Part 26
JOHN SARGENT, examined by Mr. SERJEANT SHEE--I frequently attend race meetings, and knew Mr. Cook intimately. I was with him at Liverpool on the week previous to the Shrewsbury meeting. We slept in adjoining rooms, and in the morning he called my attention to the state of his throat and mouth. The back part of his tongue was in a complete state of ulcer. I said I was surprised that he could eat and drink in the state his mouth was in. He said he had been in that state for weeks and months, and took no notice of it now. He had frequently before then shown me his throat when it was in that state. On one occasion, when he took a ginger nut with cayenne by mistake, he told me that it nearly killed him. Before Shrewsbury races Cook was very poor. He owed me £25, and paid £10 on account, saying he had not sufficient to pay his expenses at Liverpool. Cook and Palmer were in the habit of betting for each other on particular horses. I have heard Cook apply to Palmer to supply him with a lotion called blackwash. This is a mercurial lotion of calomel and lime water.
Cross-examined by Mr. JAMES--He applied for it at the latter end of last year. Having seen the state of his throat, I was surprised at his eating and drinking so well.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: J. Smith]
JEREMIAH SMITH, examined by Mr. SERJEANT SHEE--I am an attorney at Rugeley, and knew the late Mr. Cook. I saw him at ten o’clock on Friday morning, 16th November, 1855. He was having breakfast in bed--a cup of tea with a wineglassful of brandy in it. I dined with him and Mr. Palmer about two o’clock. We had a beefsteak and some champagne. After dinner we had three bottles of port wine, of which Cook drank his share. We rose from the table between five and six, and Cook and I went to my house, and then to the Albion Hotel, which is next door, and had a brandy and water each. Cook left me there between seven and eight. He said he felt cold. During that day I asked Cook for £50 he was due me. He gave me £5, and when he took the note out of his case I said, “You can pay me the whole £50.” He said, “No; there is only £41 10s. due to you.” Then he said he had given Mr. Palmer money, and he would pay me the remainder when he returned from Tattersall’s on Monday after the settling. On the Saturday night following I slept in the same room with him, as he was not well. We went to bed about twelve o’clock. In the early part of the night he got some toast and water, and he was sick. I saw him using a night-chair in the room. He tried to vomit, but I do not know whether he did so or not. After that I slept until Mr. Palmer and Mr. Bamford came in the morning to see him. He said, “I am rather better this morning. I slept from about two or three o’clock, after the confounded concert was gone.” Mr. Bamford said, “I will send you some more medicine.” I then got up and left the house. I know Mrs. Palmer, the mother of the prisoner. She asked me to see her on Monday evening, and, in consequence of that, I went about two o’clock to see if I could find Palmer, but could not. About ten minutes past ten I saw him in a car coming from the direction of Stafford. I asked him, “Have you seen Mr. Cook to-day?” He said, “No; we had better just run up and see.” We went up, and Cook told Palmer he was late, and that he had taken the medicine. We only stayed two or three minutes. Cook said he had taken some pills Mr. Bamford had sent him. He also said he had been up that day, and Palmer said he ought not to have been up. Palmer and I then went to his mother’s house, about 400 or 500 yards. We stayed about half an hour, and then left for Palmer’s house. I left him at his house and went home. On the Saturday I asked Cook to dine with me, but he did not. He said he was not well. I got for him a boiled leg of mutton and some broth from the Albion, which was taken to him by Ann Rowley, a charwoman. In the May before his death I borrowed £100 from Mrs. Palmer and £100 from William Palmer for Cook. I also negotiated a £500 loan through Mr. Pratt. I know that Palmer and Cook were jointly interested in one horse, “Pyrrhine,” and that they were in the habit of betting very frequently for each other. Shortly before Mr. Cook’s death I had seen Mr. Thirlby, Palmer’s assistant, dress Cook’s throat with caustic. I have seen this four or five times, chiefly before Shrewsbury races. I know Mr. Cook’s signature. [Some papers were handed to witness.] Here are two notes, instructions for the £500. One is signed “J. P. Cook” and the other “J. Parsons Cook.” I saw that signed. Some weeks before Mr. Cook’s death he was served with a writ. [The following letter was read:--]
My dear Sir,--I have been in a devil of a fix about the bill, but have at last settled it at the cost of three guineas, for the damned discounter had issued a writ against me, and I am very much disgusted at it.
JOHN PARSONS.
I destroyed the envelope in which that was contained. [Another letter was read, dated 25th June, 1855--]
Dear Jimmy,--I should like to have the bill renewed for two months more. Can it be done? Let me know by return; 4 Victoria Street, Holborn Bridge. I have scratched “Polestar” for the Northamptonshire and Wolverhampton Stakes. I shall be down on Friday and Saturday. In haste.--J. Parsons Cook. Fred tells me “Bolton” or “Arabus” will win the Northumberland Plate.
