Alderman Sidney was hardly to be envied: as the sole Rugeley man present in that distinguished gathering, and one whose father had opposed the Lord Chief Justice, then Mr John Campbell, when he stood for Parliament as member for Stafford in 1830. Being suspected of partisanship, the Alderman must needs dissociate himself absolutely from Dr Palmer—the son of his former patron, old Joseph Palmer, the sawyer—as the vilest of vile men, wholly untypical of Rugeley; and whimper more excitedly on his trail than the Attorney-General himself. This prejudice against the prisoner supplied seats in Court, by order of Lord Campbell, to all the medical witnesses whom the Crown called; whereas those called for the Defence, however highly they might rank professionally, must stand meekly in the crowded aisles, day after day, during the eight or nine hours of the hearing!
Here we may mention that the book bought by Hawkins at Dr Palmer's sale, and produced at the trial, was a work entitled Manual for Students Preparing for Examination at Apothecaries' Hall. It contained a pencilled note, evidently written in his student days: 'Strychnine kills by causing a tetanic fixing of the respiratory muscles.' The Attorney-General insisted that he attached no great value to this note; but did so in an apologetic manner which left a directly opposite impression on the minds of the jurymen.
It came as a general surprise that two further witnesses for the Defence were missing: namely Eliza Tharm, who could have sworn that Dr Palmer did not make up the pills on that Monday evening in the surgery between 9 and 10.30; and old Mrs Palmer, whom he had visited in Jeremiah Smith's company at about 10.15. We have already shown why Mrs Palmer's tongue was tied: the Prosecution would have put in the shamelessly lascivious
[224] letters she had written to Cornelius Duffy, and represented her as a woman of bad character.
Let Eliza Tharm tell in her own words, as she told us, why her tongue was likewise tied.
ELIZA THARM
When dear Mrs Annie Palmer died, the Doctor was so broken in spirit that I felt exceedingly sorry. Indeed, I loved him with all my heart, and gave him all I had to give. He used to call me his 'little missus', and treated me very sweetly, though he said he was not as yet in a position to make me his wife. Race-going took him away a deal; and that he slept with other girls I knew—for example, one Jenny Mumford, whom he got with child and had to buy off. But that he loved mc best, I knew also; and he gave me his solemn promise not to go with any that had a nasty disease.
Well, among his friends was a Miss Bergen, supposed to be a respectable girl, who had written some very randy letters, inviting him into her bed. Says I: 'Doctor, don't mind me! When you're over at Stafford with Mr Walter and can't get back home to my arms, well, I know how you hate sleeping alone . ..'
So he kissed me and called me an angel, for he knew what I meant.
'But mind,' I told him, 'I don't want to hear about what you and she do together! It might make me jealous.'
The Doctor comes to me one day in a great pother. 'Lizzie, my duck,' he says, 'I'm in trouble with that Stafford girl. She's in pod and wants me for her husband. But I promised you that I wouldn't marry anyone save your little self; so here you'll have to advise me.'
'It's no business of mine, Doctor,' says I. 'Do as you think fit.'
Well, he wrote to Miss Bergen, giving the name of an abortionist who would be as silent as the grave; and the baby was turned away, with nobody none the wiser. But when she wrote that her 'stomach ache', as she called it, had got better, the cold tones of his answer warned her she had no hope of becoming Mrs Palmer. So Miss Bergen threatened to show her father the letters he had written. Now, that was serious, because he was none other than Mr Daniel Scully Bergen, Chief Superintendent of the Stafford Rural Constabulary! First the girl demanded a hundred pounds for their return, and then fifty; but in the end she settled for forty, and he gave her the halves of four ten-pound notes, undertaking to send the others when all the letters were safe in his hands. The money he paid her was part of the sum that he had from Mr Cook to settle bills owing in London. Well, when Captain Hatton made the arrest, Dr Palmer called me and said privately: 'Lizzie, pray do me a service. Take this packet to Miss Bergen. In it are the other halves of those four ten-pound notes. They're no good to me, and I'd rather keep my word even to a bad woman.'
