Part 32

My learned friend says that Cook was the best friend of the prisoner, and that Cook was the only person to whom he could look for assistance in his embarrassments. But Cook had no means of assisting him, unless he were to appropriate to his use the money which he had won at Shrewsbury, which was all the property he then possessed; and can any one believe that the deceased would have parted with that money, and would have left himself wholly without any resources for the approaching winter? My learned friend contends that the fact that Palmer had written the letter on the Friday night, in which he asked Fisher to pay £200 to Pratt, on account of a transaction in which both he and Palmer were interested, while £300 more were to be sent upon that night--my learned friend contends that that fact shows that the prisoner and the deceased perfectly understood one another at the time, and goes far to prove the innocence of his client. To my mind, however, that very circumstance affords a very strong argument in favour of the case for the Crown. The only transaction with Pratt, in which Palmer and Cook were both interested, was that relating to the bill for £500, and in which Cook had assigned his horse as a collateral security. It is very easy to see that he must have felt particularly anxious that that claim should at once be settled, and that his horses should come into his own undisputed possession, one of these horses being a very valuable one, namely, Polestar, which had just won the Shrewsbury race. He accordingly, I have no doubt, gave Palmer £300 to be sent up to London on account of that bill; but that sum was never applied by the prisoner to the purpose for which it had been placed in his hands. There is not the slightest foundation for the statement that Cook had entered into an arrangement with Palmer for the purpose of defrauding Fisher of the £200 he had advanced; for there was nothing in his character which could show that he was capable of so infamous an act, and it could not possibly have been his interest that it should take place. I will not ask you to direct your attention to the request addressed by the prisoner to Cheshire, the postmaster, that he should bear his witness to the genuineness of Cook’s signature to the order on the Messrs. Weatherby for the sum of £350. That request was made forty-eight hours after Cook’s death; and if the signature was not a forgery, why was that extraordinary demand made of Cheshire, and why had not the document been since produced? It is impossible to forget that if Cheshire had testified to the genuineness of that document, the prisoner would have been enabled to exercise over him the most fatal control, and that he might then have compelled him to sign another paper, transferring, as the prisoner had sought to do in the course of one of his conversations with Mr. Stevens, to the deceased the liability for £4,000 or £5,000 due on bills to Pratt, and outstanding in his own name.

All these facts show irrefragably, as I contend, that the death of Cook had, in the opinion of the prisoner, become most desirable for his own relief. There is another part of his conduct as tending to throw light on this matter, and that is with reference to Cook’s betting book. On the night when Cook died--ere the breath had hardly parted from that poor man’s body--the prisoner was found there, rummaging his pockets, and searching for his papers. When, subsequently, Stevens asked for the betting book, the prisoner said, “Oh, it’s of no use, for a dead man’s bets are void.” True it is that a dead man’s bets are void, but not when they are paid during his life. Who received the bets? The prisoner at the bar. Who was answerable for them? The prisoner at the bar. Who had an interest in concealing the amount of those debts? The prisoner at the bar. If Stevens had seen that book, he would have seen that Cook was entitled to a sum of £1,020; he would have seen that Fisher was his agent, and from him that Herring, and not Fisher, had calculated his bets. But there is still more yet to be accounted for. When Stevens determined upon having a _post-mortem_ examination, what was the conduct of the prisoner at the bar? [The learned Attorney-General then proceeded to refer to the arrival of Dr. Harland in the town of Rugeley for the purpose of making the examination, his conversation with Palmer, when the latter said that Cook had died of epileptic fits, and that traces of old disease would be found in the head and heart, none of which were, however, found on the examination of the body; the removal of the jar containing the stomach and intestines of Cook, the slits cut in the covering probably for the purpose of introducing something into the jar, which would neutralise the poison if it were present, the restlessness and uneasiness of the prisoner while the examination was going on, his remonstrating with Dr. Bamford for letting the jars be sent away, and his attempt to bribe the post-boy to upset the chaise and break the jar.]

