Cook, John Parsons, -1855; Palmer, William, 1824-1856 -- Trials, litigation, etc.; Trials (Murder) -- England -- London
Palmer knew that Cook was angry with him, or, at all events, displeased
with him, for forcing him to take the pills. In the first statement of
Elizabeth Mills before the coroner she said Cook said it was “the pills
that made him ill, and that he had taken the pills about half-past ten.”
When she came here she swore that Cook said “the pills which Palmer gave
him at half-past ten made him ill”; thereby, you see, fixing the fact
that Palmer gave him the pills, and fixing the time at which Palmer gave
them to him, she having had an opportunity of learning that the later
the pills were given the more favourable it would be to the suspicion
that death had been occasioned by this poison. Before the coroner she
did not say that Palmer was in Cook’s bedroom between nine and ten
o’clock on the Monday night, but she did when she was here. You will see
that makes him more about the bedside of Cook, having more opportunity
of dealing with the pills. By these variances from her first statement
she shows the animus which now, for some reason or other, actuates her.
Perhaps it has been the result of the persuasion that Palmer was the
murderer of Mr. Cook, as Dr. Alfred Swayne Taylor swore he is, and of
her horror of so great a crime; that gives it the just, charitable
construction; still, I say, she is not to be relied upon. I have
mentioned the particulars in which her statements vary, but these are
nothing to the important particulars to which I will now call your
attention. I impeach her testimony on the ground that she adopted here a
manner and a gesticulation in describing the symptoms under which Cook
laboured which, if true, would have exhibited itself at the inquest, and
would have at once attracted the attention of Dr. Taylor. The
contortions into which she put her hands, and her neck, and her mouth,
before you, could not by any possibility have escaped the attention of
Dr. Taylor. If anything like it took place there it would have been
observed by him, and questions would have been put to reduce, so to
speak, those gesticulations into verbal expressions, that they might be
recorded in the depositions. But that is not all. I am told, and you
will have an opportunity of hearing it from Mr. Nunneley, Dr. Letheby,
Dr. Robinson, and other eminent medical men, that the description of the
symptoms which she gave to you is inconsistent with any known
disease--that they were grouped by her in a manner so extraordinary as
to be quite inconsistent with strychnia tetanus.
[Sidenote: Serjeant Shee]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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