Dr Palmer's creditors had all gathered together like a flock of vultures, and on January 21st, 1856, his broodmares, horses in training and yearlings, came up for auction. We were present to witness that interesting occasion.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For a Fortnight Photographic Portraits ★
C. Allen
Respectfully informs the Ladies, Gentry & Inhabitants of Rugeley and elsewhere that he can produce A Very Superior Photographic Portrait in gilt and other frames FROM ONE SHILLING TO ONE GUINEA and invites their patronage at the rear of PREMISES LATELY OCCUPIED BY W. PALMER
★
Specimens may be seen at Mr James's, Bookseller ★
Commencing at 10 o'clock Mornings until 6 in the Evening. Rugeley, June 2nd, 1856 ★
-------------------------------------------------------------
At Hyde Park Corner, close to where carriages and horsemen enter the Park, and where the mob stands roaring and screaming to see Her Majesty the Queen drive by in her landau—not far, in fact, from Decimus Burton's Arch topped by that formidable equestrian statue of the late Field-Marshal the Duke of Wellington—you will find Tattersall's Ring, the sanctum sanctorum of all Turfites. It is a haunt as familiar to the young Yorkshire tyke as to the finest swell in London: a name as suggestive of good faith, honour, prompt payments, splendid horseflesh and noble company as it is of swindling, robbery, non ests, defaulting, levanting, screws and blackguards.
There's a sporting air hangs about 'The Corner', from the red-jacketed touts who hang around its entrance to the shrewd cast of the auctioneer's countenance. We went down the yard, already filling at the news that Dr Palmer's nags would come under the hammer, and hundreds who had no intention whatever of bidding, were assembled there through curiosity. Here they stood: gentle and simple, young and elderly, peers of the Realm, gentry, tradesmen and legs. That lanky old man with the fine aristocratic face, and neck swathed in the thick white choker, is a clergyman, and as thorough a sportsman as ever stepped; nor are his sermons any the worse for that. The dirty little man in the brown coat is a viscount, exceedingly rich but so mean that he is said to go through the refuse bins outside his former club, from which he has been ejected, searching avidly for remnants of lobster and crayfish, which he grudges to buy for himself. Yonder goes the 'Leviathan' of the Ring, Bill Davies, tall and thin, dressed entirely in black, with a blue speckled handkerchief about his throat. He started life as a carpenter, and his word is now good for £50,000; beside him walks young Frank Swindell, another commission-agent, wearing a bunch of early violets in his buttonhole. Both of them have made the same discovery, that, in the long run, straight dealing pays even in the betting ring. Since they scorn 'daylight robbery', which is to encourage betters to lay money on dead 'uns—horses that will never run—engineers of dirty work no longer trouble to approach them.
Tattersall's stables are the acme of neatness and cleanliness. Here to the right is the Subscription Room, into which we might not go; instead we visited a public house mainly frequented by little grooms and jockeys, and listened to their gossip. 'The Rugeley Poisonings' were all the talk, and feeling ran high, the sporting fraternity being about equally divided between pro's and con's. Some swore that Billy Palmer was a bold sportsman, a good loser, and a generous friend; others that he was Ananias, Cain and Judas Iscariot rolled into one.
'He's far lower than an animal, and worth a deal less,' cries a ferret-faced stableboy to Young Ashmole the jockey, 'and I'll undertake to prove it—at even money in half-sovereigns!'
'Done,' Young Ashmole answers, 'let the landlord hold the stakes and be umpire.'
'Well,' says Ferret Face, 'Palmer was denied entrance to Tattersall's, now wasn't he? And a horse is an animal, isn't it? Well, there's seventeen of his horses admitted today where he wasn't, and a couple of 'em will sell for well over five hundred guineas, and none for lower than fifty. Well, what's Palmer worth now? There's bills for fifteen thousand pounds out against him, and ten thousand of 'em won't be met. And as for his life, I wouldn't back his chances to live the year out, not at a hundred to one.'
Young Ashmole, defeated by this crude logic, which satisfied the landlord and raised loud cheers at the bar, paid up sulkily; but, having done so, he soused Ferret Face with a mug of beer full in his grinning phiz.
