tetanus? And if every one of the distinctions they have attempted to set
up I show you to have really nothing to do with the case (because I
produce you at once an undoubted case in which the administration of
strychnia is beyond the reach of question, in which those particular
symptoms and appearances were manifested and observed) I get rid at once
of all those vain, futile attempts to distinguish this case, either in
its premonitory symptoms or in the appearances either before or upon
post-mortem examination. I get rid of all those difficulties, and I come
back to the symptoms which attended this unhappy man’s demise. I ask
whether you can doubt that, when I have excluded all those cases of
tetanic convulsions, epilepsy, and arachnitis, or angina pectoris, which
occurred, you recollect, in a young girl after an attack of scarlet
fever--in all human probability the scarlet fever had been thrown back
upon the system, and had produced all those consequences--when I exclude
all those cases, and then, lastly, exclude traumatic or idiopathic
tetanus, what remains? The tetanus of strychnia, and the tetanus of
strychnia only. I pray your attention to the cases of which evidence has
been given, in which there was no question as to strychnia having been
administered, there not being the shadow of a doubt about it, and in
which the circumstances were so similar, and the symptoms so analogous,
that I think you cannot hesitate to come to the conclusion that this was
death by strychnia. Medical witnesses of the highest authority, both on
the part of the Crown and on the part of the defence, agree that in the
whole range of their experience and knowledge they know of no natural
disease to which these remarkable symptoms can be referred. If that be
so, and there is a known poison that will produce them, how strong, how
cogent, how irresistible becomes the inference that to that poison, and
to that poison alone, are those symptoms and this death to be ascribed!
[Sidenote: Attorney-General]
Nevertheless, gentlemen, on the other hand, the case is not without its
difficulties; and I will not shrink from the discussion of them, nor
from the candid recognition of these difficulties, so far as they in
reality exist. Strychnia was not found in this body; and we have it, no
doubt upon strong evidence, that in a variety of experiments which have
been tried upon the bodies of animals killed by strychnia, strychnia has
been detected by the tests which science places at the disposition of
scientific men. If strychnia had been found, of course there would have
been no difficulty, and we should have had none of the ingenious
theories which gentlemen from a variety of parts have been brought
forward to propound in this Court. The question for your consideration
is, whether the absence of its detection leads conclusively to the view
that this death could not have been caused by the administration of that
poison. Now, in the first place, under what circumstances was the
examination made of which Dr. Taylor and Dr. Rees have spoken? They tell
you that when the stomach of this man was brought to them for the
purpose of analysis, it was presented to them under the most
unfavourable circumstances. They say that its contents had been lost,
and that they had no opportunity of experimenting upon them. It is very
true that those who put up the jar make a statement somewhat different.
They say that the contents of the stomach were emptied into the jar, but
there appears (at all events I will not put it higher than accident), by
accident, to have been some spilling of the contents; and there is, I
think, the clearest and most undeniable evidence of very considerable
bungling in the way in which the stomach was cut, and the way in which
it was emptied into the jar. It was cut from end to end, says Dr.
Taylor. It was tied up at both ends; it had been turned inside out into
the contents of the intestines, and lay there in a mass of fœculent
matter, and was therefore in a condition the most unsatisfactory for
analysis and experiment. It is very true that the witnesses upon the
other side--Mr. Nunneley, Mr. Herapath, and Dr. Letheby--say that, no
matter how contaminated or how mixed with impurities, they would have
been able to ascertain the presence of strychnia in the stomach, if
strychnia ever had been there. I own I should have more confidence in
the testimony of those witnesses if their partiality and partisanship
had not been so much marked as they are. I should have more confidence
in the testimony of Mr. Herapath if he had not been constrained to admit
to me a fact which had come to my knowledge, that he has again and again
asserted that this case was a case of poisoning by strychnia, but that
Dr. Taylor had not known how to find it out--he admits that that is a
statement he has again and again made.
Mr. SERJEANT SHEE--It was in the newspapers, he said.
