Today is the centenary of Dr Wm Palmer's public execution for the alleged poisoning of his friend John Parsons Cook; and all opponents of capital punishment should be wearing black. 'I am a murdered man,' Dr Palmer told the prison Governor after his twelve-day trial, one of the best attended, and most scandalous, ever staged at the Old Bailey; which was the truth. The medical evidence against him had broken down completely and the circumstantial evidence conflicted, but the Lord Chief Justice and the Attorney-General were both out to secure a verdict of guilty from the hand-picked jury.
Dr Palmer was, I grant, a scoundrel and spendthrift-though hardly in the class of John James, Q.C., one of the Crown Counsel who helped to hang him and got disbarred five years later for frauds amounting to over sixty thousand pounds-but he was also well known for his generosity to the unfortunate and his remarkable stoicism when things went wrong. James, then a member of Parliament, got safely away to New York, owing one hundred thousand pounds and there not only resumed his legal practice but became a successful actor at the Winter Garden Theatre. Palmer had no such luck. His wax effigy appears in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's Exhibition, among England's most notorious poisoners: doubtless as a warning to all who dare challenge the combined might of the Police, the insurance companies and the Jockey Club.
Mr James Hodge, editor of The Trial of Wm Palmer, in the Notable British Trials series, is pleased to rank Dr Palmer among the 'mass-executioners'. To me, however, he recalls 'Hanging Johnny' in the sea-chanty:
They say I hanged my mother,
Away, boys, away!
They say I hanged my brother,
Then hang, boys, hang!
They say I hanged my Annie,
Away, boys, away!
I hanged her up so canny,
Then hang, boys, hang!
They say I hanged my daddy,
Away, boys, away!
But I never hanged nobody,
Then hang, boys, hang!
Palmer was similarly accused of murdering fourteen people: in particular his wife Annie, the last survivor of a suicidal family. That she poisoned herself to get him out of debt by her life insurance is the only theory that covers all the facts; but his deep grief has been unkindly dismissed as hypocritical. The case did not come up for trial. My conclusion is that 'he never killed nobody.'
My uncle, Dr Clifford Pritchard, M.D., to whom I dedicate this book in grateful acknowledgement of advice, and the loan of books, is my sole personal link with the Palmer case. He took over a medical practice at Highgate from his friend, the late Dr George Fletcher, J.P., Palmer's leading biographer, who as a boy met many of the characters in this story, including old Mrs Palmer, and once even carried John Parsons Cook's cricket-bag.
In reconstructing Palmer's story, I have invented little, and in no case distorted hard fact. But the case is so complex that to argue it out in historical detail would have made a very bulky and quite unreadable book. I worked from the following main sources:
THE TIMES Report of the Trial of Wm Palmer, Illustrated, London, Ward & Lock, 1856. The Queen v. Palmer: Verbatim Report of the Trial, in two parts, London, J. Allen, 1856. The Queen v. Wm Palmer: Official Report of the Minutes of Evidence, London, George Hebert, 1856. Illustrated Life and Career of Wm Palmer of Rugeley (Anon.), London, Ward & Lock, 1856. Last Hours and Execution of William Palmer the Poisoner (Anon.), London, Taylor & Green, 1856. The Cries of the Condemned: Proofs of the Unfair Trial of Wm Palmer: by Thomas Wakley, Esq., Coroner, London, C. Elliot, 1856. A Letter to the Lord Chief Justice Campbell: by the Rev. Thomas Palmer [mainly written, it seems, by Edward Kenealey, Palmer's junior Counsel], London, T. Taylor, 1856. In Favorem Vitae: A Letter to Mr Serjeant Shee on the Trial of Wm Palmer by Henry Conington, London, John Russell Smith, 1856. W. Palmer Exhumed: A Few Words on the Trial by L. B. (M.A. Cantab.), London, Palmer & Son, 1856. The Principles and Practice of Medical Jurisprudence by Professor Alfred Swaine Taylor, London, John Churchill, 1865 edition. Sixty Years on the Turf by George Hodgman, London, Grant Richards, 1901. The Life and Career of Dr Wm Palmer of Rugeley by Dr George Fletcher, London, Fisher Unwin, 1925. The Trial of Wm Palmer: edited by E. R. Watson (Notable British Trials Series), London, Wm Hodge, 1952.
Unfortunately, the thirty-four 'lascivious' letters written by Dr Palmer to Jane Bergen have disappeared since 1933, when Dr Fletcher's collection of Palmeriana was dispersed at his death.
As usual, I have to thank Kenneth Gay for his constant help with this book at every stage.
ROBERT GRAVES
Deyá, Mallorca, Spain,
June 14th, 1956.
