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Advanced Guide to Python 3 Programming, 2nd John Hunt download

The document is an overview of the 'Advanced Guide to Python 3 Programming, 2nd Edition' by John Hunt, which is part of the Undergraduate Topics in Computer Science series. This edition includes significant updates and expansions from the first edition, covering advanced language features, Reactive Programming, and more, with a total of 18 new chapters. It is designed for undergraduate students and includes exercises, examples, and a GitHub repository for code access.

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100% found this document useful (1 vote)
9 views

Advanced Guide to Python 3 Programming, 2nd John Hunt download

The document is an overview of the 'Advanced Guide to Python 3 Programming, 2nd Edition' by John Hunt, which is part of the Undergraduate Topics in Computer Science series. This edition includes significant updates and expansions from the first edition, covering advanced language features, Reactive Programming, and more, with a total of 18 new chapters. It is designed for undergraduate students and includes exercises, examples, and a GitHub repository for code access.

Uploaded by

embelhaboon
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
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Undergraduate Topics in Computer Science

John Hunt

Advanced Guide
to Python 3
Programming
Second Edition
Undergraduate Topics in Computer Science

Series Editor
Ian Mackie, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

Advisory Editors
Samson Abramsky , Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford,
Oxford, UK
Chris Hankin , Department of Computing, Imperial College London, London,
UK
Mike Hinchey , Lero – The Irish Software Research Centre, University of
Limerick, Limerick, Ireland
Dexter C. Kozen, Department of Computer Science, Cornell University, Ithaca,
NY, USA
Andrew Pitts , Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of
Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
Hanne Riis Nielson , Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer
Science, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark
Steven S. Skiena, Department of Computer Science, Stony Brook University,
Stony Brook, NY, USA
Iain Stewart , Department of Computer Science, Durham University, Durham,
UK
Joseph Migga Kizza, College of Engineering and Computer Science, The
University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, Chattanooga, TN, USA
‘Undergraduate Topics in Computer Science’ (UTiCS) delivers high-quality instruc-
tional content for undergraduates studying in all areas of computing and information
science. From core foundational and theoretical material to final-year topics and
applications, UTiCS books take a fresh, concise, and modern approach and are ideal
for self-study or for a one- or two-semester course. The texts are all authored by
established experts in their fields, reviewed by an international advisory board, and
contain numerous examples and problems, many of which include fully worked
solutions.
The UTiCS concept relies on high-quality, concise books in softback format, and
generally a maximum of 275–300 pages. For undergraduate textbooks that are likely
to be longer, more expository, Springer continues to offer the highly regarded Texts
in Computer Science series, to which we refer potential authors.
John Hunt

Advanced Guide to Python 3


Programming
Second Edition
John Hunt
Midmarsh Technology Ltd.
Chippenham, Wiltshire, UK

ISSN 1863-7310 ISSN 2197-1781 (electronic)


Undergraduate Topics in Computer Science
ISBN 978-3-031-40335-4 ISBN 978-3-031-40336-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40336-1

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019, 2023

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of
the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation,
broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information
storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
For Denise, my wife, my soulmate, my best
friend.
Preface to the Second Edition

This second edition represents a significant expansion of the material in the first
edition, as well as an update of that book from Python 3.7 to 3.12.
This book includes whole new sections on advanced language features, Reactive
Programming in Python and data analysts. New chapters on working with Tkinter,
on event handling with Tkinter and a simple drawing application using Tkinter have
been added. A new chapter on performance monitoring and profiling has also been
added. A chapter on pip and conda is included at the end of the book.
In all there are 18 completely new chapters that take you far further on your Python
journey. Enjoy the book and I hope you find it useful.

Chippenham, UK John Hunt

vii
Preface to the First Edition

Some of the key aspects of this book are


1. It assumes knowledge of Python 3 and of concepts such as functions, classes,
protocols, abstract base classes, decorators, iterables and collection types (such
as list and tuple).
2. However, the book assumes very little knowledge or experience of the topics
presented.
3. The book is divided into eleven topic areas: advanced language features,
Computer Graphics, games, testing, file input/output, database access, logging,
concurrency and parallelism, Reactive Programming, network programming and
data analytics.
4. Each topic in the book has an introductory chapter followed by chapters that
delve into that topic.
5. The book includes exercises at the end of most chapters.
6. All code examples (and exercise solutions) are provided on line in a GitHub
repository.

What You Need

You can of course just read this book; however following the examples in this book
will ensure that you get as much as possible out of the content. For this you will need
a computer.
Python is a cross-platform programming language, and as such you can use Python
on a Windows PC, a Linux box, an Apple Mac, etc. So you are not tied to a particular
type of operating system; you can use whatever you have available.
However you will need to install some software on that computer. At a minimum
you will need Python. The focus of this book is Python 3 so that is the version that
is assumed for all examples and exercises. As Python is available for a wide range

ix
x Preface to the First Edition

of platforms from Windows, to Mac OS and Linux, you will need to ensure that you
download the version for your operating system.
Python can be downloaded from the main Python website which can be found at
http://www.python.org/.