[Sidenote: Attorney-General]
Mr. ATTORNEY-GENERAL--He did not venture to say that the newspaper
statement in any way differed from the fact which he admitted in this
Court. I have seen that gentleman not merely contenting himself with
coming forward, when called upon for the purposes of justice, to state
that which he knew as a matter of science or of experiment, but I have
seen him mixing himself up as a thoroughgoing partisan in this case,
advising my learned friend, suggesting question upon question, and that
in behalf of a man whom he has again and again asserted he believed to
be a poisoner by strychnia. I do not say that alters the fact; but I do
say that it induces one to look at the credit of those witnesses with a
very great amount of suspicion. I reverence a man who, from a sense of
justice and a love of truth--from those high considerations which form
the noblest elements in the character of man--comes forward in favour of
a man against whom the world may run in a torrent of prejudice and
aversion, and who stands and states what he believes to be the truth;
but I abhor the traffic in testimony to which I regret to say men of
science sometimes permit themselves to condescend. I ask you therefore
to look at the statements of those witnesses with dispassionate
consideration before you attach implicit credit to them. But let me
assume that all they say is true, that it is the fact that they in their
experiments have succeeded in discovering strychnia when mixed with
other impurities, and contaminated, no matter by what cause--they say
that no extent of putrefaction, no amount of decomposition, will alter
the character of that vegetable matter, so that it may not be detected
if it is in the human stomach. Be it so. But then must it always be
found in every case where death has ensued? Professor Taylor says no;
and he says it would be a most dangerous and mischievous proposition to
assert that that must necessarily be so--that it would enable many a
guilty man to escape who, by administering the smallest quantity whereby
life can be affected and destroyed, might by that means prevent the
possibility of the detection of the poison in the stomach of the
individual. All the witnesses seem to agree in this, or, at all events,
the great bulk of them agree in this, that the poison acts after it has
been absorbed into the system; taken up by the absorbents of the
stomach, it is carried into the blood; passing by means of the
circulation through the tissues, it is deposited there; at some stage or
other of its progress it affects the nervous system; and as soon as the
nerves affecting the muscles of motion become influenced by its baneful
power, then come on those muscular spasms and convulsions of which we
have heard so much. If the minimum dose be given, and that operates by
absorption, it is perfectly clear--and must be clear--that the whole
must be taken up by absorbents and pass into the blood, and that none
therefore will be found in the stomach. Nay, a further proposition is
also clear. If it is necessary that it should be first passed by means
of the circulation into the solid tissues of the body, before it acts
upon the nervous system, it will cease to be found in the blood. Again,
a portion of it, if in excess, will be eliminated in the kidneys, and
pass off in watery excretion. You do not know, therefore, in what part
of the human body to put your hand upon it. But this is undoubtedly the
fact, if there has been an excess over the quantity necessary to destroy
the life of a particular individual, then, as soon as the absorbents
have taken up the necessary quantity, the nervous system will at once be
affected and life destroyed; you will find the excess in the stomach, if
you adopt the proper means of seeking for it. Now, what did these
gentlemen do? They gave never less than a grain--often as much as two
grains; and yet we now know that a quarter of a grain is enough to
destroy a small animal like a rabbit, and that no man could venture to
hope for life who took half a grain or three-quarters of a grain of it.
Therefore in the cases of their experiments, and experiments made, allow
me to say, for the purpose of this case, after those parties had been
retained--I use the word “retained,” for it is the appropriate word; no
parties can be more thoroughgoing partisans than scientific men who have
once taken up a case--after they have been retained for this case, and
desire that their experiments should have a certain result, they take
good care to have doses large enough to leave a small portion in the
stomach. But be this as it may, I have only now to deal with the
experiments of Professor Taylor and Dr. Rees; they may, for aught I
know, be a pair of bunglers; it is no part of my business to uphold them
if their professional reputation will not do it; but they tell us that
they tried its effects upon four animals of the same species with fully
adequate doses. Where they administered two grains they reproduced the
poison in abundance; where they administered one grain they found a
small indication of it; and when they administered half a grain to two
rabbits they found no traces of the poison at all. It may well be that
that may result, as Mr. Herapath says, from Professor Taylor not knowing
the right way of going about it. It may be, if Mr. Herapath had had the
stomach under his more scientific manipulation, he would have produced
the strychnia. It is enough for my purpose when, as I show, the man who
did in this case experiment upon the stomach of Mr. Cook, in two cases
out of four when he had given a smaller dose to rabbits failed to
reproduce the poison. What is the conclusion I draw from it? Why, that
although I cannot have the advantage here which the positive detection
of the strychnia would have afforded if it had been found, there is no
room for the opposite conclusion--the converse of the proposition for
which my learned friend and his witnesses contend--that the fact of the
strychnia not having been reproduced or discovered affords negative
conclusive proof that the death was not produced by strychnia. I have no
positive proof on the one hand, but on the other hand my learned friend
is in the same predicament--he cannot say that he has negative proof
conclusive of the fact of this death not having taken place by
strychnia.