The conduct of Mr. Stevens, the stepfather of Cook, in resolving to prosecute this inquiry, was such as the gravity and importance of the case proved ought to have protected him from the charge of insolent curiosity brought against him by my learned friend. The hon. and learned gentleman then concluded as follows:--It is for you to say, under these circumstances, whether or not the death of the deceased was caused by the prisoner at the bar. You have indeed had introduced into this case one other element which I cannot help thinking might well have been omitted. You have heard from my learned friend an unusual, I think I may even say an unprecedented, expression of the innocence of his client. I can only say on that point that I believe my learned friend might have abstained from any such statement. What would he think of me, if, imitating his example, I should at this moment declare to you, on my honour, as he did, what is the internal conviction which has followed from my conscientious consideration of this case? My learned friend has, with a full display of his great ability, also adopted another course, which, although sometimes resorted to by members of our profession, involves in my mind a species of insult to the good sense and the good feeling of the jury; he has endeavoured to intimidate you by evoking your own conscientious scruples for the purpose of preventing you from adopting the only honest mode of discharging the great duty you are called upon to perform. My learned friend told you that if your verdict in this case should be Guilty, the innocence of the prisoner will one day or other be made manifest, and you would never cease to regret the verdict you had given. If my learned friend was sincere in that--and I know that he was, for there is no man who is more alive than he is to the claims of truth and honour--but if he said what he believed, all I can state in answer is, that I can only attribute the conviction he has expressed to that strong bias which his mind easily, perhaps, received in directing all his energies to the defence of a man charged with this frightful crime. But I still think he would have done well to have abstained from any assurance of the innocence of the prisoner at the bar. I go further, and say that I think he ought, in justice and in consideration to you, to have abstained from telling you that the voice of the country would not sanction the verdict which you might give. I say nothing of the inconsistency which is involved in such a statement, coming from one who but a short time before complained in eloquent terms of the universal torrent of passion, and of prejudice by which, he said, his client was borne down.

In answer to my learned friend, I have only this to say to you. Pay no regard to the voice of the country, whether it be for condemnation or for acquittal; pay no regard to anything but to the internal voice of your own consciences; trust to the sense of that duty to God and man, which you are about to discharge upon this occasion, seeking no reward except the comforting assurance that when you shall look back at the events of this trial you have discharged, to the best of your ability, and to the utmost of your power, the duty you have been called upon to fulfil. If, on a review of the whole case, comparing the evidence on one side and on the other, and weighing it in the even scales of justice, you can come to the conclusion of the innocence, or even entertain that fair and reasonable doubt of guilt, of which the accused is entitled to the benefit, in God’s name give to him that benefit. But if, on the other hand, all the facts and all the evidence lead your minds with satisfaction to yourselves to the conclusion of his guilt, then--but then only--I ask for a verdict of Guilty at your hands. For the protection of the good, for the repression of the wicked, I then ask for that verdict by which alone--as it seems to me--the safety of society can be secured, and the demands--the imperious demands--of public justice can be satisfied. (The hon. and learned gentleman concluded his address shortly after half-past six o’clock, after having occupied the breathless attention of every one who had heard him during a period of three hours and three quarters).

Lord Campbell then addressed the jury as follows:--the cause of public justice imperatively requires that the court should now adjourn. I shall feel it my duty, in this important case, to bring before you the whole of the evidence on the one side and on the other, accompanying the reading of it with such remarks as I may think it proper to make. It is impossible to enter on that duty at this hour, and I am, therefore, under the painful necessity of ordering that you be again kept sequestered from your families and friends during another Sabbath.

The court then adjourned at twenty-five minutes to seven o’clock until ten o’clock on Monday.

We may here observe that the prisoner listened with deep attention to the whole of the address of the Attorney-General, and even with, an air of considerable anxiety, although he still preserved his usual perfect self-possession.

ELEVENTH DAY, MAY 26.

The proceedings in this protracted case were resumed this morning at the Old Bailey. The public interest which it has excited from the first appears in no degree to have abated, and the Court was again densely crowded. The prisoner was placed at the bar punctually at 10 o’clock, and we were unable to trace any change in his appearance or demeanour, although he naturally listened with marked attention, in which one might occasionally detect a shade of anxiety, to the summing up of the Lord Chief Justice. Still it must be admitted that he looked as little concerned as any one in Court.

Several persons of distinction were present during portions of the day, and among them we noticed Mr. Gladstone, M.P., General Fox, Mr. Milnes Gaskell, M.P., Mr. C. Forster, M.P., Mr. Oliveira, M.P., Lord G. Lennox, M.P., the Recorder, the Common Serjeant, Alderman Sir R. W. Garden, the Sheriffs, and other gentlemen officially connected with the administration of justice in the city.

SUMMING-UP OF THE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE.

