For a day or two, he was generally assumed to be guilty beyond dispute, and the crowds at Newgate would have cheerfully torn him to pieces, had the Police permitted them. Yet among medical men in Edinburgh, London, and Dublin, the prevalent view now seems to be: 'Hang Palmer for the insurance offices, or for the Jockey Club, or for the greater glory of the Attorney-General. Hang him as a rogue, if you will, but it must be on circumstantial evidence alone, not on the medical evidence; because that has broken down, horse, foot, and guns!'
Yesterday, the President of the College of Surgeons, lecturing to a packed audience on the subjects of tetanus and strychnine, referred pointedly to Dr Palmers triaclass="underline" 'I have heard of grand jurors and petty jurors, special jurors, and common jurors, but these were twelve most uncommon jurors—very respectable confectioners and grocers into the bargain, I have no doubt—who boldly cut the Gordian knot, and settled the most difficult problem in the world, which is the anatomy of the brain!' He added that ninety-nine parts in a hundred of the surgical evidence at the trial were irrelevant to the case, since Cook had doubtless died of no surgical disease, but of a medical one—namely, a convulsion.
Guy's Hospital is in a ferment. One of Professor Taylor's colleagues has represented the speech of the Attorney-General as one of the greatest examples of medical extravagance and folly ever proffered to the public. Another pre-eminent surgeon calls it 'a piece of cold-blooded cruelty, disgraceful to the nineteenth century'. Professor Taylor himself receives cold looks from his own associates and pupils. At King's College Hospital, where Professor Partridge lectures, the pupils are most indignant at the Attorney-General's attack on Mr Devonshire, who performed the first post-mortem, and is regarded as one of the most promising young surgeons in that institution.
A considerable change of opinion has therefore been observed among the educated public. We reprint the following from The Daily Chronicle:
A public meeting, organized neither by Dr Palmer's family, nor by the Defence, but spontaneously by a number of disinterested citizens, took place today in St Martin's Hall, Longacre, to consider the propriety of staying Wm Palmer's execution on the ground of doubtful and conflicting testimony given at the trial. Most persons present were working men, with a considerable representation of the middle classes, and here and there a few women.
When the doors opened, the hall soon filled, and hundreds who could not find standing room remained outside during the proceedings. A petition praying that the hanging might be postponed, to allow time for a medical inquiry into the facts at issue, lay in a lobby at the entrance throughout the evening, and a stream of people appended their names to it. The feeling manifested by the greater part of the audience was in favour of a respite, though a few score vociferously asserted an opposite view at all stages of the proceedings. So high, indeed, did feeling run at one time that a well-dressed, portly man named Bridd jumped upon the platform and, defying the remonstrances of the chairman, Mr P. Edwards, began addressing the meeting while another speaker held the chair. Bridd was brought to reason amid a scene of indescribable confusion only by the appearance of police constables.
Mr P. Edwards announced that he and his fellows on the platform had not the least personal sympathy with William Palmer, knew nothing of him, and had never seen or conversed either with him or with any member of his family. Nor did they feel a morbid sympathy with criminals, and if the verdict had satisfied public opinion as correctly given, he for one should never have considered arresting the progress of the law, which was always a thing to be respected. (Cheers.) But, since public opinion found much cause to doubt Palmer's guilt, and since a number of first-class medical men, such as Professor Herapath of Bristol, Dr Letheby, and others, stated that, given more time, they could throw additional light on this subject, the meeting had been convened to ask for more time. (Cheers.)
He, and those who acted with him on this occasion, demanded neither a reprieve, nor the Royal clemency; they demanded simple justice. If his listeners considered the evidence submitted at the trial to have been doubtful, he hoped that they would endeavour, with him, to procure a re-investigation of the case, so that there might afterwards be no cause for resentment at a judicial scandal. He had not met with a single man who ventured to assert that Palmer's guilt was proved. (Cheers and uproar.) Despite the show of a fair trial, most people thought that Palmer had too many counsel against him, and that Lord Campbell himself might be included in their number. (Renewed uproar.) He thought Lord Campbell to stand high above all interested and petty motives, yet all judges are fallible human beings, and he might well have erred in his direction of the trial.
Though Mr Edwards admitted that he himself believed in Palmer's guilt, belief (he insisted) was one thing and certainty another. Surely a man was not to be hanged on mere belief ?
Mr Baxter Langley now moved the resolution: 'That, there being grave doubts as to whether or not John Parsons Cook died from strychnine, and it being essential to the interests of society, the progress of science, and the safety of individual life, that such doubts should be removed, this Meeting is of opinion that the execution of William Palmer should be delayed till an opportunity has been afforded of proving whether or not strychnine can be found in all cases where it Has caused death.'
Mr Langley, too, denied that he had any sympathy with the convict Palmer, or with his pursuits. He stood there to vindicate the majesty of the law, which was dear to all Englishmen as a protective, and not as a destructive, principle; and he wished the public mind to rest satisfied, before the sentence was executed, that no link was wanting in the chain of evidence against the prisoner. He did not affirm Palmer's innocence, but he asked the Meeting for their own sakes and for the sake of the law, to give Palmer the benefit of the doubt which still hung over his guilt.
He went on to say that Lord Campbell, when summing up, had assumed the prisoner was a murderer, and then laid before the jury facts to prove his own hypothesis. ('No, no!' and counter-cheers.) The summing up of Lord Campbell was unfair, because he did not put the question to the jury whether strychnine had, or had not, been administered to the deceased—but whether his death was consistent with poisoning by strychnine—thus assuming that death had occurred from strychnine, which was not found in Cook's body. He himself believed that if Palmer were executed, he would be executed to satisfy an unproved scientific hypothesis. ('No, no!' and uproar.)
Mr R. Hart, who seconded the resolution, contended that if capital punishment must take place, it should take place only in cases admitting no doubt of guilt. If a man has been haled to the scaffold and hanged, and if proof of innocence be afterwards established, what compensation for the wrong does this bring his relatives, and what alleviation for the remorse of those who hanged him? (Cheers.) They were not there to consider whether Palmer was a gambler, a black-leg, or a forger. The question was: had the crime or poisoning been legally proved against him? ('No, no!' and uproar.) He could hardly do Lord Campbell the injustice of supposing that he was a willing accessory to legal murder. Yet the evidence was wholly circumstantial, not only as to Palmer's guilt, but as to the fact of any crime having been committed; for though the doctors had contradicted one another, and advanced opposite theories throughout the trial, most of them held that Cook died a natural death. The whole operation of the old English law observed on trials for murder had, in this case, met with a reversaclass="underline" first, when, before proceeding to prove a murder, they proceeded to prove a murderer; and second, when, instead of inferring the criminal from the crime, they inferred the crime from the criminal.