[Sidenote: Attorney-General]
But now is there no other evidence in the case? Do I ask you to come to
the conclusion that he administered strychnia to his friend, simply
because the symptoms of that friend’s death are reconcilable with no
known form of disease which the most enlarged experience or knowledge
can supply? No, gentlemen, it does not rest there. Not because those
symptoms are precisely those which show themselves in cases of poisoning
by strychnia. No, the case does not rest there; I wish it did. But,
alas! it does not. I must now draw your serious attention to a part of
the case which has not been met, and has not been grappled with. My
learned friend said that he would contest the ground with the
prosecution foot by foot. Alas! we are upon that ground upon which, as
it were, is centred the crisis of this momentous question; and, alas! my
learned friend has not grappled with it for an instant. We have here a
death of which the dread manifestations bore upon their face the
character of strychnia poisoning. Was the prisoner at the bar possessed
of that poison? Did he obtain it upon the eve of the death into which we
are inquiring? These are matters of fearful moment. They are matters
with which it behoved my learned friend, indeed, to have grappled with
all the vigour of which he was capable and with all the means that his
case afforded. But I grieve to say that this part of the case is left
untouched as regards the defence. Did the prisoner at the bar obtain
possession of strychnia on the Monday late? Did he get it again upon the
Tuesday morning? The fact of his having got it on the Monday night
rests, it is true, upon the evidence of an individual whose statement,
as I said to you at the outset, and as I repeat now, requires at your
hands the most careful and anxious attention before you adopt it easily.
Newton tells us that on that night when Mr. Palmer came back from
London, he came to him and obtained from him three grains of the poison
of which, supposing it had been administered, the symptoms and effect
both in life and death would have been precisely the same as those which
have been described in Cook’s case. Is Newton speaking the truth, or is
he not? It is open to observation--I said so from the beginning, and my
learned friend has done no more than reiterate the warning I gave
you--it is, I say, open to serious observation, that Newton never made
that statement until the day previous to the commencement of the trial.
He has explained to you the reasons which induced his silence. His
employer had been for a long time upon unpleasant terms with Palmer. The
young man, who knew him, however, and who appears to have been more or
less upon familiar terms with him, did not hesitate to give him the
three grains of strychnia. Palmer was a medical man, and strychnia is
often used by medical men. There was nothing extraordinary therefore at
that time of night, when chemists’ shops might be expected to be shut
up, that, upon Mr. Palmer’s coming to him for three grains of strychnia,
he gave them to him, and probably thought little more about it. But when
afterwards the question of the mode by which this man’s life had been
taken away became rife in Rugeley, and suspicions arose of strychnia,
and Roberts came forward and said that upon the Tuesday morning Mr.
Palmer had bought strychnia off him, and this young man was called to
confirm the circumstance of Mr. Palmer having been at the shop, he heard
that this question of strychnia was involved, and it began to occur to
him that it might seriously implicate him with his employer, might cast
even the shadow of doubt and suspicion upon himself, if he came forward
and voluntarily stated that he had supplied Palmer with the poison the
night before. Then he locked this secret in his breast. But when the eve
of the trial came, and he knew that he was to be subjected to
examination here, he felt a sort of oppression at having this secret
locked up in his breast, and he voluntarily came forward and made the
statement which he has repeated here. It is for you to say whether you
are satisfied with that explanation. It is unquestionably true that it
detracts from the otherwise perfect credibility which would attach to
his statement. But then, gentlemen, on the other hand, there is a
consideration which I cannot fail to press upon you. What possible
conceivable motive can this young man have, except a sense of truth, for
coming forward to make this statement? My learned friend, with justice
and with propriety, has asked for your most attentive consideration to
the question of motives involved in this case. Before you can charge a
man with having taken away the life of another by aforethought and
deliberate malice, it does become important to see whether there were
motives that could operate upon him to do so foul a deed. That does not
apply to this witness, for, even though the hideous crime of taking life
by poison is not perhaps so horrible to contemplate as the notion of
judicial murder effected by false witness against a man’s neighbour, can
you suppose that this young man can have the remotest shadow of a motive
for coming forward upon this occasion, under the solemn sanction of an
oath, in a Court of justice like this, to take away the life--for, alas!
if you believe his evidence, it must take away the life--of the prisoner
at the bar? If you believe that on the night of Monday, for no other
conceivable or assignable purpose except the deed of darkness which was
to be done that night upon the person of Mr. Cook, the prisoner at the
bar went to Newton and obtained from him the fatal and deadly instrument
whereby life was to be destroyed, it is impossible that you can come to
any other conclusion than that the prisoner is guilty, and that your
verdict must pronounce him so.