You will also need some form of editor to write your programs. There are numerous
generic programming editors available for different operating systems with VIM on
Linux, Notepad++ on Windows and Sublime Text on windows and Macs being
popular choices.
However, using an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) editor such as
PyCharm, Visual Studio Code or Spyder can make writing and running your programs
much easier.
However, this book does not assume any particular editor, IDE or environment
(other than Python 3 itself).

Conventions

Throughout this book you will find a number of conventions used for text styles.
These text styles distinguish between different kinds of information. Code words,
variable and Python values, used within the main body of the text, are shown using
a Courier font. A block of Python code is set out as shown here:
Preface to the First Edition xi

def draw_koch(size, depth):


if depth > 0:
for angle in ANGLES:
draw_koch(size / 3, depth - 1)
turtle.left(angle)
else:
turtle.forward(size)
# Draw three sides of snowflake
for_in range(3):
draw_koch(SIZE_OF_SNOWFLAKE, depth)
turtle.right(120)

Note that keywords and points of interest are shown in bold font.
Any command line or user input is shown in standard font as shown below, for
example:
Hello, world
Enter your name: John
Hello John

Example Code and Sample Solutions

The examples used in this book (along with sample solutions for the exercises at the
end of most chapters) are available in a GitHub repository. GitHub provides a web
interface to Git, as well as a server environment hosting Git.
Git is a version control system typically used to manage source code files (such
as those used to create systems in programming languages such as Python but also
Java, C#, C++ and Scala). Systems such as Git are very useful for collaborative
development as they allow multiple people to work on an implementation and to
merge their work together. They also provide a useful historical view of the code
(which also allows developers to roll back changes if modifications prove to be
unsuitable).
The GitHub repository for this book can be found at:
• https://github.com/johnehunt/advancedpython3_2nd
If you already have Git installed on your computer, then you can clone (obtain a
copy of) the repository locally using:
git clone https://github.com/johnehunt/advancedpyth
on3_2nd.git
If you do not have Git, then you can obtain a zip file of the examples using
https://github.com/johnehunt/advancedpython3_2nd/arc
hive/refs/heads/main.zip
xii Preface to the First Edition

You can of course install Git yourself if you wish. To do this, see https://git-scm.
com/downloads. Versions of the Git client for Mac OS, Windows and Linux/Unix
are available here.
However, many IDEs such as PyCharm come with Git support and so offer another
approach to obtaining a Git repository.
For more information on Git see http://git-scm.com/doc. This Git guide
provides a very good primer and is highly recommended.

Acknowledgement I would like to thank Phoebe Hunt for creating the pixel images used for the
Starship Meteors game in Chap. 22.
Contents

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Useful Python Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Part I Advanced Language Features


2 Python Type Hints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.2 Pythons Type System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.3 The Challenge for Python Developers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.4 Static Typing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.5 Python Type Hints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.6 Type Hint Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.7 Type Hints for Multiple Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.8 The Self Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.9 The Benefits of Type Hints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.10 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.11 Online Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3 Class Slots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.2 The Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.3 Slots to the Rescue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.4 Performance Benefits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3.5 Why Not Use Slots? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
3.6 Online Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
4 Weak References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4.2 How Garbage Collection Works: Reference Counting . . . . . . . . 23
4.3 Weak References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
4.4 When to Use Weak References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

xiii
xiv Contents

4.5 The Weakref Module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26


4.6 Creating Weak References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
4.7 Retrieving Objects from Weak References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
4.8 The WeakValueDicitonary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
4.9 WeakKeyDictionary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
4.10 Proxy Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
4.11 Online Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
5 Data Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
5.2 A Traditional Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
5.3 Defining Data Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
5.4 Defining Additional Behaviour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
5.5 The Dataclass Decorator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
5.6 Custom Factory for Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
5.7 Immutable Dataclasses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
5.8 Data Classes and Inheritance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
5.9 Post Initialisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
5.10 Initialisation Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
5.11 Positional Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
5.12 Exercise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
6 Structural Pattern Matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
6.2 The Match Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
6.3 Matching Classes with Positional Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
6.4 Matching Against Standard Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
6.5 Online Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
7 Working with pprint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
7.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
7.2 The pprint Data Printer Module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
7.3 Basic pprint Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
7.4 Changing the Width . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
7.5 Changing the Depth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
7.6 Managing the Indentation Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
7.7 Reducing Line Breaks Using Compact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
7.8 The pformat Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
7.9 The saferepr() Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
7.10 Using the PrettyPrinter Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
7.11 Online Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
8 Shallow v Deep Copy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
8.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
8.2 Copying a List of Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
8.3 The Problem with Copying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Contents xv

8.4 The Copy Module to the Rescue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68


8.5 Using the deepcopy() Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
8.6 Online Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
9 The __init__ Versus __new__ and __call . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
9.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
9.2 The __new__ and __init__ Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
9.3 The __new__ Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
9.4 When to Use the __new__ Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
9.5 Using __new__ to Create a Singleton Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
9.6 The __init__ Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
9.7 Can __new__ and __init__ Be Used Together? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
9.8 The __call__ Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
9.9 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
10 Python Metaclasses and Meta Programming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
10.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
10.2 Metaprogramming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
10.3 Decorators as a Form of Metaprogramming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
10.4 Metaclasses for Metaprogramming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
10.4.1 Singleton Metaclass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
10.5 Exec and Eval for Metaprogramming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
10.5.1 The exec() Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
10.5.2 The eval() Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
10.5.3 eval Versus exec() . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