J. P. COOK.
I saw that “J. P. Cook” written. [The following paper was read:--]
“Polestar,” three years; “Sirius,” two years, by way of mortgage, to secure £500, advanced on a bill of exchange, dated 29th August, 1855, payable three months after date.
These were the instructions to prepare the mortgage.
[Sidenote: J. Smith]
Cross-examined by the ATTORNEY-GENERAL--I am the Mr. Smith that took Mr. Myatt to Stafford gaol. I have been employed a good deal by Mr. Palmer as his attorney. I do not recollect that he applied to me in December, 1854, to attest a proposal on the life of his brother Walter for £13,000 at the Solicitors and General office. Nor do I recollect that I was applied to by Palmer to attest a proposal for £13,000 to the Prince of Wales office on his brother Walter’s life. I knew that Walter Palmer had been a bankrupt six years before, but not that he was in great distress for money. I believe he had an allowance from his mother. I do not recollect that I was called upon to attest another proposal in the Universal office for £13,000 upon the life of Walter Palmer. If I could see any document or any letter to remind me of the circumstance I would not deny it. [An assignment of this policy by Walter Palmer to William Palmer was handed to witness. He was asked if he received £5 for attesting the assignment, and answered he might have, he did not recollect.] This is very like my signature. It is a good imitation. I have some doubt that it is not my handwriting. That is Walter Palmer’s signature, and the attestation, “signed, sealed, and delivered,” is in Mr. Pratt’s handwriting. I got the document from Mr. Palmer. I still do not think that what bears to be my signature is in my handwriting. In October, 1855, I applied to the Midland Counties office to be appointed their agent. Bates and Palmer came together to my office with a prospectus, and asked me if there was any agent in Rugeley. I said I never heard of one. They asked me to write and get an appointment, as they wanted to raise money. I did so. The reason I became an agent was to get an insurance effected upon Bates’ life for £10,000. Bates at that time was the superintendent of William Palmer’s stud and stables. After this I went to the widow of Walter Palmer to get her to give up her claim upon the policy of her husband. She refused. This document, the signature to which I doubt whether it is my handwriting or not, is signed by Walter Palmer. I do not know that he got nothing for the assignment. I understood he got a house furnished for him. I do not recollect being applied to by William Palmer in December, 1854, to attest a proposal on his brother’s life for £13,000 in the Solicitors and General office. I have no doubt I might. The body of the document [handed to witness] is in the handwriting of William Palmer. The signature is mine. I may have signed it blank. I do not remember getting £5 for attesting the execution of that deed of assignment by Walter Palmer to his brother. [The witness gave similar answers to questions put as to his attestation of proposals for policies of £13,000 on Walter Palmer’s life in two other offices.] With reference to that £200 which I got for Mr. Cook, £100 from Mrs. Palmer and the other £100 from William Palmer, Cook gave £10 for the accommodation to William Palmer. William Palmer was the drawer of the bill and Cook the acceptor. He received £100 less £10 in cash. When the bill was given I handed it over to Mr. Palmer. What he did with it I do not know. I do not know if he discounted with Mr. Pratt. I have never seen the bill since. Palmer was not short of money at this time, as he lent £100 to Cook. I do not know that he wanted some money to make up the sum of £500 payable to Mr. Sargent.
_Proof closed._
Attorney-General’s Address to Jury.
[Sidenote: Attorney-General]
Mr. ATTORNEY-GENERAL--May it please your lordships--Gentlemen of the jury, the case for the prosecution and the case for the defence are now before you; and it becomes my duty to address to you such observations upon the whole of the materials, upon which your judgment is to be founded, as suggest themselves to my mind. I have a solemn and an important duty to perform. I wish that I could have answered the appeal made to me the other day by my learned friend, Mr. Serjeant Shee, and have felt that I was satisfied with the case that he submitted to you on the part of the defence. But, standing here as the instrument of public justice, I feel that I should be wanting in the duty that I have to perform if I did not ask at your hands for a verdict of guilty against the accused. I approach the consideration of the case in what, I hope, I may term a spirit of fairness, of moderation, and of truth. My business is to convince you, if I can, by facts and legitimate argument, of the prisoner’s guilt. If I cannot establish it to your satisfaction, no man will rejoice more than I shall in the verdict that you will pronounce of not guilty.
