They Hanged My Saintly Billy

newspaper. I have the cutting here in my pocketbook.

Castle Terrace, Stafford, August 10th, 1855

My dearest Agnes,

I left you last evening and did feel I possessed a light heart; but on my arrival at Warrington I found the South Express was three-quarters of an hour late, owing to the flood washing away arches, etc. I was lonely—only myself in the carriage. The rain on my arrival was incessant. Thanks to God, I had not far to go. I have been home today; I am truly sorry to say Mother has been very unwell, but is better. I told Sarah you was going to the concert on the 27th, and she wishes to go too. Please write to her, and she can come with me. If I should bring little Miss Barber, you won't be jealous, will you? But I don't know whether we shall meet or not. I should like you to know one steady and sensible creature upon earth, but not a teetotaller on principle. She says: 'I never drink one glass of wine in twelve months and have, therefore, no occasion to be a teetotaller.' I will write to you tomorrow and explain a few little secrets. Good night, God bless you, and ever believe in the affection of

Walter Palmer

P.S. Remaining sober with you was easy enough, because you are a dear good creature and keep no spirits in your house. Here drink is always at my elbow.

On Sunday, August 12th, Dr Day called at Castle Terrace and found Walter and William Palmer together. Walter was so intoxicated that Dr Day deferred his visit until the afternoon, hoping that he would by then be in a quieter state. Dr Palmer undertook to do his best in the matter, but that afternoon, when Dr Day called, he opened the door himself and said: 'Pray, leave this to me. Walter's no better and so very noisy and unmanageable, it's no use your seeing him, I'm afraid.'

On Monday, Dr Palmer attended the Wolverhampton Races; meanwhile Dr Day saw Walter and prescribed some pills. When he called on the Tuesday, Walter said, grinning: 'Doctor, those pills of yours were twisters! But I threw them up, and now I'm off to Wolverhampton. You needn't look in for another day or two. I'm well again.'

He set out for Wolverhampton with Walkenden, stopping at The Fountain Inn on his arrival. Here he felt so weak that he had to lie down and never reached the racecourse. Walter drank all that day, and continued all night after his return to Castle Terrace. When Dr Day called on the Wednesday, August 14th, he was told by Walkenden: 'Your patient is at the Wolverhampton Races, Doctor.' Walkenden has since confessed that this was untrue; but swears Walter himself sent the message. At any rate, Walter lay upstairs drinking, and did not leave the house.

Dr Palmer was to have attended the Ludlow Races that Thursday; but changed his mind and instead went to Stafford where he spent the day with 'Walter, having asked Jeremiah Smith to keep in touch with him. At 1.32 p.m., Mr Smith dispatched a telegraphic message: 'Lurley has a good chance for the Ludlow Stakes.' It arrived just as Walter was dying, after an apoplectic stroke. Ten minutes later Dr Palmer summoned the Boots at the Grand Junction Hotel, and offered him sixpence if he would take a telegraphic message to Stafford railway station, for delivery in London. This was addressed to his friend, Mr Webb, and ran: 'Lay ?50 on Lurley for the Ludlow Stakes, whatever the price. If Lurley won, Dr Palmer stood to make five hundred pounds. At a quarter past four, he sent another telegraphic message by the same Boots to the Clerk of the Course, at Ludlow: 'Pray, Mr Frail, inform me who won the Ludlow Stakes.'

In the event, Lurley did not catch the Judge's eye, nor did Morning Star's winning of the Welter Cup by twenty lengths at that meeting compensate for the disappointment. Dr Palmer received word of Lurley's failure as stoically as usual. On the Thursday, he went by train to Liverpool and broke the news of Walter's death to Agnes Palmer. Overcome by grief, she asked why nobody had written or telegraphed to say that he was ill. Dr Palmer at once answered that, on asking Walter's leave to write, he had been told: 'No, Billy, I'm not so bad as all that. I'll write myself tomorrow from Wolverhampton; I don't want Agnes worried unnecessarily. You shan't say a word.'

