Part 39

The next witness of any consequence was Newton; and here I should have thought your lordship’s feelings as a man, if they had not entirely perished, would have exhibited some trace of natural passion. Newton, according to his own account, was an accessory to the murder, and the murderer after the fact; he knew the current gossip of Rugeley and Stafford, that Cook had been poisoned by my brother; he assisted at the post-mortem examinations for the purpose of detecting the poison which the murderer had used; he had an interview on the Sunday after Cook’s death with William, in which this skilful poisoner (whose chemical knowledge of the minimum dose of strychnia which destroys life, and of the hitherto unknown fact that antimony neutralises the discovery of strychnia, places him a hundred years in advance of all the chemists of the age), asks the ignorant shopboy of the nature and the effects of strychnia! And when the learned Newton gives him information on the matter, the poisoner snaps his fingers in joy and exclaims, “That will do”; and after that he goes with him to the post-mortem examination; and after that Newton swears against him at the inquest; and after that he keeps the deadly secret buried in his bosom from November until the middle of the month of May, just one day before the trial! And after the trial he communicates the further fact to the Attorney-General that it was he who made up the deadly pills for my brother on the Monday night. With reference to the credibility of this monstrous witness you have not one word to say, though you did not hesitate to stigmatise Mr. Nunneley and Dr. M‘Donald as persons on whom the jury could place no reliance; and in the course of their cross-examination you looked at them in a manner significant of total incredulity of their testimony. Observe the mode in which you support Newton. You say, “There is no contradiction of anything that he has said.” Why did you not tell the jury that, as he fixed no time or place when any one but the prisoner himself, whose mouth was sealed, was by, it was impossible he could be contradicted? You go on (report, p. 313)--“Well, then, you are to consider what is the probability of his inventing this wicked and most abominable lie? He had no ill-will towards the prisoner at the bar.” (Who told you that? Who proved it? What right had you to assume it? What right had you to tell it to the jury?) “He had nothing to gain by injuring him much less by saying anything to affect his life.” (I ask again who told you all this, and on what pretence did you venture to say so to the jury?) “I see no motive that Mr. Newton could have for inventing a lie to take away the life of another person.” (Are you omniscient, then, and do you profess to read that inscrutable mystery, the human heart, and have you not read in the annals of crime of innumerable murders and perjuries committed without apparent motive?) “No inducement could be held out to him by the Crown; he says himself that no inducement was held out to him, and that he at last disclosed it from a sense of justice.” (As if a man who screened a murderer for six months could have any sense of justice.) “If you believe him, certainly the evidence is very strong against the prisoner at the bar.” Not a word of caution is here given; not one Scotch hint of doubt in this witness. Your “canny” countrymen are not always so credulous; they are not at all times so easy of belief in persons of this description. Yet your milk of human kindness is so pure that you cannot for your life imagine the least reason why Newton should not be believed.

But it was on the evidence of Roberts that your lordship used observations which had the most powerful effect on the jury, and since then upon the public mind. I have already explained how it was that the prisoner, even if he were a guilty man, might have denied the purchase of the strychnia from Roberts, as he always denied its purchase from Newton, was deprived by artifice of the witness Cockayne, who could have thrown a new light upon this affair, and I have shown how Bates prevaricated with reference to the dogs and the brood mares. My brother being in this way at the mercy of Bates, and juggled out of Cockayne, in what possible way could he account for the disposal of the strychnia? Yet you, who knew all this a thousand times better than the jury, told them that “a very serious case is adduced, supposing you should come to the conclusion that the symptoms of Mr. Cook were consistent with that of poison. If you think the symptoms are accounted for by merely ordinary tetanus, of course the fact of strychnia being obtained by the prisoner at the bar is of very little weight; but, if you should come to the conclusion that the symptoms which Mr. Cook exhibited on the Monday night and Tuesday night are consistent with strychnia, then a fearful case is made out against him.” The learned counsel did not favour us with the theory which he had formed in his own mind respecting that strychnia, and how he considered it to be consistent with the view that he suggested. There is no evidence of the intention with which it was purchased. There is no evidence how it was applied, and what became of it, or what was done with it (report, p. 313). What modern judge before yourself in a case of death ever ventured to tell a jury that “a fearful crime was made out against the prisoner”? Scraggs or Belknap might have done it; Jeffreys might not have blushed to use the words, but that they should now be used in the face of an open Court, and with a pantomimic gesture and grim stare at the jury such as you gave, are facts discreditable to any law. By what right, with what face, on what authority did you venture to tell the jury that his “learned counsel” was bound to prove his innocence or to account for his possession or disposal of the strychnia? I have always understood it to be the law that every man was presumed to be innocent until he was proved to be guilty; but you have reversed this majestic, merciful principle, and intimate that every man is guilty until his counsel proves him to be innocent. A more shameful perversion of the law than this, I am told by persons in authority, has never been witnessed. Well also did you know that Serjeant Shee was not entitled to put forward to the jury “the theory which he had formed in his own mind respecting the strychnia.” Had he ventured to do so I have no doubt you would have interrupted him with unfeeling harshness, and repeated to him in even stronger language than you did that species of insult “that a witness had no more right to make himself an advocate than an advocate to make himself a witness.” And then you glaringly tell the jury that there has been no “evidence of the intention,” as if you did not well know that if such evidence were possible to be given it could only be given by my brother William himself (who, by law, could not speak); and that, even if he could speak and was about to mention his intention, you would have stopped him, and said that such evidence was illegal, facts, not intentions, being the only admissible evidence in a Court of law. Yet you gravely complain as if the thing might have been done, and the jury, who probably believed you, convicted my brother because he could not prove an impossibility.

