Part 2

It was not intended by Palmer that those proceeds should fall into Cook’s hands, and accordingly he forged the name of John Parsons Cook on the back of that cheque. Cook never received the money, and you will see that, within ten days from the period when he came to his end, the bill in respect to that transaction, which was at three months, would have fallen due, when it must have become apparent that Palmer received the money; and that, in order to obtain it, he had forged the endorsement of Cook. I wish these were the only transactions in which Cook had been at all mixed up with the prisoner Palmer; but there is another to which it is necessary to refer. In September, 1855, Palmer’s brother having died, and the proceeds of the insurance not having been realised, Palmer induced a person named Bates to propose his life for insurance. Palmer had succeeded in raising money upon previous policies, and I have no doubt that he persuaded Cook to assist him in that transaction, so that, by representing Bates as a man of wealth and substance, they might get a policy on his life, by which policy, deposited as a collateral security, they might obtain advances of money. Bates had been somewhat better off in the world, but he had fallen into decay, and he had accepted employment from Palmer as a sort of hanger-on in his stables. He was a healthy young man; and, being in the company of Palmer and Cook at Rugeley on the 5th of September, Palmer asked him to insure his life, and produced the form of proposal to the office. Bates declined, but Palmer pressed him, and Cook interposed and said, “You had better do it; it will be for your benefit, and you’ll be quite safe with Palmer.” At length they succeeded in persuading him to sign the proposal for no less a sum than £25,000, Cook attesting the proposal, which Palmer filled in, Palmer being referred to as medical attendant, and his former assistant, Thirlby, as general referee. That proposal was sent up to the Solicitors and General Insurance Office, and in the ensuing month--that office not being disposed to effect the insurance--they sent up another for £10,000 to the Midland Office--on that same life. That proposal also failed, and no money, therefore, could be obtained from that source. All these circumstances are important, because they show the desperate straits in which the prisoner at that time found himself.

The learned counsel then read a series of letters from Mr. Pratt to the prisoner, all pressing upon the prisoner the importance of his meeting the numerous bills which Pratt held, bearing the acceptance of Mrs. Sarah Palmer; and these letters appeared to become more urgent when the writer found that the insurance office refused to pay the £13,000 upon the policy effected on the life of the prisoner’s brother, and which Pratt held as collateral security. The letters were dated at intervals between the 10th of September and the 18th of October, 1855.

On the 6th of November, two writs were issued by Pratt for £4,000, one against Palmer and the other against his mother; and Pratt wrote on the same day to say that he had sent the writs to Mr. Crabbe, but that they were not to be served until he sent further instructions, and he strongly urged Palmer to make immediate arrangements for meeting them, and also to arrange for the bills for £1,500 due on the 9th of November. Between the 10th and the 13th of November, Palmer succeeded in paying £600; but on that day Pratt again wrote to him, urging him to raise £1,000, at all events, to meet the bills due on the 9th. That being the state of things at that time, we now come to the events connected with Shrewsbury Races. Cook was the owner of a mare called Polestar, which was entered for the Shrewsbury Handicap. She had been advantageously weighted, and Cook, believing that the mare would win, betted largely upon the event. The race was run upon the 13th of November--the very day on which that last letter was written by Pratt, which would reach Palmer on the 14th. The result of the race was that Polestar won, and that Cook was entitled, in the first place, to the stakes, which amounted to £424, _minus_ certain deductions, which left a net sum of £381 19s. His bets had also been successful, and he won, upon the whole, a total sum of £2,050. He had won also in the previous week, at Worcester, and I shall show that at Shrewsbury he had in his pocket, besides the stakes and the money which he would be entitled to receive at Tattersall’s, between £700 and £800. The stakes he would receive through Mr. Weatherby, a great racing agent in London, with whom he kept an account, and upon whom he would draw; and, the race being run on a Tuesday, he would be entitled on the ensuing Monday to receive his bets at Tattersall’s, which amounted to £1,020.