So I went, and right glad I am that I did, as it turned out. You may know that when they took him away, he gave me a fifty-pound note, all the money he had, bless his kind soul! Captain Hatton tried to take it from me, but I wouldn't give it up. He says: 'Mr Stevens has a list of the numbers of all the ten-pound and fifty-pound notes paid to Mr Cook at Shrewsbury, and this will be one of them. It s wanted as evidence.'
The Doctor turns very coolly to Captain Hatton and says: 'I think you'll be wise to leave Miss Eliza in possession of the note.'
'And why, may I ask?' the Captain wants to know.
'I'll tell you why,' Dr Palmer answers. 'The money was entrusted to mc by Mr Cook, not stolen from him and, with his consent, I sent four of the ten-pound notes to pay off a young lady who has been blackmailing me because of some foolish letters I wrote her.'
'That's no concern of mine,' says the Captain.
'By your leave, Sir, it should be,' retorts the Doctor. 'The young lady is the daughter of a colleague of yours; and the letters show that she wanted the money to pay for an illegal operation.'
At this point I break into their conversation: 'Yes, Captain Hatton,' I says, 'it's true. I brought her the other halves of the notes—for the Doctor had sent only half-notes to make sure she'd play fair—and watched while she gummed them together and went to change them at the bank. The bank clerks, they'll have taken the numbers, I've no doubt, and the notes can be traced to her.'
This piece of news seemed to dismay the Captain, so I went on: 'Come, Sir, your hand on the bargain! You leave me with this fifty-pound note, which I'll change at the same bank, and trust me to keep silent.'
'Nobody would believe a word of what you say, you common slut,' Captain Hatton shouts.
'Now, just for that,' says I, quiet but very vexed, 'I've a good mind to do what I first thought of doing, which is to sell the young lady's blackmailing letters to The Illustrated Times. I could get another fifty pounds for them quite easy.'
'Where are they?' the Captain asks threateningly.
'Ah, wouldn't you like to know?' I answers, laughing in his face, I was so emboldened by rage.
The Captain grins back at me and says: 'You're a smart lass.' Then we shake hands on our bargain. But he turns to the Doctor and growls: 'This smart trick of yours isn't going to help you, Palmer!'
The Doctor answers, most polite: 'I trust that you'll do nothing dishonourable, Captain Hatton. The Stafford Constabulary have a high reputation for fair dealing, you know.'
Chapter XXI
IF DOCTORS DISAGREE .. .
WQE refer our readers to The Times's verbatim report for details of the plentiful and complicated medical evidence offered. Dr Bamford, suffering (curiously enough) from English cholera, the very disease to which he had attributed the late Annie Palmer's death, was unable to attend the trial, but made a sworn statement to the effect that the antimony which Professor Alfred Taylor found in Cook's organs had not been prescribed by himself in the form of tartar emetic.
So far, so good; then the egregious Professor Taylor mounted into the witness box. He had at first diagnosed antimony as the cause of death, though discovering only half a grain, which is no more than most of us healthy modern men carry about in our vitals, without trouble or hazard. He conveyed this opinion to Mr Gardiner in the letter which Cheshire, the Rugeley Postmaster, intercepted and opened at Dr Palmer's request; but hearing then that Cook had been overcome by a convulsion shortly before he died, and that Dr Palmer had bought the strychnia from Messrs Hawkins's shop, the Professor changed his mind. Death, he now concluded, must have resulted from strychjiine poisoning, because the human body can absorb up to sixty grains of antimony and suffer no fatal consequences. To us this seem
s a non sequitur. As a wag has put it:
In antimony, great though his faith, The quantity found being small, Taylor's faith in strychnine was yet greater, For of that he found nothing at all.