Gentlemen, in the vast mass of materials which the evidence in this case has brought before you, two main questions present themselves prominently for your consideration--- did the deceased man, into whose death we are now inquiring, die a natural death, or was he taken off by the foul means of poison? And if the latter proposition be sanctioned by your approbation, then comes the important--if possible the still more important--question of whether the prisoner at the bar was the author of his death? I will proceed at once without further observation to the discussion of those questions, taking them in the order in which I have proposed them. Did John Parsons Cook die by poison? I assert and maintain the affirmative of that proposition. The case which is submitted to you on behalf of the Crown is this, that having been first practised upon by antimony, he was at last killed by strychnia; and the proposition which I have to establish is that the death of the deceased was occasioned by that poison. The first question, with a view of seeing what is the conclusion at which we shall arrive upon that point, is, what was the immediate and proximate cause of his death? The witnesses for the prosecution have told you one and all that he died, in their judgment, of tetanus, which signifies a spasmodic convulsive action of the muscles of the body. Can there be any doubt that that opinion is correct? Of course, it does not follow that because he died from tetanus it must be tetanus from strychnia; that is a matter for after consideration; but inasmuch as strychnia produces death by
[Sidenote: Attorney-General]
tetanus, we must see, in the first place, whether it admits of any doubt that he did die of tetanus. I have listened with attention to every form in which that disease has been brought under your consideration, whether by the positive evidence of witnesses, or by reference to the works of scientific authors; and I assert deliberately that no case either of a human subject, or of any animal, has been brought under your notice in which the symptoms of tetanus have been so marked as they are in this case; from the moment the paroxysm came on, of which this unhappy man died, the symptoms were of the most marked and of the most striking character. Every muscle, says the medical man who was present at the time, of his body was convulsed; he expressed the most intense dread of suffocation; he entreated them to lift him up lest he should be suffocated, and when they stooped to raise him every muscle of his body, from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, was so stiffened that the flexibility of the trunk and limbs was gone, so that they could have raised him as you would raise a dead corpse or a lifeless log. It was found to be impossible, and the man prayed to be turned over in order to escape from the sense of the imminent risk of suffocation; they turned him over, and in the midst of doing so a fearful paroxysm, one mighty spasm, seems to have seized upon his heart, to have pressed from it the life blood, so that in a moment vitality ebbed, and the man was dead before them; when dead, the body exhibited the most marked symptoms of this most fearful disease; it was bowed from head to foot, and it would have rested, if it had been so placed, says the witness, upon the back of the head and the heels; the hands were clenched with a grasp which it required power to overcome, and the feet were curved till they assumed the appearance of a natural malformation. It is impossible to conceive symptoms more striking of tetanus; nor is it possible to conceive evidence more dishonest than that which has attempted to represent it as any other than as a case of tetanus.
[Sidenote: Attorney-General]
Well, then, if it was a case of tetanus, as to which I will not waste your time with any further observations, was it a case of tetanus from strychnia? I will confine myself for the moment to the exhibition of the symptoms as they have been described by the witnesses. Tetanus may proceed from natural causes as well as from the administration of poison. While the symptoms last they are the same, but in the course of the symptoms before the disease reaches its consummation in the death of the patient the distinction between the two is marked by characteristics which will enable any one conversant with the subject to distinguish between the two. We have been told upon the highest authority that the distinctions are these--Natural tetanus is a disease not of minutes, not even of hours, but of days. It takes, say several of the witnesses, from three to four days, and will extend to a period of even three weeks, before the patient is destroyed. Upon that point we have the most abundant and conclusive evidence. We have the evidence of gentlemen who have made it their especial study, like Mr. Curling and Dr. Todd. We have the evidence of one of the most eminent practitioners who ever adorned that profession or any other, I mean Sir Benjamin Brodie. We have the evidence of Mr. Gordon, who for twenty-eight years was surgeon to the Bristol Hospital; we have the evidence of Mr. Daniel, who saw twenty-five or thirty of these cases of natural tetanus; we have the evidence of a gentleman who practised for twenty-five years in India, where, owing to the particular character of the climate, those cases are infinitely more frequent than they present themselves here, and he gives exactly the same description of the course of symptoms through which this disease runs. Idiopathic or traumatic tetanus are therefore, upon the evidence, out of the question; but traumatic tetanus is out of the question for a very different reason. Traumatic tetanus is tetanus brought on by lesion of some part of the body. What is there in this particular case to show that there was lesion in any part of the body at all? We have had the most singular representations upon the subject of Mr. Cook’s health made by the witnesses who have come here on behalf of the defence, and who appear to have come into that box with the determination as far as possible to misconceive every fact which they could pervert to their purpose. We call before you for the purpose of showing what Cook’s health was an eminent physician who had had him under his care. It seems that in the spring of 1855 Cook, having found certain small spots manifest themselves in one or two parts of his body, and having something of ulcers under his tongue, or in his throat, conceived that he was labouring under symptoms of a particular character, and he addressed himself to Dr. Savage, who found the course of medicine he had been pursuing, founded upon this belief, was, in his judgment, an erroneous one; he altered it altogether; he enjoined the discontinuance of mercury, and was obeyed in his injunction; and the result was that the deceased, who was suffering, not from disease, but from the treatment, rapidly grew well. Nevertheless, lest there should be the possibility of mistake, Dr. Savage made him come to him from time to time that he might see that things were going on right, and he sees, long before the summer had advanced, the very unsatisfactory symptoms had entirely gone, and that there was nothing about him except that affection of the throat to which sometimes people are subject, some abnormal condition of one of the tonsils, but in other respects the man was better than he had been, and might be said to be perfectly convalescent. On the very day he left London to go into the country about a fortnight before the races, his stepfather accompanied him to the station, and congratulated him upon his healthy and vigorous appearance, and the young man, in the consciousness of the possession of health, struck his breast, and said he was well, and he felt so.
