Anonymous

“ Jones was of all men living the most likely to be the recipient of Cook’s confidence, and the man who was bound by every consideration of honour, friendship, and affection to protect him, to vindicate his cause, and to avenge his death. Yet this was the man for whom Palmer sent, that he might converse with Cook, receive his confidences, minister to him in his illness, and even sleep in the same room with him! ”

“ Is it conceivable that if Palmer meant to slay Cook with poison in the dead of the night he would have previously ensured the presence, in his victim’s bed-room, of a medical witness, who would know from the symptoms that the man was not dying a natural death? He brings a medical man into the room, and makes him lie within a few inches of the sick man’s bed, that he may hear his terrific shrieks, and witness those agonising convulsions which indicate the fatal potency of poison! ”

“ When a long correspondence is read to a jury, who are without the same means of testing its importance as the judge or the counsel, they frequently do not attach that weight to it which it deserves. But I watched the correspondence which was read to you yesterday with an anxiety which no words can express, because I firmly believed that in it the innocence of the prisoner lay concealed; that it proved not only that the prisoner had no motive to kill Cook, but that Cook’s death was ruin to him. ”

“ It is not fair in a case of this momentous importance to affix the opprobrium on a man who is not proved to have ever had it in his hand. The Crown had no doubt originally intended to rely upon the prisoner’s medical books as affording damning proof of his guilt; but I will refer to those volumes for evidences that will speak eloquently in his favour. In youth and early manhood there is no such protection for a man as the society of an innocent and virtuous woman to whom he is sincerely attached. ”

“ Is it not to the last degree incredible that a shrewd, intelligent man like Palmer should have exposed himself to such a chance of detection as sending broth which he had poisoned from his house, to stand by the kitchen fire of the Talbot Arms, when, sure as fate, the cook would taste it? ”

“ I, upon all occasions, am most reluctant to attack a witness who is examined upon his or her oath, and particularly if he be in a humble position of life. I am very reluctant to impute perjury to such a person; and I think that a man who has been as long in the profession as I have been must, in most cases, be put a little to his wits’ end when he rushes upon the assumption that a person whose statements have, after a considerable lapse of time, materially varied, is therefore necessarily, deliberately perjured. ”

“ Hideous though may be the crime of taking away life by poison, it is probably not so horrible to contemplate as the motive of a judicial murder effected by a false witness against a man’s life. Can you suppose that this young man Newton could have the shadow of any such motive in coming forward in a court like this to take away the life of the prisoner at the bar, as, alas! his evidence must do, if you believe him. ”

“ Every muscle, says the witness, the medical man who was present at the time—every muscle of his body was convulsed—he expressed the most intense dread of suffocation—he entreats them to lift him up lest he should be suffocated—and every muscle of his body, from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet, was so stricken—the flexibility of the trunk and the limbs was gone—and you could only have raised him up as you would have raised a corpse. ”

“ The life of the prisoner is at stake; if he be guilty, it is necessary that he should expiate his crime; if he be innocent, it is requisite that his innocence should be vindicated. If his guilt be proved to you on satisfactory evidence, it is your duty to society and to yourselves to convict him; but unless his guilt be fully sustained by the evidence, it is your duty to acquit him. You must bear in mind that in a case of this sort you cannot expect that witnesses should be called to state that they saw the deadly poison mixed up by the prisoner, and by him openly administered. ”

“ I exclaimed, “No betting-book, Mr. Jones?” Turning towards Palmer, I said, “How is this?” Palmer said, “Oh, it is of no manner of use if you find it.” I said, “No use, Sir! I am the best judge of that.” He replied, “It is of no use.” I said, “I am told it is of use. I understand my son won a great deal of money at Shrewsbury, and I ought to know something about it.” He replied, “It is of no use, I assure you. When a man dies his bets are done with. Besides, Cook received the greater part of his money on the course at Shrewsbury.” ”

“ When you gave your opinion that Cook died from the effects of antimony had you any reason to think that an undue quantity had been administered?—I could not tell. People may die from large or small quantities; the quantity found in the body was no criterion as to how much he had taken.
May not the injudicious use of a quack medicine containing antimony, the injudicious use of James’s powders, account for the antimony you found in the body?—Yes; the injudicious use of any antimonial medicine would account for it. ”

“ Have you not said that the quantity of antimony you found was not sufficient to account for death?—Certainly. If a man takes antimony he first vomits, and then a part of the antimony goes out of the body; some may escape from the bowels. A great deal passes at once into the blood by absorption, and is carried out by the urine.
Can you say upon your oath that from the traces in Cook’s body you were justified in stating your opinion that death was caused by antimony?—Yes perfectly and distinctly. ”

“ There was not one who heard his evidence who was not satisfied that the man came here to tell a falsehood—not one who was not convinced that he was mixed up in many of the villanies which, if not perpetrated, were, at all events, contemplated, and that he came here to save the life of his companion and friend, and the son of the woman with whom he had that intimacy the nature of which he sought in vain to disguise. ”

“ By the practice in foreign countries it is allowed to raise a probability of the prisoner having committed the crime with which he is charged by proving that he has committed other offences—by showing that he is an immoral man, and that he is not unlikely, therefore, to have committed the offence with which he is charged. That is not the case in this country. You must presume that a man is innocent until his guilt be established, and his guilt can only be established by evidence directly criminating him on the charge for which he is tried. ”

