The Sun.
London, England, 1856-05-21 00:00:00

xxisi; Rua:llT-, •

POISO:i.VINGS.

TRIAL OF WIL LIAM PALMER.

CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURT (THIS DAY).

SEVENTH PAY.

The interest excited by this important trial has in-
Creased in an extraordinary degree. This morning the
crowd, both inside and outside the Court, was greater
than it has ever been during the whOle of the previous
proceedings.
Palmer this morning looked exceeding dull.
The jnry having entered the Court,
Mr. Wetherby was called—He said on the 21et of
November I received a letter from the prisoner, enclosing
a cheque for 3001. I was not asked to produce the letter
during my first examination.- I produce it now.—[The
letter directed that the cheque should be cashed, and
that a portion of the money should be sent to Prattl—
On the 23d Nov. -I received another letter from the pri-
soner, and on the same day I wrote an answer telling
him I had no mosey of Conk's te pay the cheque with.
Mr. Hatton, of the Staffordshire police, said he had
not discovered aiming the nrieoner's papers any of the
correspondence. On the 24th a notice, signed by the
priSoner, was left at our office. It was a request that
all moneys etbat might be or had been received for
ls:Parsons. Cook would be sent to him. On
the: 23d I had sent a letter to Cook at
Itugeleyo—it was returned to me through the dead
letter office. I knew the handwriting of Cook. The
cheque for 350/. was signed, as far as I recollect, by
him. I cannot recollect whether it was signed I. or J.
Parsons Cook. - I cannot say whether the body of the
cheque was written. by Cook.
By Sergeant - Shee—When that cheque arrived we
had' not funds enough of Cook to meet it.
Mr. Frail did not send any money from Shrews-
bury. It was a week after Mr. Cook had won the
race, and he might have thought the money was trans-
mitted to u'. I informed Mr. Palmer by letter that the
Money had not been received.
Mr. J. Butler said was at Shrewsbury races, and
had an account to settle there with Palmer. I had to
receive from him about 7001. ; and it was in respect to
the Liverpool races, on which I bail paid bets for him.
I bad no money to receive from him for the Shrewsbury
races. I endeavOured to get my money at Shrewsbury.
I got cy. The reason Palmer gave for not paying
any more was, that he had not received any more.
He did not tell me how much he had to receive. H 14-
afterwards gave me a cheque on the Rugeley Bank for
2501. It has never been paid. • I know Mr. Cook's Pole-
star ; after she Won the Shrewsbury races she was worth
700/.
Mr. Stevens Was here recalled, and stated that Pole-
star. was sold `en. the 10tn of March last by public auc-
';' tien- She fetched 750/. 4uineas.
This closed the case for the prosecution.
Mr. Sergeant 'Sbee then rose amidst intense interest
to address the jury for the prisoner, but he spoke so
inaudibly that it was with difficulty he could be heard
by the reporters, who, by the bad arrangements of the
court, are placed at a considerable distance behind the
counsel. He said—ln rising to perform the task that
devolves on me to defend a fellow-creature for his life,
I cannot but be everwheliaied with a sense of the onus
which rests on-me, and in discharging that, duty lam
afraid it must necessarily oc -upy 4 considerable time.
If, under ordinary circumstances, it is a difficult task both
for an advocate and a jury to perform, how much more
so must it be when after six long days my unhappy client
has been standing on the brink of the scaffold, and any
error of-judgment on my part mustannsign him to a mur-
derer'sdoom. It cannot be denied but the prejudice of the
pubic has imperilled the calm administration of justice;
and it is useless for me to conceal what you know per-
fectly well, than with all your endeavours to keep your
minds free, from prejudice von cannot wholly efface it
from your recollection. Yon know that for six long
Months, that under the sanction or upon tile authority
of science, an almost unanimous opinion had prevailed
on the ease throughout the country, and there had hem n
an almoetuniversal cry fir blood to avenge the death of
John Parsons Cook, and that it was made under the
imPrCesion 'and cc:Menet:On of the guilt of the prisoner.
It is not to be doubted but that you have entered on
Your duties with the endeavour to efface from your
Memory all.that you have read and heard of this case,
it°4 uninfluenced by that cry which has been raised with
reference to the guilt or innocence of the prisoner, arid
that you know that whatever opinion you may have
formed on it, it fir now, your duty to attend only to
the evidence of both sides of the case, and upon it form
,Your opinion. The cireunastanaesninder which we meet
in this place are of a character to excite mingled feel-
ilife of encouragement and alarm, and those whose duty
't is to watch over the safety of the Queen's subject felt
themselves so much apprehensive lest in this case the
course of justice might be• disturbed by the popular pre-
judice that has been excited against the prisoner, and
that an unjust and adverse verdict might thereby he ,
Passed against him, that they resolved on the passing of
" Act of Parliament to prevent the possibility
of the ordinary form of law being affected by •
that popular prejudice and which received the
unanimous consent of the Legislature a short time since.
The Crown, under the advice of the responsible Minister,
. resolved also that the conduct of this prosecution should
not be left in private hands', but that its own law officer,
the learned Attorney-General, should take upon himself
the responsibility of conducting it in a proper manner,
and cbtisistent with his duty to the public ; and that
learned gentleman, when the duty was intrueted to him,
did what I must say, in my opinion, will ever redound
