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Programming the Photon
 Programming the Photon

Getting Started with the Internet of Things

Christopher Rush

New York Chicago San Francisco

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2016933233
McGraw-Hill Education books are available at special quantity discounts to use as premiums and sales promotions or for
use in corporate training programs. To contact a representative, please visit the Contact Us page at
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Programming the Photon: Getting Started with the Internet of Things
Copyright © 2016 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Except as
permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in
any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the
publisher, with the exception that the program listings may be entered, stored, and executed in a computer system, but
they may not be reproduced for publication.
McGraw-Hill Education, the McGraw-Hill Education logo, TAB, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered
trademarks of McGraw-Hill Education and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries and may not be used
without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. McGraw-Hill Education is
not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.
1234567890 DOC DOC 12109876
ISBN 978-0-07-184706-3
MHID 0-07-184706-5
e-ISBN 978-0-07-184707-0
e-MHID 0-07-184707-3
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Sponsoring Editor
Michael McCabe
Editorial Supervisor
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Acquisitions Coordinator
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Information has been obtained by McGraw-Hill Education from sources believed to be reliable. However, because of the
possibility of human or mechanical error by our sources, McGraw-Hill Education, or others, McGraw-Hill Education
does not guarantee the accuracy, adequacy, or completeness of any information and is not responsible for any errors or
omissions or the results obtained from the use of such information.
About the Author
Christopher Rush has a degree in computer science and has spent the last 10 years
working for an electronics distribution company as a product manager for single-board
computing. He also runs a MakerSpace blog (www.rushmakes.com) providing reviews,
tutorials, and user guides for popular development boards and accessories, including
Raspberry Pi, Arduino, BeagleBone, and others. Mr. Rush is the author of 30 BeagleBone
Black Projects for the Evil Genius, also published by McGraw-Hill Education.
 CONTENTS AT A GLANCE
1 Introduction to the Photon
2 Getting Connected
3 Particle Syntax
4 Outputs
5 Inputs
6 The Internet of Things
7 Programming Particle Shields
8 IFTTT
9 Troubleshooting Your Device
A Tools and Tips
B Particle Code Reference
Index
 CONTENTS
Preface
Acknowledgments
1 Introduction to the Photon
Microcontrollers
So, What Is the Photon?
Particle Photon versus Spark Core
The Internet of Things
Particle Cloud
The Photon Board
Summary
2 Getting Connected
Board Features
Getting Connected
Connecting to Mobile Smart Device
Connecting over USB
Using Tinker
Tinker API
Running Tinker Alongside Your Scripts
Using the Particle Web IDE
Particle Applications and Libraries
Uploading Your First Application
Account Information
Using Libraries
Photon’s Firmware
Summary
3 Particle Syntax
What Is Programming?
 Variables
Floats
Boolean
Char
Commands
The if Statement
for Loops
while Loops
Arrays
Strings
Coding Best Practices
Indentation
Commenting Your Code
Whitespaces
Summary
4 Outputs
Digital Outputs
Flashing an LED
LCD Display
Analog Outputs
Summary
5 Inputs
Digital Inputs
digitalRead ()
Analog Inputs
Summary
6 The Internet of Things
Functions
Controlling an LED over the Internet
Reading Values over the Internet
 Summary
7 Programming Particle Shields
Shield Shield
Relay Shield
Programmer Shield
Power Shield
The Internet Button
Grove Starter Kit for Photon
Adafruit Particle NeoPixel Ring Kit
Summary
8 IFTTT
If This Then That
Sunrise E-mail Alert
Create a Twitter Alert Using Grove Modules
Summary
9 Troubleshooting Your Device
Device Modes
Troubleshooting Modes
Summary
A Tools and Tips
Breadboards and Prototyping Boards
Multimeter
Soldering
Analog versus Digital
Suppliers
Components
Resistors
Semiconductors
Hardware and Miscellaneous
B Particle Code Reference
Other documents randomly have
different content
the prisoner at the bar? Do not find a verdict of guilty unless you believe
that the strychnia was administered to the deceased by the prisoner at the
bar. But if you believe that, it is your duty to God and man to find a verdict
of guilty.

The jury retired, and, after an absence of an hour and eighteen minutes,
returned a verdict of guilty.
The prisoner was asked what he had to say why the Court should not
pass sentence of death upon him according to law, and he made no answer.

Lord Campbell then said—William Palmer, after a long and

impartial trial you have been convicted by a jury of your country Lord
Campb
of the crime of wilful murder. In that verdict my two learned ell
brothers, who have so anxiously watched this trial, and myself
entirely concur, and consider that verdict altogether satisfactory. The case is
attended with such circumstances of aggravation that I do not dare to touch
upon them. Whether it is the first and only offence of this sort which you
have committed is certainly known only to God and your own conscience.
It is seldom that such a familiarity with the means of death should be shown
without long experience; but for this offence of which you have been found
guilty your life is forfeited. You must prepare to die; and I trust that, as you
can expect no mercy in this world, you will, by repentance of your crimes,
seek to obtain mercy from Almighty God. The Act of Parliament under
which you have been tried, and under which you have been brought to the
bar of this Court at your own request, gives leave to the Court to direct that
the sentence under such circumstances shall be executed either within the
jurisdiction of the Central Criminal Court or in the county where the
offence was committed. We think that, for the sake of example, the sentence
ought to be executed in the county of Stafford. Now, I hope that this terrible
example will deter others from committing such atrocious crimes, and that
it will be seen that whatever art, or caution, or experience may accomplish,
such an offence will be detected and punished. However destructive poisons
may be, it is so ordained by Providence that there are means for the safety
of His creatures for detecting and punishing those who administer them. I
again implore you to repent and prepare for the awful change which awaits
you. I will not seek to harrow up your feelings by any enumeration of the
circumstances of this foul murder. I will content myself now with passing
upon you the sentence of the law, which is, that you be taken hence to the
gaol of Newgate, and thence removed to the gaol of the county of Stafford,
the county in which the offence of which you are justly convicted was
committed; and that you be taken thence to a place of execution, and be
there hanged by the neck until you be dead; and that your body be
afterwards buried within the precincts of the prison in which you shall be
last confined after your conviction; and may the Lord have mercy upon
your soul. Amen!

The prisoner was executed at eight o’clock on Saturday morning, 14th

June, 1856, in front of Stafford gaol. He reiterated that he was “innocent of
poisoning Cook by strychnia.”
 APPENDICES.

APPENDIX I.
Letter from Thomas Palmer, Brother of William Palmer, to the
Lord Chief-Justice Campbell.
The following extract from the Diary of Lord Chief-Justice Campbell
will serve as introduction to the following letter:—
June 28.
Since my last notice in this journal the great event has been the trial of
William Palmer at the Central Criminal Court for poisoning, which began
on Wednesday, May 14th, and did not finish till Tuesday, May 27th—the
most memorable judicial proceedings for the last fifty years, engaging the
attention not only of this country but of all Europe.
My labour and anxiety were fearful; but I have been rewarded by public
approbation. The Court sat eight hours a day. When I got home, renouncing
all other engagements, I employed myself till midnight in revising my notes
and considering the evidence. Luckily I had a Sunday to prepare for my
summing up, and to this I devoted fourteen continuous hours. The following
day, after reading in Court ten hours, I had only got through the proofs for
the prosecution. My anxiety was over on the last day, when the verdict of
guilty was pronounced and I had sentenced the prisoner to die, for I had no
doubt of his guilt, and I was conscious that by God’s assistance I had done
my duty. Such was the expressed opinion of the public and of all the
respectable part of the Press. But a most ruffian-like attempt was made by
the friends of the prisoner to abuse me, and to obtain a pardon or reprieve
on the ground that the prisoner had not had a fair trial. Having unbounded
funds at their command, they corrupted some disreputable journals to admit
these diatribes against me. They published a most libellous pamphlet under
the title of “A Letter from the Rev. T. Palmer,” the prisoner’s brother, to
Lord Chief-Justice Campbell, in which the Chief-Justice was represented to
be worse than his predecessor Jeffreys, and it was asserted that there had
been nothing in England like the last trial since the “Bloody Assize.”
However, the Home Secretary remained firm and the law took its course.
 The Rev. T. Palmer has since disclaimed the pamphlet, and it is said to
have been written by a blackguard barrister. I bear him no enmity. He has
done me no harm; but for the sake of example he ought to be disbarred.

A LETTER TO THE LORD CHIEF-JUSTICE CAMPBELL.