“ Serjeant Shee: We are learning new facts every day, and I do not at present conceive it to be impossible that some peculiarity of the spinal cord, unrecognizable at the examination after death, may have produced symptoms like those which have been described. I, of course, include strychnia in my answer, but it is irreconcileable with everything I have seen or heard of. It is as irreconcileable with strychnia as with everything else; it is irreconcileable with every disease that I am acquainted with, natural or artificial. ”

“ Did you ever know a cook who would not taste broth sent by another person and said to be particularly good? It is not in the nature of things. A cook is a taster, she tastes everything, and Palmer must have known that as sure as ever he sent into the kitchen broth containing antimony the cook would take it and be ill. Her statement is not credible and cannot be relied on. Then she said in her evidence before the coroner that on Saturday Cook had coffee and vomited directly he swallowed it, and that up to the time she gave him the coffee she had not seen Palmer. ”

“ Taylor vindicate his opinion? He does not appear to have ever seen one solitary case of strychnine in the human subject, yet, with the full knowledge that the consequences of his assertion might be disastrous to the prisoner at the bar, he has the audacity to assert that the pills, which for anything he knows to the contrary were the same that Dr. Bamford prepared, contained strychnine, and that Cook was poisoned by it. I have quoted the sentiment, “a little learning is a dangerous thing,” and assuredly to no science is that maxim so applicable as to the medical. ”

“ If we can satisfy you that this man was assailed by any one of the numerous kinds of convulsions to which humanity is liable, and that he was asphyxiated or deprived of life when writhing in some sudden spasm or paroxysm, we shall have done all that can in fairness be demanded of us, unless, indeed, the Crown shall be prepared to prove that Cook’s symptoms were irreconcilable with any other doctrine than that of death by strychnine. ”

“ Brodie and other witnesses, that in the whole of their experience, and in the whole range of their learning and observations, they know of no known disease to which the symptoms in Cook’s case can be referred. When such men as these agree upon any point, it is impossible to exaggerate its importance. If it be the fact that there is no known disease which can account for such symptoms as those in Cook’s case, and that they are referable to poison alone, can you have any doubt that that poison was strychnia? The symptoms, at all events, from the time the paroxysms set in, are precisely the same. ”

“ Can you form any judgment as to the cause of death in Cook’s case?—I cannot. No conclusion or inference can be drawn from the degree or kind of the contractions of the body after death.
Lord Campbell: Can you not say, from the symptoms you heard, whether death was produced by tetanus, without saying what was the cause of tetanus?
Witness: Hypothetically I should infer that he died of the form of tetanus which convulses the muscles. Great varieties of rigidity arise after death from natural causes. The half-bent hands and fingers are not uncommon after natural death. ”

“ But do no such things happen to people of sound constitutions and regular habits? Do no such people awaken in agony and delirium because there is a noise under their windows? No, these are the afflictions of the dissipated and the anxious, whose bodies are shattered, and whose minds are distracted. Next day, Monday, he was pretty well, but not so well as to mount his horse, or to take a walk in the fields. He could converse with his trainer and jockey, but he took no substantial food, and drank not a drop of brandy-and-water. You will bear in mind that Palmer was not with him that day. ”

“ We know that in cases of tetanus death may result from more than one cause. All the muscles of the body are subject to the exciting action of the poison. But no one can tell in what order these muscles may be affected, or where the poisonous influence will put forth. When it arrests the play of the lungs and the breathing of the atmospheric air, the result will be that the heart is full; but if some spasm siezes on the heart, the heart will be empty. You have never any perfect certainty as to the mode in which the symptoms will exhibit themselves. ”

“ I have the greatest respect for science. No man can have more. But I cannot repress my indignation and abhorrence when I see it perverted and prostituted for the purposes of a particular case in a court of justice. Dr. Nunneley talked to you about certain excitements being the occasion of idiopathic tetanus. You remember the sorts of excitement of which he spoke. They are unworthy of your notice. They were topics discreditable to be put forward by a witness as worthy of your consideration. ”

“ The evidence of Mr. Jones, fairly interpreted, cannot be construed otherwise than as intimating an impression that they were convulsions which partook of the tetanic character. That might be, and yet the malady might not be tetanus. It is bad reasoning—most defective logic—to argue without positive proof of the fact that the disease was tetanus, and no other tetanus in the world than that produced by poison. Following in the trail dragged for them by the toxicologists, the Crown have thought proper to impute the death of this man to the poison of strychnine. It is for them to prove the fact. ”

“ I must therefore tell my unhappy client that everything which the constituted authorities of the land—everything which the Legislature and the Law Officers of the Crown could do to secure a fair and impartial trial has been done, and if that unhappily an injustice should on either side be committed, the whole responsibility will rest upon my Lords and upon the jury. A most able man was selected by the prisoner as his counsel not many weeks ago, but, unfortunately, was prevented by illness from discharging that office. ”

“ He might have despatched him by means that would have defied detection, for Cook was taking morphia medicinally, and a grain or two more would have silently thrown him into an eternal sleep. But, instead of doing so, he sends to Lutterworth for Jones. You have been told that this was done to cover appearances. Done to cover appearances! No—no—no! You cannot believe it. It is not in human nature. It cannot be true. You cannot find him guilty—you dare not find him guilty on the supposition of its truth. The country will not stand by you if you believe it to be true. ”