mouth, I ran out that way into the yard and there, just where you're standing, Sir, I threw it up, together with my supper—pig's liver, ale, soused herring, red cabbage and all. It was a fair mess, like. I never was took that way after drinking
brandy, not in all my life before. I don't drink so much of it neither, now. Ten shillings a week is what Lloyd pays me; you can't drink brandy on that, but only ale. And I'd spewed out two good quarts there on the stable floor.
I generally drinks brandy when I can get it. At one time, while I was working for old Mr Venables up by Castle Knoll, who kept a good cellar and didn't mind my sampling it, I used to drink all day, like. I'd begin in the morning and carry it on till night, and I kept this game up for nearly eight year, until Mr Venables died and the cellar ran dry, at much the same time. Then I had to come here to The Junction. Needs must when the Devil drives. Lloyd's ale is good ale for sure, but it ain't brandy; nor don't go well with brandy. The two liquors quarrel, like, in the belly. But they tell me Dr Palmer's a poisoner, so of course he must have gave me arsenic, or something wicked of the same nature, mixed in the water.
I was never so sick in my life before, not after drinking. I went and laid me down in the kitchen; and the missus she comes in and sees me there, all of a tizzy. 'Good God,' says she, 'why, what's the matter, Tom? You look white as a sheet!'
'I've been drinking, Ma'am,' says I.
'What have you been drinking?' she asks me.
'Some brandy and water along with Dr Palmer,' I says.
'The more fool you,' she says. 'Never heard what happened to poor Abley, down at The Lamb and Flag, eleven years ago ? You're poisoned, Tom, that's what you are. Who's your doctor?'
'Dr Palmer,' says I.
'Don't talk foolish, Tom,' says she; so I go and lay me down in one of the stalls, for I couldn't mount the ladder to the loft, nohow I couldn't. My legs, they wouldn't support me, like. Well, I lived, as you see, Sir, and that's more than poor Abley did, nor poor Watty Palmer. But I felt mighty queer for three or four days after. I remember very little about when I woke up, or how long I lay there.
I'm told the ostler came and covered me with a horse-rug. I was as black as soot in the face, he says, which it wasn't only the horse dung on which I'd laid—that I'll swear—and he couldn't hear me breathe, nohow, nor nothing. He thought I was dead, like, and left me there, saying nothing to Mr Lloyd, nor the missus, for fear he'd be blamed. A narrow shave it was, you may be bound, in all honesty!
No, Sir, I never named it to Dr Palmer afterward. I couldn't positively swear that he nobbled me, you see? And he was always a generous gentleman when I ran him his errands.
It is, however, not impossible that these two stories may, after all, have been substantially true—if Dr Palmer's motive was not, in either case, to kill but merely to prostrate his victims and cloud their judgement by the use of 'knocking-out drops': as these are termed in the taverns and brothels of seaport towns, where sailors are forcibly enlisted for long voyages. If Doubt had lost, the Doctor would have been able to tear a page or two from Swindell's betting-book, and empty his money-belt of whatever cash it contained. In Tom's case, he stood to gain nothing but a petty revenge; yet it will be noted that the drug supposedly used on Swindell was a laxative, whereas the one supposedly used on Boots was an emetic. The latter may have been tried experimentally, with more important victims in view.
We can find no confirmation of a rumour, now widely current, that Dr Palmer also attempted to drug Lord George Bentinck, the racehorse owner. This is said to have taken place while he was still a student at Bart's, three years before Lord George's death in 1848; but the exact circumstances are never given.
FINANCIAL STRAITS
THE Attorney-General's speech on the opening day of the trial has given a very fair account of Dr Palmer's financial troubles; save that, in our opinion, he misrepresented Jeremiah Smith's humorous proposals for an insurance on George Bate's life as serious ones prompted by the Doctor and designed to improve his own situation. This situation was, indeed, desperate. Yet, after careful thought, we accept his plea of 'Not Guilty' to the charge of taking Cook's life, by strychnine poisoning, with the object of pecuniary gain. The gain would have been utterly inadequate to re-establish his credit; and imprisonment is always a better fate than the gallows. Nor do we believe that strychnia was the cause of Cook's death.
THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL
Gentlemen, it seems that as early as the year 1853, Palmer had got into pecuniary difficulties—he began to raise money on bills. In the year 1854, his circumstances became worse, and he was at that time indebted to different persons in a large sum of money. He then had recourse to an expedient which I shall have to bring before you, because it has an important bearing on this case. Gentlemen, let me make a preliminary observation. I must detail to you transactions involving fraud and, what is graver, forgery— circumstances and transactions reflecting the greatest discredit on those connected with them. Yet while I feel it absolutely necessary to bring these circumstances to your notice for the elucidation of the truth, I am anxious that they should not have more than their fair and legitimate effect. You must not allow them to prejudice your minds against the prisoner as regards the real matter of inquiry here today. A man may be guilty of fraud, he may be guilty of forgery; it does not follow that he should be guilty of murder.
Among the bills on which Palmer raised money, in the course of the year 1854, was one for two thousand pounds, which he discounted with Mr Padwick. That bill bore upon it the acceptance of Palmer's mother, Mrs Sarah Palmer. She is a woman of considerable wealth; and her acceptance, being believed to be genuine, was a security on which money would be readily advanced. Palmer forged that acceptance, and got money upon it; which was, if not the first, at least one of the earlier transactions of that nature—for there are a large series of them—in which money was obtained from bills discounted by Palmer, with his mother's acceptances forged upon them. I shall show you, presently, how this practice involved him in a state of such peril and emergency, that—as we suggest, but it is for you to form your own conclusions—he had recourse to a desperate expedient in order to avoid the imminent consequences.
By the summer of 1854, he owed a very large sum of money. On the 29th of September his wife died; he had an insurance on her life to the amount of thirteen thousand pounds—and the proceeds of that insurance were realized. Palmer used the thirteen thousand pounds to pay off some of his most pressing liabilities. With regard to a part of these liabilities, he employed as his agent a gentleman named Pratt, a solicitor in London, who is in the habit of discounting bills, and whose name will be largely mixed up with the subsequent transactions I shall detail to you. Mr Pratt received from him a sum of eight thousand pounds, and disposed of it in the payment of various liabilities on bills which were in the hands of his own clients. Mr Wright, a solicitor of Birmingham, who had also advanced money to the prisoner, received five thousand more, and thus thirteen thousand of debt was disposed of; but that still left Palmer with considerable liabilities. Among others, the bill for two thousand pounds, discounted by Mr Padwick, remained unpaid.
This brings us to the close of 1854. Early in 1855, Palmer effected another insurance in his brother Walter's name, Mr Pratt acting as his agent; and that policy for thirteen thousand pounds was immediately assigned to Palmer. Mr Pratt paid the first premium for him, out of a bill which he discounted at the rate of sixty per cent, and afterwards proceeded to discount further bills, the insurance policy being held by him as a collateral security. The bills discounted in the course of 1855 reached a total of ?12,500. I find that two, discounted as early as June, 1854, were kept alive by being held over from month to month. In March, 1855, two further bills of two thousand pounds each were discounted; and with the proceeds Palmer bought two racehorses, called Nettle and The Chicken. These bills were renewed in June; they became due on the 28th of September and 2nd of October, were then renewed and became due again on the ist and 5di of January, 1856. On the 18th of April, 1855, a bill was discounted for two thousand pounds at three months, which became due on the 22nd of July, and was renewed so as to become due on the 27th of October. On the 23 rd of July, a bill for two thousand pounds, at three mondis, was discounted, which became due on the 25th of October. On the 9th of July, a bill for two thousand pounds, at three months, was drawn; renewed on the 12th of October, it became due on the 12th of January, 1856. On the 27th of September, a bill for one thousand pounds was discounted, at three months, the proceeds of which went to pay the renewal on the two March bills of two thousand pounds, due at the close of September, and the bill of the 23rd of July, due on the 12th of October.
Thus, in the month of November, when the Shrewsbury Races took place, the account stood as follows.