[Sidenote: Attorney-General]
Well, he goes to Shrewsbury, and shortly afterwards came those matters to which I shall have to call your attention presently, more particularly that ended in his death. I want to know upon what part of this evidence there is the slightest pretence for saying that this man had any affection about him from which traumatic tetanus could ensue. It is said at some former time he had exhibited his throat to some of the witnesses who were called, and that he had applied to Palmer for some mercurial wash to apply to his throat, or some of those ulcers. The precise period of it is not fixed, but it is perfectly clear that though he had at one time adopted that course, under the recommendation of Dr. Savage, he had got rid of it; and there is not the slightest pretence for saying that this man was suffering under a syphilitic affection of any kind; nevertheless that fact was distinctly and unequivocally negatived by a man of the highest authority--a medical gentleman of eminence--under whose treatment the man got so rapidly well. That fact is assumed by the witnesses for the defence as the ground upon which to suggest that there was traumatic tetanus in this case. It is a pretence, gentlemen, which has not the shadow of a foundation, and which I should be shrinking from my duty if I did not denounce as altogether unworthy of your attention. There was nothing about the man, according to the statement of all those who were competent to give you an opinion, which would warrant for a single moment the supposition that there was anything in any part of the man’s body which could justify the notion of traumatic tetanus; even if there were, the character which his symptoms assumed when the tetanus set in is utterly incompatible, according to the evidence of all the witnesses, with a case of traumatic tetanus. One or two cases of traumatic tetanus have been adduced in evidence on the part of the defence. We had the case of a man who was brought to the London Hospital in the evening, and who died the same night. Yes, but what were the facts of that case? The facts are that he had had before he was brought in repeated paroxysms; that he felt premonitory symptoms early in the morning; he was suffering from ulcers of a most aggravated description; and that the symptoms had run their course, rapidly it is true, but still the disease was not a matter of minutes, but a matter of hours. There is no other case that I am aware of. There is the case of the boy who was brought in, if it be necessary to allude to it. But there again we have the disease existing for some time before it ends in death. It is a matter there again of hours, and not of minutes, and not a single paroxysm like this was observed. But it is then suggested that this may have been a case of idiopathic tetanus. Idiopathic tetanus proceeding from what? They say that Mr. Cook was a man of delicate constitution--subject to excitement--that he had something the matter with his chest--that in addition to having something the matter with his chest, he had this diseased condition of the throat--and, putting all these things together, they say that the man, if he took cold, might get idiopathic tetanus. We are launched into a sea of speculation and of possibilities. Mr. Nunneley, who comes forward here for the purpose of inducing you to believe that there was anything like idiopathic tetanus, goes through a bead-roll of the supposed infirmities of Mr. Cook and talks about his excitability--talks about his delicacy of chest--talks about the affection of his throat--goes through those various heads, and says that those things may have predisposed him to idiopathic tetanus if he took cold. What evidence is there that he ever did take cold? Not the slightest in the world. The man, from the beginning to the end of the symptoms, was never treated for cold by anybody, or ever complained that he had taken cold. I cannot help saying, to me it seems that it is a scandal upon a learned, a distinguished, and a liberal profession, that men should come forward and put forward such speculations as these, perverting the facts, and drawing from them sophistical and unwarranted conclusions with the view of deceiving a jury. I have the greatest respect for science--no man can have more; but I cannot repress my indignation and abhorrence when I see it thus perverted and prostituted to the purposes of a particular cause in a Court of justice. Do not talk to me about excitement, as Mr. Nunneley did the other day, being the occasion of idiopathic tetanus. You remember the sorts of excitement he spoke of. They are unworthy of your notice, and they were topics discreditable to be put forward by a witness as worthy of the attention of sensible men constituting such a tribunal as you are.
[Sidenote: Attorney-General]