In what way were the opinions of the Crown's medical witnesses to be judged sounder than those held by the opposite side? Not one of the seven had ever seen a single case of strychnine poisoning in the human subject—some had never even witnessed an experiment on animal life—and several confessed to but very limited experience of simple tetanus. Yet no less than three of the medical witnesses called by the Defence had been present at numerous post-mortem examinations, where deadi had been admittedly due to strychnia. Professor Nunnely, the target of so much of the Attorney-General's abuse and the victim of the Lord Chief Justice's privileged, courteous insults, had made postmortem examinations of two persons carried off by this poison; had experimented with strychnine on forty animals; and with other poisons on two thousand more; thus claiming a body of experimental research one hundredfold greater than that possessed by all the other doctors and professors together. Nevertheless, his evidence was spoken of by the Prosecution in terms well calculated to excite contempt.
Professors Taylor and Rees, called for the Crown, pronounced that the fiftieth part of a grain of strychnia cannot be detected. Yet Professor Herapath of the Bristol Medical School, and Professor Letheby, Medical Officer of Health to the City of London, stated for the Defence that the fifty-thousandth part can!
Professor Taylor's testimony was, without doubt, the mainspring that acted so powerfully on the minds of the jury. Some twenty-three years ago, he had experimented with strychnia on twelve wild rabbits—'which is the only personal knowledge that I have of strychnia, as it affects animal life'—but had never seen any human being exposed to its influence. And 'though I met a case of tetanus in the human subject years ago, I have not had much experience in such matters'. He constantly failed to detect the presence of strychnia after poisoning animals, even when the dose was as much as a grain and a half; and had never thought to conduct experiments on dogs or cats, though they resemble man far more closely in that they vomit, whereas rabbits do not. Professor Taylor has published The Principles and Practice of Medical Jurisprudence—in part a treatise on poisons—and diere one may find listed experimental facts and the reports of several deaths by strychnia. But none of this is the product of his own research— the Professor's light shines with borrowed rays, like the deceptive Moon.
Of Sir Benjamin Brodie little need or can be said. Though he had considerable experience of tetanus, he also excelled in tact and avoided any positive statement that could contradict other people's opinions, qualifying his evidence with such phrases as ' according to my knowledge,' 'so far as I have seen,' 'at least so it has been in my experience,' 'I believe I remember cases,'—and so forth. He took the safe course of a man who, being himself benighted, will not pretend to set a neighbour's foot on the right path. But Professor Taylor's forthright evidence was even at variance with itself. In reply to the question: 'Were the symptoms and appearances in Cook's case the same as diose you have observed in the animals which you poisoned with strychnia?' he declared: 'They were.' Yet he had repeatedly laid down that no prognosis of the symptoms likely to ensue from the human consumption of strychnia can rest on those observed in lower animals similarly poisoned; so that even his youthful experiments with rabbits were irrelevant here.
To quote a tithe of the evidence on the above subjects would protract our comment far beyond convenient limits. Indeed, we find so much that is criticizable in the evidence, the addresses of Counsel, and the charge to the jury, that our own patience as well as that of our readers would soon suffer exhaustion. However, a letter written to The Times by F. Crage Calvert, Esq., F.C.C., a Cheshire chemist, about his discovery of strychnia in the bodies of several wilfully poisoned hounds—at least three weeks after death —convinces us that Professor Taylor's theory of 'perfect absorption' is quite fallacious. So does another written to the same newspaper by Professor Herapath, the greatest analytic chemist now alive among us, whom the Attorney-General browbeat and flustered during the trial. He once found strychnia in a fox dead for over two months.
How Professor Herapath came to be subpoenaed by the Prosecution is a curious story. According to an anonymous letter received by the Crown lawyers from Keynsham in Somersetshire, the Professor had publicly declared: 'I have no doubt that there was strychnia in Cook's body, but Professor Taylor could not find it.' Professor Hcrapath was known to be at loggerheads with Professor Taylor, whom he looked upon as an ignorant theorist, and seems to have incautiously made some such remark to Mr Twining, the Mayor of Bristol, and a party of his friends. Yet it had been based on partial newspaper accounts of the case, including a most inaccurate one printed by The Illustrated Times. This anonymous letter also reported him as saying: 'A word from mc would hang that man!'—but the remark was, in effect, made by Mr Twining. The Attorney-General eagerly seized on Professor Herapath's observation which he had read as meaning that strychnine might evade the analysis of even the most experienced analyst; whereas, in truth, the Professor had merely referred to Professor Taylor's incompetence. At the trial, the Attorney-General realized his mistake, and was skilful enough to repair it with Pharisaic ingenuity by entangling Professor Herapath in his talk.