My lord, if our present system of representation were anything but a mockery, and if the House of Commons were constituted as it was in the days of Pym, Vane, and Hampden, I verily believe you would be impeached for such a charge as this, for you stated to the jury that the prisoner was guilty because he did not do that which you absolutely knew he could not do, namely, prove his intention. But, under the present system of things, judges may do anything they please with impunity, and no one calls attention to it, because the wretches whom they hang or exile are friendless outcasts, deprived of all sympathy from the world, enemies often of society, which thus becomes their enemy; and the great body of the community not being acquainted with the law, and the only persons who are, namely, the bar, being a body of degraded, crawling, sneaking slaves and sycophants who do not venture to arraign a judge, because if they do they fear that attorneys will desert them; in this way the most frightful licentiousness of power is given to men like you, and they are as despotic as the Cadis in the remotest part of Turkey. In civil cases, indeed, there is a check upon them, because there the parties are rich, and there is an opportunity for a new trial, but in criminal cases there is no new trial, even in the most scandalous and infamous conduct of the judge; and the consequence is that a wicked man may commit almost any conceivable crime upon the bench, and gratify his love of blood to the utmost without restraint or fear, than which I can conceive no more shocking infamy to exist.

Next, as to the evidence of Mr. Stevens, you made it a rule all through violently to censure Serjeant Shee whenever he said anything against the witnesses for the Crown, but not one syllable did you say against the Attorney-General for his attack on the medical witnesses for my brother. Thus you say here (report, p. 313)--“The learned counsel in the discharge of his duty did, as he was perfectly justified in doing, make very violent attacks upon the character and conduct of Mr. Stevens. It rests with you to say whether that attack was well founded.” But had you not said that he was justified in doing so, and did not this imply that Stevens deserved it? And if it “rested with the jury,” what right had you to add, “I own I can see nothing in Mr. Stevens in the slightest degree calling for it”? Thus you first say Serjeant Shee was “justified,” then you say it “rests with the jury,” and then, lest they may jointly agree with the serjeant, you volunteer your own opinion, that Serjeant Shee was not justified. Conduct like this requires no comment, but if my brother is hanged upon such a charge, who is guilty of his blood?

The next witness was Mary Keeling. She gave important evidence as to the condition of the body. Mills and one or two other of the witnesses had endeavoured to show that the body was “bent like a bow,” to use the imaginative language of that man Taylor, and this was pressed in to support your view of the case that “the death was consistent with strychnia.” Now, Mary Keeling proved the exact reverse of this, but you did not either take it in your notes or read it to the jury. Serjeant Shee was obliged to interrupt you. I copy from the report, p. 313--

“Mr. Serjeant Shee--I am not quite sure whether your lordship read that the witness said that the body was lying straight on the back on the bed?

“Lord Campbell--I have read all that I have taken down. Is it in the cross-examination?

“Mr. Serjeant Shee--No, in the examination in chief. ‘How was the body lying?--On the back, straight down on the bed.’

“Mr. James--Where do you read that from?

“Mr. Serjeant Shee--It is in two reports; one in the _Times_ and one from the shorthand writer’s notes.