When Professor Taylor laid stress on this negative evidence, the Lord Chief Justice remarked, with a challenging look at Serjeant Shee: 'Of course, upon this the whole Defence rests.' Since it had yet to be proved that Cook did not the of natural causes, the absence of strychnia in the organs examined struck many judicious persons as a most feasible defence! But Professor Taylor led the hanging-party with the contention: 'Though no strychnia was found, it would be very improper to believe that none had been administered.' 'Then why trouble to analyse for strychnia?' some asked, 'if its presence and its absence may alike point to its having caused death?' Others remembered the Professor's strange message, unwarrantably presuming murder, which he addressed to a daily newspaper some weeks before the trial: 'Society demands a victim in this case!' They commented: 'We may legitimately doubt whether Dr Palmer fell a victim to the demands of society in general, rather than to those of the racehorse owners whom he had dishonoured, and the insurance company shareholders whom he had defrauded. But certain it is that British Justice has likewise fallen a victim.'
The Professor's admission on his volte face deserves particular scrutiny. A plain question was put to him: 'Can you say upon your oath that, from the traces of antimony found in Cook's body, you were justified in concluding death to have been caused by this poison?' He answered: 'Yes, perfectly and distinctly.' We fail to see what sophistical process can divest so direct, so positive, and so unqualified a statement of its simple meaning. Professor Taylor did believe that Cook died from the effects of antimony; and he arrived at that belief not merely from finding slight traces of the poison in Cook's remains, but from the reports given him of Cook's vomitings and convulsions. Then, when a new light shone within, and the claims of strychnia made him a renegade, his rational powers were severely taxed to satisfy the needs of this sudden change. He knew well that the healthiness of Cook's brain was quite inconsistent with strychnine poisoning; and that so was the length of time—one and a half hours—between the alleged administration of the strychnine pills and the tetanic paroxysms. Yet, for the jury, his total conversion from antimony to strychnia seemed a proof that here was an honest man who cheerfully admitted former error.
Let us now briefly summarize and compare some of the many theories and views held by the medical witnesses.
Dr Monckton's post-mortem examination of Cook's spinal cord revealed the presence of certain granules, which he read as indicating organic disease. Dr Devonshire and Dr Harland, it appears, had discounted them during the preh'minary examination; and at the trial several shades of opinion marked the medical evidence on this head. For instance, Dr Todd, physician at King's College Hospital, asserted that such granules would be unlikely to produce tetanus; while Professor Partridge, who lectures on anatomy at the same college, quoted cases where they had heralded fatal attacks of tetanus. Professor Nunnely of the Leeds School of Medicine, Dr Macdonald of the Royal College of Surgeons at Edinburgh, and Dr Robinson of the Newcasde-on-Tyne Fever Hospital, confidently supported Professor Partridge. Other doctors, however, saw in the granules no sufficient cause to produce either tetanus or death.
Dr Todd held that the state of a person suffering from tetanus is
identical with that induced by strychnine poisoning—an opinion
roundly rejected by all other witnesses for the Crown. Dr Harland
remarked that, though he found the spinal cord softened, this condition
would not cause tetanus; and that, so far as he knew, no disease of
the spinal cord could do so. Then young, plain-speaking Mr Devonshire declared that tetanic convulsions do result from derangements
Sir Benjamin Brodie of the spinal cord; but was dismissed by Mr Baron Alderson as an ignoramus. Sir Benjamin Brodie, no less skilled a physician than he is cautious of his opinions, would not commit himself here; and Professor Alfred Taylor, though holding that strychnia acts on the spinal cord, also seemed to be in the dark on this subject.
Nor was there agreement about muscular rigidity after death. Dr Monckton stated that Cook's muscles were not more rigid than is usual; Dr Francis Taylor of Romsey, that distortion from rigidity generally continues when death has supervened; Professor Taylor, that it sometimes does. Professor Nunnely related that in two cases of stryclinine poisoning which had come to his attention, there was no such rigidity.
That epileptic convulsions occasionally assume tetanic features was a doctrine held by Dr Jones of Lutterworth and others; Dr Macdonald, Dr Robinson, and Dr Richardson (a London physician) concurred in saying that this is invariably the case.