Part II Computer Graphics and GUIs


11 Introduction to Computer Graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
11.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
11.2 Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
11.3 The Graphical Computer Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
11.4 Interactive and Non Interactive Graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
11.5 Pixels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
11.6 Bit Map Versus Vector Graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
11.7 Buffering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
11.8 Python and Computer Graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
11.9 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
11.10 Online Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
12 Python Turtle Graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
12.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
12.2 The Turtle Graphics Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
12.2.1 The Turtle Module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
12.2.2 Basic Turtle Graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
12.2.3 Drawing Shapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
12.2.4 Filling Shapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
xvi Contents

12.3 Other Graphics Libraries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105


12.4 3D Graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
12.4.1 PyOpenGL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
12.5 Online Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
12.6 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
13 Computer Generated Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
13.1 Creating Computer Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
13.2 A Computer Art Generator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
13.3 Fractals in Python . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
13.4 The Koch Snowflake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
13.5 Mandelbrot Set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
13.6 Online Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
13.7 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
14 Introduction to Matplotlib . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
14.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
14.2 Matplotlib . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
14.3 Plot Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
14.4 Matplotlib Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
14.4.1 Backend Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
14.4.2 The Artist Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
14.4.3 The Scripting Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
14.5 Online Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
15 Graphing with Matplotlib Pyplot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
15.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
15.2 The pyplot API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
15.3 Line Graphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
15.3.1 Coded Format Strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
15.4 Scatter Graph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
15.4.1 When to Use Scatter Graphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
15.5 Pie Charts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
15.5.1 Expanding Segments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
15.5.2 When to Use Pie Charts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
15.6 Bar Charts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
15.6.1 Horizontal Bar Charts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
15.6.2 Coloured Bars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
15.6.3 Stacked Bar Charts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
15.6.4 Grouped Bar Charts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
15.7 Figures and Subplots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
15.8 3D Graphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
15.9 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
You stated that care was taken in administering strychnia to
animals to administer it to them fasting. Do you think it not likely R.
it would supervene more quickly if administered to an empty Christis on
stomach?—Certainly.
If resinous substances were used in a pill, would they not be found in the
stomach on analysis afterwards?—No; if they were not acted upon they
might pass into the intestines and be carried off.
Then the strychnia would be discharged with them, would it not?—
Certainly, or gradually acted upon with the resinous substances.
I suppose if the resinous substances prevented the poison acting rapidly,
it would prevent its absorption into the blood?—For a time.
If so, the more likely to leave portions of it in the stomach or intestines
as the case may be?—The more likely.
Re-examined by the Attorney-General—Would that materially depend
on the quantity of the dose?—Both on the dose and on the time during
which the pill was allowed to remain. It appears that colour tests are not to
be relied upon in the case of strychnia in an impure condition. In the first
place, you may not find indications of strychnia, and secondly, they are
subject to fallacy, even if the strychnia is pure, from other substances not
containing strychnia presenting similar appearances.
The Court then adjourned.

Sixth Day, Tuesday, 20th May, 1856.

The Court met at ten o’clock.

Dr. John Jackson, examined by Mr. James—I am a member


of the College of Physicians. I have been in practice for twenty- John
Jackson
five years in India, and have seen cases of idiopathic and
traumatic tetanus. Idiopathic is more common in India than in this country. I
have seen not less than forty cases. It is common with children. In children
there is a more marked symptom of lockjaw, but in adults there is no
difference between the symptoms of idiopathic and traumatic. I have always
seen idiopathic tetanus preceded by a peculiar expression of the
countenance, stiffness in the muscles of the throat and of the jaw. In infants
it will kill in forty-eight hours; in adults, arising from cold, it is of longer
duration, and may continue many days, going through the same grades as
the traumatic form.
Cross-examined by Mr. Serjeant Shee—The patient always appears
uncomfortable for some time before the attack comes on. His appetite and
desire for food are not much affected. He may take his food as usual within
twelve hours of the preliminary symptoms.
During the twelve hours, supposing the attack to be the first one under
which he suffers, does he seem not to relish his ordinary food?—His
attention is more directed to the stiffness of his mouth and the stiffness of
his neck.
You said to within twelve hours of the attack he relishes his food as if no
attack was impending, but does he not appear less desirous of food and less
inclined to eat it?—I have never heard that complaint.
Re-examined by the Attorney-General—What interval has occurred in
those cases that have come under your attention between the preliminary
symptoms and the tetanic convulsions?—In an infant, not more than twelve
hours, and in an adult, from twelve to twenty-four hours; sometimes more
than that.
And from the commencement of the tetanic convulsions to death, what
time?—That will vary; three days to ten days; it may take place early
sometimes, perhaps in two days, but that is early.
Does that apply to traumatic as well as to idiopathic tetanus?—They are
both alike, when the disease sets in, as regards the course of the symptoms.
Are the symptoms more or less severe in India than in this climate?—I
do not see there is any difference; when once set up, the symptoms of
tetanus are the same.
In all your experience, did you ever know a case in which the
disease ran its course and ended in death in the space of twenty John
Jackson
minutes or half an hour?—I have never seen it.