After a struggle with internal emotions too dreadful to be described,
amid the tears and lamentations of my family, the bereavement of a
household knit together in bonds of strongest love and amity, and the
smothered, not wholly-concealed indignation of relatives and friends, I
address your lordship, not only as the man who has sealed my brother’s fate
and borne him to the foot of the scaffold, but as the judge who will have to
render an account to your fellow-men, to posterity, and to God of your
dealing towards a human being whose fate was, to a certain extent, placed
in your hands, and on whose destiny you operated in a manner hitherto
unknown, at least in our days. The law, with bitter irony, propounds it is an
axiom dear to Englishmen that a magistrate invested with powers like your
lordship is “counsel for the prisoner”; but every man who witnesses the late
mockery at the Old Bailey, in which you played so prominent a part,
confesses—to his own heart, at least, whatever he may own in public—that
a more infamous delusion has never been solemnly enacted before a British
audience since those days of shame when Jeffreys went forth upon the
“bloody assize,” and, in the name of Justice and the Law, consigned the
young, the innocent, the helpless, and the stricken with years to the dungeon
and the gallows, professing all the while to be actuated by a sense of duty to
the Crown and to the people.
These may appear strong words, and this a heavy accusation, but I will
demonstrate it to all who read this letter. What though I may not hope to
move your lordship to justice, yet I may, at least, awaken within you a sense
of that awful day which approaches you as certainly as it looms on my
brother, and which, at your advanced age, cannot be far removed. I may
awaken within you a feeling of compunction, or, at all events, of solemn
reflection; for you, also, will have to stand before a Judge enthroned in
majesty and power; before whom you will be, indeed, as nought; and when
upon your brow appears the awful record of your administration of justice
to the man whom you have condemned, in that hour also shall you
remember this word from the brother of his affections. May it avail you
before that terrific moment! May it serve to save yourself from yourself,
and to warn you in time that it is the duty of a British judge to hear, not to
condemn; to adjudicate, not to execute; to administer the law as the
representative of the country, not to pervert it to his own purposes with the
anxiety of a hangman.
My lord, in one week—in some short days from this—William Palmer,
my brother, will stand before his God; he will have to answer for his life,
and for the sins of his life; he will have to endure that fearful scrutiny into
his past from which even the best of us may well shrink with terror. But
there is one crime for which he will not have to answer, and that is the
crime for which your lordship has convicted him. My brother, William
Palmer, is no murderer. His whole life, his whole character, his whole
bearing at and since the trial are quite convincing of the fact. From
childhood upward no man was gentler of heart; his charity was
inexhaustible; his kindliness to all who were in distress was well known. To
him the wanderer resorted in his afflictions; by him the poor and houseless
were fed and comforted. I write in the face of the public, with my character
as a gentleman and a clergyman at stake, and I avow only facts that cannot
be denied. His liberality was a proverb, his frank sincerity, his courage, his
faithful loyalty to his friends, his temperance, his performance of the duties
of religion, his social relations in the character of father, husband, and son
won for him the love and confidence of all who approached him; and
though it is true that in one fatal instance he violated the laws of his
country, and subjected himself to a severe penalty for an infringement of its
commercial code, yet this excepted, his was in all respects the very opposite
of that cool, calculating, cowardly, crafty temper which is essential to the
poisoner, and which we know cannot co-exist with these qualities which my
brother possessed from his earliest years down even to the day when your
lordship sent him to his death. My lord, beware, lest while you convict of
murder you are not yourself a party to a murder! It is not the first time that
the annals of our own jurisprudence have exhibited traces of blood; it is not
the first time that judges have persuaded juries to convict to death on
circumstantial evidence. The records of every country abound in remarkable
cases of persons judicially destroyed for crimes of which they were entirely
innocent. A mistaken resemblance to the actual perpetrator, the fact of
having been seen near the spot where the crime was committed, an apparent
motive of self-interest, a confusion of manner when he was accused, or
some other suspicious circumstance has contributed to bring the odium of
guilt and consequent punishment on the wrong party. At one time cases of
frightful injustice were committed by condemning individuals for murder
when it was not proved that a murder had been perpetrated. The now well-
recognised principle in criminal law—violated, indeed, by your lordship in
my brother’s case—that no murder can be held as having been committed
till the body of the deceased has been discovered, had, apparently,
terminated this form of legal oppression until your lordship persuaded a
jury to find a man guilty of blood where there was no actual positive proof
that a homicide had at all been perpetrated, and when the chemical analysis
had even demonstrated that it had not. Another, and perhaps one of the most
common causes of prejudice in trials of this nature was the prevarication or
the suspicious conduct of the party charged with the offence, and this,
likewise, your lordship told the jury was proof of my brother’s guiltiness.
Finding himself, though innocent, placed in an awkward predicament, the
accused sometimes invented a plausible story in his defence, and the deceit
being discovered, he was at once presumed to be in every respect guilty. Sir
Matthew Hale mentions a melancholy instance of this kind. An uncle, who
had the bringing up of his niece, to whom he was heir-at-law, correcting her
for some offence, she was heard to say, “Good uncle, do not kill me!” after
which she could not be found. The uncle was committed on suspicion of
having murdered her, and was admonished by the judge of the assize to find
out the child by the next assizes. Being unable to discover his niece, he
brought another child, dressed like her, and resembling her in person and
years; but, on examination, the fraud was detected, and upon the
presumption of guilt which those circumstances afforded, he was sentenced
to be hanged, and the sentence was executed. The child afterwards
reappeared, when of age, to claim her land. On being beaten by her uncle
she had run away, and had been received by a stranger; a jury, worked upon
by suspicion, and probably also by a judge who pandered then, as judges
pander now, to public prejudice, had thus murdered an innocent man; and
that great Chief-Justice has preserved the fact as a warning for all time to
beware of judgment in cases of life and death. Yet your lordship, who has
succeeded that noble luminary of the law, forgot this memorable case in the
moment when you ought most to have remembered it; though I take upon
myself to say the circumstantial evidence against my brother was not half as
powerful as that against this gentleman whose fate has thus been
commemorated in vain by your lordship’s wise and Christian predecessor in
the judgment seat. Yet do I believe that, as surely as the sun shines or that
God lives in the heavens, there will come a day when my brother’s
innocence will be demonstrated before all men, and though your lordship
may not live to see it, yet will his blood cry out from his prison grave, and
his fate will blacken the memory of all who were parties to his death with
immortal infamy. For it is at your door the public will lay his conviction—
not at that of the jury who were worked upon to convict, and who would
have been more than men if they had resisted your looks, your gestures,
your actions, and your arguments. My lord, since this conviction of death
has been recorded I have seen William Palmer. I have visited him in his
condemned hold. I have beheld that darling brother, the playmate of my
infancy, the companion of my youthful sports, in whom my heart’s blood
circulates, and with whom my love is entwined. And how did he present
himself? And how did he bear our presence? I say, like Socrates in his cell;
I say, like Sidney in the Tower; I say, like Calas before the wheel. He
preserves a cheerful, an undaunted, an English heart and spirit, and I am
proud of him even in his death doom. Your lordship has not crushed or
trampled my brother’s soul. He maintains his energy and his hope in justice,
not indeed from men, for he was condemned long since, but in the course of
events, in the discoveries of science, in the confession or conviction of
those perjured witnesses against him; or, these all failing, in the God of
truth. Though I never doubted his innocence, yet did I resolve to make all
certain and positive before I hazarded this letter. I fell on my knees before
him. I implored him by our past love and kindred, by our early recollections
and hopes, by our common faith, by all the duties which he owed to man
and God, to disburthen his conscience if he were guilty, and not to enter
before the presence of his Creator with a falsehood upon his lips. I adjured
him to say if he were guilty or not guilty. Oh, my lord! he did not wince; he
did not change his noble composure; he spoke and looked all innocence.