“Lord Campbell--Bamford says it was lying straight on the bed.

“Mr. Serjeant Shee--I did not allude to Bamford’s examination. This witness says so too.”

And there the matter ended, and though it was admitted that it had been said, and though it corroborated Dr. Bamford and Dr. Jones, and entirely refuted the “opisthotonos” theory of Taylor and Mills, and thus got rid of one of the most remarkable symptoms “consistent with poisoning by strychnia,” yet not one word of comment did you offer upon it; but, as you said, it was not upon your notes--where it ought to have been--you left the jury unadvised upon this essential contradiction, which, taken with the evidence of the two medical men, entirely demolished Mills and her congenial companion Taylor, and took out of the mouth of Sir Benjamin Brodie and the other medical witnesses one of those vital symptoms on which they founded their diagnosis of the causes of death. For, if there was no opisthotonos, or bent bow-like shape, then Cook did not die of strychnia; and this being proved not to have been so by these three witnesses, or, at all events, left in deep doubt, my brother was entitled to the benefit of that doubt, and should have been acquitted.

The same wish of omission was manifest in your notes when you read out the evidence of Devonshire to the jury; you forgot to tell the jury that Cook’s left lung was diseased, which was important, as his death arose from natural causes. Serjeant Shee was again obliged to interfere (report, p. 314)--

“Mr. Serjeant Shee--I think the witness said there were traces of emphysema in the left lung?

“Mr. Baron Alderson--Yes.”

But not one word of comment did you make.

Myatt, the postboy, whose testimony was wholly incredible, you bolstered up with this remark, “Now, there seems no reason to doubt the evidence of this poor boy.” As if you could fathom the secret motives of man.

Upon the letter which my brother addressed to the coroner you say--“This letter is a most improper letter, addressed by the prisoner to Mr. Ward, the coroner, who is, of course, a judge. It so happens that I myself am the chief coroner of England, but all the coroners are judges as much as I am, and ought, with equal integrity and indifference, to administer the law of the country.” This self praise, my lord, is of that species which is said to stink. It would have been better if you had not eulogised your conduct upon this trial, but allowed others to do so. You did the same thing when you were sentencing my brother, for you prefaced your “hanging speech” by these words--“William Palmer, after a fair and impartial trial,” &c., &c. You then go on, and suggest to the jury that my brother was guilty because he wrote that letter. “You will say whether this is consistent with innocence; it is clear tampering with the judge.” Yet the conduct of the gentleman mentioned by Sir Matthew Hale, or the French gentleman who offered to surrender his wife’s will, was just as suspicious, though the first was hanged innocently, and the last, fortunately for himself, not tried by you.

When Cheshire was cross-examined by Serjeant Shee he asked him, “Did he not say I knew they would not, for I am as innocent as a baby?” You immediately interrupted, in a most angry tone, saying, “He has already said that,” whereas in truth he had not done so, but the phrase was likely to have an influence on the jury.

Again, when Herring was examined, and Mr. Welsby proposed to give some evidence from the pages of the lost betting book, about whose disappearance one of the greatest points was made against William, Serjeant Shee said, “We cannot have the contents.”

“Lord Campbell--The last account we have got is that it was in Mr. Palmer’s possession.

“Mr. Serjeant Shee--I do not think there is any proof of its ever having been in Mr. Palmer’s possession.

“Mr. Attorney-General--We show that it was in the dead man’s room on the Tuesday night before his death, and Mr. Palmer is afterwards seen looking about; we have no one else, my lord, that we can resort to.” ... (This was utterly false, for the last person who saw it, or swore she saw it, was Mills, and that was on Monday night.)

“Lord Campbell--I do not think we can receive this evidence” (report, p. 41).

Thus you were about to admit the contents of that book on the plea that my brother possessed it, a plea entirely untrue, and not only not supported, but even negatived by the evidence. My lord, if you do these things in matters of life and death, who among us is safe?

When Bates was called, it was proposed to give in evidence the facts of the insurance, and you permitted a discussion to arise which put the jury in possession of all the facts. You then said, “On the Attorney-General’s opening I doubted whether this would be relevant and proper evidence to be received at this trial” (yet you permitted him to open it!), “and upon consideration my brothers agree with me it is too remote to be admissible.” But all the evil had then been done, the jury having been prejudiced by the statement and discussion. And not one word did you say to them in your charge about disabusing their minds of the false impression which it might have made.