[The rest of this day, after Dr. Jackson’s evidence, was occupied with
taking evidence that there was nothing in Palmer’s papers to show joint
transactions between him and Cook; as to Pratt’s and Padwick’s accounts;
as to Palmer’s pecuniary position generally; as to the forgery of his
mother’s name, and the forgery of an endorsement on a cheque for £375 of
Cook’s name, by which he passed into his own account that sum which was
intended for Cook.]
The Court then adjourned.

Mr. Serjeant Shee.

Seventh Day, Wednesday, 21st May, 1856.

The Court met at ten o’clock.

Speech for the Defence.


Mr. Serjeant Shee—May it please your lordships, gentlemen
of the jury—I should pity the man who could rise to perform the Serjean
t Shee
task which it is now my duty to attempt unoppressed by an
overwhelming sense of diffidence and of apprehension. Once only before
has it fallen to my lot to defend a fellow-creature upon trial for his life; it is
a position, even if the effort should last but for a day, of a nature to disturb
the coolest temperament and try the strongest nerves; how much more so
when, during six long days, in the eye of my unhappy client, I have been
standing between him and the scaffold; conscious that the least error of
judgment on my part might consign him to a murderer’s doom, and that
through the whole time I have had to breast a storm of public prejudice such
as has never before imperilled the calm administration of justice!
Gentlemen, it is useless for me to conceal what you know perfectly well,
what your utmost endeavours cannot wholly have effaced from your
recollection, that for six long months, under the sanction and upon the
authority of science, an opinion has universally prevailed that the voice of
the blood of John Parsons Cook was crying up unto us from the ground, and
that that cry was met by the whole population under an impression and
conviction of the prisoner’s guilt in a delirium of horror and indignation by
another cry of “blood for blood”! You cannot have failed to have entered
upon the discharge of the duties, which you have, as I have observed, most
conscientiously endeavoured to perform, without having been to a great
extent influenced by that cry; you could not know that it would be your
duty to sit in that box to pass between the Crown and the prisoner; you may
with perfect propriety, understanding that the facts had been ascertained
before a coroner’s jury, and reading such evidence as was there taken, have
formed an opinion upon the question of the guilt or innocence of the
prisoner; but you cannot but know that whatever that opinion may have
been it is your duty to discard it, at least until you have heard the evidence
on both sides.
Gentlemen, the very circumstances under which we meet in
this case are of a character to excite mingled feelings of Serjean
encouragement and alarm. Those whose duty it is to watch over t Shee
the safety of the Queen’s subjects felt so much apprehension lest the course
of justice should be disturbed by the popular prejudice which had been
excited against the prisoner, so much alarmed that an unjust verdict might in
the midst of that popular prejudice pass against him, that a resolution was
taken, not only by the Queen’s Government and the Legislature, upon the
motion of the noble and learned judge, who presides here, in the House of
Lords, that an Act of Parliament should be passed to prevent the possibility
of the ordinary forms of law being, in the case of William Palmer, made the
instrument of popular vengeance. The Crown, under the advice of its
responsible Ministers, resolved also that this prosecution should not be left
in private hands, but that its own law officer, my learned friend the
Attorney-General, should take upon himself the responsibility of
conducting it properly, at once sternly in his duty to the public and fairly to
the prisoner at the bar; and my learned friend, when that duty was entrusted
to him, did what I must say will, in my opinion, for ever redound to his
honour—he insisted that in a case in which so much prejudice had been
excited all the evidence which it was intended on the part of the Crown to
press against the prisoner should, as soon as he received it, be
communicated to the prisoner’s counsel; everything, I must say and tell my
unhappy client, everything which the constituted authorities of this land,
everything which the Legislature and the law officers of the Crown could
do to secure a fair and impartial trial in this case, has been done, and the
whole responsibility, if unhappily injustice should on either side be done,
now weighs with terrible pressure upon my lord and upon you.
Gentlemen, one great misfortune has befallen the accused—a
most able man who had been selected by him as his counsel many Serjean
weeks ago has been, unfortunately, by illness prevented from t Shee
discharging that duty to him. I have endeavoured, to the utmost of my
ability, to supply his place; I cannot deny that I am awed—that I am moved
—by the task I have undertaken; but the circumstances to which I have
already adverted, the national effort, so to speak, through the Government
of the country, to ensure a fair trial is a great cause of encouragement, and I
am not dismayed. I have this further cause for not being altogether
overcome by the duty which I have of defending the prisoner and of
discussing the mass of evidence which has been laid before you, that
though, of course, like everybody else, I knew generally and loosely, very
loosely indeed, the history of these transactions at Rugeley, I had formed,
when the papers came into my hands, no opinion upon them, no opinion
upon the guilt or the innocence of the prisoner at the bar, and my mind was
perfectly free to form what I trust will be declared by you a right judgment
in this case. I commence his defence, I say it in all sincerity, with an entire
conviction of his innocence. I believe that there never was a truer word
pronounced than the words which he pronounced when he said “Not guilty”
to this charge. If I fail in establishing that to your satisfaction I shall be
under a great misgiving that my failure was more attributable to my own
ability to do justice to this case than to any weakness in the case itself; and I