If we may give our studied opinion for what it is worth, founding it upon that of Mr John Robinson, the well-known lecturer on Medical Jurisprudence, and others, equally distinguished, we will say that the sore on Cook's body—where, according to the evidence, excoriation of a syphilitic scar had been rubbed off— was well capable of inducing tetanus, especially in one who frequented stables; for stables breed the disease. To this we will, however, add that the nightly recurrence of Cook's attacks rather suggests an obscure nervous disorder—'epileptic convulsions with tetanic symptoms,' as Dr Bamford called it—which, in his weakened state, Cook could not resist. Dr Palmer, in all probability, had assisted this weakness, for a felonious object, possibly by introducing tartar emetic into Cook's toast-and-water; but never, we are convinced, did he foresee or desire that it should have a fatal ending.
It may be objected that epilepsy seldom makes its first appearance in mature persons and that, if Cook had previously experienced epileptic seizures, this fact would surely have come out in the trial. But such epileptic seizures as occur only late at night, when the patient is suffering from gastric disturbances, or has worked himself up to an anxious frame of mind, often escape general remark; and if Dr Jones, a capable physician and Cook's country neighbour, diagnosed epilepsy, he must have suspected a proneness to this unusual disorder. The suggestion that Dr Palmer procured three grains, and then another six grains, of strychnia— in his own home-town, too—for the purpose of murdering his friend, afterwards adjusting the dose so nicely as to leave no vestige of the crime—this seems to us one of the most far-fetched that we have ever heard.
Chapter XXII
THE VERDICT
MANY incidents in this trial, we confess, surprised us unpleasantly. Mr Baron Alderson, who shared Lord Chief Justice Campbell's partiality for the Prosecution, made even less attempt to conceal it, and frequently amused himself by suggesting questions to Mr James, Q.C., the Counsel for the Crown. He would raise his hands in feigned astonishment if evidence favourable to Dr Palmer was elicited by cross-examination; stare at the jury with a look of incredulity and contempt if Serjeant Shee called attention to such evidence; and assist the Lord Chief Justice in overruling almost every legal objection raised by the Defence. Once, when Mr Serjeant Slice asked a medical witness: 'Where are the pathionic glands?', Mr Baron Alderson started angrily from his seat and exclaimed in loud tones: 'Humbug!' To another similar question he answered for the witness: 'You will find that in any encyclopaedia.'
By contrast, Mr Justice Cresswell Cresswell, who had been educated, like Mr Baron Alderson, at the Charterhouse and Cambridge, comported himself with dignity and strict impartiality. It was clear that, but for his intervention at many important points, the Lord Chief Justice would have admitted illegal evidence against Dr Palmer, or excluded evidence operating in his favour. When, on one o
ccasion, Mr Justice Cresswell respectfully addressed Serjeant Shee as 'Brother Slice', Mr Baron Alderson's impatient ejaculation: 'O, bother Shee!' was heard by everyone present.
The Lord Chief Justice first showed his prejudice by allowing the Attorney-General to acquaint the jury with the story of Bate's life insurance, while omitting circumstances which Samuel Cheshire, or Jeremiah Smith, or Dr Palmer himself—who, by a quirk of British legal procedure, must keep silent throughout the trial, whatever falsehoods might be told—could have supplied in extenuation. Dr Palmer, let it be observed, had never been granted the privilege of stating his case from any witness-box, or before any public authorities whatsoever. Serjeant Shee strongly objected to this evidence about the insurance as irrelevant, and it was excluded, but too late for the true facts to appear. Thus the black impression remained fixed in the minds of the jurymen: 'Dr Palmer attempted to take George Bate's life; as he had already taken those of his own wife and, perhaps, his brother.'
