Part 1

THE MOST EXTRAORDINARY

TRIAL

OF

WILLIAM PALMER,

FOR THE

RUGELEY POISONINGS,

WHICH LASTED TWELVE DAYS.

LONDON: W. M. CLARK, 16 & 17, WARWICK LANE, PATERNOSTER ROW AND SOLD BY ALL BOOKSELLERS.

COUNSEL FOR THE CROWN.

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL, Mr. JAMES, Q.C., Mr. BODKIN, Mr. WELSBY, and Mr. HUDDLESTON.

COUNSEL FOR THE PRISONER.

Mr. Serjeant SHEE, Mr. GROVE, Q.C., Mr. GRAY, and Mr. KINNEALY.

The following Gentlemen were sworn on

THE JURY.

THOMAS KNIGHT, of Leytonstone. RICHD. DUMBRELL, Fore Street. WM. MAVOR, Park Street. WM. NEWMAN, Coleshill Street. GEORGE MILLER, Duke Street, Grosvenor Square. GEORGE OAKSHOTT, Ham Lane, West Ham. CHARLES BATES, Borough Road. WM. ECCLESTONE, HAM LANE. SAMUEL MULLETT, Great Portland Street. JOHN OVER, Grosvenor Road, Pimlico. WM. NASH, Conduit Street. WM. FLETCHER, Fore Street.

The prisoner, WILLIAM PALMER, Surgeon, of Rugeley, aged 31, was indicted for having at Rugeley, county of Stafford, on November 21st, 1855, feloniously, wilfully, and with malice aforethought, committed murder on the person of JOHN PARSONS COOK.

MEMOIR

OF

WILLIAM PALMER.

William Palmer is a member of a wealthy family, and is thirty-one years of age. He was educated for the medical profession, was a pupil at St. Bartholemew’s Hospital, London, received the diploma of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1846, and shortly afterwards settled at Rugeley, his native place. He seems, however, to have paid more attention to the “turf,” and what are commonly called sporting pursuits, than to his profession, and to have confined his practice to his own family and friends.

His name appears in the “London and Provincial Medical Directory” of 1851, and again in 1855, as that of one of the persons who had neglected to inform the editor of that work of the nature of their qualifications. He married, in 1847, Anne, the natural daughter of Col. William Brookes and Mary Thornton, his housekeeper. Col. Brookes, who, after quitting the East India service, took up his residence at Stafford, died in 1834, leaving considerable property, and more than one natural child.

To Anne Thornton he bequeathed, by a will dated July 27, 1833, nine houses at Stafford, besides land, and the interest of 20,000 sicca rupees, for herself and her children, and appointed Dr. Edward Knight, a physician of Stafford, and Mr. Dawson, her guardians and trustees. To Mary Thornton, the mother of Anne, the colonel bequeathed certain property, which was to pass to her daughter at the decease of the mother. Mary Thornton departed this life--it is said, while a guest at Mr. Palmer’s house,--in 1848 or 1849.

Now, although the will of Colonel Brookes would seem clear enough to anyone who was ignorant of law, and although, in the present state of the law, as we are informed, it would be sufficient, yet it was discovered by the legal fraternity, some years since, that the language conveying the bequest to Anne Thornton was not sufficiently forcible to convey it to her absolutely, but only to give her a life interest in it, insomuch as, at her decease, it was liable to be claimed by the heir-at-law to Colonel Brookes.

Under these circumstances, there was nothing unnatural or unusual in the idea that Palmer should insure his wife’s life, in order to protect himself from the inevitable loss which must ensue in case of her decease; and since her property consisted of seventeen acres of land, valued at between £300 and £400 per acre, besides nine houses, and the interest of the sicca rupees--probably altogether worth at least £400 per annum, upon which he had borrowed largely from his mother--there could be no doubt of his having such an interest in his wife’s life as would justify insurance.

Accordingly, in January, 1854, he insured her life for £3,000 in the Norwich Union, and in March in the Sun for £5,000; there was also an insurance in the Scottish Equitable for £5,000. Mrs. Palmer died on September 29, 1854, leaving only one surviving child, a boy of seven years; and, as if to justify the husband in effecting an insurance, an action was brought within a month by Colonel Brookes’s heir-at-law, to obtain possession of Mrs. Palmer’s property.

Palmer brought up the life policies on the Sun and Norwich Union on the 16th of October, 1854, and employed Mr. Pratt, the solicitor, to obtain the money from the offices. Mr. Pratt, who seems to have acted with entire _bona fides_, and the caution usual among lawyers, required to be furnished with evidence of the husband’s pecuniary interest in his wife’s life, took counsel’s opinion on every step, and obtained the £8,000 from the offices on the 6th of February, 1855; strangely enough, the £5,000 from the Scottish Equitable was paid through a banker unknown to Pratt.