will give you this proof of the sincerity with which I declare upon this
evidence my conviction of his innocence, that I will meet the case of the
prosecution foot to foot at every stage. I will grapple with every difficulty
which has been suggested by my able friend the Attorney-General. You
shall see that I avoid no point because I fail to approach it, and if you find
that I do thus deal fairly with you from the beginning, and it is my duty to
do so, I hope I may be sure, indeed I know I may be sure, of a willing and
considerate attention to an address which must, I fear, be long, but in which
there shall be no observations, no tone, and no topic of discussion which do
not properly belong to the case.
Gentlemen, the case which the Crown undertakes to establish against the
prisoner at the bar, and to support by entirely circumstantial evidence, is, or
may be, shortly stated thus. They say that the prisoner having in the second
week in November made up his mind that it was his interest to get rid of
John Parsons Cook, deliberately prepared his body for deadly poison by the
slower poison of antimony, and afterwards despatched him by the deadly
poison of strychnia. No jury will convict a man of the crime thus imputed to
the prisoner, unless in the first place it be made clear that he had some
motive for its commission, some strong reason for desiring the death of
Cook; unless, in the second place, the symptoms of the deceased before
death, and the appearance presented by his body after death, were consistent
with the theory of death by strychnia poison, and inconsistent with the
theory of death from other and natural causes; unless, thirdly, the
circumstantial evidence against him is such as to be inexplicable upon the
supposition of his innocence. Now, it is under these three heads that I intend
to discuss the evidence that you have heard; and it must be plain to you that
if I adhere to that order and method of treating the vast amount of proof
which has been laid before you, I must exhaust the whole argument, and
leave myself no chance without immediate detection of evading any
difficulty in the defence.
Before, however, I proceed to grapple in these close quarters
with the case of the Crown, as made by the Attorney-General, Serjean
allow me, that you may at once see the whole scope of the t Shee
address with which I have to trouble you, to claim its proper place in the
discussion for a fact which, though by no means concealed from you by the
Attorney-General, yet appeared to me in that address by which he at once
seized upon your judgment to have been thrown too much into the shade,
the fact that strychnia was not found in the body of John Parsons Cook. If
he died from the poison of strychnia, he died within two hours of the
administration to him of a very strong dose of it—he died within a quarter
of an hour or twenty minutes of the effects of that dose being visible in the
convulsions of his body; the post-mortem examination took place within six
days of his death—there is not the least reason to suppose that between the
time of the ingestion of the poison, if poison was taken, and the paroxysm
in which he died, there was any dilution of it in the stomach, or any ejection
of it by vomiting. Never, therefore, were circumstances more favourable;
unless the science of chemical analysis is altogether a failure for detection
of the poison of strychnia, never was there a case in which it ought to have
been so easy to produce it. Now, the fact is, and it is beyond all question,
that it was not found. Whatever we may think of Dr. Alfred Taylor, of his
judgment, and of his discretion, we have no reason to doubt that he is a
skilful analytical chemist—we have not the least reason to suppose, we
know the contrary, that he and Dr. Rees, who assisted him, did not do all
that the science of chemical analysis could enable man to do to detect the
poison of strychnia. They had distinct information from the executor and
near relative of the deceased, either personally or through his solicitor, that
he, for some cause or other, had reason to suspect the poison of strychnia;
they undertook the examination of the stomach, which, I think, upon the
whole evidence, without adverting to that part of it now in detail, you will
be satisfied was not in an unfavourable condition for a sufficiently accurate
analysis, with the expectation that if strychnia had been taken it would be
found, and without any doubt as to the efficiency of their tests to detect it;
and yet in their letter of the 4th of December they say, “We do not find
strychnia, prussic acid, or any trace of opium; from the contents of the
stomach having been drained away it is impossible to say whether any
strychnia had or had not been given just before death, but it is quite possible
for tartar emetic to destroy life, if given in repeated doses; and, as far as we
can at present form an opinion, in the absence of any natural cause of death,
the deceased may have died from the effects of antimony in this or some
other form.” Having afterwards attended the inquest, and heard the
evidence of Elizabeth Mills and Mr. Jones, of Lutterworth, and the evidence
of a person of the name of Roberts, who spoke to the purchase of strychnia
poison by Palmer on the morning of the Tuesday, Dr. Taylor came to the
conclusion that the pills which were administered to Cook on the Monday
and Tuesday night contained strychnia, and that Mr. Cook was poisoned by
it; and he came to that conclusion, though he had expressed an opinion in
writing that he might—and these are his very words—have been poisoned
by antimony, of which some trace was found by him in the body, while no
trace was found of strychnia.
Gentlemen, I am not about to discuss that part of the case in
detail, but I call your attention to it for the purpose of claiming for Serjean
it its proper place in this discussion, and that you may know at the t Shee
commencement of my address what the whole course of my argument will
be, and not be under the impression that, because I do not under the three
heads to which I have directed your attention advert particularly to that
head. I intend to pass it over. I tell you exactly what the case for the defence
