By contrast, Mr Justice Cresswell Cresswell, who had been educated, like Mr Baron Alderson, at the Charterhouse and Cambridge, comported himself with dignity and strict impartiality. It was clear that, but for his intervention at many important points, the Lord Chief Justice would have admitted illegal evidence against Dr Palmer, or excluded evidence operating in his favour. When, on one occasion, Mr Justice Cresswell respectfully addressed Serjeant Shee as 'Brother Slice', Mr Baron Alderson's impatient ejaculation: 'O, bother Shee!' was heard by everyone present.
The Lord Chief Justice first showed his prejudice by allowing the Attorney-General to acquaint the jury with the story of Bate's life insurance, while omitting circumstances which Samuel Cheshire, or Jeremiah Smith, or Dr Palmer himself—who, by a quirk of British legal procedure, must keep silent throughout the trial, whatever falsehoods might be told—could have supplied in extenuation. Dr Palmer, let it be observed, had never been granted the privilege of stating his case from any witness-box, or before any public authorities whatsoever. Serjeant Shee strongly objected to this evidence about the insurance as irrelevant, and it was excluded, but too late for the true facts to appear. Thus the black impression remained fixed in the minds of the jurymen: 'Dr Palmer attempted to take George Bate's life; as he had already taken those of his own wife and, perhaps, his brother.'
Again, it is a first principle of our Law that nothing which has been said while a prisoner was absent may be quoted in evidence against him. Yet the Lord Chief Justice allowed the Prosecution to prove a talk between Mr Cook and Fisher, held in Dr Palmer's absence when the latter had no means of contradicting Cook's drunken suspicions of the brandy. It seems that Mr Justice Cress-well noted the impropriety, because he later interposed at this point in the Lord Chief Justice's summing-up and prevented him from reading to the jury evidence which should never have been given. Yet the passage had produced a decisive influence on their minds, and blinded them to the fact that Cook later went to Rugeley with Dr Palmer, dined at his house, constantly sent for him, made no mention of any 'dosing' to Dr Jones, his closest friend and his physician, and kept an affectionate faith in Dr Palmer until death carried him off.
Serjeant Shee objected time after time to Mr James's illegal questions, but the Lord Chief Justice overruled him so constantly that at last he told Mr John Smith, Dr Palmer's solicitor: 'I dare not object further.'
John Smith replied: 'This, Sir, is an organized conspiracy to hang our client; and so I suspected from our correspondence with the Crown solicitors. You will remember how we failed to extract a report from them as to Professor Taylor's analytic methods. They refused my demand, and were supported by Sir George Grey at the Home Office, who stated that it was an unprecedented one, and that these matters would doubtless appear in cross-examination. I answered that the case was equally unprecedented, this being the first in which strychnia had been cited as a means of murder; and respectfully denied that Professor Taylor's analyses could form a proper subject 'of cross-examination, unless they were duly recorded in writing and the depositions read to the Judges and the jury. Nevertheless, Sir George brushed me off. Yes, Sir, Mr James's questions are inadmissible, as every member of the Bar knows well; but what remedy have we?'
Mrs Brooks's testimony that she had seen Dr Palmer holding up a tumbler of water against the gaslight at The Raven Hotel was not unfavourable to the Doctor; for she had also deposed that many odicr people in Shrewsbury, whom Dr Palmer could not possibly have dosed, suffered from the same sickness as Cook. Yet in his summing-up the Lord Chief Justice failed to remind the jury of this important fact.
When Herring, the commission-agent, known on the Turf as 'Mr Howard', was examined, and the Prosecution wished him to reveal the contents of Cook's betting-book, Serjeant Slice objected: 'We cannot have dus given in evidence, my Lord, since the book is lost.'
The Lord Chief Justice, gazing sternly at Serjeant Shee, said: 'According to the last account we heard, it was in the prisoner's possession.'
Serjeant Shce replied with a reproachful cough: 'My Lord, I don't think there is any proof of his ever having touched it.'
Here the Attorney-General interrupted: 'We will show that it lay in the dead man's room on the Tuesday night before his death, and that the prisoner was afterwards observed looking about
Yet nobody at The Talbot Arms Hotel claimed to have seen the book later than the Monday night, when Elizabeth Mills noticed it hanging from the mirror.
Nor did the Lord Chief Justice point out the patent discrepancy between a statement promised from Elizabeth Mills by the Attorney-General; namely, that she handed Cook's cup of coffee, ordered on the Monday morning, to Dr Palmer (who therefore had an opportunity of doctoring it); and the statement which she actually made, namely that she gave it directly to Cook. He also withheld comment on the even graver discrepancy pointed out by Serjeant Slice between her statements at the inquest and at the trial. Whereas she had told the Coroner that the broth tasted very good, and mentioned no harmful after-effect, her new story was that she had been seized by violent vomiting which incapacitated her for five hours. Moreover, her original deposition contained no reference to the twitchings and jerkings which she now described with much pantomimic by-play.
It was noted, too, that the Lord Chief Justice eulogized all the medical witnesses called for the Crown and allotted seats in Court; while seeming to regard all witnesses for the Defence as ignoble or inferior beings since, by his own orders, they were condemned to stand. Some of these he offered undeserved disrespect, and applauded only one, Dr Wrightson of Birmingham, whose evidence lent some slight support to Professor Taylor's theories. His recommendation of Sir Benjamin Brodie went: 'The jury will take into consideration the solemn opinion of this distinguished medical man: that he never knew a case in which the symptoms he has heard described arose from any disease. He has witnessed the various diseases that afflict the human frame in all their multiplicity, and he knows of no natural disease such as will answer the symptoms which he has heard described in the case of Cook; and, if death did not arise from natural disease, then the inference is that it arose from other causes.'
The alleged cause was, of course, strychnine poisoning. Now, Sir Benjamin Brodie based his solemn opinion on two irreconcilable statements: the first made by Elizabeth Mills—who was proved to have greatly enlarged and embroidered on the evidence she gave at the inquest—and the other by Dr Jones of Lutterworth, whose evidence had remained unchanged. If what Elizabeth Mills swore was all true, and if Sir Benjamin was omniscient, then the Lord Chief Justice might have been justified in saying that Cook's symptoms accorded with no known disease, and that strychnine might therefore be suspected—except that neither did some of the symptoms reported coincide with those expected from strychnine poisoning. On the other hand, if Elizabeth Mills lied, then the description of Cook's deadi as given by this Dr Jones, a trained medical practitioner, became perfectly consistent with natural disease. This is to say: if Mr Stevens and Mr Gardiner had influenced Miss Mills by culling a number of symptoms from the recent case of Mrs Dove, who had died from strychnine, and suggesting that she had noticed them in Cook; and if she perjured herself in swearing to these; and if her evidence must be given equal value with Dr Jones's—why, then Sir Benjamin Brodie could hardly make any other reply than he did when asked the question. How could he assign the cause of Cook's death to any known disease, when most of the symptoms were fictitious and irreconcilable with the genuine ones?