Part 16

I have mentioned all that I intend to say about his bodily infirmities--let us now see what has been the state of his mind. He went to the Shrewsbury races in imminent peril of leaving them a ruined man. Mr. Stevens told Palmer, and we have heard nothing to the contrary, that if anybody had claims upon him, there would not be four thousand shillings to meet them. We know, from the necessity under which he was to raise sums of money at exorbitant interest, that he must have been in circumstances of the utmost embarrassment--that it was impossible, morally speaking, unless some wonderful success on the turf restored his fortunes, that he could stand his ground at all; and it is in this state of mind, and with health, at all events, not strong, and a constitution exceedingly delicate, that he had been for a length of time cherishing the hope that “Polestar,” which was hardly his, for it was mortgaged, and which must become another person’s if it did not win at Shrewsbury--in all reasonable probability he had been cherishing the hope that “Polestar” would win, and that he by that winning would possess himself at once of the stakes, which my learned friend stated, and I think it was proved, amounted to nearly £400, besides some considerable winnings to the amount of £600 or £700 by bets on the mare--upwards of £1000 altogether. That has been mentioned several times. Fancy the condition in which that young man rose from his bed on the Tuesday morning. He must have known and felt when he went down to breakfast, “This night I am either a beggar, or a man with hopes of recovering myself, and with the means, at least for the time, of keeping up my appearance of respectability.” He goes to the races--another race takes place before his mare, “Polestar,” is brought to the goal. He waits for it in a state of feverish anxiety and expectation--the hour that intervenes appears to him everlasting. At last the horses start, and his mare wins easily--he is the winner of £1000. We may suppose that to be the sum. What effect has it upon him? Mr. Jones tells us the effect. He is unable to speak for three minutes. He is saved, not merely in purse but in honour and character--saved before his relatives and friends. He will not be a disgrace to them yet, at all events; he may retrieve his fortunes, and become an honourable and respectable man. Conceive him to be a man with right feelings--and it is not because a man falls into the ways of promiscuous licentiousness that he is devoid of all honourable feeling--conceive him to be an honourable man, a man who loved the memory of his father and his mother, who valued the respectability of his family, and who had a desire to appear before his sister, Mrs. Bradford, as an honourable man, instead of being known to her as a levanter and a blackleg, driven from all honourable society. The effect of his success is that for three minutes he cannot speak, though he is with his intimate friend Mr. Jones. He goes back to the inn, though he has to some extent recovered himself, in a state of elation, of which it is my duty to say that one man said he was not more elated than other people when they have won, but still, depend upon it, overjoyed, and with a revulsion from the despair in which he was, which must have convulsed, though not in a sense of immediate illness, every fibre of his frame. His first and his natural inclination was to entertain his friends, and he gives a champagne dinner. The evidence is that he did not drink to excess; that is the evidence--but he had champagne, and we all of us know that when there is champagne there are other things besides, and it very often happens it is not because champagne is drunk the company do not drink as much of other wines. What in ordinary parlance is called a champagne dinner is a good, luxurious entertainment, in which there is no stint and not much self-restraint. I do not mean to say he was drunk. The evidence is he rose from table not drunk, and therefore it is not for me to say, and the evidence will not justify me in saying, he was. That evening he did not spend in the company of Jones. I do not think it is very clear in whose company he spent it after the dinner was over; but we find him the next night, Wednesday, at the Unicorn, with Saunders, the trainer, Mr. Palmer, and a lady. The next morning is cold and wet. He went on the ground, and was observed by Herring standing in the wet, who remonstrated with him for so doing. He was taken ill that night, and you will hear what his symptoms were. I shall call your attention to those under the third head of what I have to address to you. He sent for a doctor, who recommended an emetic. The poor man seemed to know more about it than the doctor. He said he could do it with hot water and a toothbrush. Perhaps he had often relieved his stomach in that way. He was unwell that day, and was ailing till his death at Rugeley. That is the general history, as far as the mental excitement can be referred to--great reason to apprehend ruin when he went to Shrewsbury; immediate, sudden, yet only partial recovery from his embarrassments at Shrewsbury; and home to Rugeley to meet them again in their full intensity, all the winnings and twice the sum, unable to save him from the ruin he had brought on himself. All the property he appears to have had at the time was “Polestar” and “Syrius,” and they were mortgaged for debts due to Pratt. He may have had some few hundreds in money. It is with a weakened body and an irritated and excited mind that he is affected with a sickness at Shrewsbury, which clings to a system incapable of being recruited by the ordinary necessary food, without which the strongest man gives way, excites his nerves, and makes him in imminent danger of falling a victim to any convulsive attacks to which his constitution would be likely to be disposed. Depend upon it, the thoughts of that young man, when he retired to bed, were not the thoughts with which you lay your heads upon the pillow. He had much to think of which he regretted, much to deliberate upon which was of a nature to excite in his mind the most serious apprehensions. There was neither credit, nor honour, nor anything in his career which would make him respect himself, or respectable in the eyes of others. His rest was only imperfect at the best, and after the gratifications of the animal appetite to which people in some instances resort to alleviate the unhappy recollections of the moment, he had no resource. He desired no society so much as the society of Palmer. His residence was at the Talbot Arms, which was, in fact, a residence with Palmer. He does not appear to have had a sitting-room to himself; he does not appear to have frequented the coffee-room. He had a bedroom at the Talbot Arms, and his real home, where he often was, and would have been nearly altogether but for his illness, was Palmer’s house over the way. That was his condition at Rugeley. He is taken violently ill on Sunday night. We had nothing but his own description of it; but what is that description? He had been poorly for some time. For two nights he had been taking opium pills prescribed by Mr. Bamford. Mr. Bamford is an aged man, but there is no doubt a respectable man, and a man who would be likely, I think we might fairly infer, to consider what the complaint was and prescribe accordingly. In the middle of the night, at twelve o’clock, he was awakened from a dream in a state of affright. He says he was nearly mad; he rang the bell, but nobody would come.