will be, as to the point that strychnia was not found in Mr. Cook’s body. Let
me state it as fairly as I can—the gentlemen who have come to the
conclusion that strychnia may have been there, though they did not find it,
have arrived at that conclusion by experiments of a very partial kind indeed;
they contend that the poison of strychnia is of that nature, that when once it
has done its fatal work, and become absorbed into the system, it ceases to
be the thing which it was when it was taken into the system; it becomes
decomposed, its elements separated from each other, and therefore no
longer capable of responding to the tests which, according to them, would
certainly detect the poison of undecomposed strychnia; that is their case.
They account for the fact that it was not found, and for their still retaining
the belief that it destroyed Mr. Cook, by that hypothesis. Now, it is only a
hypothesis; there is no foundation for it in experiment; it is not supported by
the evidence of any eminent toxicologist but themselves—it is due to them
to say, and to Dr. Taylor in particular to say, because it will be quite out of
my power to speak of Dr. Christison through any part of this discussion
except with the respect and consideration which is due to a man of eminent
acquirements and of the highest character; it is due to Dr. Taylor to say that
he does propound that theory in his book, but he propounds it as a theory of
his own; he does not vouch, as I remember, any eminent toxicologist in
support of it; and when we recollect that his knowledge on the matter
consists—good, humane man!—in having poisoned five rabbits twenty-five
years ago, and five since this question of the guilt or innocence of Palmer
arose, his opinion, I think, unsupported by the opinions of others, cannot
have much weight with you; however, what I have to say now upon that
point is, that I will call before you many gentlemen of the highest eminence
in their profession, analytical chemists, to state to you their utter
renunciation of that theory. I will call before you Mr. Nunneley, a Fellow of
the Royal College of Surgeons, and Professor of Surgery at the Leeds
School of Medicine, who attended that case of strychnia poison that took
place at Leeds, and to which we have agreed that no reference shall be
made by name. I will call before you Dr. Williams, Professor of Materia
Medica at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and surgeon for
eighteen years to the City of Dublin Hospital, who will tell you that he also
entirely rejects that theory, and believes that it has no foundation in
experiment or authority. I will call before you Dr. Letheby, one of the ablest
and most distinguished among the men of science in this great city,
Professor of Chemistry and Toxicology in the Medical College of the
London Hospital, and medical officer of health of the city of London, who
also rejects that theory as a heresy unworthy of the belief of scientific men.
I will call before you Dr. Nicholas Parker, of the College of Physicians, a
physician of the London Hospital and Professor of Medicine to that
institution, who concurs with Dr. Letheby in his opinion; Dr. Robinson, also
of the Royal College of Physicians; Mr. Rogers, Professor of Chemistry to
St. George’s School; and lastly, I will call before you probably the most
eminent chemical analyst in this country, Mr. William Herapath, of Bristol,
who totally rejects the theory as utterly unworthy of credence—all of these
gentlemen contending, and ready to depose to it on their oaths, that not only
if half a grain, or the fiftieth part of a grain, but I believe they will go on to
say that if five, or ten, or twenty times less than that quantity had entered
into the human frame at all, it could be and must be detected by tests which
are unerring. They will tell you this, not as the result of a day’s cruelty for
ever regretted on five rabbits, but upon a large and tried experience upon
the inferior animals, made and created, as you know they were, for the
benefit of mankind; upon a very extensive experience in many cases, as to
many of them, of the effects of strychnia on the human system. And not to
detain you on this part of the case, to which I only now advert, not
intending to press it on you later at any length, that you may see what the
nature of the defence in point of medical testimony will be, I will satisfy
you by evidence which I think must control your judgment, that the only
safe conclusion at which you can arrive is that strychnia not having been
found in Cook’s body, under the circumstances of this case never could
have been there. You will find that they all agree in this opinion, that no
degree of putrefaction or fermentation in the human system could in their
judgment so decompose the poison of strychnia as that it should no longer
possess those qualities which in its undecomposed state cause it to respond
to the tests which are used for its detection.
Having said so much I will now apply myself to what, in my
judgment, is an equally important, if not more important, question Serjean
in this case, one which I approach with no diffidence whatever t Shee
except the distrust which I have, under the circumstances in which I speak,
of myself, and which, if it were possible for me to write what I think upon it
and then to read it to you, I do not entertain the smallest doubt that you
must be convinced of the innocence of this man—the question whether, in
the second week of November, 1855, he had a motive for the commission of
this murder, some strong reason for desiring that Cook should die. I never
will believe that, unless it be made clear to you that it was the interest of
William Palmer, or that he thought it was his interest, to destroy Cook—I
never will believe, till I hear your verdict pronounced, that a jury can come
to the conclusion of his guilt. And it seems to me, upon the evidence which
has been laid before you, abundantly clear that it not only was not the
interest of William Palmer that Cook should die, but that his death was the
very worst calamity that could befall him, and that he could not possibly be
ignorant that it must be immediately followed by his own ruin. That it was
followed by his immediate ruin we know. We know that at the time when he
