put in yesterday. You see that the pressure by Pratt upon Palmer to meet
the two £1000 bills never took place until the office disputed the
payment of that policy. All went as smooth as possible so long as Pratt
held what he believed to be a good security, the policy upon Walter
Palmer’s life, who was dead; but when they began to dispute it, then you
will find that Pratt writes to Palmer and tells him the situation of
things is quite changed; he could manage the bills very well while that
policy was undisputed; but now it is disputed that quite alters the
state of things; he says, as he had somewhat anticipated, he finds they
can do nothing till the 24th, that is nothing towards compelling the
office to pay, because insurance offices generally take three months to
pay; and then, stating some other circumstances, he says, “This you will
observe quite alters the arrangement, and I therefore must request you
to make preparations for meeting the two bills due at the end of this
month”; that was where the difficulty was, that was where the pinch was.
Then, he says, he shall not flag in his exertions, and so on, and he
refers to the circumstances connected with the dispute; Mr. Pratt
says--“You, Palmer, know whether they have any ground to dispute that
policy upon your brother’s life; you are enforcing it, and if you have
no right to do it it is at your peril.” That is what it means, and then
he goes on to say, “We must try and make them pay”--that was the
position in which Pratt, who was acting for him, stood as to this Prince
of Wales insurance office. He says, “In any event, bear in mind that you
must be prepared to cover your mother’s acceptances for the £4000 due at
the end of the month”; there was the pinch, the office would not pay,
the £4000 was becoming due, the holder of the bills saw he was without
security, and if anything occurred to increase the suspicions of the
insurance office, which was very reluctant to pay, the £13,000 was lost
for ever, lost beyond hope. Gentlemen, that £13,000 is sure to be paid
unless that man is convicted of murder; and that has a great deal to do
with the clamour and alarm which have been excited. So sure as that man
is saved, and saved I believe he will be, that £13,000 is paid; there is
no defence, no pretence for a defence--the letters of the office make
that plain; they took an enormous premium--knowing that the man was only
thirty, they took a premium for a man of fifty.
Mr. ATTORNEY-GENERAL--That is not in evidence; do you mean to prove
that?
Mr. SERJEANT SHEE--I do not know whether I can show that to be the
actual premium, but the letters which were put in show that the premium
was enormous; and I say that as sure as he is saved that £13,000 is good
for him, and will pay all his creditors.
Now, observe the position in which he was at the moment--all the
correspondence turns upon that. This correspondence saves the prisoner,
if there is common sense in man.
[Sidenote: Serjeant Shee]
Now, observe, there is another letter from Pratt containing this
passage, “I have your note, acknowledging receipt by your mother of the
£2000 acceptance, due the 2nd of October; why not let her acknowledge it
herself? You must really not fail to come up at once, if it be for the
purpose of arranging for the payment of the two bills at the end of the
month; remember I can make no terms for their renewal, and they must be
paid. I will, of course, hold the policy for as much as it is worth,”
and so on. At this time Simpson and Field were making inquiries how a
young man of thirty had died, who had had delirium tremens three times,
as their own physician, Dr. Hastings, and Mr. Wardell had informed them.
Then in a postscript he says he “casts no doubt upon the capability of
the company to pay, but that in the nature of things, with so large an
amount in question, it is not surprising that, if they think they have
grounds for resisting, they should temporise by delay.” Does not that
show that at that date at least, the 6th of October, suspicions were
hanging in menacing meteors about Palmer’s head, which would come down
with irresistible momentum and crush him upon suspicion of a sudden
death by murder? Do you believe that a man who wrote what the effects of
strychnia were in his manual would risk such a scene as a deathbed by
strychnia, in the presence of the dearest and best friend of Cook--a man
whom he could not influence, a medical man, who liked him and loved him
well enough when he knew he was ill to sleep with him in the same room
that he might be ready to attend to him in case he wanted assistance
during the night? Is that common sense; are you going to endorse such a
theory as that upon the suggestion of Dr. Alfred Taylor about the
effects that strychnia produced upon his five rabbits? Impossible,
perfectly impossible! as I submit to you. But to proceed--I will prove
to you, most clearly, the position in which he was. On the other side of
the letter of the 10th of October Mr. Pratt writes, “Copy of solicitors’
reply”; that is, the solicitors to the Prince of Wales insurance office.