LORD CAMPBELL--He thought they would not hear him; he thought they had gone to bed.

[Sidenote: Serjeant Shee]

Mr. SERJEANT SHEE--Yes; that is so; I am much obliged to your lordship. He states he was mad for two minutes, and what did he ascribe it to? Nothing but sudden alarm at the noise of a quarrel in the street. Does that happen to us, gentlemen? Does it happen to those of us who live regular lives, and who are of good average constitution? Do we awaken in a state that we can describe as madness, and without any mode of accounting for the paroxysm but a quarrel in the street? It must have been a very high state of nervous excitement. It must have been something violent while it lasted--transient in its character--but something that arose from a disordered state of the stomach and an agitated and anxious mind, probably in some degree weakened by the medicine he was taking, the calomel and the morphia.

The next day, the Monday, he was well the whole day; not well in the sense of being strong and able to take a walk in the fields, or mount his horse and gallop about the country, but well in the sense of being able to get up, after trying to breakfast in bed, to talk of sending for the barber, and, I believe, actually sending for him; of seeing his trainer and his jockeys, and discussing his plans for his next campaign--well to that extent, but not out of his bedroom, taking no substantial food, not vomiting much that day, though a little I think in the morning, which is ascribed by the theory of the Crown, or by those whose case the Crown has been forced by public opinion or by public excitement to take up, to Palmer’s absence all that day. We do not hear that Cook took anything solid. We do not hear that he lunched at one o’clock, and then, as most probably he was in the habit of doing, took his beefsteak and his leg of mutton, or his chicken, at five or six o’clock. He had no insuperable dislike to brandy and water; he could, on occasion, take his glass or two, though Palmer was not there; but he does not appear to have been in the condition, ill as he was, to have any gratification in food or drink of any kind; and Palmer was in London all the time. Then, in the middle of the night, at twelve o’clock, he was seized with a paroxysm, which Elizabeth Mills describes. We will take her description. That is the account of Cook’s illness on Monday night. It might have been a much less serious fit than the one on the Sunday night. Nothing took place which could justify any man in saying that he was mad for a minute--nothing of the kind. But let us be fair. Afterwards, in talking of it, he says, speaking to Elizabeth Mills, “Did you ever see anybody in such agony as I was last night?” We have the description of Elizabeth Mills, and his own statement afterwards; “I saw him again about seven o’clock, and he asked me whether I ever saw anybody in such agony as he was the previous night.” Not to tie the young woman down to a word, the fair inference of the whole of that statement is that for some time during the whole of that paroxysm he was in pain, and in great pain, but that he never lost his senses. He could not very well be in such a state as that which he described on the Sunday night. Now, let us have the statement of Mr. Jones, who is, we must take it, a perfectly competent man, and whose evidence must be attended to. Mr. Jones was requested to go there by Palmer, Palmer having written to him on the Sunday. He was not able to go then, being himself indisposed, and he could not get there till Tuesday. He went there on the Tuesday, and got there by three o’clock, and he was for some time with Cook alone.

