They Hanged My Saintly Billy

Health to the City of London, stated for the Defence that the fifty-thousandth part can!

Professor Taylor's testimony was, without doubt, the mainspring that acted so powerfully on the minds of the jury. Some twenty-three years ago, he had experimented with strychnia on twelve wild rabbits—'which is the only personal knowledge that I have of strychnia, as it affects animal life'—but had never seen any human being exposed to its influence. And 'though I met a case of tetanus in the human subject years ago, I have not had much experience in such matters'. He constantly failed to detect the presence of strychnia after poisoning animals, even when the dose was as much as a grain and a half; and had never thought to conduct experiments on dogs or cats, though they resemble man far more closely in that they vomit, whereas rabbits do not. Professor Taylor has published The Principles and Practice of Medical Jurisprudence—in part a treatise on poisons—and diere one may find listed experimental facts and the reports of several deaths by strychnia. But none of this is the product of his own research— the Professor's light shines with borrowed rays, like the deceptive Moon.

Of Sir Benjamin Brodie little need or can be said. Though he had considerable experience of tetanus, he also excelled in tact and avoided any positive statement that could contradict other people's opinions, qualifying his evidence with such phrases as ' according to my knowledge,' 'so far as I have seen,' 'at least so it has been in my experience,' 'I believe I remember cases,'—and so forth. He took the safe course of a man who, being himself benighted, will not pretend to set a neighbour's foot on the right path. But Professor Taylor's forthright evidence was even at variance with itself. In reply to the question: 'Were the symptoms and appearances in Cook's case the same as diose you have observed in the animals which you poisoned with strychnia?' he declared: 'They were.' Yet he had repeatedly laid down that no prognosis of the symptoms likely to ensue from the human consumption of strychnia can rest on those observed in lower animals similarly poisoned; so that even his youthful experiments with rabbits were irrelevant here.

To quote a tithe of the evidence on the above subjects would protract our comment far beyond convenient limits. Indeed, we find so much that is criticizable in the evidence, the addresses of Counsel, and the charge to the jury, that our own patience as well as that of our readers would soon suffer exhaustion. However, a letter written to The Times by F. Crage Calvert, Esq., F.C.C., a Cheshire chemist, about his discovery of strychnia in the bodies of several wilfully poisoned hounds—at least three weeks after death —convinces us that Professor Taylor's theory of 'perfect absorption' is quite fallacious. So does another written to the same newspaper by Professor Herapath, the greatest analytic chemist now alive among us, whom the Attorney-General browbeat and flustered during the trial. He once found strychnia in a fox dead for over two months.

How Professor Herapath came to be subpoenaed by the Prosecution is a curious story. According to an anonymous letter received by the Crown lawyers from Keynsham in Somersetshire, the Professor had publicly declared: 'I have no doubt that there was strychnia in Cook's body, but Professor Taylor could not find it.' Professor Hcrapath was known to be at loggerheads with Professor Taylor, whom he looked upon as an ignorant theorist, and seems to have incautiously made some such remark to Mr Twining, the Mayor of Bristol, and a party of his friends. Yet it had been based on partial newspaper accounts of the case, including a most inaccurate one printed by The Illustrated Times. This anonymous letter also reported him as saying: 'A word from mc would hang that man!'—but the remark was, in effect, made by Mr Twining. The Attorney-General eagerly seized on Professor Herapath's observation which he had read as meaning that strychnine might evade the analysis of even the most experienced analyst; whereas, in truth, the Professor had merely referred to Professor Taylor's incompetence. At the trial, the Attorney-General realized his mistake, and was skilful enough to repair it with Pharisaic ingenuity by entangling Professor Herapath in his talk.

If we may give our studied opinion for what it is worth, founding it upon that of Mr John Robinson, the well- known lecturer on Medical Jurisprudence, and others, equally distinguished, we will say that the sore on Cook's body—where, according to the evidence, excoriation of a syphilitic scar had been rubbed off— was well capable of inducing tetanus, especially in one who frequented stables; for stables breed the disease. To this we will, however, add that the nightly recurrence of Cook's attacks rather suggests an obscure nervous disorder—'epileptic convulsions with tetanic symptoms,' as Dr Bamford called it—which, in his weakened state, Cook could not resist. Dr Palmer, in all probability, had assisted this weakness, for a felonious object, possibly by introducing tartar emetic into Cook's toast-and-water; but never, we are convinced, did he foresee or desire that it should have a fatal ending.