Again, it is a first principle of our Law that nothing which has been said while a prisoner was absent may be quoted in evidence against him. Yet the Lord Chief Justice allowed the Prosecution to prove a talk between Mr Cook and Fisher, held in Dr Palmer's absence when the latter had no means of contradicting Cook's drunken suspicions of the brandy. It seems that Mr Justice Cress-well noted the impropriety, because he later interposed at this point in the Lord Chief Justice's summing-up and prevented him from reading to the jury evidence which should never have been given. Yet the passage had produced a decisive influence on their minds, and blinded them to the fact that Cook later went to Rugeley with Dr Palmer, dined at his house, constantly sent for him, made no mention of any 'dosing' to Dr Jones, his closest friend and his physician, and kept an affectionate faith in Dr Palmer until death carried him off.
Serjeant Shee objected time after time to Mr James's illegal questions, but the Lord Chief Justice overruled him so constantly that at last he told Mr John Smith, Dr Palmer's solicitor: 'I dare not object further.'
John Smith replied: 'This, Sir, is an organized conspiracy to hang our client; and so I suspected from our correspondence with the Crown solicitors. You will remember how we failed to extract a report from them as to Professor Taylor's analytic methods. They refused my demand, and were supported by Sir George Grey at the Home Office, who stated that it was an unprecedented one, and that these matters would doubtless appear in cross-examination. I answered that the case was equally unprecedented, this being the first in which strychnia had been cited as a means of murder; and respectfully denied that Professor Taylor's analyses could form a proper subject 'of cross-examination, unless they were duly recorded in writing and the depositions read to the Judges and the jury. Nevertheless, Sir George brushed me off. Yes, Sir, Mr James's questions are inadmissible, as every member of the Bar knows well; but what remedy have we?'
Mrs Brooks's testimony that she had seen Dr Palmer holding up a tumbler of water against the gaslight at The Raven Hotel was not unfavourable to the Doctor; for she had also deposed that many odicr people in Shrewsbury, whom Dr Palmer could not possibly have dosed, suffered from the same sickness as Cook. Yet in his summing-up the Lord Chief Justice failed to remind the jury of this important fact.
When Herring, the commission-agent, known on the Turf as 'Mr Howard', was examined, and the Prosecution wished him to reveal the contents of Cook's betting-book, Serjeant Slice objected: 'We cannot have dus given in evidence, my Lord, since the book is lost.'
The Lord Chief Justice, gazing sternly at Serjeant Shee, said: 'According to the last account we heard, it was in the prisoner's possession.'
Serjeant Shce replied with a reproachful cough: 'My Lord, I don't think there is any proof of his ever having touched it.'
Here the Attorney-General interrupted: 'We will show that it lay in the dead man's room on the Tuesday night before his death, and that the prisoner was afterwards observed looking about
Yet nobody at The Talbot Arms Hotel claimed to have seen the book later than the Monday night, when Elizabeth Mills noticed it hanging from the mirror.
Nor did the Lord Chief Justice point out the patent discrepancy between a statement promised from Elizabeth Mills by the Attorney-General; namely, that she handed Cook's cup of coffee, ordered on the Monday morning, to Dr Palmer (who therefore had an opportunity of doctoring it); and the statement which she actually made, namely that she gave it directly to Cook. He also withheld comment on the even graver discrepancy pointed out by Serjeant Slice between her statements at the inquest and at the trial. Whereas she had told the Coroner that the broth tasted very good, and mentioned no harmful after-effect, her new story was that she had been seized by violent vomiting which incapacitated her for five hours. Moreover, her original deposition contained no reference to the twitchings and jerkings which she now described with much pantomimic by-play.
It was noted, too, that the Lord Chief Justice eulogized all the medical witnesses called for the Crown and allotted seats in Court; while seeming to regard all witnesses for the Defence as ignoble or inferior beings since, by his own orders, they were condemned to stand. Some of these he offered undeserved disrespect, and applauded only one, Dr Wrightson of Birmingham, whose evidence lent some slight support to Professor Taylor's theories. His recommendation of Sir Benjamin Brodie went: 'The jury will take into consideration the solemn opinion of this distinguished medical man: that he never knew a case in which the symptoms he has heard described arose from any disease. He has witnessed the various diseases that afflict the human frame in all their multiplicity, and he knows of no natural disease such as will answer the symptoms which he has heard described in the case of Cook; and, if death did not arise from natural disease, then the inference is that it arose from other causes.'