He says, “I may add that I hear the office have been making inquiries in
every direction.” To be sure, Field was employed; he is not now in the
police, but he is employed as a detective officer; he was at Stafford,
and was at Rugeley, and was making inquiries in all directions;
inquiries could be made at Stafford as well as Rugeley, and all that had
taken place at Rugeley just as easily ascertained there as at Rugeley
itself; whatever had taken place there would be known. He says they have
been making inquiries in all directions. It is plain, then, that he knew
that suspicions were then rife, or that they were endeavouring to create
suspicions, against him about the policy on the life of Walter Palmer.
Here is the very letter which the company wrote in answer to the claim,
dated 8th of October, 1855; it is from Messrs. Chubb, Deane & Chubb, the
solicitors to the office, addressed to Thomas Pratt, Esq., acknowledging
the application; and shortly afterwards Messrs. Chubb send a reply to
the application--there is no date to it, but it is enclosed in a letter
of the 18th of October from Pratt to Palmer. After apologising for not
answering the letter of the 16th instant, owing to the absence of Mr.
Deane, they refer to the “local investigation having been made, and
decline to pay the claim upon the ground that the facts disclosed in the
course of the inquiry are such as fully to warrant them in doing so.”
These are letters which my learned friend thought it right to put in
yesterday; they are evidence for the Crown, and what is the inference
from them? Judge, if you please, from some of the letters to Pratt, and
the one which I read first from Pratt to Palmer. Palmer determined that
the policy should be paid; he took the advice of Sir Fitzroy Kelly. I
see here it is said, “The case will be laid before Kelly to-morrow.”
This letter came just before the end of the long vacation; the time to
take proceedings had only just commenced, in any event, because the
three months had only just expired. But so sure as anything happened by
foul play to Cook, he had no more chance of getting the £13,000 than
£130,000 from the Prince of Wales insurance office--none whatever. That
was the only means he had at that time of extricating himself from those
incumbrances.
[Sidenote: Serjeant Shee]
Gentlemen, I have detained you a long time upon this, but not, I trust,
too long, if the view I have submitted be one worthy of your
consideration. I infer from all this that Palmer had no interest
whatever to put Cook to death; that it was contrary to his interest in a
pecuniary point of view, and brought claims upon him, some of them
small, others of a larger amount, of which he might have shared the
liability with Cook, if not have thrown it entirely upon Cook; that it
forced an immediate settlement of the affairs of Cook, not with Cook
himself, who was an easy man--it is plain he was--and probably their
solicitors, and that therefore in a pecuniary sense he had every motive
of interest to desire that Cook should live; and further, he had no
chance of getting a ready payment from these documents--but with hard
and exacting executors of the £13,000, no chance of the sudden death of
Cook passing without suspicion and inquiry, and therefore he could not
think it safe for him that he should die.
I cannot, I think, be so much mistaken as that a considerable portion of
these observations is not well worthy your attention. I humbly contend
that the suggested motive altogether fails; and I conclude that head of
the observations which I have to address to you by saying that I submit
respectfully to you, to the Court, and to my learned friends that that
portion of this case has failed. It could not be the interest of Palmer
that Cook should die.
I now proceed to the next head, and it is impossible in dealing with
this evidence to observe altogether the order of date. I must group the
facts as well as I can in order to deal with the whole of the evidence.