Bidding at the auction was spirited, and very high prices were realized. Prince Albert's name has already appeared in our account of the other auction, if only as a metaphor; here we heard it used in a direct and practical manner. For Major Grove, Her Majesty's Commissioner from the Royal Paddocks, bought Trickstress, an eight-year-old mare, for 230 guineas on Prince Albert's behalf. Strange to relate, though the Major appeared anxious to secure Nettle, a decidedly superior animal, in the end he let her go to Mr F. L. Popham for 430 guineas. (Nettle, it will be recalled, was favourite for the Oaks last year, and her tumble over the chains sealed Dr Palmer's financial doom.) The Chicken went for 800 guineas to Mr Harlock, who has since changed her name to 'Vengeance'. In the aggregate, the sale amounted to £3,906, which included the high price of 590 guineas for a three-year-old filly, by Melbourne out of Seaweed, which fell to Mr Sargent.
While Dr Palmer was attempting suicide by starvation, the bodies of his wife and brother were exhumed, and Coroner's inquests held on them. In the first case, Annie Palmer's, the gaseous exudations of the corpse had, since the fifteen months of burial, escaped through the fibre of the oaken coffin and left the corpse comparatively dry. Dr Monckton made the post-mortem examination, and again the organs were sent to Professor Taylor, who reported antimony in the stomach, liver and kidneys and judged that death was due to this antimony administered in the form of tartar emetic, and to no other cause. The jury found Dr Palmer guilty of wilful murder.
Exceptionally distressing was the post-mortem done on Walter Palmer s body. He had been buried in a lead coffin and, the wooden shell being removed, a hole was bored through the lid. At once a most noxious effluvia permeated the entire Talbot Inn. Fifteen of the persons present, including seven of the jury, were seized with nausea, and some of them remained seriously indisposed for the next two or three days. The lid being opened, the corpse wore a terrible aspect, being a mass of corruption, dropsy and gangrene. Professor Taylor was inclin ed to think that death was caused by prussic acid, though he could find no trace of the poison in the organs sent him for analysis; and though Dr Day, who had signed the death certificate, testified that he had not smelt the telltale fumes of prussic acid on the dying man's breath, but only those of brandy! Dr Day stood firmly by his original opinion that death was due to apoplexy, consequent on excessive drinking. Since Drs Monckton, Harland, Campbell, Hughes and Waddell supported Dr Day, Professor Taylor felt it wise not to press his view.
Nevertheless, when the case came before the Coroner, the jury, instigated by Mr Hawkins, the chemist, who had been chaffed a good deal for having supplied Dr Palmer with enough poison to destroy the whole parish, brought in yet another verdict of wilful murder. Walter's widow, Mrs Agnes Palmer, had attended the Court, but was so broken by grief that the Coroner led her to a private room where he took her evidence in the presence of the Foreman and the Clerk. Among others who appeared were George Palmer, the solicitor, who told the Court: 'Mr Hawkins feels rancour towards my brother, and will, I am sure, find him guilty of murder whatever the evidence. At my brother's sale, Mr Hawkins bought a medical book, to use against him when he comes to be tried on the equally false charge of poisoning his friend, the late Mr Cook.'
Pratt, the moneylender, was also called, because he held Walter Palmer's life insurance policy as collateral security for Dr Palmer's debts to him, and because he had approached the insurance companies on the Doctor's behalf; which led him to be suspected of complicity in the supposed murder. The Coroner and jury asked him searching questions; denounced his rate of interest—sixty per cent a year—as usurious; and treated him so roughly that at last he
screamed in falsetto, tears of rage streaming down his plump face: 'How can you ask such questions of a family man with three young children and a dear wife, who will probably be ruined by this affair? I lost over four thousand pounds through Palmer!'
The Court burst into loud laughter.
This, however, was not yet the end of the matter, for at the next Stafford Assizes the Grand Jury threw out the bill against Dr Palmer for wilful murder of his brother Walter, finding the evidence insufficient.