Great excitement prevailed in reference to the trial, and large bodies of persons who could have no possible chance of admission crowded the avenues of the court. Day after day notices have appeared in the papers, that only those who had obtained tickets of admission from the Sheriffs would be admitted; and the under-sheriffs very wisely adhered to that determination. In consequence of their very excellent arrangements, the Court was at no time inconveniently crowded. At ten o’clock the judges appointed to try the case entered the Court, and took their seats on the bench. They were Lord Campbell, the Lord Chief Justice of the Queen’s Bench, Mr. Baron Alderson, and Mr. Justice Cresswell.

TRIAL OF WILLIAM PALMER

FOR

THE RUGELEY POISONINGS.

CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURT, MAY 14, 1856.

The long-deferred trial of William Palmer, which, owing to the necessity of passing a special act of Parliament to enable it to take place in this court, has been delayed for a period of several months since the finding of a true bill by the Grand Jury of Staffordshire, commenced to-day at the Old Bailey; and, notwithstanding the interval which has elapsed since this extraordinary case was first brought under the notice of the public, the intense interest and excitement which it then occasioned seem in no degree to have abated. Indeed, if the applications for admission to the court which were made so soon as the trial was appointed, and the eager endeavours of large crowds to gain an entrance to-day, may be regarded as a criterion of the public anxiety upon the progress and issue of the trial, the interest would seem to have augmented rather than diminished.

At a very early hour every entrance to the court was besieged by persons of respectable appearance, who were favoured with cards giving them a right of entrance. Without such cards no admittance could on any pretence be obtained, and even the fortunate holders of them found that they had many difficulties to overcome, and many stern janitors to encounter, before an entrance to the much-coveted precincts could be obtained. On the whole, however, the arrangements of the Under-Sheriffs Stone and Ross were excellent, and, although there may be individual cases of complaint, as there always will be when delicate and important functions have to be performed with firmness, it is but justice to testify to the general completeness and propriety of the regulations which the Sheriffs had laid down.

Among the distinguished persons who were present at the opening of the Court were the Earl of Derby, Earl Grey, the Marquis of Anglesea, Lord Lucan, Lord Denbigh, Prince Edward of Saxe Weimar, Lord W. Lennox, Lord G. G. Lennox, and Lord H. Lennox. The Lord Advocate of Scotland sat by the side of the Attorney-General during the trial.

At five minutes to ten o’clock the learned Judges, Lord Chief Justice Campbell, Mr. Baron Alderson, and Mr. Justice Cresswell, accompanied by the Lord Mayor, and Aldermen Sir G. Carroll, Humphrey, Sir R. W. Carden, Finnis, Sir F. G. Moon, and Sidney, Mr. Sheriff Kennedy, Mr. Sheriff Rose, Mr. Under-Sheriff Stone, and Mr. Under-Sheriff Rose, took their seats on the bench.

The prisoner, William Palmer, was immediately placed in the dock; and to the indictment which charged him with the wilful murder of John Parsons Cook, who died at Rugeley upon the 21st of November last, he pleaded, in a clear, low, but perfectly audible and distinct tone, “Not guilty.” The prisoner is described in the calendar as “William Palmer, 31, surgeon, of superior degree of instruction.” In appearance Palmer is much older, and, although there are no marks of care about his face, there are the set expression and rounded frame which belong to the man of forty or forty-five. His countenance is clear and open, the forehead high, the complexion ruddy, and the general impression which one would form from his appearance would be rather favourable than otherwise, although his features are of a common and somewhat mean cast. There is certainly nothing to indicate to the ordinary observer the presence either of ferocity or cunning, and one would expect to find in him more of the boon companion than the subtle adversary. His manner was remarkably calm and collected throughout the whole of the day. It was altogether devoid of bravado, but was respectful and attentive, and was calculated to create a favourable impression. He frequently conversed with Mr. Smith, his professional adviser, and remained standing until the close of the speech for the prosecution, when at his request his counsel asked that he might be permitted to sit--an application which was at once acceded to by Lord Campbell.

The counsel engaged in the case were:--The Attorney-General, Mr. E. James, Q.C., Mr. Bodkin, Mr. Welsby, and Mr. Huddleston, for the Crown; and Mr. Serjeant Shee, Mr. Grove, Q.C., Mr. Gray, and Mr. Kenealy, for the prisoner.