It may be objected that epilepsy seldom makes its first appearance in mature persons and that, if Cook had previously experienced epileptic seizures, this fact would surely have come out in the trial. But such epileptic seizures as occur only late at night, when the patient is suffering from gastric disturbances, or has worked himself up to an anxious frame of mind, often escape general remark; and if Dr Jones, a capable physician and Cook's country neighbour, diagnosed epilepsy, he must have suspected a proneness to this unusual disorder. The suggestion that Dr Palmer procured three grains, and then another six grains, of strychnia— in his own home-town, too—for the purpose of murdering his friend, afterwards adjusting the dose so nicely as to leave no vestige of the crime—this seems to us one of the most far-fetched that we have ever heard.

Chapter XXII

THE VERDICT

MANY incidents in this trial, we confess, surprised us unpleasantly. Mr Baron Alderson, who shared Lord Chief Justice Campbell's partiality for the Prosecution, made even less attempt to conceal it, and frequently amused himself by suggesting questions to Mr James, Q.C., the Counsel for the Crown. He would raise his hands in feigned astonishment if evidence favourable to Dr Palmer was elicited by cross-examination; stare at the jury with a look of incredulity and contempt if Serjeant Shee called attention to such evidence; and assist the Lord Chief Justice in overruling almost every legal objection raised by the Defence. Once, when Mr Serjeant Slice asked a medical witness: 'Where are the pathionic glands?', Mr Baron Alderson started angrily from his seat and exclaimed in loud tones: 'Humbug!' To another similar question he answered for the witness: 'You will find that in any encyclopaedia.'

By contrast, Mr Justice Cresswell Cresswell, who had been educated, like Mr Baron Alderson, at the Charterhouse and Cambridge, comported himself with dignity and strict impartiality. It was clear that, but for his intervention at many important points, the Lord Chief Justice would have admitted illegal evidence against Dr Palmer, or excluded evidence operating in his favour. When, on one occasion, Mr Justice Cresswell respectfully addressed Serjeant Shee as 'Brother Slice', Mr Baron Alderson's impatient ejaculation: 'O, bother Shee!' was heard by everyone present.

The Lord Chief Justice first showed his prejudice by allowing the Attorney-General to acquaint the jury with the story of Bate's life insurance, while omitting circumstances which Samuel Cheshire, or Jeremiah Smith, or Dr Palmer himself—who, by a quirk of British legal procedure, must keep silent throughout the trial, whatever falsehoods might be told—could have supplied in extenuation. Dr Palmer, let it be observed, had never been granted the privilege of stating his case from any witness-box, or before any public authorities whatsoever. Serjeant Shee strongly objected to this evidence about the insurance as irrelevant, and it was excluded, but too late for the true facts to appear. Thus the black impression remained fixed in the minds of the jurymen: 'Dr Palmer attempted to take George Bate's life; as he had already taken those of his own wife and, perhaps, his brother.'

Again, it is a first principle of our Law that nothing which has been said while a prisoner was absent may be quoted in evidence against him. Yet the Lord Chief Justice allowed the Prosecution to prove a talk between Mr Cook and Fisher, held in Dr Palmer's absence when the latter had no means of contradicting Cook's drunken suspicions of the brandy. It seems that Mr Justice Cress-well noted the impropriety, because he later interposed at this point in the Lord Chief Justice's summing-up and prevented him from reading to the jury evidence which should never have been given. Yet the passage had produced a decisive influence on their minds, and blinded them to the fact that Cook later went to Rugeley with Dr Palmer, dined at his house, constantly sent for him, made no mention of any 'dosing' to Dr Jones, his closest friend and his physician, and kept an affectionate faith in Dr Palmer until death carried him off.

Serjeant Shee objected time after time to Mr James's illegal questions, but the Lord Chief Justice overruled him so constantly that at last he told Mr John Smith, Dr Palmer's solicitor: 'I dare not object further.'

John Smith replied: 'This, Sir, is an organized conspiracy to hang our client; and so I suspected from our correspondence with the Crown solicitors. You will remember how we failed to extract a report from them as to Professor Taylor's analytic methods. They refused my demand, and were supported by Sir George Grey at the Home Office, who stated that it was an unprecedented one, and that these matters would doubtless appear in cross-