[Sidenote: Serjeant Shee]

Now, just observe the consequence of that, looking at the circumstances of this case. Mr. Jones was the most intimate friend, as far as we can judge, that Cook had. Probably he was. He had a great regard for Mr. Stevens, who had been the husband of Cook’s mother, but he was not so intimate with Mr. Stevens. Mr. Stevens was probably a gentleman who did not approve--in fact, he frankly told us he disapproved--of the course Cook was pursuing. Probably he was more austere to him during life than we should imagine from the way he speaks of him after death. His best friend seems to have been Mr. Jones. No doubt Mr. Jones, though he was a respectable man, did not take on himself to rebuke or reprove Cook for what he might think it not correct to do. He lived in his house at Lutterworth, and appears to have been on such good terms with Cook that Palmer knew it would not be disagreeable to Cook if Mr. Jones would come and stay and sleep in the same bedroom, and so long as he required the attendance of a friend; and, as far as we can understand, Mr. Jones has Cook to himself from three to seven o’clock. He has him to himself for some considerable time. You know part of the suggestion in this case for the Crown is that Cook thought that Palmer had played false with him at Shrewsbury; part of the suggestion in this case is that Cook thought at Shrewsbury Palmer laid a plan for circumventing him, and of getting his money. Mr. Jones had the opportunity, during the afternoon, if Cook had wished it, of being the recipient of the whole confidence of Cook; Cook might have said to Mr. Jones, “I am glad you have come; I have been acting the fool with Palmer; I suspect him; I think he means to get my money.”

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL--You must not say that. You would not let me ask him any questions about it.

Mr. SERJEANT SHEE--I do not say that it did pass. I use it in this way, it might have passed, and that it did not is clear, because Mr. Jones entertained no suspicion of the kind; he having been with Cook during the whole of the evening shows that it did not pass, and that nothing occurred in the entire and unbounded confidence which may be supposed to have existed between Cook and Mr. Jones to raise a suspicion in the mind of Mr. Jones; and so much was that the case that, at the consultation which took place between seven and eight o’clock on Tuesday evening, between Mr. Jones and Palmer and Mr. Bamford, as to what the medicine ought to be, the fit of the Monday night was never mentioned; it was not alluded to at all.

[Sidenote: Serjeant Shee]

Gentlemen, that is a very remarkable fact; it is remarkable in two ways; the Crown might say it is remarkable in this sense, that Palmer knew it, and said not a word about it. But it seems it was a matter, in the opinion of Cook, so little serious, that he never said a word of it to Mr. Jones, because, if Cook had thought that those words which he used to Elizabeth Mills were not an exaggerated description of what had occurred, do you not think, when Mr. Jones came to see him, and felt his pulse, and inquired what his symptoms were, that Cook would have said (he being in full possession of his senses), “You cannot judge now from my appearance how I am--I was in a state of madness last night--I was in the greatest possible agony--I do not know what it was--I was attacked in the middle of the night in such a way that I thought I was going to die”? As he had Mr. Jones with him, would he not have mentioned that in the conversation? My inference from that is, that in all probability this first statement of Elizabeth Mills was the correct statement of what occurred; and if we find it is consistent with what Mr. Jones says as to what occurred the next night in its general character, it would be very nearly the same on both nights. We may reasonably infer that anything in excess of that, on which the medical evidence was given, has been the result of imagination, and not so strictly consistent with the truth as the original statement. Let us see what Mr. Jones says. (The learned Serjeant read a portion of the deposition of Mr. Jones before the coroner.) Observe the significance of that. Palmer, in the presence of Mr. Jones, brings up two pills, which it is supposed were the pills that poisoned him--pills containing a substance which sometimes does its work in a quarter of an hour, which has done it in less, but never hardly exceeds half an hour; and so we are to be asked to believe that Palmer, Jones being present, and Cook in his presence objecting to take the pills, positively forced them down his throat, at the imminent peril of his falling down, like the rabbit, in two or three minutes afterwards in convulsions evidently and manifestly tetanic. He states what did take place. (The learned Serjeant read a further portion of Mr. Jones’ deposition.) But, as I am reminded by one of my lords, that in the course of the examination of Mr. Jones the word “tetanus” is used, it is right I should say a word on that, lest I should forget it. The word “tetanus” is not in the deposition, and it is very remarkable that the suggestion which has been put forward by the Crown was the suggestion of Dr. Taylor. I do not think it is impossible that Mr. Jones, when he gave that evidence, had in his mind’s eye what he had seen that night and not seen very correctly. He had not light enough to see the patient’s face. There was only one candle, and he could not tell whether there was any change in his countenance on the Tuesday--a very important symptom. They say it cannot have been tetanic, because there is a peculiar expression in the face--a fact which nobody observed. It was too dark, in this case of Cook’s, to take notice. Mr. Jones gave his evidence, and he is a competent professional man, and it is quite clear that the notion of tetanus, tetanic, tetaniform, or something like tetanus, must have entered into his mind, because the clerk has put down “tetinus”; he probably had not heard of the word before, and the probability is something like it was used. He said he did use it, and afterwards it was struck out, and Mr. Jones corrected his deposition, read it all over, and signed it, and left it with the word struck out. There are strong symptoms of “compression,” that is, one word struck out; then afterwards there is the word “tetinus,” and then those two words are struck out, with Mr. Jones’ entire approbation, because otherwise he would have corrected it when he signed it; and he said he read it over, and the words “violent convulsions” were substituted. What is the fair inference from that?--that the man who saw Cook in the paroxysm did not think himself justified in saying it was tetanus. It might be very like; it might have a tetaniform appearance; but it was not tetanus.

