at a shilling. My husband enjoys his bit of fishing of a Sunday afternoon, and the box was handy for garden tools.'
'The only fair prices were paid for the Doctor's cellar,' chimed in Mr Fawcus. 'He had 222 gallons of home- brewed ale, according to the catalogue, 67 dozen of port, and 43 gallons of spirit. A very fine cellar for so abstemious a man. It never occurred to the innkeepers who bid for them that every bottle might contain rank poison; they were a deal less suspicious than the officers at Stafford Gaol.'
We strolled round to the back of the house, where the garden stretches—half an acre of land 'in very good fettle,' as Mr Fawcus called it. The low hedge dividing the courtyard from the garden has been carefully clipped, and the small garden in front of the house, with a little pile of imitation rock to spruce it up, is thoroughly well tended. Though we noticed at least six beds of leeks and spring onions, a patch about the size of his drawing-room carpet was all the space Dr Palmer devoted to flowers. The beds, cut out of the turf in curious shapes, such as stars and lozenges, contained only a few pinks and wallflowers.
We came across a well-built stable and coach-house with a pear-tree trained against the brick wall facing the noon sun, and a horseshoe nailed to the door. The large tank is of slate and clean rainwater flows into it for horses' drinking—soft water improves their health. In one corner, next a pigsty, a manure tank is sunk, into which the slush of the stable and piggery formerly drained; there being a pump to raise the liquid as it was required for the cultivation of vegetables. All these improvements to the property had been added by Dr Palmer.
Following the kitchen garden path, where clothes poles and the cord along them formed a kind of telegraph, we found a fine rhubarb bed, behind which grew forty gooseberry and currant bushes, all neatly pruned. And beyond these, we suddenly came on a gendeman in check coat and trousers sitting on an upturned oyster barrel. He rose and addressed us in a hoarse Manchester accent, pressing upon us a tradesman's card which we reproduce on the following page.
We thanked Mr Allen, but informed him that another day would suit us better. 'Oh, that's all right, bless you, Sir,' he said, 'I don't want for custom. The number of fashionably dressed folks who journey over here from the surrounding districts for a sight of Dr Palmer's house, barred and empty as it is, still astounds me. It's early yet for the rush, which don't commence much before noon. I do very well indeed from them, and take their portraits standing gainst the stable door, with one hand on the pear-tree to steady 'em. Yes, Sir, 'tis a superb place for my trade.
Dr Palmer's creditors had all gathered together like a flock of vultures, and on January 21st, 1856, his broodmares, horses in training and yearlings, came up for auction. We were present to witness that interesting occasion.
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For a Fortnight Photographic Portraits ?
C. Allen
Respectfully informs the Ladies,
?
Commencing at 10 o'clock Mornings until 6 in the Evening.
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At Hyde Park Corner, close to where carriages and horsemen enter the Park, and where the mob stands roaring and screaming to see Her Majesty the Queen drive by in her landau—not far, in fact, from Decimus Burton's Arch topped by that formidable equestrian statue of the late Field-Marshal the Duke of Wellington—you will find Tattersall's Ring, the
There's a sporting air hangs about 'The Corner', from the red-jacketed touts who hang around its entrance to the shrewd cast of the auctioneer's countenance. We went down the yard, already filling at the news that Dr Palmer's nags would come under the hammer, and hundreds who had no intention whatever of bidding, were assembled there through curiosity. Here they stood: gentle and simple, young and elderly, peers of the Realm, gentry, tradesmen and legs. That lanky old man with the fine aristocratic face, and neck swathed in the thick white choker, is a clergyman, and as thorough a sportsman as ever stepped; nor are his sermons any the worse for that. The dirty little man in the brown coat is a viscount, exceedingly rich but so mean that he is said to go through the refuse bins outside his former club, from which he has been ejected, searching avidly for remnants of lobster and crayfish, which he grudges to buy for himself. Yonder goes the 'Leviathan' of the Ring, Bill Davies, tall and thin, dressed entirely in black, with a blue speckled handkerchief about his throat. He started life as a carpenter, and his word is now good for ?50,000; beside him walks young Frank Swindell, another commission- agent, wearing a bunch of early violets in his buttonhole. Both of them have made the same discovery, that, in the long run, straight dealing pays even in the betting ring. Since they scorn 'daylight robbery', which is to encourage betters to lay money on dead 'uns—horses that will never run—engineers of dirty work no longer trouble to approach them.
Tattersall's stables are the acme of neatness and cleanliness. Here to the right is the Subscription Room, into which we might not go; instead we visited a public house mainly frequented by little grooms and jockeys, and listened to their gossip. 'The Rugeley Poisonings' were all the talk, and feeling ran high, the sporting fraternity being about equally divided between pro's and con's. Some swore that Billy Palmer was a bold sportsman, a good loser, and a generous friend; others that he was Ananias, Cain and Judas Iscariot rolled into one.
'He's far lower than an animal, and worth a deal less,' cries a ferret-faced stableboy to Young Ashmole the jockey, 'and I'll undertake to prove it—at even money in half-sovereigns!'
'Done,' Young Ashmole answers, 'let the landlord hold the stakes and be umpire.'
'Well,' says Ferret Face, 'Palmer was denied entrance to Tattersall's, now wasn't he? And a horse is an animal, isn't it? Well, there's seventeen of his horses admitted today where he wasn't, and a couple of 'em will sell for well over five hundred guineas, and none for lower than fifty. Well, what's Palmer worth now? There's bills for fifteen thousand pounds out against him, and ten thousand of 'em won't be met. And as for his life, I wouldn't back his chances to live the year out, not at a hundred to one.'
Young Ashmole, defeated by this crude logic, which satisfied the landlord and raised loud cheers at the bar, paid up sulkily; but, having done so, he soused Ferret Face with a mug of beer full in his grinning phiz.
Bidding at the auction was spirited, and very high prices were realized. Prince Albert's name has already appeared in our account of the other auction, if only as a metaphor; here we heard it used in a direct and practical manner. For Major Grove, Her Majesty's Commissioner from the Royal Paddocks, bought Trickstress, an eight- year-old mare, for 230 guineas on Prince Albert's behalf. Strange to relate, though the Major appeared anxious to secure Nettle, a decidedly superior animal, in the end he let her go to Mr F. L. Popham for 430 guineas. (Nettle, it will be recalled, was favourite for the Oaks last year, and her tumble over the chains sealed Dr Palmer's financial doom.) The Chicken went for 800 guineas to Mr Harlock, who has since changed her name to 'Vengeance'. In the aggregate, the sale amounted to ?3,906, which included the high price of 590 guineas for a three-year-old filly, by Melbourne out of Seaweed, which fell to Mr Sargent.
While Dr Palmer was attempting suicide by starvation, the bodies of his wife and brother were exhumed, and Coroner's inquests held on them. In the first case, Annie Palmer's, the gaseous exudations of the corpse had, since the fifteen months of burial, escaped through the fibre of the oaken coffin and left the corpse comparatively dry. Dr Monckton made the
Exceptionally distressing was the
