Contrary to the usual custom in small country towns, the scaffold, a huge affair, somewhat resembling an agricultural machine and hung with black cloth, was not built upon the top of the prison, but brought out in front, so as to bar the road. Smith, the man selected to execute the sentence of the law, was once a nailer—a great, coarse fellow, standing five feet ten inches —but left his original vocation soon after he became hangman in the year 1840, and now pursues the precarious trade of a higgler. Smith hanged Moore for the murder of the Ash Flats, four years ago; and once ran a race against time, almost naked, through Wednesbury town, being sent to gaol immediately on accomplishing this feat. The rope destined for Dr Palmer's neck was twisted by a ropemaker named Coates, who is also a porter at the Stafford railway station. All the railwaymen lent a hand in this task, and Coates, having an eye to the main chance, made thirty yards, cut the surplus length up into small pieces of two or three inches, and hawked them through the streets of Stafford, at a shilling the inch.
When Mr Wright, the philanthropist, visited Dr Palmer a few days before, the rumour went around that he had elicited a confession. But a warder whom we questioned at the time shook his head: 'Well, Sir, I haven't much to wager, but I'll bet every stick and stump I possess that Dr Palmer doesn't confess after all. Why, he ate half-a-pound of steak last night for his tea, and complained of the milk not being good! I shall never forget the scowl he gave us when we took away his brush and tortoise-shell pocket comb. We thought, you know, he might hurt himself with the comb. He went into such a passion! "Send for the barber," he said, "send for the damned barber! I'll have every bit of my hair cut off." And he did, too. He looks so different, you can't imagine— sharp, like. He's given away locks to all his family, for what good those may do them. . . . Yes, Mr "Wright may be a very pious man, but I cannot believe that Dr Palmer said so much as he is supposed to have done. You mark my words, Sir—and I've seen a deal of him—he'll die hardened, and a coward.'
In the event, the warder's prediction proved to be wrong. Dr Palmer's bearing in this supreme ordeal amazed all who witnessed it. Just before eight o'clock, when the Prison bell tolled and the procession was formed which conducted him from his cell to the scaffold, he tripped jauntily along between his guards. Though, contrary to usage, he wore prison dress, this was not meant as an indignity; it happened that the clothes in which he was tried were left behind in London, and no others had been since supplied. Despite the considerable distance he must traverse, Dr Palmer maintained his bold front to the last, stepped lightly up the stairs leading to the gallows, took his place on the drop, and cast a single look at the vast multitude below, not without emotion, but without anything like bravado.
A deafening roar greeted him: of curses, shouts, hootings, shrieks, groans, and execrations from nearly thirty thousand throats. The miners and colliers, maddened by drink and enthusiasm, clamoured: 'Murderer!', 'Poisoner!' He joined in a brief prayer with the Chaplain, then turned and, while the crowd suddenly stood silent, awaiting the speech which, in fact, he did not make, had the rope put round his neck and the long cap drawn over his face. Finally he shook hands with the hangman and said in a low voice: 'God bless you!' As he spoke, the bolt was shot, the drop fell; and after a slight convulsion of his limbs, Dr Palmer hung lifeless from the gallows. The disappointed colliers roared again: 'Cheat!', 'Twister!', not having had their money's worth.
Presently the corpse was cut down and carried inside the Gaol, where Mr Bridges, the phrenologist of Liverpool, took a cast of the head which is, in his opinion, decidedly a criminal one. Then, according to the sentence, Dr Palmer's body was buried naked in quicklime within the Prison precincts.
Rugeley had earned so infamous a reputation because of Dr Palmer, not only in these islands, but on the Continent, that there was serious talk at the Town Hall of changing its name. The Mayor even approached the Prime Minister, through Mr Alderman Sidney, M.P., and demanded an Act of Parliament to this end. The Prime Minister, having recently come to power at a time of immense national anxiety, felt the request to be frivolous; yet he replied obligingly enough: 'By all means, gentlemen; so long as you name your town after me.' They were out of the room before they realized what a joke he had played on them. It would hardly have suited their book to re-name Rugeley ‘Palmers-ton’. So 'Rugeley' it remains.
Here let us conclude our history with an interesting anecdote. An artist of our acquaintance, employed by Messrs Ward & Lock, Publishers, to make sketches of Rugeley for a Life of Wm Palmer, was busily at work the other day on the canal bank beside The Yard, when he became aware of a spirited elderly lady, dressed in the fashion, bearing down on him, a gay parasol held over her French bonnet. In politeness he asked her to inspect his sketch.
'That's well done,' she said. 'I can see you're no slouch of an artist. By the bye, I'm Dr Palmer's mother, and not ashamed of it, neither. Yes, they hanged my saintly Billy! He was a bit of a scamp right enough, but a good son to me; the best of the brood, except Sarah, and no murderer. Yonder merry child riding on the swing is his son, my little grandson Willie, and I shall see he doesn't lack for money, poor creature! When the time comes, I'll send him abroad with Sarah, and have his name changed. Sarah promised Billy, that; she always loved Billy.1 Yes, the pretty nursemaid in charge of Willie is Eliza Tharm all right; she's a brave, good-natured girl, and I shan't forget her in my will.'
Our artist had the hardiness to ask Mrs Palmer whether she knew what her son had meant when he said:' I did not poison him by strychnine.'
'Why, that's plain,' she answered. 'It would have gone against his conscience to say "I didn't poison Cook"; he had got his own back on Cook—do you see?—for that ill-natured lark of George Bate's insurance, by giving the joker a drug to make him feel sick and sorry. It was tartar emetic, which contains antimony. Billy told Shee of it, which was why Shee believed in his innocence. He didn't make it a fatal dose, of course; but the devil of it was, Professor Taylor had pronounced, at first, that Cook died of antimony. That turned tartar emetic into a poison, which it never
1 Old Mrs Palmer survived for another five years, outliving Jeremiah Smith by three. I cannot discover what happened to Sarah Palmer, who is not buried in the family vault at Rugeley. Little Willie inherited the Brookes curse from his mother: he committed suicide in 1925.
was reckoned before; so Billy couldn't own up to his lark. He thought himself safe when Taylor changed his mind and spoke of strychnine; but he had disposed of what he bought from Hawkins's to that misshaped dwarf Dyke in London, for his nobbling business, and it was not to be got back. Worse still, Cook must go and die of some unknown disease, like a fool! The trouble is, I understand, that if one accidentally causes the death of a man while engaged in a felony—and so Billy was—the Law reckons it to be murder. Billy feared the tartar emetic might have caused the convulsions. That's what was on his mind, my poor, dear rascal! Will Saunders, who's a fine fellow, would have sworn that Billy intended to use the strychnine on those hounds which were running his mares; but Captain Hatton—damn his eyes!—made Will "safe", as they say.
'I've had a great many unkind letters from all and sundry. For the most part, they speak of my affair with that cowardly rogue Jerry Smith. But I've finished it, once and for all. He can sink or swim as he pleases.
'There's been kind letters, too, and some strange ones, and the strangest of all came from a lady who signs herself "Jane Smirke" —Jane Widnall, as was. She knew my Billy at Liverpool and Haywood, and feels guilty for leading him astray. He was a very good boy, she says, and now if she can be of any service to me in my affliction, etc. . . .
'But that letter I could not answer; my heart was too full; besides, she gave me no address. . .'
Robert Graves, They Hanged My Saintly Billy
(Series: # )
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