disease as it is imputed to be, on evidence not consistent with itself, as respects the evidence of Elizabeth Mills in all particulars, or with the evidence of a much better informed person, Mr. Jones, or with the opinion of Mr. Jones—it ascertains, and pronounces positively, that the disease of which Cook died was not simply convulsions of a tetanic form, however violent—not convulsions with many features of tetanus, but that it was actual tetanus, and that description of it which could only be caused by one poison, and that poison strychnia. That is the evidence—he lays that down as a proposition on which he is perfectly satisfied to rest, and on that the verdict goes.
Serjeant Shee