The alleged cause was, of course, strychnine poisoning. Now, Sir Benjamin Brodie based his solemn opinion on two irreconcilable statements: the first made by Elizabeth Mills—who was proved to have greatly enlarged and embroidered on the evidence she gave at the inquest—and the other by Dr Jones of Lutterworth, whose evidence had remained unchanged. If what Elizabeth Mills swore was all true, and if Sir Benjamin was omniscient, then the Lord Chief Justice might have been justified in saying that Cook's symptoms accorded with no known disease, and that strychnine might therefore be suspected—except that neither did some of the symptoms reported coincide with those expected from strychnine poisoning. On the other hand, if Elizabeth Mills lied, then the description of Cook's deadi as given by this Dr Jones, a trained medical practitioner, became perfectly consistent with natural disease. This is to say: if Mr Stevens and Mr Gardiner had influenced Miss Mills by culling a number of symptoms from the recent case of Mrs Dove, who had died from strychnine, and suggesting that she had noticed them in Cook; and if she perjured herself in swearing to these; and if her evidence must be given equal value with Dr Jones's—why, then Sir Benjamin Brodie could hardly make any other reply than he did when asked the question. How could he assign the cause of Cook's death to any known disease, when most of the symptoms were fictitious and irreconcilable with the genuine ones?
Serjeant Shee made great efforts to bring out this point in cross-examining Sir Benjamin:
Serjeant shee. Would you think that the description of a chambermaid, and of a provincial medical man who had seen only one case of tetanus, could be relied on to state what sort of disease Cook's was?
the lord chief justice (nodding wisely to the jury). He is asked, on
the assumption that both witnesses are speaking the truth.
sir benjamin brodie (uncomfortably). I must say, I thought that the
description was clearly given.
Serjeant shee. On which of the two would you rely, supposing that
they differed—the chambermaid or the medical man ?
the lord chief justice (in injured tones). This is hardly a proper
question.
mr baron alderson. It is a proper observation for you to make, Brother She
e!
The question was, of course, disallowed. But surely it had been most properly put? If Sir Benjamin had answered that he relied on Elizabeth Mills's untrained observations, then the jury would have set the fact against their memories of certain most disingenuous answers given by this witness when questioned about her meetings with Messrs Stevens and Gardiner. If, however, Sir Benjamin had answered that he preferred Dr Jones's testimony, the inference would have been that Cook died from natural causes.
We believe that this ruling by the Lord Chief Justice did more to hang Dr Palmer than any other. Yet it is an axiom of the Law, dear to all Englishmen, that in any criminal trial, the presiding Judge is 'prime counsel for the prisoner'.
Serjeant Shee's speech for the Defence was eloquent enough. He could show that Dr Palmer and Cook owned a racehorse in common; had contracted certain debts jointly; and trusted each other to lay money on horses. The brotherliness of their relations was suggested by a letter, produced in evidence, which Cook wrote Dr Palmer from Lutterworth, on January 4th, 1855.
My dear Sir,
I went up to London on Tuesday to back St Hubert for £50, and my commission has returned 10s/1d. I have therefore booked £250 to £25 against him, to gain money. There is a small balance of £10 due to you, which I forgot to give you the other day. Tell Will Saunders to debit me with it on account of your share in training Pyrrhine. I will also write asking him to do so, and there will be a balance due to him from me.
Yours faithfully,
J. Parsons Cook
But Serjeant Shee attempted too much. Cheshire's and Pad-wick's testimony proved conclusively that Dr Palmer had forged Cook's signature to a paper and got for himself the money Cook won at Shrewsbury. Granted, Cook's murder could have benefited him neither in the long run nor in the short, since liabilities to the amount of twelve thousand pounds were outstanding; yet the evidence of fraud was plain. A plea that Dr Palmer had taken advantage of Cook's natural sickness to rob him would have been a safer one. Dr Palmer would, it is true, have received a very severe prison sentence in consequence; but the crime of forgery, which he had admitted on oath, already made him liable to that.