Silence having been proclaimed,

The LORD CHIEF JUSTICE (CAMPBELL) proceeded to sum up the case to the jury; but spoke in so low a tone that some part of his address was not audible in the reporters’ inconvenient box. He said,--Gentlemen of the Jury, we have at length arrived at that stage in this solemn and important case when it becomes the duty of the Judge to explain to you the nature of the charge brought against the prisoner, and the questions and considerations upon which your verdict ought to be given. Gentlemen, I must begin by conjuring you to banish from your minds all that you may have heard before the prisoner was placed in that dock. There is no doubt that a strong prejudice elsewhere did prevail against the prisoner at the bar. In the county of Stafford, where the offence for which he has to answer was alleged to have been committed, that prejudice was so strong that the Court of Queen’s Bench made an order to remove the trial from that county. The prisoner, by his counsel, expressed a wish that the trial might take place at the Central Criminal Court; and to enable that wish to be accomplished an act has been passed by the Legislature, authorising the Court of Queen’s Bench to direct the trial to be held in this Court, so as to secure to the prisoner that he shall have a fair and impartial trial.

Gentlemen, I must not only warn you against being influenced by what you have before heard, but I must also warn you not to be influenced by anything but by the evidence which has been laid before you with respect to the particular charge for which the prisoner is now arraigned. It is necessary that I should so warn you in this case, because the evidence certainly implicates the prisoner in transactions of another description which are very discreditable. It appears that he has forged a great many bills of exchange, and that he had entered upon transactions which were not of a creditable nature. Those transactions, however, must be excluded from your consideration altogether. By the practice in foreign countries it is allowed to raise a probability of the prisoner having committed the crime with which he is charged by proving that he has committed other offences--by showing that he is an immoral man, and that he is not unlikely, therefore, to have committed the offence with which he is charged. That is not the case in this country. You must presume that a man is innocent until his guilt be established, and his guilt can only be established by evidence directly criminating him on the charge for which he is tried. Gentlemen, it gives me great satisfaction that this case has been so fully laid before you. Everything has been done that could have been accomplished for the purpose of assisting the jury in arriving at a right conclusion. The prosecution has been taken up by the Government, so that justice may be duly administered, the Attorney-General, who is the first law officer of the Crown, having conducted it in his capacity of a minister of justice. The prisoner also appears to have had ample means for conducting his defence; witnesses have very properly been brought from all parts of the kingdom to give you the benefit of their information; and he has had the advantage of having his case conducted by one of the most distinguished advocates of the English bar. Gentlemen, I must strongly recommend to you to attend to everything that fell from that advocate, so eloquently, so ably, and so impressively. You are to judge, however, of the guilt or innocence of the prisoner from the evidence, and not from the speeches of counsel, however able or eloquent those speeches may be. When a counsel tells you that he believes his client to be innocent, remember that that is analogous to the mere form by which a prisoner pleads “Not Guilty.” It goes for nothing more; and the most inconvenient consequences must follow from regarding it in any other light.

I will now say a few words in order to call to your minds what are the allegations in this case on one side and on the other. On the part of the prosecution it is alleged that the deceased, John Parsons Cook, was first tampered with by antimony, that he was then killed by the poison of strychnia, and that his symptoms were the symptoms of poisoning by strychnia. Then it is alleged that the prisoner at the bar had a motive for making away with the deceased, that he had an opportunity of administering poison, that suspicion could fall upon no one else, and that a few days before the time when the poison is supposed to have been administered he had purchased strychnia at two different places. It is also alleged by the prosecution that his conduct during that transaction, and after it, was that of a guilty and not of an innocent man. The prisoner at the bar, on the other hand, puts forward these allegations--that he had no interest in procuring the death of John Parsons Cook, but, on the contrary, that it was his interest to keep him alive; that the death was not occasioned by strychnia, but by natural disease, and that the symptoms were those of natural disease, and were by no means consistent with, the supposition of death by strychnia. These are the allegations which are urged upon one side and the other, and it is for you to say, upon the evidence, which, of these allegations you believe to be founded on truth.

Gentlemen, you have a most anxious duty to perform. The life of the prisoner is at stake; if he be guilty, it is necessary that he should expiate his crime; if he be innocent, it is requisite that his innocence should be vindicated. If his guilt be proved to you on satisfactory evidence, it is your duty to society and to yourselves to convict him; but unless his guilt be fully sustained by the evidence, it is your duty to acquit him. You must bear in mind that in a case of this sort you cannot expect that witnesses should be called to state that they saw the deadly poison mixed up by the prisoner, and by him openly administered. Circumstantial evidence of the fact is all that can be expected; and if there be a series of circumstances leading to the conclusion of guilt, a verdict of guilty may be satisfactorily pronounced. With respect to the motive, it is of great importance, in cases of this description, that you should consider whether there was any motive for committing the crime with which a prisoner is charged, for if there be no motive, there is an improbability of the offence having been committed. If, on the other hand, there be any motive which can be assigned for the commission of the deed, the adequacy of that motive becomes next a matter of the utmost importance.