Calmly, earnestly, and solemnly he answered, and the seriousness of his
words went into our hearts with the fullest persuasion of his perfect
guiltlessness of blood; the most complete reliance on that dying tongue
which never spoke falsely to one of us, but to whose language we listened
ever with full assurance in its integrity and its faith. Under these
circumstances, therefore, I make no apology for addressing your lordship. A
great, a majestic duty is now imposed on you. If you shrink from executing
it you are undone. There are but seven days between this and the
irrevocable hour of death. All your repentance, all your shame will be
unavailing if that dread sentence be rashly carried into effect. I ask you not
to recommend a pardon for my brother—for that, I know, you will not do;
but I ask you—for in you it lies—to obtain a respite for him till his guilt or
innocence be demonstrated to the satisfaction of the world. Bear in mind
that my brother’s counsel offered fearlessly at the trial that an experiment
should be made. Bear in mind that some of the most able chemical analysts
in the world have declared upon their oaths that if strychnia were
administered it can be found; that the Attorney-General himself, to a certain
extent, repudiated Dr. Taylor, and supported himself by Mr. Herapath’s
supposition that strychnia was there, though Taylor could not find it; bear in
mind that Taylor’s theory of the absorption and decomposition of strychnia
was never heard of until this trial; that it was hit upon by him to bolster up
his credit, and that all the ablest of the chemists at the trial unanimously
repudiated it as a heresy, unworthy of credit, and whose fallacy they had
themselves proved by actual experiment; bear in mind, I say, all this, and
remember with what a harsh and angry denial you refused to permit such an
experiment, though upon it depended the blood of a man. I say deliberately
that if these chemists have sworn the truth, and that there is no strychnia
discernible in Cook’s body, then will William Palmer be murdered as
effectually under the semblance of English law as ever the most innocent
was butchered under the worst forms of the Papal Inquisition; and that the
most fearful responsibility of blood that ever rested upon human head will
be upon those who refuse to concede the test which is now challenged. I ask
that that experiment shall be performed, which will set at rest for ever the
imputation of judicial murder that will sear your lordship’s character with
the present and with the future; an experiment which may probably clear
your soul from the stain of blood that it must risk if you oppose this
application. What is there unusual, what is there criminal, what is there
illegal in only asking for a respite until it be proved—as it can be proved
incontrovertibly—whether Cook died of strychnia or not? And if he did not
die of strychnia, then is my brother’s innocence made manifest, even to
your satisfaction! While, if it is shown that he did so die, then is the voice of
accusation silent for ever, and the much-vaunted majesty, the supposed
impartiality and purity of English law vindicated in triumph before
mankind. The precise mode in which this experiment might be made it is
not for me to suggest. I have no objection that it shall be made in any way
which may appear satisfactory to the Home Office, provided only that
neither Dr. Taylor nor Dr. Rees is entrusted with its management. In this
pair of worthies I have no confidence. The first pronounced my brother
guilty of poisoning on grounds the most ridiculous that can be imagined,
upon which even a Stafford Grand Jury did not think there was sufficient to
warrant them in finding even a prima facie case for investigation at the
assizes. He wrote letters to the newspapers branding the accused as a most
desperate criminal; he largely assisted in getting up the prosecution, and
was busily engaged all through the trial in writing notes and making
suggestions to the Attorney-General and the other prosecuting counsel; he
smiled perceptibly when the case was strong against my brother, and could
not conceal his chagrin as it grew weak. As to Rees, he seems to endorse all
that Taylor says, and I have no confidence whatever in him. A writer in the
papers, who is unknown to me, makes a suggestion which you may bring if
you choose before the Home Secretary; but it matters little by whom the
experiment is made so that it is done by an honest man. “If it is proved,”
says the writer, “that Cook died from strychnia, there is no difficulty in
connecting Palmer with the administration of it. But if that fact is not
proved, then the other circumstances do not lead to the irresistible inference
of his guilt.” For the sake of all parties concerned in the case, for the sake of
society at large, and, above all, for the sake of justice, let that point be set at
rest; and let that be done in this manner—Mr. Herapath says he can detect
strychnia wherever present. Then let there be a certain number of animals
killed, some by strychnia and some by other means; let their interiors be
taken out and put in jars, each separately and numbered, and verified with
all the necessary formalities, Mr. Herapath being kept in the dark as to
which was the poisoned jar and which was not; and if he then can
distinguish between those which contained strychnia and those that did not,
let the Home Secretary have the moral courage to step in and avert the
disgraceful and horrible-to-contemplate possibility of having one day, in
token of his acknowledged innocence, to wave a flag over the grave of
William Palmer, to which he has been consigned upon insufficient
evidence, despite of the revelations of science, and because (to use the
words of Dr. Taylor), “society demands a victim.”
My lord, I have been told by lawyers that all presumptive evidence of
crime should be admitted cautiously, for the law holds that it is better that
ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer. And there is a
famous case which so strongly illustrates this noble principle of the law that
I may remind your lordship of it here. The mother and reputed father of a
bastard child were observed to take it to the margin of the dock in
Liverpool, and, after stripping it, to throw it into the dock. The body of the
infant was not afterwards seen, but, as the tide of the sea flowed and
reflowed into and out of the dock, the learned judge who tried the father and
mother for the murder of their child, observed that it was possible the tide
might have carried out the living infant, and the prisoners were acquitted.
The case is mentioned by Garrow, one of the ablest and purest judges that
ever adorned the bench; and it has been brought before me as illustrative of
the wise and merciful caution which the judges of the past were used to
exercise before they persuaded juries to condemn men who might possibly
be innocent. How your lordship would have decided this trial had it taken
place before you, and had the public Press, under the influence of insurance
societies, hounded on the many to a cry for blood, I can easily anticipate;
but that the great judge who ruled for mercy adjudicated according to the
well-known principles of the Constitution is what I am assured by every
man who has made the English law his study, and who is too pure to be
influenced by a shout of “Crucify him! crucify him!” will admit without the
slightest shadow of a doubt. Take, again, the ordinary case which I find
mentioned in an anonymous letter in one of the morning papers, and which,
I am informed, is so strongly illustrative of the caution exercised in all
criminal cases where the judge is impartial, and where medical science
must occasionally be fallible, that it needs no words of mine to add to its
force. Its value is increased by this fact, that neither I nor any person
connected with my family has the least knowledge of who the writer is, and,
therefore, no considerations but those which do him honour can be
supposed to operate on his mind.
“To establish,” he says, “a perfect chain of circumstantial evidence,
every circumstance in the case must be proved beyond all cavil. And the
first and most important and absolutely indispensable circumstance in a
case like that of Palmer’s is the fact of a murder having been committed.
That is the groundwork of the circumstantial fabric, without which the rest
of the edifice topples over. It is a circumstance of which merely the
conduct, however suspicious, antecedent or subsequent to its occurrence, of
the alleged murderer furnishes no valid proof. To convict a man of
poisoning, you should distinctly trace the death of the deceased to poison.
“Take a case in point. It is of frequent occurrence in this country that a
woman is charged with the murder of her newly-born infant. She is
unmarried; she is proved to have been suspected of pregnancy, and to have
denied the fact; she is proved to have been recently delivered of a child; she
has been seen going to a water-closet, and, after she has left, there are
found, rammed down the pipe of that water-closet, the dissected members
of an infant’s body; a knife smeared with blood is discovered hidden away,
and traced to the prisoner’s possession; she has made no provision for the
reception of the child, which, should it survive the moment of its birth, must
prove an incubus upon its mother and a living witness to her shame. Here
are circumstances of a damning nature. A strong motive, a cool
premeditation, a mutilated body, and physical traces which cannot be
mistaken. Mark the result. A surgeon is called at the trial, and states that he
cannot positively swear that the child was born alive; that it may by
possibility have been born dead; that there being no proof that the child was
ever alive, he cannot be sure that it was killed by being cut in pieces. In that
case there is no Professor Taylor, who, while the case was pendente lite, has
written letters in a newspaper stating that ‘society demands a victim,’ and
whose sworn testimony is to the effect that, inasmuch as 99 children in 100
are born alive, his solemn belief is that so was this child, and that he has
therefore come to the conclusion that the cutting off of its head was the
cause of death. There is no Chief Justice to tell the jury that they are to take
all the circumstances surrounding the case into consideration, and that,
although it was not proved beyond a doubt that death was the result of
mortal agency, yet if they arrived at the conclusion that the prisoner had a
strong motive for destroying the deceased, and had possession of an
instrument by which to effect that purpose, there was a prima facie case
made out which would lead them to the next question, namely, was the state
of the body, or was it not, consistent with the fact of a violent death? There
is no infuriated and Press-prejudiced populace regarding the prisoner as a
great criminal, and thirsting after her blood. No! The judge says to the jury
you cannot, according to the law of the land, whatever your suspicions in
this case may be, find a verdict of guilty; there is no proof of a murder
having been committed, and the prisoner must be acquitted on that charge.
That may be a vicious law, but it is the law, and had no more right to be
violated in the case of William Palmer than in that of any other individual.
If it be, the whole proceedings of the trial are a mockery and a delusion—a
disgraceful pandering to out-of-door prejudices and a lasting disgrace to
this country.”
This is the language of a man who writes as an unprejudiced observer,
and, I am told, with a deep knowledge of the law. If it be, as he says, that
this is the law in cases of this nature, with what face can my brother be
executed when precisely the very reverse was done by your lordship in his
case, and, when forgetting or despising all the precedents of mercy with
which our jurisprudence abounds, you took only the sanguinary view of the
evidence, and enforced everything against the prisoner by argument, by
gesture, and by look.
That the law is wise in exercising this salutary caution I think may be
proved even by the testimony of the actor who next, after your lordship, had
most influence in the verdict against my brother—I mean Dr. Taylor. In that
writer’s work on “Poisons,” page 139, I find the following statement:—“It
often happens, in the hands of the ablest analyst, that the last steps of a
process lead to a result very different from that which was anticipated at the
commencement; and, therefore, a suspicion derived from a few incipient
experiments is very likely to be overthrown by continuing the investigation.