Now, if it is asked why Professor Taylor had been so ready to name prussic acid as the cause of dcadi, the answer is clear. A detective, employed by Mr Stevens to make inquiries at Wolverhampton, discovered that on the Monday before Walter's death, while the race-meeting was in progress there, the Doctor had visited a chemist's shop and bought a quantity of prussic acid and jalap from the assistant. Mr Stevens acquainted Professor Taylor with this news, and the evidence which the assistant gave at the inquest, supporting Professor Taylor's seemingly unaided diagnosis, prompted the verdict of wilful murder. But George Palmer prudently took the precaution of checking the Poison Book and found no entry, on the date concerned, referring to prussic acid. He then threatened to indict the assistant for perjury—a crime which carries the statutory punishment of transportation—if he would not publicly withdraw his statement. This the young man hastened to do, though transportation has, of course, been suspended since 1846, when the authorities of Van Diemen's Land, overwhelmed by a horde of idle and depraved convicts, far outnumbering the free settlers, begged the Government to send no more. The probability is that the assistant had made Dr Palmer a present of the prussic acid, just as Newton did; and that the Doctor intended to use it on other owners' horses—for it can at least be said that he always ran his own to win.
While held in Stafford Gaol, Dr Palmer was only once allowed outside the building. On January 21st, policemen escorted him to Westminster where he appeared as a witness at a trial in which Padwick, the moneylender, was plaintiff, and old Mrs Palmer defendant. (This, it will be recalled, was the day artfully chosen by the managers of Tattersall's to put the 'all-yellow' horses under the hammer; the coincidence excited high bidding.) Padwick was trying to recover a £2,000 loan, in the form of a bill which apparently bore old Mrs Palmer's acceptance. She denied the handwriting, and was supported in this by three of her children: Mr George Palmer, the Rev. Thomas Palmer, and Miss Sarah Palmer. The dramatic appearance of Dr Palmer, who had presented the bill to Padwick, caused quite a stir. The door of the Judge's private room was thrown open and he entered, cool and collected, in the custody of a large and muscular police officer. From the witness box he leisurely surveyed the crowded audience, to some of whom he gave a familiar nod, before fixing his attention on a person located between him and the learned counsel who conducted Mrs Palmer's case. This was a young red-haired woman, believed to have been the same Jane Widnall, or Smirke, lately-returned a widow from Australia, who had first seduced him from the narrow path of virtue. She afterwards applied for a seat at the murder trial, but the demand being too great, failed of her expectation.
Dr Palmer was then sworn and answered the following questions in a low, yet firm and distinct voice, without betraying the least hesitation or nervousness.
mr edwin james (handing him the bill of exchange). Is the signature 'William Palmer' as the drawer of this bill in your handwriting?
dr palmer. Yes.
mr james. And you applied to Padwick to advance you money on it?
dr palmer. I did.
mr james. Who wrote Mrs Sarah Palmer's acceptance on it?
dr palmer. Ann Palmer.
mr james. Who is she?
dr palmer. She is now dead.
mr james. Do you mean your wife?
dr palmer. Yes.
mr james. Did you see her write it?
dr palmer. Yes.
A shudder went through the audience. That a man should accuse his dead wife of a crime which he had himself forced upon her, seemed a heartless proceeding; yet, she being dead and past caring, his chief concern was to preserve his mother's esteem. She had assured Jeremiah Smith that 'my Billy would never seek to rob me', nor was she disappointed; his honest confession of fraud now saved her two thousand pounds, for Mr Padwick's Counsel saw no course open to him but retirement from the case. The jury found in favour of old Mrs Palmer, and the prisoner was hurried back to Euston Square station.
It is an ironical circumstance that Mr Padwick, half an hour earlier, had purchased two of the Doctor's horses: a bay yearling colt, by Touchstone out of the Duchess of Kent, at 230 guineas; and a brown yearling filly, by Touchstone out of Maid o' Lyme, at 250 guineas. He swore that had he known how the case would go, he'd never have 'bought hoof or hair of that twister's bloodstock'.
Chapter XIX
UNRELIABLE WITNESSES
DR PALMER'S younger brothers, George the solicitor, and Thomas the Anglican clergyman, had cooled off considerably towards him of late years; yet kept the peace to please old Mrs Palmer. Since she never disguised her fondness for 'my roguish Billy', they did not vex her by evincing their repugnance for him; in part, no doubt, because she was worth some seventy thousand pounds, but principally because she was their mother. When the Police arrested the Doctor on a charge of murder, they at once rallied to his defence. Neither of them, from their long experience of him, could bring himself to believe in the charge; nor, being respectable citizens, would they consent to be known as the brother of a murderer, without doing everything that might he in their power to wipe out this stigma. Old Mrs Palmer, though repudiating the debts which Dr Palmer had incurred in her name, promised to engage the best lawyers available.
