awful change which awaits you. I will not seek to harrow up your feelings by enumerating the circumstances of this foul murder; but content myself now by passing upon you the sentence of the law.
'Which is: that you be taken from hence to the gaol of Newgate, and be thence removed to the gaol of the county of Stafford —the county in which the offence for which you stand convicted was committed—that you be taken thence to the place of execution, and there hanged by the neck until you be dead, and that your body be afterwards buried within the precincts of the prison; and may the Lord of Heaven have mercy on your soul!
'Amen.'
Dr Palmer's notorious comment on the verdict—the sporting phrase: 'It was the riding that did it,' which he wrote on another scrap of paper and tossed to his solicitor—has been read as an unwilling tribute to the Attorney- General's masterly conduct of the Prosecution. But we have it from his solicitor, John Smith, that it referred solely to the Lord Chief Justice's discreditable jockeyship on the Bench.
A CHANGE IN PUBLIC OPINION
BACK in his cell at Newgate Gaol, Dr Palmer complained to the Under-Sheriff that he had not received anything like a fair trial. The Under-Sheriff replied: 'You can have no reason for complaint, my man. Why, the Attorney-General laid his cards face upwards on the table, saying that, since so much prejudice had been excited in this case, all the evidence against you would first be communicated to Counsel for the Defence, not sprung upon him.'
'I saw in that only the hypocrisy of a Scot,' Dr Palmer retorted. 'There were several cards missing from the pack, including the high trumps.'
'Moreover,' went on the Under-Sheriff, 'no less than three Judges agreed with the jury's finding.'
'Well, Sir, but that don't satisfy me,' said the Doctor. He then stated that Lord Chief Justice Campbell had failed to consult his fellow-Judges before announcing their unanimous agreement with the verdict; and that it should properly have fallen to Mr Justice Cresswell, as junior Judge, to pass sentence.
Later, Dr Palmer admitted: 'Despite old Campbell's unfair speech at the close of it, I had hoped to get off; but when the jury returned to Court and I saw the cocked-up nose of that perky little Foreman, I knew it was a gooser with me.'
He appeared greatly mortified when given a grey suit of convict clothes and curtly told to change into them. Having done so, he was handcuffed and fettered. 'You are bound for Stafford tonight,' said the Under-Sheriff.
A Black Maria stood waiting in the courtyard, where the crowd had gathered thick for a sight of the prisoner; but Mr Weatherhead, the Governor of Newgate Gaol, smuggled him out by cab to Euston Square station. Though met there with angry and derisive shouts, he was safely assisted to the eight o'clock train and thrust into the middle compartment of a first-class carriage; the blinds being at once drawn. He had pleaded to travel by the Great Western Railway, over a less direct route, on the ground that if he went by the London & North Western, he would be recognized all along the line. This favour was denied him.
When he arrived, rather fagged, at Stafford station late that night—only to be greeted with prolonged boos and catcalls— Mr Wollaston, Superintendent of the Stafford Police, took one of his arms, and Mr Weatherhead the other. The police having dispersed the crowd, Dr Palmer picked his way carefully through the puddles, saying: 'Dear me, it’s very wet! Have you had much rain down here?'
'We have,' Mr Wollaston answered shortly.
No further word was spoken for some time, but after about five minutes Dr Palmer signed and said: 'I've had a wearying trial of it: twelve long days!' Then he stumbled in the dark and cried: 'Bother these chains! I wish they were off. I can't walk properly.'
The Doctor's brothers, George and Thomas, had leave to visit his cell a day or two later. When they begged him to declare whether he were guilty or not guilty, he forcibly replied: 'I have nothing to say, and nothing shall I say!'
Within half a week of returning to Stafford he overcame his fatigue, and was allowed several more visits from them; also from the Rev. Mr Atkinson, the Vicar of Rugeley, who had baptized, confirmed, married, and never ceased to feel affection for, him; from Mr Wright, the philanthropist of Manchester; and from the Rev. Mr Sneyd of Ripstone. All diese urged on him the necessity of confessing, but he kept a polite silence. Serjeant Shee sent Dr Palmer a Bible, carrying a sympathetic note on the flyleaf; and he passed much of his time reading this, and other religious books, lent him by the Prison Chaplain, the Rev. H. J. Goodacre. At his request, old Mrs Palmer spared herself the pain of a farewell, and took sole charge of little William, his son.
For a day or two, he was generally assumed to be guilty beyond dispute, and the crowds at Newgate would have cheerfully torn him to pieces, had the Police permitted them. Yet among medical men in Edinburgh, London, and Dublin, the prevalent view now seems to be: 'Hang Palmer for the insurance offices, or for the Jockey Club, or for the greater glory of the Attorney-General. Hang him as a rogue, if you will, but it must be on circumstantial evidence alone, not on the medical evidence; because that has broken down, horse, foot, and guns!'
Yesterday, the President of the College of Surgeons, lecturing to a packed audience on the subjects of tetanus and strychnine, referred pointedly to Dr Palmers trial: 'I have heard of grand jurors and petty jurors, special jurors, and common jurors, but these were twelve most uncommon jurors—very respectable confectioners and grocers into the bargain, I have no doubt—who boldly cut the Gordian knot, and settled the most difficult problem in the world, which is the anatomy of the brain!' He added that ninety-nine parts in a hundred of the surgical evidence at the trial were irrelevant to the case, since Cook had doubtless died of no surgical disease, but of a medical one —namely, a convulsion.
Guy's Hospital is in a ferment. One of Professor Taylor's colleagues has represented the speech of the Attorney-General as one of the greatest examples of medical extravagance and folly ever proffered to the public. Another pre-eminent surgeon calls it 'a piece of cold-blooded cruelty, disgraceful to the nineteenth century'. Professor Taylor himself receives cold looks from his own associates and pupils. At King's College Hospital, where Professor Partridge lectures, the pupils are most indignant at the Attorney-General's attack on Mr Devonshire, who performed the first
A considerable change of opinion has therefore been observed among the educated public. We reprint the following from
A public meeting, organized neither by Dr Palmer's family, nor by the Defence, but spontaneously by a number of disinterested citizens, took place today in St Martin's Hall, Longacre, to consider the propriety of staying Wm Palmer's execution on the ground of doubtful and conflicting testimony given at the trial. Most persons present were working men, with a considerable representation of the middle classes, and here and there a few women.
When the doors opened, the hall soon filled, and hundreds who could not find standing room remained outside during the proceedings. A petition praying that the hanging might be postponed, to allow time for a medical inquiry into the facts at issue, lay in a lobby at the entrance throughout the evening, and a stream of people appended their names to it. The feeling manifested by the greater part of the audience was in favour of a respite, though a few score vociferously asserted an opposite view at all stages of the proceedings. So high, indeed, did feeling run at one time that a well-dressed, portly man named Bridd jumped upon the platform and, defying the remonstrances of the chairman, Mr P. Edwards, began addressing the meeting while another speaker held the chair. Bridd was brought to reason amid a scene of indescribable confusion only by the appearance of police constables.
Mr P. Edwards announced that he and his fellows on the platform had not the least personal sympathy with William Palmer, knew nothing of him, and had never seen or conversed either with him or with any member of his family. Nor did they feel a morbid sympathy with criminals, and if the verdict had satisfied public opinion as correctly given, he for one should never have considered arresting the progress of the law, which was always a thing to be respected.
He, and those who acted with him on this occasion, demanded neither a reprieve, nor the Royal clemency; they demanded simple justice. If his listeners considered the evidence submitted at the trial to have been doubtful, he hoped that they would endeavour, with him, to procure a re-investigation of the case, so that there might
