We thanked Mr Allen, but informed him that another day would suit us better. 'Oh, that's all right, bless you, Sir,' he said, 'I don't want for custom. The number of fashionably dressed folks who journey over here from the surrounding districts for a sight of Dr Palmer's house, barred and empty as it is, still astounds me. It's early yet for the rush, which don't commence much before noon. I do very well indeed from them, and take their portraits standing gainst the stable door, with one hand on the pear-tree to steady 'em. Yes, Sir, 'tis a superb place for my trade.
Dr Palmer's creditors had all gathered together like a flock of vultures, and on January 21st, 1856, his broodmares, horses in training and yearlings, came up for auction. We were present to witness that interesting occasion.
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For a Fortnight Photographic Portraits ★
C. Allen
Respectfully informs the Ladies, Gentry& Inhabitants of Rugeley and elsewhere that he can produce A Very Superior Photographic Portraitin gilt and other frames FROM ONE SHILLING TO ONE GUINEA and invites their patronage at the rear of PREMISES LATELY OCCUPIED BY W. PALMER
★
Specimens may be seen at Mr James's, Bookseller ★
Commencing at 10 o'clock Mornings until 6 in the Evening. Rugeley, June 2nd, 1856 ★
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At Hyde Park Corner, close to where carriages and horsemen enter the Park, and where the mob stands roaring and screaming to see Her Majesty the Queen drive by in her landau—not far, in fact, from Decimus Burton's Arch topped by that formidable equestrian statue of the late Field-Marshal the Duke of Wellington—you will find Tattersall's Ring, the sanctum sanctorumof all Turfites. It is a haunt as familiar to the young Yorkshire tyke as to the finest swell in London: a name as suggestive of good faith, honour, prompt payments, splendid horseflesh and noble company as it is of swindling, robbery, non ests, defaulting, levanting, screws and blackguards.
There's a sporting air hangs about 'The Corner', from the red-jacketed touts who hang around its entrance to the shrewd cast of the auctioneer's countenance. We went down the yard, already filling at the news that Dr Palmer's nags would come under the hammer, and hundreds who had no intention whatever of bidding, were assembled there through curiosity. Here they stood: gentle and simple, young and elderly, peers of the Realm, gentry, tradesmen and legs. That lanky old man with the fine aristocratic face, and neck swathed in the thick white choker, is a clergyman, and as thorough a sportsman as ever stepped; nor are his sermons any the worse for that. The dirty little man in the brown coat is a viscount, exceedingly rich but so mean that he is said to go through the refuse bins outside his former club, from which he has been ejected, searching avidly for remnants of lobster and crayfish, which he grudges to buy for himself. Yonder goes the 'Leviathan' of the Ring, Bill Davies, tall and thin, dressed entirely in black, with a blue speckled handkerchief about his throat. He started life as a carpenter, and his word is now good for £50,000; beside him walks young Frank Swindell, another commission-agent, wearing a bunch of early violets in his buttonhole. Both of them have made the same discovery, that, in the long run, straight dealing pays even in the betting ring. Since they scorn 'daylight robbery', which is to encourage betters to lay money on dead 'uns—horses that will never run—engineers of dirty work no longer trouble to approach them.
Tattersall's stables are the acme of neatness and cleanliness. Here to the right is the Subscription Room, into which we might not go; instead we visited a public house mainly frequented by little grooms and jockeys, and listened to their gossip. 'The Rugeley Poisonings' were all the talk, and feeling ran high, the sporting fraternity being about equally divided between pro's and con's. Some swore that Billy Palmer was a bold sportsman, a good loser, and a generous friend; others that he was Ananias, Cain and Judas Iscariot rolled into one.
'He's far lower than an animal, and worth a deal less,' cries a ferret-faced stableboy to Young Ashmole the jockey, 'and I'll undertake to prove it—at even money in half-sovereigns!'
'Done,' Young Ashmole answers, 'let the landlord hold the stakes and be umpire.'
'Well,' says Ferret Face, 'Palmer was denied entrance to Tattersall's, now wasn't he? And a horse is an animal, isn't it? Well, there's seventeen of his horses admitted today where he wasn't, and a couple of 'em will sell for well over five hundred guineas, and none for lower than fifty. Well, what's Palmer worth now? There's bills for fifteen thousand pounds out against him, and ten thousand of 'em won't be met. And as for his life, I wouldn't back his chances to live the year out, not at a hundred to one.'
Young Ashmole, defeated by this crude logic, which satisfied the landlord and raised loud cheers at the bar, paid up sulkily; but, having done so, he soused Ferret Face with a mug of beer full in his grinning phiz.
Bidding at the auction was spirited, and very high prices were realized. Prince Albert's name has already appeared in our account of the other auction, if only as a metaphor; here we heard it used in a direct and practical manner. For Major Grove, Her Majesty's Commissioner from the Royal Paddocks, bought Trickstress, an eight-year-old mare, for 230 guineas on Prince Albert's behalf. Strange to relate, though the Major appeared anxious to secure Nettle, a decidedly superior animal, in the end he let her go to Mr F. L. Popham for 430 guineas. (Nettle, it will be recalled, was favourite for the Oaks last year, and her tumble over the chains sealed Dr Palmer's financial doom.) The Chicken went for 800 guineas to Mr Harlock, who has since changed her name to 'Vengeance'. In the aggregate, the sale amounted to £3,906, which included the high price of 590 guineas for a three-year-old filly, by Melbourne out of Seaweed, which fell to Mr Sargent.
While Dr Palmer was attempting suicide by starvation, the bodies of his wife and brother were exhumed, and Coroner's inquests held on them. In the first case, Annie Palmer's, the gaseous exudations of the corpse had, since the fifteen months of burial, escaped through the fibre of the oaken coffin and left the corpse comparatively dry. Dr Monckton made the post-mortemexamination, and again the organs were sent to Professor Taylor, who reported antimony in the stomach, liver and kidneys and judged that death was due to this antimony administered in the form of tartar emetic, and to no other cause. The jury found Dr Palmer guilty of wilful murder.
Exceptionally distressing was the post-mortemdone on Walter Palmer s body. He had been buried in a lead coffin and, the wooden shell being removed, a hole was bored through the lid. At once a most noxious effluvia permeated the entire Talbot Inn. Fifteen of the persons present, including seven of the jury, were seized with nausea, and some of them remained seriously indisposed for the next two or three days. The lid being opened, the corpse wore a terrible aspect, being a mass of corruption, dropsy and gangrene. Professor Taylor was inclin ed to think that death was caused by prussic acid, though he could find no trace of the poison in the organs sent him for analysis; and though Dr Day, who had signed the death certificate, testified that he had not smelt the telltale fumes of prussic acid on the dying man's breath, but only those of brandy! Dr Day stood firmly by his original opinion that death was due to apoplexy, consequent on excessive drinking. Since Drs Monckton, Harland, Campbell, Hughes and Waddell supported Dr Day, Professor Taylor felt it wise not to press his view.