A most respectable jury having been empanelled, and all the witnesses, with the exception of the medical men, having been ordered out of court,

THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL

proceeded, amid breathless silence, to open the case on the part of the prosecution. He said: Gentlemen of the jury, the duty you are called upon to discharge is the most solemn which a man can by possibility have to perform--it is to sit in judgment and to decide an issue on which depends the life of a fellow human being who stands charged with the highest crime for which a man can be arraigned before a worldly tribunal. I am sure that I need not ask your most anxious and earnest attention to such a case; but there is one thing I feel it incumbent on me to urge upon you. The peculiar circumstances of this case have given it a profound and painful interest throughout the whole country. There is scarcely a man, perhaps, who has not come to some conclusion on the issue which you are now to decide. All the details have been seized on with eager avidity, and there is, perhaps, no one who is not more or less acquainted with those details. Standing here as a minister of justice; with no interest and no desire save that justice shall be done impartially, I feel it incumbent on me to warn you not to allow any preconceived opinion to operate on your judgment this day. Your duty--your bounden duty--is to try this case according to the evidence which shall be brought before you, and according to that alone. You must discard from your minds anything that you may have read or heard, or any opinion that you may have formed. If the evidence shall satisfy you of the prisoner’s guilt, you will discharge your duty to society, to your consciences, and to the oaths which you have taken, by fearlessly pronouncing your verdict accordingly; but if the evidence fail to produce a reasonable conviction of guilt in your minds, God forbid that the scale of justice should be inclined against the prisoner by anything of prejudice or preconceived opinion. My duty, gentlemen, will be a simple one. It will be to lay before you the facts on which the prosecution is based, and in doing so I must ask for your most patient attention. They are of a somewhat complicated character, and they range over a considerable period of time, so that it will be necessary not merely to look to circumstances which are immediately connected with the accusation, but to go back to matters of an antecedent date. I may safely say, however, that, in my conscience, I believe there is not a fact to which I am about to ask your patient attention which has not an immediate and most important bearing on this case. The prisoner at the bar, William Palmer, was by profession a medical practitioner, and he carried on that profession in the town of Rugeley, in Staffordshire, for several years. In later years, however, he became addicted to turf pursuits, which gradually drew off his attention and weaned him from his profession. Within the last two or three years he made over his business to a person named Thirlby, formerly his assistant, who now carries it on. In the course of his pursuits connected with the turf, Palmer became intimate with the man whose death forms the subject of this inquiry--Mr. John Parsons Cook.

Now, Mr. Cook was a young man of decent family, who originally had been intended for the profession of the law. He was articled to a solicitor; but after a time, inheriting some property, to the extent, I think, of some £12,000 or £15,000, he abandoned the laborious profession of the law, and betook himself also to the turf. He kept racehorses and betted considerably; and in the course of his operations he became much connected and familiarly intimate with the prisoner William Palmer. It is for the murder of that Mr. John Parsons Cook that the prisoner stands indicted to-day, the charge against him being that he took away that man’s life by poison. It will be necessary to show you the circumstances in which the prisoner Palmer was then placed, and the position in which he stood relatively to the deceased Cook. It will be impossible thoroughly to understand this case in all its bearings without those circumstances being laid before you, and it will be necessary, therefore, that I should go into them particularly. The case which, on the part of the prosecution, I have to urge against Palmer is this--that, being in desperate circumstances, with ruin, disgrace, and punishment staring him in the face, which could only be averted by means of money, he took advantage of his intimacy with Cook, when Cook had become the winner of a considerable sum, to destroy him, in order to obtain possession of his money. Out of the circumstances of Palmer at that time arose, as we say, the motive which induced him to commit this crime. If I show you upon evidence which can leave no reasonable doubt in your minds that he committed that crime, motives become a matter of secondary importance. Nevertheless, in inquiries of this kind, it is natural and right to look to see what may have been the motives by which a man has been induced to commit the crime charged against him; and if we find strong motives, the more readily shall we be led to believe in the probability of the crime having been committed; but if we find an absence of motive the probability is the other way. In this case, the motive will be matter for serious consideration; and inasmuch as the circumstances out of which we say that the motive arose come first in order of time, I will deal with them before I come to that which is the more immediate subject matter of our inquiry. It seems to me that it would be most convenient that I should follow the chronological order of events, and I will therefore pursue that course. It appears that as early as the year 1853 Palmer had got into difficulties, and that he began to raise money upon bills. In 1854 his circumstances became worse, and he was at that time indebted to different persons in a large sum of money. He then had recourse to an expedient which it is important that I should bring before you; but, as it will become necessary for me to detail to you transactions involving fraud, and, what is worse, forgery, I wish to make a few observations to you before I detail those transactions.

Although I am anxious, where I feel it to be absolutely necessary for the elucidation of the truth, that those circumstances should be brought before you, I wish that they should not have more than their fair and legitimate weight. You must not allow them to prejudice your minds against the prisoner with reference to that which is the real matter of inquiry. I cannot avoid bringing them forward; but I would anxiously caution you and pray you not to allow any prejudice by reason of those transactions to operate against the prisoner; for, though a man may be guilty of fraud and forgery, it does not follow, therefore, that he is guilty of murder.