In the Boughton case Dr. Rattray gives an opinion, in the first instance, that
the poison administered to the deceased was arsenic; but he subsequently
attributed death to laurel-water! A case occurred within my knowledge
where arsenic was pronounced to be present when sulphuric acid was really
the poison. In another case, tried at the Kingston Assizes in 1832, the
medical witness admitted that at the coroner’s inquest he stated the poison
to be arsenic, but by subsequent experiments he found that it was oxalic
acid, and in a case which has but recently occurred the poison was at first
stated to be oxalic acid, but on a more careful examination it was shown to
be arsenic!” Whether or not all the unhappy persons in whose cases these
chemical mistakes were thus made, and thus coolly avowed, suffered death
is not stated, but, as I am told that one of them, Donellan, was certainly
executed, and as it is even now a question deeply involved in doubt whether
the person whom he is supposed to have poisoned was poisoned at all, and
the most able medical authorities incline to the opinion that he was not, it is
likely that the others also were as ruthlessly sacrificed to what is called
“public opinion,” and that they have been sent to their graves with the
stigma of murder when they were, in fact, but victims to medical delusions,
or toxicological mistakes, which are as coolly confessed by Taylor as if they
were merely ordinary trifles, not affecting in any way the life and death of
the wretches whose interests were at stake.
My lord, how comes it to pass that not one of these most important facts
was mentioned by Taylor at the trial? that his henchman, Rees, who swore
exactly as Taylor swore, did not give the jury the slightest information upon
these questions of vital value to the prisoner? Why were they kept back
from the knowledge of the jury? Why were they concealed from your
lordship? It was proved at the trial that Dr. Harland sent Stevens his medical
notes of the first post-mortem examination; that Stevens handed them over
to Taylor, and that, up to the third day of the trial, Taylor withheld, even
from the knowledge of the Attorney-General and the Crown solicitor, that
he possessed these notes, which contained circumstances strongly
favourable to the case of the prisoner. Was not his silence as to the medical
facts just mentioned of a piece with his suppression of this material
document? Your lordship made no comment to the jury upon this
extraordinary conduct. You severely attacked Mr. Nunneley, you bitterly
censured others of the witnesses for the defence, you weakened, by all the
means within your power, the effect of their evidence when it told for the
prisoner; but not one syllable of censure had you for Taylor, who kept the
jury in ignorance of these facts, and the cases mentioned by him in his own
book, though he was sworn in the language of the law to tell “the truth and
the whole truth.” The whole truth, indeed, he did not tell; otherwise these
matters which I have now quoted would have come before the jurors, and,
as I believe, with all-powerful influence.
If the wilful suppression of evidence by the prosecution had ended with
Taylor the case would have been infamous enough; the Crown would have
showed that it prosecuted for victory, not for truth, for I take it to be the
unquestioned duty of a prosecutor, more especially when he is backed by
the Crown authorities and the Home Office, not merely to squabble for a
petty triumph on a prisoner charged with murder, or to attempt to higgle a
jury out of an adverse verdict, but to present not a part but the whole case
fairly before the public—the features favourable to a prisoner as well as
those that are unfavourable, the weak portions of the accusations against
him as well as those that are strong, so that the jury, who are (in theory) his
judges, may see and know every circumstance, however minute, and, from
an aggregate of the whole, come to a right conclusion as to the verdict
which they are to pronounce. But this salutary rule was not followed by the
Crown prosecutors in the present case; they wilfully deceived and misled
the counsel for my brother, and by this trick, which I shall presently expose,
they deprived the prisoner of two of the most material witnesses, who could
prove his innocence, that it was possible for man to have. The first of these
witnesses was a man named Henry Cockayne. Your lordship remembers the
questions which Serjeant Shee put to that wretched Bates; and you recollect
also, I doubt not, the artful way in which he answered those questions. It
was of importance to my brother to show for what purpose he had
purchased, and in what manner he had used, the strychnia, which he never
denied, and does not now mean to deny, that he bought from Roberts on the
Tuesday.
He had a number of valuable brood mares in a paddock, separated from
the adjoining land only by a thin fence, over which the dogs were in the
habit of leaping and hunting these animals (nine in all), so much so that
even Bates was obliged to admit that one of them, the “Duchess of Kent,”
had slipped her foal; and it is a fact that “Goldfinder” had suffered from a
like mishap, though Bates refused to acknowledge it. Indeed, Bates would
scarcely admit anything, or give a direct reply to any of the questions put to
him. Here is an example, taken from the verbatim report of the trial—“Can
you give me any notion of their value?” “I do not pretend,” answers Bates,
“to tell the value of the stock myself.” No one had asked him to do so, yet
this stable-boy, brewer, farmer, or whatever else he chooses to call himself,
who has been about horses all his life, could not give Serjeant Shee a notion
of the value of these brood mares. “Do you know,” pursued the serjeant,
“that one of them sold for 800 guineas?” Now, Bates knew this as well as
my brother himself, but mark his answer—“I have heard so.” Again, he is
asked—“Were any of them in foal shortly before or at the beginning of the
month of November?” Bates, you will remember, was in the stables and
paddocks every day, yet he answers this question, “I cannot say whether
they were or not. I should suppose there were some in foal.” A witness who
answered in this way would probably have been rebuked by any fair judge,
and ordered to answer the questions put to him; but your lordship, who was
so dreadfully sarcastic on Mr. Nunneley and Dr. Macdonald, had no word of
reproof for Bates. This man was again asked, “had any complaint been
made about dogs going about the paddock?” Mark the artful way in which
he evaded this interrogatory—“I think I once said to Harry, ‘The turf seems
a good deal cut up here; how is it?’ ” Your lordship sees Bates had not been
asked what he had said to Harry (this was Cockayne), but he had been
asked about repeated and well-known complaints made by my brother as to
the way in which his mares were constantly hunted by the dogs in the
neighbourhood; and you now see, though you would not at the trial, the
evasive and equivocating way in which he replied. Serjeant Shee then
proceeded—“What did you see on the turf that induced you to make that
observation?—I saw it cut up, which I supposed to be with horses’ feet, for
they could not cut it up without they galloped. Did you attribute that to
anything?—I attributed it to the mares galloping about. Had you any reason
to think they had been run by dogs?—I never saw any dogs run them.” This
was no answer to the question, but your lordship said not a word, and this
Bates, who was with Day in the paddock, who, to use the words of the
Attorney-General, “was a hanger-on of Palmer’s, working in his stables,”
could not tell, as he pretended, how it was that the mares were galloping
about and cutting up the turf. The serjeant then proceeded—“Did Harry
keep a gun there?—I have seen a gun there. (This again was not a direct
answer, but an evasion.) Did he keep a gun, which belonged to his master,
for any purpose?—I have seen a gun at the paddock. Did it belong to his
master?—I cannot say. Did you ever see it used?—No. Was it in a condition
to be used?—I never had it in my hands to examine it.” In ordinary cases I
am told that where a witness misconducts himself in this manner, the
Crown immediately gives him up, and the judge informs the jury that no
reliance is to be placed on his testimony. But, so far from abandoning him,
the Attorney-General relied all through upon this man, and pressed against
my brother the effect of the evidence which he gave. Now, your lordship
was told at the trial, by Serjeant Shee, that the object for which the poison
was purchased was to destroy these dogs. Bates was found to admit that a
gun was kept in the stables, and though he cunningly kept back for what
purpose the gun was used, yet was there another witness on the back of the
indictment who had been examined before the coroner, and who was
present in the Court, of whose evidence your lordship was well aware, for it
was in the depositions, and this witness the Crown withheld from the jury.
Had Cockayne been called, as he ought to have been called, he would have
proved that he kept a gun loaded in the stable, by order of my brother, to
shoot the dogs that worried his brood mares; that he had also threatened to
poison them, that the strychnia was purchased for that object, and that he
had missed dogs since then which had been in the habit of prowling about
the paddock and hunting the mares. That my brother left poisoned food
about the place is a matter which can be proved only by himself, for these
things are not always trusted to servants; and, as it is a positive medical fact
that animals to which this poison has been given go away into secret,
concealed, and quiet places, where they die undiscovered, and would be
mortally attacked in so short a time that they could not get to their own
homes. Is it not almost demonstrated that this has been the case here, and
that my brother is thus made the victim of circumstances, harmless in
themselves, but which, having occurred at this precise period, tell now with
fearful weight upon his unfortunate case? The Crown may cry out,
“Produce the dogs, and show us the strychnia in them.” With how much
more freedom may the condemned man say, “Produce the poison from
Cook’s body before you hang me to satisfy a medical theory invented for
this trial and broached against me by a deadly foe!”
In the same way, the non-discovery of the money which Cook is said to
have possessed at Shrewsbury was urged by your lordship as startling
evidence against my brother, and you signified to the jury, by gestures, by
looks, and shakes of the head, that my brother had fraudulently got
possession of that money, and poisoned Cook in order to conceal the fact.