When you commented on the medical evidence you told the jury that my brother had an opportunity of substituting for Bamford’s pills others made by himself. What right had you to do that? Was it not leading their minds to an inference that he did so, and that the substituted pills contained poison? (report, p. 315).

You introduced Sir Benjamin Brodie with great praises; in fact, you praised all the medical witnesses for the Crown, and confined your applause to only one of those for the prisoner, who slightly coincided with Taylor’s notions. You said of Sir Benjamin--“You will take into consideration the solemn opinion of this distinguished medical man, that he never knew a case in which the symptoms that he heard described arose from any disease. He has seen and known the various diseases that afflict the human frame in all their multiplicity, and he knows of no natural disease such as will answer the symptoms which he heard described in the case of Cook; and if it did not arise from natural disease, then the inference is that it arose from other causes” (report, p. 316). Now, Sir Benjamin formed his opinion upon two inconsistent statements made by Mills and Dr. Jones. If what Mills swore was all true, then, perhaps, Sir Benjamin Brodie would have been justified in saying that no disease that he had seen accorded with that description; but if what Mills swore was all false, and it was entirely inconsistent with what Dr. Jones proved, then also it would not be consistent with natural disease, or with anything in Nature, and yet my brother be innocent of this crime. If Mills invented a number of symptoms which no medical man had ever seen, and it is what an ignorant chambermaid who was disposed to perjure herself might be supposed to do, then what Sir Benjamin Brodie proved would have been correct, and he could not assign to any natural disease that which was, in truth, but a fictitious narrative; but it would not necessarily follow from that that Cook died of poison, as you told the jury it would, but it would as logically follow that the whole of the symptoms not being in accordance with any known disease were invented by an unskilful person, and unskilfully put together for the occasion. I think you saw in its full force the effect of this, for it will be seen by the report that you prevented Serjeant Shee from discovering on which of these two witnesses Sir Benjamin relied in premising his opinion.

“Considering how rarely tetanus is witnessed at all, would you think that the description of a chambermaid, and of a provincial medical man who had only seen one case of tetanus, could be relied upon by you to state what description of disease the disease observed was?--I must say I thought the description very clearly given.” (How could it be given clearly if it accorded with no known disease? Besides, the answer is an evasion of the question.)

“Mr. Serjeant Shee--On which of the two would you rely, supposing they differed--the chambermaid or the medical man?

“Lord Campbell--That is hardly a proper question” (report, p. 120).

In my judgment no question could be more proper, for if Sir Benjamin relied on Mills, then the jury would have known why he pronounced so strong an opinion, and if they disliked her, the opinion would go for nothing; but if Sir Benjamin relied on Dr. Jones, then the symptoms described by him were accordant with many known diseases, and Sir Benjamin Brodie must have said so. This ruling therefore hanged my brother!

But let me hasten to a close. I am so heartbroken, so wearied out with fatigue, and pain, and grief; I am so utterly disgusted by these enumerations that I feel I cannot go on. From the first to the last my brother had no chance. You introduced him to the jury as a forger in the following words:--“There has been evidence which certainly implicates the prisoner in transactions of a very discreditable nature. It appears that he had forged a great many bills of exchange, and that he had entered into transactions not of a reputable nature.” If all this was irrelevant why did you introduce it? In the same tone was your allusion to the “student’s book,” which even the Crown abandoned. “This book has been laid before you in evidence, and certainly I think I need hardly beg of you to pay no regard to it, because it was a book that Palmer had when he was a surgeon, and at a time when I have no doubt he would have shrunk with horror at any such crime as that with which he is charged here to-day. There is, in the title page of the book, ‘Strychnia kills by causing tetanic fixing of the respiratory muscles,’ and in another part there is a description of what nux vomica is, and how strychnia is produced from it, with these words--‘Strychnia kills by causing tetanic fixing of the respiratory muscles.’ Again I say that I think this being found in his possession ought not to weigh at all against the prisoner at the bar” (report, p. 315). If it ought not to weigh against him, why, in Heaven’s name, did you so solemnly drag it in? Why did you read and re-read it? Would it not have been fairer to put it aside altogether than to impress it on the minds of the jury, and then tell them it ought not to weigh at all? Is it possible to believe you were sincere? Is it possible the jury could have drawn any other conclusion from your dwelling on it than that you wished them to regard it as proof of guilt?