The question is whether the symptoms of Cook before his death and the
appearance presented by his body after death were consistent with the
theory of his having died by strychnia poison, and inconsistent with the
theory of his having died from other and natural causes. It is under
this head, gentlemen, that I shall discuss, I hope not at undue length,
the medical evidence in this cause, and present to you such observations
as occur to me upon the witnesses who have been called to support the
view which the Crown takes of the effect of that medical evidence.
[Sidenote: Serjeant Shee]
For this purpose let us briefly, in a sentence or two, run over the
facts. Cook died on Wednesday morning, the 21st of November, at one
o’clock, in violent convulsions; he died in the presence of Mr. Jones.
It was no sooner light than Jones posted up to town to see Cook’s
stepfather and executor, Mr. Stevens, who came down, and was introduced
to Palmer. Palmer took him up to the corpse, and uncovered the corpse to
the thighs--brave man he must have been, if he was a murderer, to do
that--uncovered the corpse to the thighs before him. Stevens observed
the body, and wondered he could have died, he looked so calm, so
composed, so well, so little emaciated; he observed, indeed, some slight
rigidity about the muscles. I refer to his deposition. I am not sure
whether Stevens’ deposition was read--but it is evidence supplied to us.
He took his hand, and wondered that he should have died; his suspicions
were immediately aroused. He dined that day at Rugeley, and asked
Palmer to dinner with him, and questioned him about the betting-book;
got angry that it was not produced, dissembled with Palmer,
cross-examined him, went up to town, met him afterwards at the station
at Euston Square, afterwards at Rugby, afterwards at Wolverton, again at
Rugeley, and at last threw off the mask, and, addressing him in a tone
to which I shall call your attention presently, gave Palmer clearly to
understand that he suspected him, and intended to probe the whole matter
to the very core. He resolved upon a post-mortem examination, and a
post-mortem examination took place. The appearances which were presented
at the death of Cook were such as might have been expected by those who
had been acquainted with his course of life and his general health, his
pursuits--it is a pity to say anything hard of him--his vices--I will
not say more than this--his vices, and the company, the drinking, idle,
racing company which he kept. His father had died at the age of thirty,
his mother about the same age, a year or two after she had married Mr.
Stevens; his brother was delicate, his sister was delicate; he was
believed by his physicians to have something of a pulmonary complaint,
and, when his body was opened, his lungs were found to be emphysematous,
that is, their air vessels were distended with air. On further inquiry,
for I take both the examinations together, it was found that for a
length of time he had been troubled with a very ugly sore throat--a sore
throat bad enough to render it necessary that it should be constantly
touched with caustic, as well as his tongue; he would not have been able
to swallow without it. The tonsils of his throat were at the very time
he left for Shrewsbury races, though much better than they had been,
sore and inflamed--one of them was very nearly gone, the other was very
much reduced in size; and he knew so much better about himself and the
cause of it all probably than his medical adviser, that he very much
preferred mercury to any other specific for his complaint. He had,
besides that, traces about his person which have been so often referred
to, the result of disease, that they need not be more particularly
mentioned than they have been already, as to the extent of which and the
character of which some little doubt exists; but they did not come by an
ordinary and chaste mode of life, you may depend upon it; and
altogether, as far as it went, he seems to have been about as loose a
young man as one is in the habit of meeting, without being utterly lost
to all sense of honour and propriety, which I do not mean to suggest
that he was.
[Sidenote: Serjeant Shee]
His body was opened; the soreness of his tongue was manifest; I rather
collect that it was not actually sore at the time of his death--yet that
there were what they call follicles, and symptoms, if not recent, at
least not very ancient, of actual ulcers; the inside of his mouth, too,
had been ulcerated, or the skin taken off by some sort of soreness
attributed to decayed teeth. We all of us probably have decayed teeth;
but that does not happen to us which happened to him--it was sore on
both sides. The sores about his mouth he thought himself were
syphilitic, and could not be persuaded by the very respectable
gentleman, Dr. Savage, to attend readily to his advice. He thought he
was not weak enough, I think he said fool enough, to take quack
medicines; but weak enough to take the advice of any medical quack who
had assurance enough to give advice to him, believing that the best
thing for his complaint was mercury; and he was apprehensive, I believe,
that what are the worst symptoms of that disease for which mercury is
given, namely, spots upon the body, would make their appearance, and
that possibly (I believe such things do happen) some day or other he
would find on the morning of a race his face covered with large
copper-coloured blotches, which would plainly show what life he had been
leading. That was the sort of man he was. Many such a man has reformed
and become a good and respectable member of society. I should be sorry
to say anything unduly harsh upon a man who is gone; but the state of
his health is a material subject for our inquiry here. It is plain that
he had in his own opinion been affected by virulent syphilis, and that
that had not corrected his habits, for he had become recently diseased.