But your lordship was well aware at the time, for it was in the depositions
of Saunders, who was also in Court, and who had been examined before the
coroner and the Grand Jury, that Cook had sent for Saunders on the Monday
before his death, that he had paid him £10 (his account), and excused
himself for not paying any more, by stating that he had given my brother all
his money to take with him to London, to settle his affairs. Thus the
disposal of the money was accounted for by Cook himself; and Saunders,
whose testimony was thus highly favourable to my brother, ought to have
been called to prove this fact. But, strange to say, Saunders, though in
Court, was not called; he waited until the end of the case for the
prosecution, and then was sent away by the Crown lawyers, who not only
thus deprived the prisoner of the advantage of his testimony, had they called
Saunders for the prosecution, but absolutely put it out of the power of the
prisoner to call him for the defence by sending him away into the country at
the last moment, when they had all along left the counsel for the defence
under the idea that it was intended to examine Saunders as a witness on
behalf of the prosecution. A more scandalous trick than this, I believe, was
never committed, and I do not envy the feelings of the parties who
perpetrated it.
It may be asked, why did not Mr. Smith, an able, indefatigable, and
skilful lawyer, get Cockayne and Saunders put into the box as witnesses for
the prisoner? My lord, the answer is already given. They were the witnesses
for the Crown; they were kept in London, in the custody of the Crown, until
after the case for the prosecution had terminated; they were then sent out of
London, into a distant part of England not so easily accessible as was
needed by the prisoner; and if we are to take your lordship’s manifest and
angry impatience at the ten minutes’ delay in calling witnesses for the
defence, which occurred on the morning of Saturday, the tenth day of the
trial, as indicative of your feelings, we may be very certain that if you so
chafed at that brief interval, repeatedly during those few minutes asking
Serjeant Shee if he could not go on—if, I say, we are to consider that angry
haste significant of anything, we may very well conclude that you would
not have waited until Saunders and Cockayne were brought up from the
centre of England, if, indeed, it was possible for the prisoner at all to
discover their exact lodgings at the time. I have myself heard, on many
occasions, in Courts of justice where judges themselves called witnesses
whose names were in the indictment and order them to give their evidence
for the Crown. But this was where the judges were not biassed against the
accused—where they had no desire to become the objects of public praise
or to prostitute their high places to the low desire of popularity acquired by
pandering to a cry for blood. Why your lordship did not follow the well-
known precedents of law in my brother’s case is best known to yourself. Yet
there are many of the public also who can form a pretty accurate guess as to
your real motives. Let me revert, however, to the subject, from which this is
a digression, and pursue the confession made by Dr. Taylor of the general
inaccuracy of medical men when they are retained to carry out a theory by
the prosecution. These, which I have quoted, are not the only instances in
which mistakes have been made for want of proper caution. Taylor (p. 63)
mentions the case of M. Pralet, where “several medical witnesses deposed
that the deceased had died from prussic acid, administered to him by M.
L’Heritier, the accused. Orfila was requested to examine the medical
evidence, and found it extremely defective. The inferences drawn from the
application of the medical tests were highly improper, and the results were
extremely negative. Had it not been for the interference of Orfila, it is most
probable that the accused would have been convicted, more from the strong
medical opinions against him than from the medical facts of the case. The
witnesses appear to have acted on the principle that the whole of their duty
consisted in rendering the charge of poisoning probable, whereas we shall
hereafter see that no person can be convicted of this crime on mere
probability. The fact of poisoning must be made reasonably certain either by
medical or moral evidence, or by both combined.” He cites also (p. 110) a
case reported by Anglada, in which there were circumstances of grave
suspicion, though the party suspected was wholly innocent. “A lady, in
perfect health, while supping with her husband and family, complained,
after having taken two or three mouthfuls, of severe pain in the region of
her heart. She fell back in her chair and died instantly. The parties not
having lived on the best of terms, the husband was openly accused of
having been accessory to the poisoning of his wife—a circumstance which
was rendered still more probable in the opinion of his neighbours by the
fact that the wife had lately made a holograph will in his favour. One of his
servants, with whom he was said to live in adultery, was arrested, and a
paper containing a white powder was found in her possession. The husband
endeavoured to compromise the affair by offering to give up the will. Here,
then, were strong moral presumptions of death from poisoning. Three
surgeons (experts!) were appointed to examine the body. They opened the
abdomen, and, observing some green spots in the stomach, produced (as it
afterwards appeared, by imbibition from the gall bladder), pronounced an
opinion that the organ was in a gangrenous state from the effects of some
corrosive poison. Some doubt arising on the correctness of this view, four
other surgeons were directed to re-examine the body. They found that the
stomach had not even been opened, and that its mucous membrane, as well
as that of the intestines, was perfectly healthy. It contained a small quantity
of undigested food, which was free from any trace of poison. The deceased
had died from natural causes. The white powder found in the possession of
the servant was nothing more than white sugar!” Nor does he omit the case
of Hunter (p. 144), whose trial at Liverpool Assizes somewhat resembles
that of my poor brother, but who was fortunate enough to be tried by an
honest judge and an impartial jury. “A woman was charged with having
poisoned her husband by arsenic. The medical evidence rested chiefly on
the symptoms and post-mortem appearances, for no arsenic was discovered
in the body. The mucous membrane of the stomach and intestines was
found throughout its whole extent exceedingly inflamed and softened. The
medical witnesses for the prosecution referred (as they always do) this
condition to the action of arsenic; those for the defence considered that it
might be owing to idiopathic gastroenteritis, independently of the exhibition
of any irritant. The circumstances of the case were very suspicious, but the
prisoner was acquitted, not merely on account of the variance in the medical
evidence, but from the absence of positive proof of poison, i.e., its detection
by chemical analysis.” This generally weighs much with a Court of law. Yet
your lordship so contrived that it did not weigh one hair in my brother’s
case. The principles of law being thus clear, and the mistakes of medical
science being also equally admitted, let me follow them up by a further
quotation from the gentleman out of whose powerful letter I have already
extracted a passage—“Is there clear, and distinct, and unimpeachable proof
that beyond all reasonable doubt Mr. Cook died a violent death? Let us see
how that question is answered. For the prosecution a number of medical
men of eminence state that the symptoms in his case were such as they
would expect to have resulted from the administration of strychnia, and
were irreconcilable with death from any other cause. Upon the part of the
prisoner a number of equally eminent medical men state that they can
account for the death of the deceased without being compelled to resort to
the hypothesis of strychnia, and that in many important particulars the
symptoms were different from those which that poison invariably produces.
Each set of witnesses, upon cross-examination, qualified their statements in
some degree, but in the result such is the substance of their respective
experience.
“Then comes Professor Taylor, who analysed the contents of the
stomach, &c., and who states that he found no strychnia nor any poison
which could account for the death of Mr. Cook. As Lord Campbell said with
a sneer, ‘Of course, upon this the whole defence rests.’ It strikes me as
being a very feasible defence indeed, but more of that presently. However,
Dr. Taylor states that you must not draw the conclusion that because no
strychnia was found, therefore none was administered, because he had
known cases (though of very rare occurrence) where he had himself
administered that drug to animals, and afterwards tested for and failed to
discover it; and from the symptoms he is convinced that Mr. Cook must
have died from strychnia. Dr. Rees is of a similar opinion. Now, the result
of this evidence is to destroy the practical utility of analysis for strychnia
altogether; for although if strychnia be detected, it is proof that it has been
administered, yet if it be not detected, that is no proof that it has not been
administered.
“Then let us look at the other side. Mr. Herepath, who is confessedly one
of the greatest analytical chemists of the present day, states that if the
minutest particle of strychnia were present in the body, he would guarantee
to find it, and in that statement he is corroborated by a series of eminent
toxicologists. It is suggested, in answer to this evidence, that Professor
Taylor did not apply the proper tests. Surely, if he did not, it did not lie in
the mouth of the prosecution to urge that argument. He was their witness;
he was employed by them to make the analysis, and they trusted to his
capacity to do so; and when he states that he found no strychnia, the fair
and logical deduction is, not that he did not use the proper tests, but that
there was no strychnia to be found. Notwithstanding this, Lord Campbell
put it very strongly—and, as I conceive, very unjustifiably and illegally, to
the jury—that Professor Taylor might not have used the proper tests, and
that it was for them to consider whether, if the proper tests had been
applied, strychnia might not have been discovered. But, however, Mr.
Herepath, whose testimony is borne out by other chemical witnesses for the
defence, states that he will guarantee to find strychnia in all cases where it
is present, however infinitesimal the quantity; that he never found his tests
to fail, and that the only conclusion he could draw from the fact of strychnia
not being found is that none was administered. Upon the one hand,
therefore, you have the positive opinions of fallible medical men, founded
upon a second-hand knowledge of the symptoms, as to the impossibility of
their resulting from any other cause than strychnia. Upon the other hand
you have the equally positive opinions of medical men similarly situated as
to the effect of those symptoms being reconcilable with natural causes. Cast
into the scales the unerring inspirations of chemical science, add that the
life of a fellow-creature is at stake, and which way lies the balance of
evidence?”