Agnes Palmer then proposed to return with Dr Palmer for a last look at her husband; but he said, very truly, that this was no longer advisable. The body had begun to decompose very rapidly in the hot August weather, and was now closed tightly in a leaden shell. She therefore nursed her grief until the Monday, when the funeral took place at Rugeley; there, with her brothers-in-law William, George and Thomas, and her sister-in-law Sarah, she followed Walter to his grave in St Augustine's churchyard.

That evening Dr Waddell met Walkenden, very drunk, emerging from the refreshment room on Stafford railway station. 'Hulloa, old cock!' cried Walkenden. 'How's the hens?'

Dr Waddell, noticing the mourning band around Walkenden's hat, answered civilly: 'Good evening, Tom! May I ask in return whom you have had the pleasure of putting underground?'

'Poor Watty!' says Walkenden.

'Poor whom?' asks Dr Waddell.

'Poor Walter Palmer; died of an apoplexy. A fine funeral it was, too. His brother William didn't stint us of drink.'

Dr Waddell, terribly shocked, exclaimed in the hearing of the stationmaster and porters: 'I'll let the Assurance Office know of this affair.'

The Doctor must have suspected foul play. It was his letter to The Prince of Wales that first prompted them to contest the claim, although Dr Day had obligingly certified apoplexy as the cause of Walter's death.

Chapter XII

A GENTLEMAN OF PROPERTY

INSPECTOR SIMPSON continued to unfold the story. He described how Dr Palmer sent Pratt, his London agent, the death certificate and other documents which would enable him to claim the fourteen thousand pounds insurance money; but also how Dr Waddell's letter, informing The Prince of Wales's managers that Walter was a brother of William Palmer—whom they had recently paid a similar sum upon the death of his wife— and that Walter's death might well have been brought about by wilful negligence, alarmed them into withholding payment. They referred Pratt to their solicitors.

Dr Palmer, dreadfully pressed for money, did not know which way to turn. In May, he had entered Nettle, his Sweetmeat filly, for the Oaks and engaged Charley Marlow as her jockey. Marlow, as I mentioned just now, had won a victory for the all-yellow colours at Wolverhampton on Morning Star, coaxing a fine performance out of that lazy beast, which had never won a race before, nor was ever likely to win one again. Palmer laid so heavily on Nettle for the Oaks that she started as a raging favourite, at odds of two to one.

It happened that on the previous night an old Yorkshire trainer had told Marlow: 'Hoi's noa going to win Oaks, and whoi? 'Cause hoi poison'd woife!'

Charley Marlow, very angry, appealed to Will Saunders the trainer, who was present. 'This is a pretty serious slander, Mr Saunders,' he said. 'You come from that part of the country, and you train for Dr Palmer; what do you know of the matter?'

'It's none of my business,' Saunders replied sourly, 'if the little boys of Rugeley say that Billy Palmer poisoned his wife. I don't.'

Whether or not the suspicion thus implanted in Marlow's mind affected his horsemanship, who can tell? At all events, Nettle was lying second and Marlow had not yet called on her for the final effort, of which he believed her well capable, when suddenly she swerved, fell over the chains near the New Mile post, threw him heavily, and galloped away into the furze bushes. Marlow's thigh was broken and, while being carried off the course, he exclaimed between groans: 'It served me right! What business had I to ride a damned poisoner's horse?'

Condoled with by George Myatt on his loss of the race, Dr Palmer said no more than: 'It is rather a bore, though, isn't it?' His losses must have been very serious, since he had stood to win no less than ten thousand pounds.

The Prince of Wales's refusal to pay the insurance money came as a thunderbolt. He considered himself cheated by Walter, on whom he had spent a considerable sum—not only the seven hundred pound premium, but also sixty pounds in cash, and bills owing to the innkeeper for nineteen gallons of gin and a quantity of odicr liquor consumed at Castle Terrace. He therefore applied to Agnes Palmer, who was staying with friends at Great Malvern, for the payment of certain debts which her husband (he said) had left unsettled.

The following exchange of letters between Dr Palmer and his sister-in-law has since been published:

Rugeley, Sept. 27th, 1855

Dear Agnes,

I hope the change of air and scenery has, by this time, done you good, and that you are more quiet and reconciled than, when I communicated to you the painful, the sorrowful, news of dear Walter's death. Ah, poor