Cook had suffered from locked-jaw, according to Elizabeth Mills's new evidence; but locked-jaw, as a primary symptom of tetanus, was another dogma that invited dispute. Nearly all cases commence with locked-jaw, said Dr Curling, Surgeon to the London Hospital; and Dr Todd agreed that it is an early symptom; but Dr Macdonald contradicted all his colleagues by testifying that locked-jaw is generally a late symptom.
Cook had suffered from an ulcerated throat, and that ulcerations cause tetanus was yet another theory productive of no little discord. Dr Curling quoted two such cases from the records of the London Hospital; Sir Benjamin Brodie, however, had never heard of tetanus proceeding from ulcers or sores.
Opinion was also divided on the question of Cook's heart, which had contained no blood. Dr Todd observed that the heart is rarely full after death by strychnine poisoning. Sir Benjamin Brodie could not say whether it would be full or not. Dr Morley asserted that it is generally very full.
Cook had shrieked on the Sunday night. Shrieking, as a special symptom accompanying attacks of convulsions, found no greater identity of views.
Cook had remained conscious to the very end. Dr Solly, of St Thomas's Hospital, stated that epileptic convulsions are not always attended with want of consciousness; Professor Nunnery agreed with him. Dr Robinson and others, on the contrary, asserted that consciousness is lost in almost every instance.
What do we learn from The Times report on the subject of paroxysms and the several causes that stimulate them? Dr Corbett, the Glasgow physician, denies that touching produces paroxysms in cases of strychnine poisoning. Dr Morley of Leeds asserts that they are so induced. Professors Taylor and Letheby, opposed on so many points, agree that the very slightest touch or exertion induces paroxysms, and that the symptoms of strychnine poisoning arc: irritability, aversion to touch, noise, light, or currents of cool air; also dilated pupils, with continuous twitchings and jerkings. But the intolerance to touch, they say, is the truly diagnostic, the leading symptom, and touch invariably produces paroxysms. Yet Cook had rung the bell, and suffered no paroxysm in consequence. He had, moreover, invited Dr Jones to rub his neck; and Dr Bamford deposed to having gently applied his hand to Cook's abdomen without occasioning the least discomfort or paroxysm.
'Asphyxia,' Dr Curling rules, 'does not produce death in these cases.' Professor Taylor states exactly the opposite. Dr Todd here differs from Professor Taylor, and supports Dr Curling. Professor Christison of Edinburgh University thinks that death may arise from asphyxia, but leaves the question open.
Cook's attacks, which in each case occurred at midnight, after a day comfortably spent, were attributed by some doctors to tetanus. Drs Todd and Watson hold that the symptoms of tetanus are intermittent; Professor Christison and Sir Benjamin Brodie insist that they are continuous.
On the question of what immediately caused death, we find a grand melee of disputants. Their arguments and counter-arguments fog every uninitiated mind, and damp all hope of reaching a just verdict. We are left with one consolation only—that we never ourselves won a professorship in a science offering facilities for such profound discord!
That Cook died of strychnine poisoning is affirmed by Professors Taylor, Brodie, Rees, and Christison; and Drs
Todd, Daniel and Solly. Here are seven eminences on one side. That Cook died of some other cause is affirmed by Professors Rodgers (of the St George's School of Medicine), Partridge, Letheby, Herapath, and Nunnely; also by Drs Macdonald, Robinson, Bamford, Jones, Bainbridge of St Martin's Work House, and Richardson of, we believe, Stepney. Thus eleven eminences range themselves in opposition. Eleven more venture no opinion at all.
The jury perhaps drew inspiration from the modern proverb 'The Minority are always in the right,'—for to make any choice based on a clear perception that these seven strychnine-minded doctors had incontestably proved their case, leaving the eleven champions of natural causes to wander in the illusive moonshine of gratuitous speculation, was as far beyond the power of this stolid jury as it was to raise John Parsons Cook from the dead. Yet somehow the Lord Chief Justice expected the atmosphere of science, murky from the vapours of twenty-nine discursive intellects, to be irradiated and resolved into a pure sky of truth by the miraculous intervention of twelve respectable traders!