My lord, what answer can you make to this argument? You will say,
perhaps, that you have convinced yourself that my brother is guilty. This,
indeed, may satisfy a man of weak or of no conscience; but how will it fall
upon the great body of the enlightened British public, who have been
wound up, it is true, to the most awful excitement against this unhappy
man, but who will assuredly awaken from that excitement and demand in
tones of thunder how it came to pass that you, who should have stood
between the prisoner and prejudice, ministered to that prejudice, and were
found to be his accuser rather than his judge!
And here, my lord, before I proceed further, let me exonerate you from
all the blame of this sham trial. You had a brother judge by your side who
shares with you all the responsibility of prejudice against my brother, who
made no secret, but rather an indecent display of that prejudice in a manner
which astonished the whole auditory, and who ought also to be recorded
with you to all time coming as having participated in the laurels of blood
with which you should be crowned—I allude to Mr. Baron Alderson. That
learned functionary, who inaugurated the first day’s proceedings by falling
asleep and nearly tumbling over his desk during the Attorney-General’s
opening speech, amused himself during the progress of the trial by
suggesting questions to Mr. James, the counsel for the prosecution, by
lifting up his hands in apparent astonishment when anything favourable to
the prisoner was elicited on cross-examination, by looking at the jury with
every mark of incredulity and contempt when Serjeant Shee suggested any
matter beneficial to my brother, and by joining with your lordship in
overruling every legal objection which was raised by the counsel for the
defence. Once also, when Serjeant Shee asked one of the witnesses, “Where
are the pathionic glands?” Baron Alderson started up with every mark of
anger and exclaimed, “Humbug!” And on another occasion, when your
lordship, or Mr. Justice Cresswell, addressed the serjeant as “Brother Shee,”
Baron Alderson impatiently cried out, “Oh, bother Shee!” I can feel no
surprise, therefore, when I find your lordship, while pronouncing sentence
on my brother, declaring that Baron Alderson concurred with the finding of
the jury, though, unless he concurred with you before the verdict was
pronounced, he certainly did not do so in Court, as no communication
passed between you and either of the judges after that fatal word. But of Mr.
Justice Cresswell I feel bound to declare the feeling of my brother, of all my
family, and, unanimously, as I am told, that of my brother’s counsel, that his
conduct was in accordance with all that we hear or know of the purity of the
bench; that his demeanour was dignified, noble, impartial, and most
honourable; and that, but for his interference, visible, as was remarked on
many important occasions, your lordship would have admitted evidence
illegally against my brother, or excluded testimony which his advisers
hoped would operate favourably for him on the minds of his jury. Never
shall the memory of his conduct be erased from our hearts; we all have felt,
and we shall always continue to feel it; nor shall any sunset close on me for
the remainder of my days that shall not witness my earnest prayer for him
who did all that a judge should do to maintain the character of our country
and its criminal jurisprudence; and who probably would have exerted
himself still more strenuously but for the feeling that upon your lordship, as
chief judge, the great responsibility of this case rested, and that he himself
was but an appendage rather than a ministering officer at the trial.
My lord, the remarks which I have up to this time made may be
considered preliminary to my investigations of your charge, but they seem
to me of consequence to a right understanding of the language in which you
thought it proper to address them, and to a due appreciation of the kind of
way in which the guilt has been fastened upon my brother’s shoulders. A
writer in a daily paper says—“However horrible it may be that a systematic
poisoner should escape the penalty of his crimes by an effort of legal
chicanery, there is something even more repugnant to the principles of
British law, and that is, that a man should be found guilty upon insufficient
evidence; and there is something still more revolting, both to the
constitution of the country and to human nature, namely, that a man should
be hanged for a murder which there is no satisfactory proof had ever been
committed.”
Yet, my lord, there is something still more dreadful, and it is this, that the
time-renowned prestige of British trial by jury should be abrogated, as
abrogated it will be, if your lordship’s precedent is to be followed by
present or future judges. Did your lordship really leave any question to the
jury upon which to exercise an impartial reason? Did you throw upon them
the whole responsibility of the verdict, as by the theory of the law you
ought to have done? Did you merely lay down the legal principles
governing the case, or did you not step out of the way to comment (like an
advocate) on the evidence? To get up this witness and to knock down that
one, to praise those who supported Dr. Taylor’s theory and to censure those
who were independent of such nonsense? Did not your lordship convey, as
clearly to the jury, by meaning looks, by thumping the desk with peculiar
energy, by laying emphasis on certain parts of the evidence, and then
pausing and gazing intently upon the jurymen, by shaking your head, as if
your thoughts of my brother’s guilt were too dreadful for utterance; by
repeating over and over again those parts which told heaviest against him;
by running on the evidence for the prisoner so that it was impossible for the
jury to understand it; by charging against him, for a whole day and on the
morning of the second, recapitulating with fearful emphasis and solemnity
all your arguments of the preceding night, condensing them and summing
them into one argumentative whole, from which it was almost impossible
for the jury to draw any other conclusion than that you wished them to find
a verdict of guilty? And when you had done all this you devoted the rest of
the day—about two hours and a half—to the prisoner’s evidence, having
given upwards of eleven hours to the evidence for the prosecution. If you
think this consistent with your duty and with trial by jury, I can only say
you stand alone; for if any faith is to be placed in the public Press, in the
tone of general conversation, in the loudly-expressed voice of all
independent persons, you have struck a blow at trial by jury from which it
never will recover, unless the great mass of the community now protest
against such a course in language that cannot be mistaken. If persons are
thus persuaded into giving verdicts by judges in high station there is an end
to the liberties of Englishmen. Trial by jury becomes, in the language of
Lord Denman, “a mockery, a delusion, and a snare,” and the most glorious
privilege which we have inherited from our ancestors degenerates into an
engine of tyranny, cruelty, and falsehood, to entrap and destroy those who
regard it as their dearest birthright. My lord, if there be no sympathy for my
brother, let there be at least a feeling for our own rights when they are
invaded, and let the public meditate in time that it is by little and little the
grandest rights of states and empires are insidiously sapped until they
perish.
I am not about to recapitulate the arguments of Serjeant Shee, which
prove that this charge of murder is one of the most improbable in the annals
of criminal jurisprudence. These arguments failed with the jury because
they were not permitted to exercise a calm judgment upon them. But I may
call attention to the gross fallacy on which the whole prosecution was
founded—that of starting with the positive theory of a murder and then
endeavouring by all means to fix that murder upon my brother.
It is, therefore, clear that in this case a great, and what would have
proved in any other an insurmountable difficulty meets one at the threshold
—that in order to obtain a conviction one must reverse the legal and
customary order of proceeding. Instead of proving a murder first and
discovering the murderer afterwards, you first prove the murderer and
thence deduce a murder. That is the course which the necessities of the case
compelled the Attorney-General to pursue, and it was your duty to have
exploded that theory in your summing up. But you did no such thing. On
the contrary, you went into all the antecedents of the prisoner, and put them
to the jury as an element in the consideration of whether a murder had or
had not been committed. And having thus prepared the minds of the jury by
the antimony of motives, suspicious circumstances, &c., you then
administer to them the strychnia of a murder. You descanted more
especially upon the purchase of strychnia by the prisoner just before Cook’s
death as strong evidence that Cook was poisoned. That circumstance,
coming after proof of Cook’s death by strychnia, would reduce the case to
one of almost geometrical accuracy; but by itself, in the absence of such
proof—nay, in presence of scientific proof to the contrary—of what value is
it? Besides, it is quite incompatible with the case for the prosecution. The
prosecution suggests that my brother had a deliberate intention to murder
Cook, and had for ten days been adopting preliminary measures to carry
that intention into effect; that when the time for the completion of his
infernal purpose approached (which was on the Sunday), he wrote for Mr.