Gentlemen, I will call your attention to the features of general convulsions. I cross-examined several of the medical witnesses for the purpose of inducing what I consider to be a true belief as to this case, that the convulsions in which Cook died were not tetanus or tetanic properly speaking; but that they were convulsions of that strong and violent character which are tetaniform, though not classed under idiopathic or traumatic tetanus, but under the head of general convulsions.

[Sidenote: Serjeant Shee]

Gentlemen, I now propose to read a description of general convulsions from the work of Dr. Copland. I called the attention of the very learned gentlemen who were examined for the Crown to what was laid down in that work, which is admitted to be one of authority, and I cannot conceive how you, to whom this matter of fact is to be submitted, can form an opinion whether or not my theory, or rather my belief, that he died by the visitation of God, in violent general convulsions, be a probable one, unless you hear from what was not written for the purposes of this case what the features of general convulsions are; so, if you please, I will read to you what I have myself copied from the work of Dr. Copland. This, I may say, as I am upon the point, that the only persons in the profession who can be supposed to have any competent or reliable information on the subject of tetanus, not traumatic, are physicians; and not one physician--properly so speaking--not one of that most honourable body of men who see the sudden attacks of patients in their beds, and not in hospitals, has been called to speak to this. Dr. Todd was called, and Dr. Todd gave his evidence in a way to command the respect of everybody; but Dr. Todd is a gentleman whose practice does not appear to have been so much that of a physician as that of a surgeon; he is physician to the King’s College Hospital, and has held that office about twenty years; he has lectured on diseases of the nervous system and tetanus, but he does not appear to have been a physician in general practice.

[Sidenote: Serjeant Shee]

Gentlemen, I am instructed--I shall be able to show--by eminent men that what I am about to read from Dr. Copland’s book, as part of my speech, is a true description of convulsions that are not idiopathic or traumatic, but of a general kind. He first gives the definition of “general convulsions,” which he says are “violent and involuntary contractions of a part or of the whole of the body, sometimes with rigidity and tension (tonic convulsions), but more frequently with tumultuous agitations, consisting of alternating shocks (clonic convulsions), that come on suddenly, either in recurring or in distinct paroxysms, and after irregular and uncertain intervals.” We will see what he says about it--“If we take the character of the spasm in respect of permanency, rigidity, relaxation, and recurrence as a basis of arrangement of all the diseases by abnormal action of involuntary muscles, we shall have every grade, passing imperceptibly from the most acute form of tetanus through cramp, epilepsy, eclompsia, convulsions, &c., down to the most atonic states of chorea and tremor. Also if we consider the affections called convulsions, and which are usually irregular in their forms, with reference to the character of the abnormal contraction of the muscles, we shall see it in some cases of the most violent and spastic nature, frequently of some continuance, the relaxations being of brief duration, or scarcely observable, and in others nearly or altogether approaching to tetanic. These constitute the more tonic form of convulsions, from which there is every possible grade, down to the atonic or most clonic observed in chorea or tremor. The premonitory signs of general convulsions are, _inter alia_, vertigo and dizziness, irritability of temper, flushings or alternate flushing and paleness of the face, nausea, retching or vomiting, or pain and distension of the stomach or left hypochondrium, unusual flatulence of the stomach and bowels, and other dyspeptic symptoms. In many instances the general sensibility and consciousness are but very slightly impaired, particularly in the more simple cases, and when the proximate cause is not seated in the encephalon; but in proportion as this part is affected primarily or consecutively, and the neck and face tumid and livid, the cerebral functions are obscured, and the convulsions attended by stupor, delirium, &c., or pass into or are followed by these states. The paroxysm may cease in a few moments, or minutes, or continue for some or even many hours. It generally subsides rapidly, the patient experiencing at its termination fatigue, headache, or stupor, but he is usually restored in a short time to the same state as before the seizure, which is liable to recur in a person once affected, but at uncertain intervals. After repeated attacks the fit sometimes becomes periodic (the convulsio recurrens of authors). The most common causes are, _inter alia_, all emotions of the mind which excite the nervous power and determine the blood to the head, as joy, anger, religious enthusiasm, excessive desire, &c., or those which greatly depress the nervous influence, as well as diminish and derange the actions of the heart, as fear, terror, anxiety, sadness, distressing intelligence, frightful dreams, &c., the syphilitic poison and repulsion of gout or rheumatism.”

[Sidenote: Serjeant Shee]