On January 3 1st, The Prince of Wales, unaware that Walter was related to Annie Palmer, by whose insurance they had gone down so heavily, issued a policy of fourteen thousand pounds on the recommendation of Drs Hughes and Harland, both of Stafford. Dr Harland, an elderly physician newly arrived in the town, had passed Walter as a good life without making any close inquiries into his medical history. Dr Hughes also passed him, but added the following qualification: 'The applicant is now temperate and healthy; previous habits, however, reduce his chance of longevity to less than the average. He owns to an attack of delirium tremens five years ago.'
One of the medical men consulted by The Universal was Dr Monckton of Rugeley. After first passing Walter, he soon changed his opinion as the result of a talk with Dr Campbell of Stoke-on-Trent, Walter's former physician. He appended to his report:
MOST CONFIDENTIAL!
Walter Palmer's life has been rejected by two Assurance Offices. He drinks hard and has had delirium tremens. His brother, Dr William Palmer, insured his own wife not long ago for ^13,000. She died after a single premium had been paid.
Beneath this postscript Dr Monckton wrote in capital letters: BE CAUTIOUS!
Dr Waddell of Stafford, now Walter's private physician, was also consulted by The Universal, and likewise refused to recommend him. He countersigned Dr Monckton's confidential report with: 'I believe that the above facts are true.'
Though not shown this paper, Walter knew at least that he had been turned down as a 'bad risk', and meeting Dr Waddell one day on Castle Knoll, reproached him with a lack of consideration. 'My habits are entirely altered, Doctor,' Walter said. 'I drink no more than three glasses of bitter beer in a day, and eat like a thresher. Why didn't you pass me?'
Dr Waddell answered drily: 'Continue so for six months, and I'll begin to believe in your reform; continue for five years, and I'll do so with a good heart. But your last attack of delirium tremens caused me great trouble and anxiety, and I can't guarantee that there won't be others—not without stronger evidence than your own hopes of a cure.'
The Gresham, which appointed Drs Harland and Waddell to examine Walter, accepted the policy, while making it a condition that 'no insurance will be paid if this person dies before five years have elapsed'. On receipt of this reply, I am informed, Dr Palmer wrote to his agent, a Mr Webb: 'That would not suit my book at all. We had better drop the matter.'
In order to pay The Prince of Wales their initial premium of seven hundred pounds odd, Dr Palmer borrowed one thousand five hundred pounds from Pratt, at the usual sixty per cent rate, against one more forged acceptance from his mother; and, having done so, set about restoring Walter's former intemperance, and even enhancing it. He hired the same Tom Walkenden, who had hitherto prevented him from drinking, to be Walter's 'bottle holder'. Walkenden is a powerful man, with a broad, flat face and coarse features; he has been a potman, and once served a prison sentence in London for larceny. The assignment of the insurance policy to Dr Palmer was then duly drawn out, and witnessed by Jeremiah Smith, who took five guineas as his fee. Yet Walter did not get the promised four hundred pounds, but only sixty in cash, and unlimited credit with Mr John Burgess, the innkeeper and spirit merchant of Dudley Port.
Walter kept a cask of gin in the house and never drank less than a quart a day, besides the three-pint bottle which Walkenden placed every night at his bedside, and which he had always emptied by the early morning. He would toss off half a tumbler at a gulp. In the early morning, Walkenden had orders to bring him a cup of hot coffee and some buttered toast. This he would swallow but throw up again; afterwards he steadied himself with three or four glasses of gin and water, before starting the day's serious drinking. He constantly complained of pains all over his body, particularly below one shoulder-blade. He also coughed and spat a great deal.
Dr Waddell, meeting him one day at the bowling green, asked: 'Well, Walter, and how do you do?'
'Why, lad, I'm very bad indeed,' Walter replied. 'I fear I shall never recover. Pity me for a most wretched man.'
'Nonsense, nonsense!' cried Dr Waddell. 'I'll guarantee your cure, if you'll only obey my instructions.'
'Well, I think not,' said Walter, 'but my brother William is bringing me some pills tomorrow.'
'If you won't come back to me—if you put yourself under anyone else, even your own brother—I give you up!' Dr Waddell declared. 'But tell me, why have you relapsed, Walter, after being so much improved not many weeks ago?'
Walter replied simply: 'The fact is, lad, that I owe my brother William four hundred pounds, and it weighs on my conscience; he's pretty short of money these days. I feel like a pauper defrauding the hospital of its skeleton.'
Dr Waddell's being a near neighbour of Walter's may have been the reason why William Palmer now removed the latter to Castle Terrace, beyond the railway station. To make everything look above board, he had invited Dr Waddell and Dr Day, The Prince of Wales's regular insurance doctor, who also lived in Earl Street, to keep an eye on his brother; but encouraged neither of them to see too much of him. In the middle of July he visited Walter, and pretended to be greatly distressed by his drinking. 'You must make an endeavour, Watty,' he said, 'to sober up. Come, what do you say to visiting Agnes for a week and showing yourself in your true colours ? Tom Walkenden, here, will help you to train for the meeting, and I'll have a word with Dr Waddell first.'
Inspector Field and I have since questioned Walkenden about this episode. This is what he told us: 'Poor Watty was in a pretty bad state last July. He often begged me, if I ever saw that another attack of the horrors was on the way, not to take his gin from him, as I'd done in December before he went in front of the insurance doctors. "That sober stretch did me plenty of harm," said he. "If only I'd only been allowed my gin then, when I wanted it, I shouldn't have been half so bad when I got it back again." Well, while he was under Dr Waddell's care, sobering up for the visit to his wife, I had orders to allow him only two or three small glasses a day, as when he'd had the horrors. But when I witnessed the poor fellow's despair, and he threatened to do himself an injury, well, I sometimes gave him a glass or two more than Dr Waddell permitted, if there was real necessity. What could I do? The wretched cove used to beg and cry for liquor as if that were his life. He used to do all he could to get gin, and be very cunning about it, too. One morning, after I'd been sitting up with him all night, I reckoned he was so ill he couldn't leave his bed. Downstairs I went, to the kitchen for my coffee and my plate of bacon and eggs; and was well engaged with the victuals when I heard a noise overhead. "Why," I says to myself, "that sounds as if he were out of bed, but it's hardly possible." Upstairs I went again, and found him on his hands and knees, searching beneath the dressing table, which was where he used to hide his gin from me.
' "Hulloa, Sir," says I, "what are you doing there?" ' "I can't find it," he whimpers.
' "No," I answers. "Nor never will!" I lifted him up, though he was no light weight, and put him back to bed, where I charitably gave him a tot. He used to hide his gin bottle in all sorts of places—under his mattress, in his boots, anywhere. Well, after a hard week of it, we restored him to a condition where he'd eat again; and, once he got an-eating, the rest wasn't hard. Dr Palmer, he arranged for Watty's wife to meet him at Liverpool railway station; and we sat Watty in a train. The guard had orders that he mustn't alight at any station to buy drink.'
Walter Palmer spent five days at Liverpool and, it seems, stayed perfectly sober all the time, to please his wife, who did not let him out of her sight. On August 9th, he returned, and spent the next day at Rugeley with his mother, his sister Sarah, and Dr Palmer. That night he wrote his wife a letter which has since been printed in a newspaper. I have the cutting here in my pocketbook.