Jones, of Lutterworth, a surgeon, and a personal friend of the deceased, to
come over and be present at his last moments, in order that his presence
there might stave off suspicion. Now, if that were so, is it not reasonable to
suppose that he would have had the poison ready to be administered, and
not trust to the doctrine of chances to procure it at a village like Rugeley
when wanted for immediate use? Surely the professional poisoner might
naturally be expected to keep a good stock-in-trade? Nothing of the sort. On
the Monday night (if the case for the prosecution is to be believed) he gets
from Newton three grains of strychnia, which he gives almost immediately
afterwards to Cook. Cook is attacked with strychnia-tetanus, but recovers,
and is nearly quite well the next day. The prisoner, finding Cook not dead,
gets six grains from Roberts on the Tuesday, which he also gives to Cook,
and this time he succeeds in his purpose. Now, is not this—the blackest part
of the case against my brother—very improbable? Would the poisoner of
fourteen people do his work in such a clumsy fashion? But, then, the
possession or destination of those six grains is not attempted to be
accounted for. That certainly is a most inculpatory circumstance. But we
must remember this, that until it was known that the prisoner had had this
strychnia, it was never suspected that Cook died from strychnia. It was that
circumstance which originated the train of ideas as to my brother’s guilt;
and when charged with murder he may naturally have thought that the
strychnia, if found in his possession, would be evidence of his guilt, and so
may have destroyed it; whereas, if he had preserved it, it would have been
the strongest proof of his innocence. Then, if he did destroy it, he could
give no proof of the fact, for, of course, it would be done without the privity
of any one else. Now, if he had been in France he himself would have been
subjected to a strict examination upon all the points of the case, and his own
statement upon that point, whether for or against him, would have been in
evidence. Moreover, how does this part of the case reconcile with the
medical evidence? It is admitted on all hands that half a grain is sufficient to
destroy life; but a grain, or two, or three, no man could survive that. Still,
the inference unquestionably is that that quantity was administered on
Monday night but did not kill, and the next day the dose was doubled! Nine
grains in all! And of these nine grains of strychnia, which unquestionably
were administered if Cook died from that poison, no trace whatever can be
discovered in the body!
I will not further dwell upon this subject, but come to your lordship’s
conduct and charge, which are the more immediate objects of this letter.
The first thing which appeared to me unfair was the order which your
lordship made that the medical witnesses for the Crown should be
accommodated with seats in the most convenient part of the Court, while
the greater number of witnesses for the defence were obliged to stand
during the greater part of the trial—no slight mode of exhausting them
mentally as well as physically. And so rigidly was this carried out that none
of the medical witnesses for the defence were admitted into Court until all
the witnesses for the prosecution had taken their seats, and fully
preoccupied all the vacant space. This may appear a slight thing, but I know
how greatly it affected some of the older medical witnesses for my brother,
and how much it weakened them for the violent attacks which the Attorney-
General made upon them. There are few men, however vigorous, who will
not be worn out by standing for eight or nine days in the crowded
atmosphere of such a Court as the Old Bailey.
The next thing which appeared to me unfair was your permitting the
Attorney-General to open to the jury all the facts connected with Bates’s
insurance, and this you did after Serjeant Shee objected. It is true that
evidence of this negotiation was afterwards excluded as being irrelevant,
but why did you not exclude the statement which you must have known
beforehand would prejudice the jury against my brother? The simple fact of
that affair was that my brother wanted to raise money for Bates, whom he
pitied; that this device was resorted to for that purpose, and I am told that
not on the turf alone, but in commercial circles, it is a common thing to
raise loans upon the deposit of insurance policies. Your lordship, however,
allowed the jury to infer that my brother and Cook wanted to insure Bates’s
life in order that they might afterwards murder him!
It is a principle of the law that nothing which is said in the absence of a
prisoner can be given in evidence against him. But you permitted a
conversation between Cook and Fisher to be proved when my brother was
not present, and when he could, consequently, have had no means of
contradicting Cook’s drunken folly about the “dosing.” In this, I am told by
a most accomplished member of the bar, you violated one of the leading
rules of evidence—one adapted for the protection of all men, as it is
obvious that if private slander be once permitted to be detailed before a
jury, the most innocent man living may be hanged on statements made
behind his back. In your charge to the jury you seemed conscious of the
impropriety you had committed, and you did not read that portion of the
evidence to them, but it had already produced a fatal influence on their
minds. Yet you would have read it, as I could plainly see, only that Judge
Cresswell interposed just as you came to it. What renders this more
indefensible is that Serjeant Shee objected to it, but you overruled his
objection. (See verbatim report of trial, p. 26.) And the Attorney-General
himself refrained from stating it in his opening address, because he said it
was not evidence (report, p. 9). Upon its manifest falsehood I need not say a
word. It is incredible that Cook should say to Fisher my brother poisoned
him, and yet afterwards go to Rugeley with him, dine with him, send for
him every hour in the day, entrust him with all his moneys, make no
mention of “dosing” to his oldest friend, Dr. Jones, and retain his
affectionate faith in William to the last. Yet, not one word of these obvious
reflections did you put before the jury to weaken the force of the illegal
evidence you allowed to go before them. You only said that it was
“mysterious,” whereas, in truth, it was incredible; and you added that
“Cook was under the influence of Palmer to a very great degree,” as if he
would have continued so after an attempt to kill him. It was very soon
apparent that your lordship was resolved not only to admit illegal evidence,
but also to allow the prosecuting counsel great liberties in their mode of
examination. Serjeant Shee repeatedly called your attention to Mr. James
putting “leading questions” to the witnesses, but you overruled him, until he
told Mr. Smith that it was quite useless to object any further. I am told that
every member of the bar in Court was of opinion that the questions were
irregular in the leading shape in which they were put.
In his opening speech the Attorney-General made the following
statement to the jury:—“The next morning, at an early hour, Palmer was
with him, and from that time, during the whole of Saturday and Sunday, he
was constantly in attendance on him. He ordered him some coffee. Coffee
was brought up by the chambermaid, Elizabeth Mills. It was taken into the
room, given to the prisoner, and she left. Palmer, having received the coffee,
gave it to the man, who was in bed, and had, therefore, an opportunity of
dealing with it” (report, p. 12). Elizabeth Mills was called to prove this
statement. So far from proving that it was given to Palmer, she distinctly
swore that she “placed it in Cook’s hands,” so that Palmer had no
opportunity of tampering with it (report, p. 33). Yet your lordship, whose
duty it was to see that none of these misstatements should be unobserved
upon to the jury, did not point out this remarkable discrepancy, nor did you
think it incumbent on you to set them right upon a point of such material
import to my brother. You allowed them to believe that he had poisoned that
coffee when the evidence negatived his dealing with it at all.
In commenting upon the evidence of this woman, Elizabeth Mills, you
said that Serjeant Shee had made “a most foul charge against her and
Stevens,” representing that she had been bribed, but that you did “not see
the smallest pretence for such a suggestion.” I wonder that, after your three
score and ten years in this wicked world, you could have been so
exceedingly innocent and simple. You come from a country where the
inhabitants are keen-sighted enough, yet you thrust yourself forward as the
defender of Eliza Mills, a woman upon whose countenance her character
was written, and whose whole demeanour flashed conviction to every mind
of the sort of person she was. This woman was brought away from Rugeley
by Stevens, she was lodged by him at Dolly’s, where she saw him “always”
in the sitting-room, that gentleman having called “merely to see how I liked
London, and whether I was well in health, and all that, to see whether I
liked the place,” though she afterwards added that he called about
“sometimes one thing, sometimes another,” and “many more things which I
cannot remember. I do not keep things in my head for weeks or months
together. I do not pretend to keep in my head what the conversation was,”
yet “there were many more things talked about that I do not wish to
mention. Perhaps my thoughts were occupied about something else.” And
when the same woman is asked to give some account of herself, and her
visit to the man Dutton at Hitchingley, and asked to name “who are your
friends?” she answers, “I have some friends there.” “Who are they?” says
Serjeant Shee, to which Mills answered, “Friends are friends, I suppose,”
and then she gave an account that she slept with the mother, and was
“engaged to the son,” though what she meant by this she did not venture to
explain. Your lordship, however, “saw not the smallest pretence,” &c.
Again, when the deposition of the same woman was read, in which there
was no mention of the “twitchings and jerkings,” and all those other horrors
which she imparted into her narrative, and which she enforced by so much
pantomimic action; and when in the deposition she proved that the “broth
was very good,” while in the evidence at the trial she swore that “it
poisoned her,” you coolly told the jury that it was “an important omission;
but you will say whether that which is stated is not substantially the same as
the evidence which she gave on oath when examined before you.” Whereas
you ought to have said that they were substantially opposite, the two
statements being reconcilable by no manner of even Scotch chicanery. In
fact, the manner in which you supported this woman was exactly opposite
to that which judges usually do when persons of that description come
before them; and I have heard of judges telling juries to place no reliance on
witnesses whose conduct and demeanour were every way superior to that of
Mills. I can conceive no greater blow to public trial than the support given
by a judge to a witness like Mills, but “a fellow feeling makes us wondrous
kind,” and you adopted her with all the fervour of a champion of romance.