Within a week from that time Mr. Cook died, and the important inquiry which we have now to make is how he came by his death--whether by natural causes or by the hand of man? and if the latter, by whose hand? It is important, in the first place, that I should show you what was his state of health when he went down to Shrewsbury. He was a young man, but twenty-eight when he died. He was slightly disposed to a pulmonary complaint, and, although delicate in that respect, he was in all other respects a hale and hearty young man. He had been in the habit, from time to time, especially with reference to his chest, of consulting a physician in London--Dr. Savage, who saw him a fortnight before his death. For four years he had occasionally consulted Dr. Savage, being at that time a little anxious about the state of his throat, in which there happened to be one or two slight eruptions. He had been taking mercury for these eruptions, having mistaken the character of the complaint. Dr. Savage at once saw that he had made a mistake, and desired him to discontinue the use of mercury, substituting for it a course of tonics. Mr. Cook’s health immediately began to improve; but, inasmuch as the new course of treatment might have involved serious consequences in case Dr. Savage had been mistaken in the diagnosis of the disease, he asked Cook to look in upon him from time to time, and Cook had, as recently as within a fortnight of his death, gone to call upon Dr. Savage. Dr. Savage then examined his throat and whole system carefully, and he will be prepared to tell you that at that time he had nothing on earth the matter with him except a certain degree of thickening of the tonsils, or some of the glands of the throat, to which anyone is liable, and there was no symptom whatever of ulcerated sore-throat or anything of the sort. Having then seen Dr. Savage, he went down to Shrewsbury Races, and his horse won. After that he was somewhat excited, as a man might naturally be under the circumstances of having won a considerable sum of money, and he asked several friends to dine with him to celebrate the event. They dined together at the Raven, the hotel where he was staying, and had two or three bottles of wine, but there was no excess of any sort, and no foundation for saying that Cook was the worse for liquor. Indeed he was not addicted to excesses, but was, on the contrary, an abstemious man on all occasions. He went to bed that night, and there was nothing the matter with him. He got up the next day, and went again on the course, as usual.

That night, Wednesday, the 14th November, a remarkable incident happened, to which I beg to draw your attention. A friend of his, a Mr. Fisher, and a Mr. Herring, were at Shrewsbury Races, and Fisher, who, besides being a sporting man, was an agent for receiving winnings, and who received Cook’s bets at the settling day at Tattersall’s, occupied the room next to that occupied by Cook. Late in the evening Fisher went into a room in which he found Palmer and Cook drinking brandy-and-water. Cook gave him something to drink, and said to Palmer, “You’ll have some more, won’t you?” Palmer replied, “Not unless you finish your glass.” Cook said, “I’ll soon do that;” and he finished it at a gulp, leaving only about a teaspoonful at the bottom of the glass. He had hardly swallowed it, when he exclaimed, “Good God! there’s something in it, it burns my throat.” Palmer immediately took up the glass, and drinking what remained, said, “Nonsense, there’s nothing in it;” and then pushing the glass to Fisher and another person who had come in, said, “Cook fancies there is something in the brandy-and-water--there’s nothing in it--taste it.” On which one of them replied, “How can we taste it? you’ve drank it all.” Cook suddenly rose and left the room, and called Fisher out, saying that he was taken seriously ill. He was seized with most violent vomiting, and became so bad that after a little while it was necessary to take him to bed. He vomited there again and again in the most violent way, and as the sickness continued after the lapse of a couple of hours a medical man was sent for. He came and proposed an emetic and other means for making the sick man eject what he had taken. After that, medicine was given him--at first some stimulant of a comforting nature, and then a pill as a purgative dose. After two or three hours he became more tranquil, and about 2 o’clock he fell asleep and slept till next morning. Such was the state of the man’s feelings all that time that I cannot tell what passed; but he gave Fisher the money which he had about him, desiring him to take care of it, and Mr. Fisher will tell you that that money amounted to between £800 and £900 in notes.

The next morning, having passed a quiet night, as I have said, and feeling better, he went out on the course; and he saw Fisher, who gave him back his notes. That was the Thursday. He still looked very ill, and felt very ill; but the vomiting had ceased. On that day Palmer’s horse, the Chicken, ran at Shrewsbury. He had backed his mare heavily, but she lost. When Palmer went to Shrewsbury he had no money, and was obliged to borrow £25 to take him there. His horse lost, and he lost bets upon the race. He and Cook then left Shrewsbury, and returned to Rugeley, Cook going to the Talbot Arms Hotel, directly opposite the prisoner’s house. There is an incident however, connected with the occurrence at Shrewsbury, which I must mention. About 11 o’clock that night, a Mrs. Brooks, who betted on commission and had an establishment of jockeys, went to speak to the deceased upon some racing business, and in the lobby she saw Palmer holding up a tumbler to the light; and, having looked at it through the gas, he withdrew to an outer room and presently returned with the glass in his hand, and went into the room where Cook was, and in which room he drank the brandy and water from which I suppose you will infer that the sickness came on. I do not charge that by anything which caused that sickness Cook’s death was occasioned; but I shall show you that throughout the ensuing days at Rugeley he constantly received things from the prisoner, and that during those days that sickness was continued. I shall show you that after he died antimony was found in the tissues of his body and in his blood--antimony administered in the form of tartar emetic, which, if continued to be applied, will maintain sickness.