is said to have commenced to plot the death of Cook he was in a condition
of the greatest embarrassment. It was an embarrassment which, in its
extreme intensity, had come but recently upon him, an embarrassment, too,
in some degree mitigated by the circumstance that the person upon whom
these bills, which have been stated to you to be forgeries, purported to be
drawn was his own mother, a lady of a very large fortune, and with whom
he was on the most affectionate terms. Still, he was in a condition
unquestionably of great embarrassment. My learned friend has raised the
hypothesis of his having a wish to destroy Cook upon the ground of this
embarrassment. My learned friend stated to you that the case of the Crown
against the prisoner was this, that, “being in desperate circumstances, with
ruin, disgrace, and punishment staring him in the face, he took advantage of
his intimacy with Cook, when Cook had been the winner of a considerable
sum of money, to destroy him and get possession of his money.” That is the
theory of the Crown. Now, let us test it as a matter of business, relieving, if
possible, our minds from the anxiety we must all feel when the fate of a
fellow-creature is at stake, as if it was a case in a private room for the
decision of an arbitrator. It is my misfortune not to be able at times to speak
otherwise than earnestly, but let us look at it as a matter of business and
scrutinise it in every corner. Was it his interest that in the second week in
November, 1855, Mr. Cook should be killed by a railway accident? If it was
not, we have no motive to ascribe to it. If it was not, and more, if the
contrary was clearly his interest, no sensible man would believe that he
deliberately plotted and committed the murder. A long correspondence has
been put in, the material parts of which letters will, in a subsequent stage of
the case, be called to your attention. There is evidently a great deal in it that
does not touch the point in the case, but the learned judge, before the end of
the case, will direct your mind to a correct appreciation of the contents. I
watched them with an anxiety which no words can express. Having had the
advantage, for which I shall ever honour my learned friend, of reading the
correspondence beforehand, I found the history, as told by the
correspondence, filled up by the vivâ voce testimony which was afterwards
given. I was aware, at least I firmly believed, that in that correspondence
the innocence of the prisoner lay concealed; and I think that I shall be able
to show you that it is demonstrative of this proposition that he not only had
no motive to kill Cook, but that the death of Cook was the very worst kind
of thing that could happen for him. I shall not apologise to you, you would
think it very inopportune to do so, for going into the details of this matter.
Allow me, confining myself, as it is my duty, to the evidence in the cause,
to call your attention to the position in which these two men stood to each
other. They had been intimate as racing friends for two or three years; they
had had a great many transactions together; they were jointly interested in
at least one racehorse which was training at the stables of Saunders at
Hednesford; they generally stayed together at the same hotel; they were
seen together on almost all the racecourses in the kingdom, and were known
to be connected in betting transactions, and adventurers upon the same
horses at the same races. It is in evidence that just before Cook’s death he
said, in the presence of his friend Jones, addressing Palmer, “Palmer, we
have lost a great deal of money upon races this year.” And though it is
impossible, Cook being dead, and the mouth of the prisoner sealed, and
transactions of this character not being recorded in regular books as the
transactions in a merchant’s counting-house are, to give you in the fulness
of evidence the actual state of their relations to each other, yet it is
abundantly clear, and I will make it more clear to you presently, that they
were very closely connected. When, in the month of May, 1855, money was
wanted either by Mr. Cook or Palmer, Palmer applied to Pratt for it. He
wanted, I think, £200 to make up a sum for the payment of a debt, he
having, I think, a balance of £190 in the hands of Pratt. Mr. Pratt would not
lend it him without security, and he proposed the security of his friend John
Parsons Cook, a gentleman of respectability and a man of substance.
Now, what the exact state of the affairs of John Parsons Cook
at that time was I do not know. Such a fortune as he had might be Serjean
t Shee
thrown down in a week by the course of life that he was leading.
A young man who is reckless as to the mode in which he employs his
fortune, and who has only £13,000, may, if he likes, for a year or two pass
before the world as a man of much more considerable means; it is not
everybody who will go to Doctors’ Commons to ascertain what the exact
amount of property he derived from his grandfather was. He was Mr. Cook,
of Lutterworth, a gentleman who had a stud of racehorses, who lived
expensively, and was known to have inherited a fortune; he was a person
whose friendship was at that time probably, and probably continued to be, a
matter of considerable convenience to Palmer. You recollect, gentlemen, I
am not defending Palmer against the crime of forgery. I am not defending
him against the reckless improvidence of obtaining money at the enormous
discounts at which he obtained it. The question is, whether he is guilty of
murder. Palmer and Cook were then so circumstanced as early as the month
of May, 1855. They had had another transaction previously to the date of
November, 1855, which I will not advert to now, because it was taken
second in the case of my learned friend the Attorney-General; but let us see
what their position was in the second week of November, 1855. Respecting
that, we have the evidence of Pratt, and from the correspondence which he
explained to us there can be no doubt upon our minds. Amongst a mass of
bills, amounting altogether to £11,500, which had been repeatedly renewed,
there were two bills for £2000 each, which became due in the last week in