What says my learned friend? He says that Newton does not speak the
truth--first, because he did not come forward till the last minute; and,
secondly, because he lays the time of his communication with the
prisoner, and affording him the strychnia, at nine o’clock, and the
prisoner was not in Rugeley until ten.
[Sidenote: Attorney-General]
Now, in the first place, I must remark upon this that the young man does
not say nine o’clock. He says, “about nine,” and every one knows how
easy it is to make a mistake as to time with reference to half an hour
or three-quarters of an hour, or even an hour, when your attention is
not till perhaps a week or a fortnight or three weeks afterwards called
to a particular circumstance. A man may be sitting working in his study
or his surgery, and have no clock before him, and have nothing
particular to impress upon his mind the precise hour of time at which a
certain transaction took place; and to say afterwards, when he comes to
speak to it under the sanction of an oath, that because he makes some
slight difference as to the time therefore he must be taken to be
speaking untruly, appears to my mind a most untenable and unsatisfactory
argument. It is due to my learned friend to say that he has sought to
meet this part of the case. He has produced to-day a witness of whom all
I can say is this, that I implore you, for the sake of justice, not to
allow the man who stands at the bar to be prejudiced by the evidence of
that most discreditable and unworthy witness who has been called to-day
on his behalf. I say that not to one word which that man has uttered
will you attach the slightest value. Before I come to him, however, I
must make this remark--that, if Newton could not be mistaken as to the
time, how is it possible that the prisoner could be mistaken as to the
time? Yet he clearly was. He told Dr. Bamford (and we have it from Dr.
Bamford himself) the next morning that he visited Cook between nine and
ten o’clock the night before. And now there comes a witness who tells us
that it was a quarter past ten that he had with him alighted from the
car that brought them from Stafford, and he could not till after that
have gone to visit Cook. My learned friend reminds me that it was ten
minutes past ten. Then he had to go to Cook. One of the maid-servants,
Lavinia Barnes, like every other witness, may be mistaken; but she
asserts that on that night, the Monday evening, Mr. Palmer came to the
hotel, and went to see Mr. Cook before nine o’clock. It is clear that
she must have been mistaken. It is clear that he could not have been
there much before ten. I am told that they get over in about an hour.
There was a carriage waiting for him, and he would come over to Rugeley
with as much rapidity as he could, which would not be before ten
o’clock. As to the fact of the witness pretending that he saw him alight
from the car, and that he went to Cook and stayed a certain time so as
to cover the whole evening, I ask you not to believe a single word, and
I do so because in my heart I do not believe a single word of it.
[Sidenote: Attorney-General]
It is a remarkable fact, which has not escaped your attention, I dare
say, that my learned friend did not open a single word of the testimony
that he was going to call. He said he hoped and thought he should be
able to cover that whole period at Rugeley. Did he tell us what the
witness was going to prove, that Jeremiah Smith had been upstairs in the
inn, and seen by some of the people at the inn going upstairs to Cook’s
room? No, he did not. If he had we should have had plenty of time
between that and this to ascertain how the fact stood, and I believe
have been ready to meet Mr. Jeremiah Smith with contradictory evidence.
It was well to follow that course when you were uncertain what your
witness would say, or what your case might be, because you might be met
and confronted by contradictory evidence. I need not say that any
evidence would have been better than the evidence of that miserable man
whom we saw exhibited to-day. Such a spectacle I never saw in my
recollection in a Court of justice. He calls himself a member of the
legal profession. I blush for it to number such a man upon its roll.
There was not one that heard him to-day that was not satisfied that that
man came here to tell a false tale. There cannot be a man who is not
convinced that he has been mixed up in many a villainy which, if not
perpetrated, had been attempted to be perpetrated in that quarter, and
he comes now to save, if he can, the life of his companion and his
friend--the son of the woman with whom he has had that intimacy which he
sought to-day in vain to disguise. I say, when you look at the whole of
those circumstances, balance the evidence on both sides, and look at the
question of whether Newton can by any possibility have any motive for
coming here to give evidence which must be fatal to a man who, if that
evidence be not true, he must believe to be an innocent man--when you
see that he can have no motive for such a purpose--to suppose that he
would do so without a motive is to suppose human nature in its worst and
most repulsive form to be one hundred times more wicked and perverse
than experience ever yet has found it--I cannot but submit to you that
you ought to believe that evidence, and I cannot but submit to you
deferentially, but at the same time firmly and emphatically, that if you
do believe that evidence it is conclusive of the case.
[Sidenote: Attorney-General]