It was not that, however, of which this man died. The charge is, that having been prepared by antimony, he was killed by strychnine. You have, no doubt, heard of the vegetable product known as nux vomica. In that nut or bean there resides a subtle and fatal poison which is capable of being extracted from it by the skill of the operative chemist, and of which the most minute quantity is fatal to animal life. From half to a quarter of a grain will destroy life--you may imagine, therefore, how minute is the dose. In the human organization the nervous system may be divided into two main parts--the nerves of sensation, by which a consciousness of all external sensations is conveyed to the brain; and the nerves of motion, which are, as it were, the agents between the intellectual power of man and the physical action which arises from his organization. Those are the two main branches having their origin in the immediate vicinity of the seat of man’s intellectual existence. They are entirely distinct in their allocations, and one set of nerves may be affected while the other is left undisturbed. You may paralyse the nerves of sensation and may leave the nerves which act upon the voluntary muscles of movement wholly unaffected; or you may reverse that state of things, and may affect the nerves and muscles of volition, leaving the nerves of sensation wholly unaffected. Strychnine affects the nerves which act on the voluntary muscles, and it leaves wholly unaffected the nerves on which human consciousness depends; and it is important to bear this in mind--some poisons produce a total absence of consciousness, but the poison to which I refer affects the voluntary action of the muscles of the body, and leaves unimpaired the power of consciousness. Now, the way in which strychnine acting upon the voluntary muscles is fatal to life is, that it produces the most intense excitement of all those muscles, violent convulsions take place--spasms which affect the whole body and which end in rigidity--all the muscles become fixed, and the respiratory muscles in which the lungs have play are fixed with an immovable rigidity, respiration consequently is suspended, and death ensues. These symptoms are known to medical men under the term of tetanus. There are other forms of tetanus which produce death, and which arise from other causes than the taking of strychnine, but there is a wide difference between the various forms of the same disease, which prevents the possibility of mistake.

The learned counsel then explained the different symptoms which characterise traumatic tetanus and idiopathic tetanus, which latter is of comparatively rare occurrence in this country; but, as this is a matter which will be hereafter dwelt upon with great detail in the medical testimony, it is unnecessary to burden our report with it at any length here:--(He then continued.) I have reason to believe that an attempt will be made to confound those different classes of disease, and it will be necessary therefore for the jury to watch with great minuteness the medical evidence upon this point. It will show that both in traumatic and idiopathic tetanus the disease commences with the milder symptoms, which gradually progress towards the development and final completion of the attack. When once the disease has commenced, it continues without intermission, although, as in every other form of malady, the paroxysms will be from time to time more or less intense. In the case of tetanus from strychnine it is not so. It commences with paroxysms which may subside for a time, but are renewed again; and, whereas other forms of tetanus almost always last during a certain number of hours or days, when we deal with strychnine we deal with cases not of hours but of minutes--in which we have no beginning of the disease, and then a gradual development to the climax; but in which the paroxysms commence with all their power at the very first, and terminate, after a few short minutes of fearful agony and struggles, in the dissolution of the victim. Palmer was a medical man, and it is clear that the effect of strychnine had not escaped his attention; for I have a book before me which was found in his house after his arrest, called _Manual for Students Preparing for Examination at Apothecaries’ Hall_; and on the first page, in his handwriting, I observe this remark, “Strychnine kills by causing tetanic fixing of the respiratory muscles.” I don’t wish to attach more importance to that circumstance than it deserves, because nothing is more natural than that, in a book of this kind belonging to a professional man, such notes should be made; but I refer to it to show that the effect of poison on human life had come within his notice.

I now revert to what took place after the arrival of these people at Rugeley. They arrived on the night of Thursday, the 15th of November, between ten and eleven o’clock, when Mr. Cook took some refreshment and went to bed. He rose next morning and went out, and dined that day with Palmer. He returned to the inn about ten o’clock that evening, perfectly well and sober, and went to bed. The next morning, at an early hour, Palmer was with him, and from that time throughout the whole of Saturday and Sunday he was constantly in attendance on him. He ordered him coffee on Saturday morning. It was brought in by the chambermaid, Elizabeth Mills, and given to the prisoner, who had an opportunity of tampering with it before giving it to Cook. Immediately after taking it the same symptoms set in which had occurred at Shrewsbury. Throughout the whole of that day and the next, the prisoner constantly administered various things to Cook, who continued to be tormented with that incessant and troublesome sickness. Again, toast-and-water was brought over from the prisoner’s house, instead of being made at the inn, as it might have been, and again the sickness ensued. It seems also that Palmer desired a woman named Roney to procure some broth for Cook from the Albion. She obtained it and gave it to Palmer to warm, and when Palmer had done so he told her to take it to the Talbot for Mr. Cook, and to say that Mr. Smith had sent it--there being a Mr. Jeremiah Smith, an intimate friend of Cook. Cook tried to swallow a spoonful of the broth, but it immediately made him sick, and he brought it off his stomach. The broth was then taken down stairs, and after a little while the prisoner came across and asked if Mr. Cook had had his broth. He was told, “No; that he had tried to take it, but that it had made him sick, and that he could not retain it on his stomach.” Palmer said that he must take it, and desired that the broth should be brought upstairs. Cook tried to take it again, but again he began to vomit and throw the whole off his stomach. It was then taken down stairs, and a woman at the inn, thinking that it looked nice, took a couple of tablespoonfuls of it; within half an hour she also was taken severely ill. Vomiting came on, and continued almost incessantly for five or six hours. She was obliged to go to bed, and she had exactly the same symptoms which manifested themselves in Cook’s person after he drank the brandy and water at Shrewsbury. On that Saturday, about three o’clock, Dr. Bamford, a medical man at Rugeley, was called in, and Palmer told him that Cook had a bilious attack--that he had dined with him on the day before, and had drunk too freely of champagne, which had disordered his stomach.