The medical men who attended him before concurred in this opinion; and
when his body was opened, in addition to all those plainer symptoms of
illness to the eye, on the second post-mortem examination, there was
between the delicate membrane which covers the spinal marrow, and which
is called the arachnoid, I believe--I think I am right--there was
pressing upon the arachnoid, and embedded to some extent in the next
covering, not so delicate, though still delicate, called the dura mater,
granules, as given in evidence, of such an extent as I will satisfy you
by men competent to inform you would, if his body had been opened in the
dead-house of any hospital in this metropolis, have been said and
determined to be the cause of his death.
Such was the condition of Cook, only partially discovered on the
post-mortem examination which took place at the desire of the executor,
Mr. Stevens. That examination was not conducted with that entirety, so
to speak--with that thorough determination to investigate the whole
matter--that afterwards was thought to be necessary.
[Sidenote: Serjeant Shee]
Dr. Taylor attends the coroner’s inquest, which is held in consequence,
I presume, of his letter. I do not know whether that is so or not, but
in consequence of suspicions entertained, and probably in consequence of
the letter which he sent in answer to Mr. Stevens’ inquiries, and he
hears the evidence of Jones, and of Mills, and of Roberts, and of
others; but I call your attention to the evidence of those three
witnesses, because I think, in fairness to Dr. Taylor, it must be
presumed that they principally influenced his opinion. Now, then, I say
that upon the loose evidence of chambermaids, and waitresses, and
housekeepers, against the opinion of the medical man who attended Cook
in his last illness, or, at any rate, with no encouragement, as I will
satisfy you presently (for there is an observation to be made upon
that)--with no encouragement from the medical man, Mr. Jones, the
surgeon at Lutterworth, who was of an age and character, having seen the
whole illness, to form an opinion upon the matter--Dr. Taylor, having
heard the evidence of Elizabeth Mills, and the evidence of Mr. Jones,
and of Roberts, came at once boldly to the conclusion that his notion
that antimony was the cause of death was a mistake; and he had the
incredible imprudence--an imprudence which has led to all this dreadful
excitement--an imprudence which has rendered it necessary that this
inquiry should take place in this form and in this place, if at all--to
state upon his oath before that jury that he believed that the pills
which were administered to Cook on the Monday and Tuesday night
contained strychnia, and that Cook was poisoned by it.