Among the bills on which Palmer raised money in 1853 was one for £2,000, which he had discounted by a person named Padwick. That bill bore the acceptance of Sarah Palmer, the mother of the prisoner. She was, and is, a woman of considerable property, and her acceptance being believed to be genuine, was a security upon which money could readily be raised. The prisoner forged that acceptance, and that was, if not the first, at all events one of the earliest transactions of that nature by means of which for a long period of time money was obtained by him upon bills, with his mother’s acceptance forged by him. This shows how, when things came to a climax and he found himself involved in a position of great peril and emergency, he had recourse to a desperate expedient to avoid the consequences which seemed inevitably to press upon him. He owed in 1854 a very large sum of money. On the 29th of September in that year his wife died. He had effected an insurance upon her life for £13,000, and the proceeds of that insurance were realised, and by means of them he discharged some of his most pressing liabilities. In dealing with a portion of these liabilities he employed a gentleman named Pratt, a solicitor in London, who was in the habit of discounting bills. Mr. Pratt received from him £8,000, and Mr. Wright, a solicitor of Birmingham, received £5,000; and with those two sums £13,000 of debt was disposed of; but that still left Palmer with considerable liabilities, and among other things, the bill of £2,000, which was discounted by Padwick, remained unpaid. In the course of the same year he effected an insurance on his brother’s life, and upon the strength of that policy Palmer proceeded to issue fresh bills, which were discounted by Pratt at the rate of 60 per cent., who kept the policy as collateral security. The bills which were discounted in the course of that year amounted in the whole to £12,500. I find that there were two bills discounted as early as June, 1854, which were held over from month to month. In March, 1855, two bills were discounted for £2,000 each, with the proceeds of which Palmer bought two race-horses, called Nettle and Chicken. Those bills were renewed in June, and one became due on the 28th of September, and the other on the 2nd of October, when they were again renewed. The result of the bill proceedings of the year was that in November, when the Shrewsbury races took place, there were in Pratt’s hands one bill for £2,000, due the 25th of October; another for £2,000, due the 27th of October; two for the joint sum of £1,500, due on the 9th of November; one for £1,000, due on the 30th of September; one for £2,000, due on the 1st January; one for £2,000, due on the 5th of January; and another for £2,000, due on the 15th of January; making altogether £12,500. £1,000 of this sum, however, he had contrived to pay off, so that there was due in November, 1855, no less than £11,500, upon bills, every one of which bore the forged acceptance of the prisoner’s mother.

Under these circumstances, a pressure naturally arose--the pressure of £11,500 of liabilities, with not a shilling in the world to meet them, and the still greater pressure resulting from a consciousness that the moment when he could no longer go on and his mother was resorted to for payment, the fact of those forgeries would at once become manifest, and would bring upon him the peril of the law for the crime of forgery. The prisoner’s brother died in August, 1855. His life had been insured, and the policy for £13,000 had been assigned to the prisoner, who, of course, expected that the proceeds of that insurance would pay off his liabilities; but the office in which the insurance was effected declined to pay, and consequently there was no assistance to be derived from that source. Now, in these transactions to which I have referred, the deceased John Parsons Cook had been to a certain extent concerned. It seems that in May, 1855, Palmer was pressed to pay £500 to a person named Serjeant. He had at that time in the hands of Palmer a balance upon bill transactions of £310 to his credit, and he wanted Pratt to advance the £190 necessary to make up £500. Pratt declined to do that, except upon security; upon which Palmer offered him the acceptance of Cook, representing him to be a man of substance. Accordingly the acceptance of Cook for £200 was sent up, and upon that Pratt advanced the money. When that bill for £200 became due, Palmer failed to provide for it, and Cook had to meet it himself. In August of the same year, an occurrence took place to which I must call your particular attention. Palmer wrote to Pratt to say that he must have £1,000 by a day named. Pratt declined to advance it without security; upon which Palmer offered the security of Cook’s acceptance for £500. Pratt still declined to advance the money without some more tangible security. Now Palmer represented this as a transaction in which Cook required the money, and it may be that such was the fact. I have no means of ascertaining how that was; but I will give him the credit of supposing it to be true. Pratt still declining to advance the money, Palmer proposed an assignment by Cook of two racehorses, one called Polestar, which won the Shrewsbury races, and another called Sirius. That assignment was afterwards executed by Cook in favour of Pratt, and Cook, therefore, was clearly entitled to the money which was raised upon that security, which realised £375 in cash, and a wine warrant for £65. Palmer contrived, however, that the money and wine warrant should be sent to him, and not to Cook. Mr. Pratt sent down his cheque to Palmer in the country on a stamp as the Act of Parliament required, and he availed himself of the opportunity now offered by law of striking out the word “bearer” and writing “order,” the effect of which was to necessitate the endorsement of Cook on the back of the cheque.