to his honour—he resolved that, in a case in which so
Irauch4injudice had existed, all the evidence which it
'was the intention of the pnsecuter to call against the -'
Prison" should, as s :on as he bad seen it, be com-
municated to the prisoner. Everything I =et say
(turning to the prisoner) and I must tell my
unhappy client. that the constituted authorities
of the land, everything which the Legislature and the
law officers of the Crown could do to secure hr him a '
fair and impartial trial in this plaue, has been done by ,
them, and the responsibility of any injustice being done
to•him must rest alone on the law and the jury. One of
the greatest calamities that could have befallen any
man, cireum tanced as my unhappy client is, has befallen
ulei In being deprived o£ the services of the able advocate
by illness, who weeks since was engaged to defend him,
and I have endeavoured by my humble ability to supply
that loss, and the circumstances to which I have already
referred relative to the conduct of the Government that
. the prisoner should have a fair trial, is to me a cause of
great encouragement. I cannot for a moment
4,°°3' that -I am awed and almost overcome with
be
grea p
t imortance and magnitude of the case,
but at the same time I am not discouraged,
and I have this further came for not being altogether
overcome. by the duty I have to discharge in defending
the prisoner and in discussing the mass of ovidecce that
has been laid before you, and which assumed a different
character to that loose inquiry at Rugeley before the
!_ononer that after reading it I fermed no opinion omit,wlth regard to the guilt mar innocence of the prisoner, and
113 y mind was consequently free to form on the evidence
t°w produced what I trust will be declared by you to
ft) a right indgment on his case. I commence his de-
el'ee, and Instate it in all sincerity, with an entire con-
Ziction of his innocence and I believe there never Were
truer words pronounced by any man than those pro-
nouncede by, him ,_ethen he said "Not guilty" to
t. indictment on which he was now being
erled ; and if I fail in establishing the
prisoner's innocence, I shall be under very grave
misgivings that that failure is to be attributed more
to
oniy
of my
inability
to do justice to his case than to any
weakness
of his case itself.. And as a proof of my sin-
ceritycon.iictien of his innocence, I will state to
• Yon that it is, my intention to meet the case for the pro-
'ecution foot' ley foot, and at every stage grapple with
byte lea difficulty that has been presented to you so ably
- by the learned- Attorney-General, thate youshall see that
I
avoid no point because I fear to approach it ; apd if
Youl find that I deal fairly with the beginning, •I
°Pe I may be sure—pay, I know lam sure—of obtain-
' lug your approval. The propositions which the Crown
Undertook to establish in this case against the prisoner,
and which they have endeavoured to support entirely by
circumstantial evidence, might be shortly stated to be
eethis. They say that the prisoner, in the second week in
November, made-up his mind that it was to his interest
"° get rid of John Parsons Cook, and that he deliberately
Perpetrated his death by the deadly aid of poison—first,
by the slower poison of antimony, and afterwards that he
destroyed him- by the more rapid and deadly poison of
litrYchnia. No juryn'l feel satisfied, would venture to
convict a man of the crime-imputed to the prisoner by
the Crown, unless, iri the first place, it was made clear
that
r the person so committing the act bad some motive
the commission of the offence—some strong reasons
I_,t wishing to get rid of the person ; and; secondly, une
nes it-were made clear that the symptoms of the deceased
before death, and the ""appearance presented by the body
4tter death, were inconsistent with the theory that death
area
tee 23 frOm other and ;lateral causes ; and, thirdly,
it was quite clear that the circumstantial evi-
I Once was such as he indisputable on the supposition
ta.eitledown- Now it is under these three heads that I in-
trodisceni the evidence that you h av e heard; and
itlust te perfectly, clear to you that if I adhere to that
pier and method of treating the vast amount of evi-
qtfei than has been laid before you, I must exhaust the
argument and leave myself no chance without ini-
t&ediate detection of avoiding any difficulties in the case.
in'oeriore, however, I proceed to grapple with the case
the Crown, allow me at once to say
to at will 4a the whole scope of my addreaS
,rnlne--‘tez,, to restore to its proper place
be the discussion the fact, which has by no..means
Q.;° concealed from you by the learned Attorney-
inizleral, in that address of his, by which he at once
80 en upon your juilginnnts by drawing your attentien
ein°lnch to the details of his-case—the fact that strych-
are was not found in the body of the deceased John
d• "us k If tee deceased died of strychnine :he
iee • 0
'AitLia two hours of the adenirderetion to him of a
Nv7ristrong dole of it and it was stated that lie died
afe„n a Onanter .pf ..an hour er twenty minutes
• the effect' the dose was said to become
visible in •4 o
Rix
claysih.°dtoookf Place, and
death a post moitem xaminatien of the
and never leers there circumstances, so
artio urable, unless the science of chemical analysing is
stregolth,er a lanlore- in the detection of poisoning by
„i„ws not t
tested.n'nn in which it nu cht to have been so easily de-
Ispo
es, the fact beiond all question that it
nenlor'
einieurnlatist:ut‘thate
°lndenuil whatevr we may think of Dr. A.
d judgmeet and eat a' ility there can be no
is a skilfulg
and practical' analytical
feet,
nen We have not the least reason to suppose—in
,a.,s.w know to the coLtrar y, that he and Dr. Rees, who
" ted him, did Out de all that the science of chemical