Now, I shall show to you, by the evidence of medical men, both at Shrewsbury and Rugeley, that although Palmer had on one or two occasions represented Cook as suffering under bilious diarrhœa, there was not, during the continuance of the violent vomiting which I have mentioned, a single bilious symptom of any sort whatever. Dr. Bamford visited him at half-past 3, and when he found Mr. Cook suffering from violent vomiting, and the stomach in so irritable a state that it would not retain a tablespoonful of anything, he naturally tried to see what the symptoms were which could lead him to form a notion as to the cause of that state of things. He found to his surprise that the pulse of the patient was perfectly natural--that his tongue was quite clean, his skin quite moist, and that there was not the slightest trace of fever, or, in short, of any of those symptoms which might be expected in the case of a bilious man. Having heard from Palmer that he ascribed his illness to an excess of wine on the previous day, he informed Cook of it, and Cook then said, “Well, I suppose I must have taken too much, but it’s very odd, for I only took three glasses.” The representation, therefore, made by Palmer, that Cook had taken an excess of champagne, was not correct. Coffee was brought up to Cook at 4 o’clock when Palmer was there, and he vomited immediately. At 6 some barley-water was taken to him when Palmer was not there, and the barley-water did not produce vomiting. At 8 some arrowroot was given him, Palmer was present, and vomiting took place again. These may, no doubt, be mere coincidences, but they are facts, which, of whatever interpretation they may be susceptible, are well deserving of attention, that during the whole of that Saturday Palmer was continually in and out of the house in which Cook was sojourning; that he gave him a variety of things, and that whenever he gave him anything sickness invariably ensued. That evening Dr. Bamford called again, and finding that the sickness still continued he prepared for the patient two pills containing half a grain of calomel, half a grain of morphia, and four grains of rhubarb.

On the following day, Sunday, between 7 and 8 o’clock in the morning, Dr. Bamford is again summoned to Cook’s bedside, and finds the sickness still recurring, but fails to detect any symptoms of bile. He visited him repeatedly in the course of that day, and on leaving him in the evening found, that though the sickness continued, the tongue was clean, and there was not the slightest indication of bile or fever. And so Sunday ended. On Monday, the 19th, Palmer left Rugeley for London--on what business I shall presently explain. Before starting, however, he called in the morning to see Cook, and ordered him a cup of coffee. He took it up himself, and after drinking it Cook, as usual, vomited. After that Palmer took his departure. Presently Dr. Bamford called, and, finding Cook still suffering from sickness of the stomach, gave him some medicine. Whether from the effect of that medicine, or from whatever other cause, I know not; but it is admitted that from that time a great improvement was observed in Cook. Palmer was not present, and during the whole of the day Cook was better. Between 12 and 1 o’clock he is visited by Dr. Bamford, who, perceiving the improvement, advised him to get up. He does so, washes, dresses, recovers his spirits, and sits up for several hours. Two of his jockies and his trainer called to see him, are admitted to his room, enter into conversation with him, and perceive that he is in a state of comparative ease and comfort, and so he continued till a late hour. I will now interrupt for a moment the consecutive narration of what passed afterwards at Rugeley to follow Palmer through the events in which he was concerned in London. He had written to a person named Herring to meet him at Beaufort-buildings, where a boarding-house was kept by a lady named Hawks. Herring was a man on the turf, and had been to Shrewsbury Races. Immediately on seeing Palmer he inquired after Cook’s health. “Oh,” said Palmer, “he is all right; his medical man has given him a dose of calomel and recommended him not to come out, and what I want to see you about is the settling of his accounts.” Monday, it appears, was settling-day at Tattersall’s, and it was necessary that all accounts should be squared. Cook’s usual agent for effecting that arrangement was a person named Fisher, and it seems not a little singular that Cook should not have told Palmer why Fisher should not have been employed on this as on all similar occasions.