The great question which you will have to consider is, whether the symptoms of Cook’s death are consistent with poisoning by strychnia. If they are not, and you believe that the death arose from natural causes, the prisoner is at once entitled to your verdict of Not Guilty. If, on the other hand, you think that the symptoms are consistent with poisoning by strychnia, you have another and important question to decide--namely, whether the evidence which has been adduced is sufficient to convince you that death was effected by strychnia, and, if so, whether such strychnia was administered by the prisoner. In cases of this sort the evidence has often been divided into the medical, and the moral, or circumstantial evidence. They cannot be separated, however, in the minds of a jury, because it is by a combination of those two species of evidence that their verdict ought to be given. In this case you must look at the medical evidence, to see whether the deceased died from strychnia or from natural causes; and you must look to what is called the moral evidence, to consider whether that shows that the prisoner not only had the opportunity, but that he actually availed himself of that opportunity, and administered the poison to the deceased. Now, gentlemen, with these preliminary observations, I will proceed to read over the evidence which has been given in the course of this long trial, praying you most earnestly to weigh that evidence carefully, and to be guided entirely by it in the verdict at which you may arrive. I begin with that part of the case which was first raised by the Attorney-General, with respect to the motive which the prisoner is supposed to have had for taking away the life of John Parsons Cook. Now, I think that that arises out of certain pecuniary transactions which must be fresh in the minds of all of you. It appears that the prisoner had borrowed large sums of money upon bills of exchange, which he drew, and which purported to be accepted by his mother--a lady, it seems, of considerable wealth, residing at Rugeley. Those acceptances were forged, and the lady was not aware of them until a recent period, when they became due, and proceedings were taken upon them. One of those acceptances, for £2,000, was in the hands of a gentleman named Padwick; £1,000 had been paid, and £1,000 remained due to Mr. Padwick upon that bill. A solicitor named Pratt, of Queen-street, Mayfair, had advanced large sums of money to the prisoner upon similar bills to the amount, I think of £12,500. Several of those bills had been renewed without the knowledge of the mother; but there were two which remained unrenewed--one, for £2,000, became due on the 25th of October, 1855, and another, for £2,000, became due on the 27th of October, 1855. Besides these, Mr. Pratt held one bill for £500, and another for £1,000, which were overdue, but not renewed, and which Pratt held over, charging a very high rate of interest upon them.

In addition to these large sums, which had been advanced by Pratt to the prisoner, it appears that upon similar bills Palmer had contracted a very large debt with an attorney at Birmingham, named Wright, to whom he owed £10,400. It had been stated by Palmer that he should be able to liquidate those bills by the proceeds of a policy of assurance which had been effected on the life of his brother, Walter Palmer. Gentlemen, the law of this country wisely forbids an insurance being effected by one person upon the life of another who has no interest in that life; but, unfortunately, it does not prevent a man from insuring his own life to any amount, however large, and whatever his position may be, and assigning the policy of that insurance to another person. It has been proved in evidence that there had been an insurance for £13,000 effected on the life of Walter Palmer, who was a bankrupt, without any means except such as were furnished to him by his mother; and that the policy had been assigned by Walter Palmer to the prisoner at the bar. It was expected that the £13,000 insured upon the life of his brother would be the means of enabling the prisoner to meet the acceptances to which I have referred, but the directors of the Prince of Wales Insurance-office denied their liability upon that policy, and refused to pay it. Hence arose the most pressing embarrassments; claimants were urging the payment of their accounts, and it was evident that, unless they were immediately paid, the law would be put in force against the prisoner and his mother, and that the system of forgeries which had been so long carried on would be made apparent. Now I begin with the evidence of Mr. John Espin, a solicitor practising in Davies-street, Berkeley-square. [The learned Judge then read the evidence of Mr. Espin with respect to the £2,000 bill held by Mr. Padwick, the dishonouring of the cheque for £1,000, and the final issuing of a _ca. sa._ against the person of the prisoner on the 12th of December.] This, continued the noble Lord, is certainly strong evidence to show the desperate state of the prisoner’s circumstances at that time; but we now come to the evidence of Mr. Thomas Pratt, who had advanced money to the prisoner upon bills of exchange, which bore the forged acceptance of the prisoner’s mother, to the amount of £12,500. [The learned Judge then proceeded to read the whole of the evidence of Mr. Pratt, together with the voluminous correspondence between that gentleman and the prisoner, detailing the entire history of the transactions which had taken place between them from the date of their first acquaintance in November, 1853, down to the period of the apprehension of the prisoner upon the present charge. They will be found reported in their proper place.] With regard to the letter subjoined, and marked “strictly private and confidential,”--