[Sidenote: Serjeant Shee]
Allow me for a moment to ask your attention to what the real character
of that opinion was. That opinion as delivered was irrevocable. By it
Taylor’s reputation was staked against Palmer’s life. Instantly followed
by the verdict of wilful murder it flew upon the wings of the Press into
every house in the United Kingdom. It became known that, according to
the opinion of a man whose whole life had been devoted to science, a
gentleman of personal character perfectly unimpeachable, a man who stood
well with his friends in the medical profession--that on his opinion,
not conjectural, not delivered, as an opinion of the kind might properly
be delivered, in a private room, to persons on whose discretion reliance
was placed, but delivered upon oath in a public room, in the public inn
of a little village where everything that took place was known--and he
must have known, I cannot but think, that suspicions had been, as I say,
and as I think you will be satisfied unduly, excited about the death of
Walter Palmer--that, according to his opinion, Cook’s death had been
caused by strychnia. “In fact,” said Dr. Taylor, “though I find no trace
of strychnia, and though there is nothing to induce me to believe that
there is strychnia in the body, except the suggestion that on the
Tuesday Palmer bought it off Roberts” (which would not account in any
way, supposing the mere purchase of strychnia could account for
anything, for the paroxysm on Monday night), “yet, having heard that
evidence, knowing that I have failed to discover the presence of
strychnia, I will undertake upon my oath to say, and on my credit
publish to the whole world, that the pills which were given to him on
Monday and Tuesday night contained strychnia, and that he died from
that poison.” Observe what it amounts to. It ascertains, not upon
scientific, or well-informed, or consistent testimony, but upon
testimony ill-informed, of the humblest class, the least fitted to
detail accurately the symptoms of such a disease as it is imputed to be,
on evidence not consistent with itself, as respects the evidence of
Elizabeth Mills in all particulars, or with the evidence of a much
better informed person, Mr. Jones, or with the opinion of Mr. Jones--it
ascertains, and pronounces positively, that the disease of which Cook
died was not simply convulsions of a tetanic form, however violent--not
convulsions with many features of tetanus, but that it was actual
tetanus, and that description of it which could only be caused by one
poison, and that poison strychnia. That is the evidence--he lays that
down as a proposition on which he is perfectly satisfied to rest, and on
that the verdict goes.
[Sidenote: Serjeant Shee]
Gentlemen, let me ask you in what position we are placed for the safety
of our lives and families if, upon such evidence as this, upon
suspicions so excited and so sanctioned by hasty opinions of medical
men, we are liable every time a sudden death takes place in a family to
be put upon our trials on suspicion of foul play to those with whom we
live? In the cases which are usually discussed in this Court, witnesses
are called to give evidence respecting processes and means of arriving
at truth with a knowledge of the facts in question, with the operation
of which processes the prosecuting counsel, the judge, and the jurors
are as well acquainted as the witnesses themselves. The witnesses come
to speak to facts, a great portion of which are within the ordinary
knowledge and appreciation of mankind; but if science is admitted to
dogmatise in our Courts--science not exact in its nature--science not
successful, but baffled even by its own tests--science bearing upon its
forehead the motto that “a little learning is a dangerous thing”--if
that is to be introduced to state processes of arriving at truth,
conclusive to its satisfaction, but which we cannot follow, and opinions
respecting the cause of death which those processes have not discovered,
judges and jurors will have an amount of responsibility thrown upon them
too great for human nature to bear. This gentleman, Dr. Taylor, if he
had found the poison by his own tests, after long experience of their
efficacy, would have been a very good witness to have proved
unquestionably that strychnia was there; but not having found it, not
having seen the patient, and knowing nothing about him but what
Elizabeth Mills told him, and what he heard from Mr. Jones, who did not
agree with him, or who gave no evidence agreeing with him--with no
better means of information than that he thinks himself justified, upon
his oath in a public Court, to say that the pills administered by the
medical man (of course, he did not mean to impute any misconduct to Mr.
Bamford) contained strychnia, that murder was committed, and Cook
poisoned by it. If he is allowed to say that, what family and what
medical practitioner is safe? Gentlemen, I beg to ask you on what ground
does he say that? Not on any peculiar knowledge, for he has not any
knowledge as to the effects of strychnia more than any of us--myself, if
you please; for when we come thoroughly to look into it he does not
appear, of his own knowledge, to have seen a single case of strychnia in
the human subject; and yet he has been daring enough, knowing that the
consequences would be disastrous to this man--knowing perfectly well
that all the world, or, at all events, the great majority of the world,
would take for granted that a medical man in his position would not give
a hasty opinion--he has the incredible courage to declare, on his oath,
that the pills that were given, as far as he knew, by Dr. Bamford,
contained strychnia, and that Cook was poisoned by them!
[Sidenote: Serjeant Shee]