Cook, John Parsons, -1855; Palmer, William, 1824-1856 -- Trials, litigation, etc.; Trials (Murder) -- England -- London
removed; there is some story about his having pushed against the parties
who were performing the examination; I think that is carrying the matter
too far; it may have been an accident, and we will look at it in that
light; at last the stomach, we say without its contents, and a portion
of the intestines are put into a jar, and the jar is fastened with a
parchment covering doubled over it; it is tied and sealed, and then it
is placed upon a table while the post-mortem examination, with reference
to other parts of the body, is made. Dr. Harland has this done; when Dr.
Harland turns round he finds the jar removed; he immediately makes an
outcry, and then at the other end of a long room, and at a door which
was not the proper entrance, but a door which led into a different
apartment, which apartment led into the passage, the prisoner was found
with the jar in his hand, and when Dr. Harland exclaims, he says, “I
thought it would have been more convenient to you when you were going
out.” That might have been his motive, though it was an awkward
circumstance that the jar containing the stomach should be in the hands
of the man against whom there rested a suspicion of having deprived the
deceased of life by unfair means. That is not all; two slits were found
in the parchment cover when it was tied and sealed up; who could have
made them except the prisoner? What did he do it for? There, again, we
are lost in conjecture, but the only conclusion at which we can arrive
is against the honesty of the purpose and the integrity of the
transaction; whether it may have been for the purpose of introducing
something which might be capable of neutralising the poison, I cannot
tell you; all I know is the fact, and it is a fact of very significant
importance in the consideration of the case.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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