We come to the actual scene of Cook’s death on the Tuesday night. There was a consultation of the three doctors in Cook’s presence at seven o’clock. Cook suddenly said to Palmer, “Palmer, I will have no more medicine to-night; no more pills.” It was arranged that the pills should be made up as before without Cook knowing what they contained. Palmer went with Mr. Bamford to the latter’s surgery for the pills, and Mr. Bamford was surprised at Palmer’s asking him to write the directions on the box, as Palmer himself was to give the pills, but he did so. Palmer took the pills, and they were in his possession three-quarters of an hour before he returned to the Talbot. On opening the box he called the attention of Mr. Jones to the directions, saying “How wonderful it was that a man of eighty should write so good and strong a hand.” Cook at first refused to take the pills, but Palmer insisted, and Cook took them. They were taken about half-past ten. A little before twelve o’clock Jones, who was to sleep in Cook’s room, came in and undressed, and went to bed. In fifteen or twenty minutes he was roused by a scream from Cook, who called out, “For God’s sake, fetch the doctor, I am going to be ill as I was last night.”
I shall not set out the symptoms of Cook throughout this attack which ended in his death. They were the battle-ground of the case, and the scientific evidence must be referred to the reader’s consideration. But the length of time from the administration of the pills to the first outcry of Cook must be particularly noted. The defence urged that strychnia could not possibly be so long in taking effect. This and the non-detection of strychnia in the body were the two chief difficulties of the prosecution.
On Thursday or Friday, the 22nd or 23rd, after Cook’s death Palmer sent again for Cheshire, and, producing a paper with Cook’s signature, purporting to be an acknowledgment by Cook that £4000 worth of bills had been negotiated for Cook’s benefit, asked him to sign it as witness. Cheshire refused, exclaiming, “Good God! the man is dead!” The prosecution asserted Cook’s signature to be a forgery; they gave notice to produce the document, and this was not done.
We come to the appearance in Rugeley of Mr. Stevens, Cook’s stepfather. His conversations with Palmer on money matters, his suspicions aroused by the appearance of the body, Palmer’s ordering a coffin without his orders, and especially the fact that Cook’s betting book and other papers had disappeared, with Palmer’s evasions about them, all put him on the alert. Besides, at the time, the inquiries by the insurance office were going on in the neighbourhood about Walter Palmer’s death. On Saturday, the 24th, both Stevens and Palmer had left Rugeley to go to London, Stevens to consult his London solicitor, Palmer to pay Pratt another £100, he, as the prosecution pointed out, not having had any money at Shrewsbury, and having lost on the races there. Stevens and Palmer met in the train on the return journey, and Stevens told Palmer that he was determined to have a post-mortem and to employ a solicitor to investigate.
The post-mortem, the chemical analysis, the coroner’s inquest, and the trial followed. In the meantime Padwick had arrested Palmer for the debt on his bills, the story of his mother’s forged acceptances became known, and the Palmer case of 1855-6 became as intense a source of popular curiosity and excitement as the Crippen case of 1910. To the circumstances of the Cook case were also added the exhumations of Palmer’s wife and brother, and the public inquiries relating to them, and the rumours that Palmer had poisoned many others.
I shall not attempt to give the facts as to the post-mortem and the analysis. It would be a futile effort. Not a fact was undisputed either by one side or the other, and the value of the evidence, for the reader, consists in the exercise of the patience and memory and judgment required to master their complicated details, and to see the relations of one fact to another. In the speech for the defence by Mr. Serjeant Shee, and the final speech by Sir Alexander Cockburn, he will further see how the same facts may be rendered for opposite purposes by advocates of the first rank.
The trial marked an important step in English criminal procedure. In the ordinary course Palmer would have been tried by an Assize Court in Staffordshire, but the prejudice against him there was so strong that it was felt he would not have a fair trial. An Act was therefore passed, the 19 Vict. cap. 16, for enabling the trial to take place at the Central Criminal Court in London. Since then that Act has been available in any similar circumstances. To the magnitude and difficulty of the Palmer case must be assigned the reason for three judges, Lord Chief Justice Campbell, Mr. Justice Cresswell, and Mr. Baron Alderson being appointed to try it: a very rare occurrence in England. The bar on each side was remarkably strong. Sir Alexander Cockburn became the successor of Lord Campbell; Mr. Edward James, Q.C., was one of the most brilliant advocates of his day, and was only prevented from rising to the highest professional honours by certain private incidents in his career which happened subsequently; Mr. Huddleston became Baron Huddleston; Mr. Bodkin and Mr. Welsby were the leading men of their time in the special practice of the Old Bailey. Mr. Serjeant Shee, the leader for the defence, became Mr. Justice Shee, and Mr. Grove, Q.C., who was one of the most distinguished physicists of his day, and wrote a famous book on “The Conservation of Energy,” became Mr. Justice Grove. Mr. Kenealey was subsequently the famous Dr. Kenealey, the counsel for the Tichborne claimant, a man of great learning and natural genius, inferior to none of his professional contemporaries.
In an English criminal trial an inquiry into the family history of the accused, or into his personal character and previous career, has no place unless insanity is in issue. Such matters were rigidly excluded from the trial of Palmer. This trial as it stands is simply a great forensic contest famous in the records of the criminal law. The criminal himself is, as it were, an abstraction or automaton, his acts are only taken into account as part of certain outward events which enter into the general body of circumstances connected with the particular case. The motive is investigated, but strictly in relation to the particular crime; and in atrocious crimes the pecuniary motive always seems inadequate. Deadly hate or fierce passion, or an access of unreasoning fear in some circumstances, may be more intelligible. Yet such crimes seem always inexplicable, unless we can refer them to some abnormality in the character of the criminal himself, and either ascribe it to his ancestry or deduce it from his own doings outside the culminating crime which he commits. The normal man, we say, does not become base at a stroke.
In Palmer’s case there is available evidence of both kinds bearing on abnormality. It may not amount to insanity. It may be only the “wickedness” of which Sir James Stephen speaks in a quotation given below. Whatever it may be called, it is traceable in Palmer throughout his life.
Palmer’s father was a wealthy man who died worth £70,000, at Rugeley, in Staffordshire, Palmer’s birthplace. The origin of this fortune began with his maternal grandfather, who had been associated with a woman in Derby whom he deserted, taking with him some hundreds of pounds said to belong to her. In Lichfield he became prosperous and respectable. His daughter married the elder Palmer, who was at the time a sawyer, a rude, uneducated man. A previous suitor of Mrs. Palmer had been the steward of the Marquis of Anglesea. The two men were intimate after the marriage, and associated in dealings with the Anglesea timber; and to these dealings, and similar ones with stewards of other estates, the elder Palmer’s wealth was attributed by the country tradition. After her husband’s death Mrs. Palmer used her freedom in several love affairs that caused scandal. One of these was with Jeremiah Smith, the attorney, Palmer’s associate in many nefarious transactions, who was called for the defence, and was cross-examined mercilessly by the Attorney-General on his relations with Mrs. Palmer.