When it was proposed to contradict this woman by Dr. Collier, who was in
Court, Judge Alderson said, with unrestrained anger, “It is better Dr. Collier
should be absent from the Court. If he is to be examined as to facts, he
ought not to be here at all; he is here under the false pretence of being a
doctor,” forgetting that Taylor, Rees, and Monkton, who were also to be
examined as to facts on behalf of the Crown, were then present, though not,
of course, “under the false pretence of being doctors!” The jury very soon
saw what the judges thought of the case. Mr. Gardner, the lawyer of
Rugeley, was then called to prove that the coroner had not asked several
questions of Mills, and that the jurymen had expostulated with him for not
doing so. This illegal course you permitted, assigning the following strange
reason for it:—“What was said there is part of the transaction of taking the
evidence. It cannot be evidence against the prisoner, but it may explain the
manner in which the depositions are taken.” It requires no lawyer to tell me
that “if it cannot be evidence against the prisoner, then it has no right to go
upon your notes, or to be stated in the presence of the jury at all, whom it
cannot fail to affect, although they are sworn to decide according to the
evidence.” Yet all this you permitted, allowing the Attorney-General to
damage the character of the coroner in every way he could; and there is no
knowing what you could not have got Gardner to say had not Judge
Cresswell interposed and terminated the scene. He said “the depositions
which had been put in did not show that any questions had been put by the
jurymen. If they had contained such questions they would have shown the
motive of the jury in putting them. But the Court was left totally in the dark
as to whether questions had been put by the coroner or any other person.
For anything that appeared to the contrary, the witnesses might have made a
voluntary statement without any questions at all being put to them. No
foundation was, therefore, laid for the Attorney-General’s inquiries.” Every
one in Court saw how chagrined you were at this interposition of Judge
Cresswell, but you were obliged to submit, as Alderson concurred with him.
One word with reference to Ward, the coroner. He is a very able lawyer. The
jury wanted to put questions as to various rumours about my brother
William poisoning Lord George Bentinck, Bladen the brewer, and twenty
other people; and as the coroner overruled all such folly, the sapient
jurymen did expostulate with him, and this was Gardner’s mare’s nest!
The next witness examined was Mrs. Brooks, and though she gave
evidence of the most valuable kind to the prisoner, yet not one syllable of it
did you comment upon to the jury. The main evidence against my brother,
connected with Shrewsbury, related to the sickness with which Cook was
seized. If, therefore, other persons in various parts of the town were
similarly affected, it could not fail to benefit William, for he could not be
said to have poisoned or “dosed” all the others, especially as he was not at
Shrewsbury at all when they were sick, but was at home at Rugeley.
Serjeant Shee asked Mrs. Brooks (report, p. 54), “Do you know whether
other racing men were taken ill on the Wednesday at Shrewsbury?—There
were a great number; one of my company was dreadfully ill, and there was
a wonder what could cause it. We made an observation. We thought the
water might have been poisoned at Shrewsbury. We were all afflicted in
some way by sickness—sick and purged.” After twelve days the jury can be
scarcely expected to have remembered this most important admission. It
was your incumbent duty to have recalled their attention to it, for it was
strongly in my brother’s favour; but, if they recollected it at all, you took
care that they should pay no attention to it, for, after reading to them all that
she said in her direct examination, you remarked, “This ends the affair
about Mr. Cook’s illness at Shrewsbury, and, taken by itself, it really
amounts to very little, but, you observe, it is connected with what follows
when he returned to Rugeley” (report, p. 311). You then passed on, not
saying a word about the incident just mentioned, and, associating in the
minds of the jury with subsequent transactions at Rugeley that part of Mrs.
Brooks’ evidence which was brought forward for the prosecution, you kept
back the most valuable portion of her testimony to my brother, and entirely
ignored its existence in the case.
Dr. Jones, of Lutterworth, the friend of Cook, to whom my brother
writes, gave evidence of the most valuable kind, showing Cook’s broken
constitution, his sores, his syphilis, his secondary symptoms, his unbounded
confidence in William, and William’s brotherly kindness to him, yet not one
word of comment did you offer to the jury upon these matters. The only
remark you made was one highly damaging to my brother, and was as
follows:—“At first sight it would appear very much to be in his favour that
he sends for a medical man, who is a friend of Cook’s, and who took a
lively interest in him, and wished him well. But, at the same time, there are
circumstances in this case that may enable you to draw a different
conclusion, but I will not suggest” (report, p. 312). No, you did not suggest
in words, but, pausing here, you looked at the jury and shook your head at
them for half a minute in the most mysterious manner, so that they must
have been the dullest of all mankind if they had not perfectly well known
what you meant. I have heard more than one person remark upon the Scotch
subtlety of this mode of proceeding. Your lordship is a sort of biographer of
the Chief Justices of England, though I am told that the unfortunate Dr.
Giles, whom you had the pleasure of sentencing at Oxford to twelve
months’ imprisonment, is the real author of that production; and I suppose
you hope to figure one day in the literary gallery with those whom you have
commemorated. It would be impossible, perhaps, for a future historian who
merely read your proceedings in my brother’s trial, to form an accurate
notion of your demeanour; but, with the light which this letter will throw
upon the transaction, such an annalist—if ever you should be thought
worthy of notice—will be able to inform future times how you managed to
convince a jury without leaving any trace behind of the means by which
you did it.
The next witness of any consequence was Newton; and here I should
have thought your lordship’s feelings as a man, if they had not entirely
perished, would have exhibited some trace of natural passion. Newton,
according to his own account, was an accessory to the murder, and the
murderer after the fact; he knew the current gossip of Rugeley and Stafford,
that Cook had been poisoned by my brother; he assisted at the post-mortem
examinations for the purpose of detecting the poison which the murderer
had used; he had an interview on the Sunday after Cook’s death with
William, in which this skilful poisoner (whose chemical knowledge of the
minimum dose of strychnia which destroys life, and of the hitherto
unknown fact that antimony neutralises the discovery of strychnia, places
him a hundred years in advance of all the chemists of the age), asks the
ignorant shopboy of the nature and the effects of strychnia! And when the
learned Newton gives him information on the matter, the poisoner snaps his
fingers in joy and exclaims, “That will do”; and after that he goes with him
to the post-mortem examination; and after that Newton swears against him
at the inquest; and after that he keeps the deadly secret buried in his bosom
from November until the middle of the month of May, just one day before
the trial! And after the trial he communicates the further fact to the
Attorney-General that it was he who made up the deadly pills for my
brother on the Monday night. With reference to the credibility of this
monstrous witness you have not one word to say, though you did not
hesitate to stigmatise Mr. Nunneley and Dr. M‘Donald as persons on whom
the jury could place no reliance; and in the course of their cross-
examination you looked at them in a manner significant of total incredulity
of their testimony. Observe the mode in which you support Newton. You
say, “There is no contradiction of anything that he has said.” Why did you
not tell the jury that, as he fixed no time or place when any one but the
prisoner himself, whose mouth was sealed, was by, it was impossible he
could be contradicted? You go on (report, p. 313)—“Well, then, you are to
consider what is the probability of his inventing this wicked and most
abominable lie? He had no ill-will towards the prisoner at the bar.” (Who
told you that? Who proved it? What right had you to assume it? What right
had you to tell it to the jury?) “He had nothing to gain by injuring him much
less by saying anything to affect his life.” (I ask again who told you all this,
and on what pretence did you venture to say so to the jury?) “I see no
motive that Mr. Newton could have for inventing a lie to take away the life
of another person.” (Are you omniscient, then, and do you profess to read
that inscrutable mystery, the human heart, and have you not read in the
annals of crime of innumerable murders and perjuries committed without
apparent motive?) “No inducement could be held out to him by the Crown;
he says himself that no inducement was held out to him, and that he at last
disclosed it from a sense of justice.” (As if a man who screened a murderer
for six months could have any sense of justice.) “If you believe him,
certainly the evidence is very strong against the prisoner at the bar.” Not a
word of caution is here given; not one Scotch hint of doubt in this witness.
Your “canny” countrymen are not always so credulous; they are not at all
times so easy of belief in persons of this description. Yet your milk of
human kindness is so pure that you cannot for your life imagine the least
reason why Newton should not be believed.
But it was on the evidence of Roberts that your lordship used
observations which had the most powerful effect on the jury, and since then
upon the public mind. I have already explained how it was that the prisoner,
even if he were a guilty man, might have denied the purchase of the
strychnia from Roberts, as he always denied its purchase from Newton, was
deprived by artifice of the witness Cockayne, who could have thrown a new
light upon this affair, and I have shown how Bates prevaricated with
reference to the dogs and the brood mares. My brother being in this way at
the mercy of Bates, and juggled out of Cockayne, in what possible way
could he account for the disposal of the strychnia? Yet you, who knew all
this a thousand times better than the jury, told them that “a very serious case
is adduced, supposing you should come to the conclusion that the
symptoms of Mr. Cook were consistent with that of poison. If you think the
symptoms are accounted for by merely ordinary tetanus, of course the fact
of strychnia being obtained by the prisoner at the bar is of very little weight;
but, if you should come to the conclusion that the symptoms which Mr.
Cook exhibited on the Monday night and Tuesday night are consistent with