George secured Mr John Smith of Birmingham—the famous 'Honest John Smith of Brum'—as solicitor for the Defence, and consulted with him as to what leading Counsel should be retained. John Smith swore that the most suitable man in all England would be Mr Serjeant Wilkins, Q.C., who had enjoyed a medical education until taking to the Law, and could therefore confidently handle the abstruse evidence expected. Serjeant Wilkins agreed to act; and appeared for them in January when, in the suit brought by Padwick, Dr Palmer admitted having forged his mother's acceptances to the bills—but, three weeks before the trial, he threw up his brief, pleading ill health. In point of fact, we understand, the duns were after him; and it was with difficulty that he escaped by fishing-smack to Dieppe. This came as a great disappointment to John Smith. Having failed to secure the services of Sir Frederick Thesiger, who had been Attorney-General during the Peel administration, he fell back on an Irishman, Mr Serjeant Shee,
Q.C., M.P. for Kilkenny. Serjeant Shee, though an able barrister is, however, a devout Roman Catholic.
More than a quarter of a century has elapsed since the disabilities from which Romanists suffered in Britain were removed by Act of Parliament, but a strong prejudice against them still undeniably pervades public life. Mr Smith dared not hope that the jury would remain ignorant of Serjeant Shee's faith (this anti-Catholic sentiment being particularly rife among London tradespeople of the Roundhead tradition), if only because he had been
prominent as an advocate of Emancipation, and had of late spoken very forcibly in Parliament on the subject of the late potato famine in Ireland and the absentee Protestant landlords. Yet this prejudice seemed unlikely to affect the Bench. True, Lord Chief Justice Campbell, a Scottish 'son of the manse', had read Divinity, rather than Law, at St Andrews University, and might well regard all Roman Catholics as eternally damned. But Mr Baron
Alderson was known as a humane judge, anxious to restrict capital punishment, and Mr Smith counted on him and Mr Justice Cresswell, to restrain the Lord Chief Justice if he showed undue animus towards either Serjeant Shee or the prisoner.
Nevertheless, the Usher of the Central Criminal Court assured us on the first day of the trial: 'Sir, Dr Palmer will swing, you may be bound.'
Upon our questioning him, we were told familiarly: 'I know Jack Campbell's hanging
face well, and his hanging manner.'
"What is that?' we asked.
'His hanging face, Sir, is bland and benignant, and his hanging manner unctuous. As soon as the prisoner entered the dock and Lord Campbell invited him to be seated, I would have offered long odds against his chances of life.'
'But it takes twelve good and true men to hang a criminal,' we insisted, 'and there are a couple of other judges on the bench beside the Lord Chief Justice.'
He shook his head sagely.' Sir Cresswell Cresswell is a humane and honest man,' he pronounced, 'but Alderson would as lief hang Shee as he would Palmer. Those two legal gentlemen have always been at loggerheads, I can't say why—it may be a political disagreement, it may be a personal one. Moreover, Attorney-General Cockburn is a beloved compatriot of Jack Campbell's, and he's out to destroy Palmer. Even if the pair of them weren't as thick as thieves, it would take a mighty firm Lord Chief Justice to handle a determined Attorney-General. Cocky, you know, is due for his judgeship any day now and wishes to make this a memorable farewell to the Bar—a savages' feast day with fireworks, drums, bloody sacrifices and all. So that's three of them teamed together—Jack Campbell, Alderson and Cocky! They can do what they list, for the Under-Sheriffs have a hand-picked jury ready to serve them. Will you dare lay against Palmer's conviction?'
'I'm not a betting man,' was our cautious answer.
The twelve-day trial, which opened on May 14th, 1856, was memorable not only for brilliant forensic displays by the prosecuting and defending Counsel, but also, as we shall not hesitate to point out, for a singular conflict of evidence and surprising irregularities in judicial procedure.
On the opening day the Attorney-General promised to show that Dr Palmer was financially interested in murdering John Parsons Cook, and that, having weakened his system with tartar emetic both at Shrewsbury and at Rugeley, he purchased strychnia at the latter town and administered it in the form of pills, substituting these for the rhubarb, calomel and morphia pills which Dr Bamford had prescribed. No strychnia had been found in Cook's body, yet the Attorney-General insisted (with leave from Professor Taylor) that strychnia, being rapidly absorbed into the system, evades detection in the tissues of its victim, and that Cook's symptoms were consistent with strychnine poisoning.