October; and there was another bill, or two other bills, amounting to £1500
which had become due some time before, but which were held over, as they
say, from month to month, Palmer, who was liable upon them, paying for
the advantage of having them held over at the end of every month, at what
they call interest of about 60 per cent. These three bills, or sums of £2000,
£2000, and £1500 were the embarrassments which were pressing upon him
in the second week of November; and, be it observed, though pressing upon
him, they were pressed upon him by a man, who, no doubt, would have
been glad to have got the principal, but who would also upon anything
approaching to security have been very well pleased with the interest. How
can capital, if it be secure, be better employed than at 40 or 60 per cent. per
annum? As long as there was a vestige of good security, Mr. Pratt or Mr.
Pratt’s clients desired nothing better than that Palmer should continue to
hold the money.
Now, in that state of things, on the 27th of October, Palmer, in
answer to an urgent demand upon him for money on the ground Serjean
of the security becoming doubtful, came up to London, and Pratt t Shee
insisted that, in respect of one of those bills of £2000 which had just
become due, as Palmer could not pay it, he should pay instalments upon it
in addition to the enormous interest which he charged; and it was agreed at
that interview of the 22nd of October that £250 should be paid down, £250
paid on the 31st of October, and that as soon after as possible a further sum
of £300 should be paid, making in the whole a payment on account of that
bill of £800 to quiet Pratt, or, as Pratt said, to quiet his clients, and induce
them to let the bill stand over. On the 9th of November that £300 was paid,
and, when paid, a letter was written, which I beg your particular attention
to, and you will see how closely and strongly it bears on the point to which
I am now entreating your most anxious consideration; a letter of the 13th of
November, that is the day when “Polestar” won the race, written by Pratt to
Palmer, as follows:—“Dear Sir,—Curiously enough, I find that the great
point of the office is, that your brother had delirium tremens more than
once, say, three or four times before his life was accepted, and that actually
their medical man, Dr. Hastings, reported against the life, as well as Dr.
Wardell. I think I shall be able to get a copy of the proposal through a
friend.” Palmer did not know what the proposal was, and therefore probably
it had been made by his brother. “The opinions of several secretaries of
insurance offices are that the company have not a leg to stand upon, and
from the mere fact of the enormous premium, it is plain that the policy was
effected on an extra rate of premium on account of the true statement of the
condition of health of the assured. The enormous premium will go a great
way to give us a verdict.” I do not like to read only one passage from a
letter, lest by chance I should mislead, therefore I have read that portion of
it; but now attend to this—“I count most positively on seeing you on
Saturday; do for both our sakes try to make up the amount to £1000, for
without it I shall be unable to renew the £1500 due on the 9th.” What does
that mean? Pratt told us yesterday the three sums of £300, £250, and £250,
and some other small amount, making up the sum of £800, were instalments
payable on the bill overdue, and upon which Pratt had threatened to issue
writs against Palmer’s mother, and Palmer had gone almost down on his
knees to beg him not to do so; he said, “For God’s sake, do not think of
writs.” Now, that £800 being paid, Pratt said, “I shall only credit you for
£600; I must take £200 for the interest.” In his letter of the 13th of
November he says, “Do for both our sakes try and make up the amount to a
thousand”—that is, make the £800 up to a thousand pounds—“for without
it I shall be unable to renew the £1500. I must have a larger instalment, or
else I cannot keep this bill afloat for you.” He said so, whether it was true or
not does not matter in this case; that was the representation which he made,
and the duress which he put on Palmer; and, in truth, it meant this—Make it
up to a thousand, give me £200 more, or the writ shall be served on your
mother. He does not say so, but he said something to the same effect before,
and it was a representation that he could not satisfy the people whom he
said he represented without that additional sum. Observe, that letter is
written on the 13th of November, and Palmer gets it at Rugeley when he
arrives on that evening from the race at which “Polestar” won. Palmer, who
was at the races the first day, went away in the evening, and went to
Rugeley; when he gets to Rugeley, early in the morning of the 14th, the
next day probably, he gets this letter of Pratt’s pressing on him the necessity
of paying a further sum of £200. What does he do? See if it is possible to
doubt that at that time Cook’s life was of the utmost value to him. He
instantly returns to Shrewsbury; he sees Cook. They say he dosed him. We
will see how probable that is presently. He gets there on the Wednesday; he
sees Cook. Cook goes to bed in a state which I will not at present describe;
he gets up much more sensible than he went to bed; goes upon the
racecourse, and comes home with Palmer to Rugeley on the next day,
Thursday; he goes to bed when he gets to Rugeley; he gets up still ill and
uncomfortable, but able to go out, and he dines with Palmer that day,
Friday.
Now, I beg your attention to this letter. On that day, the 16th,
Palmer writes thus to Pratt—“I am obliged to come to Tattersall’s Serjean
on Monday to the settling, so that I shall not call and see you t Shee
before Monday, but a friend of mine will call and leave you £200 to-
morrow, and I will give you the remainder on Monday.” That is written on
the 16th, the day they dine together at Palmer’s house. Now, you recollect
that the person who ordinarily settled Cook’s accounts in racing
transactions was a person of the name of Fisher, the wine merchant, in Shoe
Lane. He was called as the first witness on this trial. That very day Cook
writes to Fisher as follows:—“It is of very great importance to both Palmer
and myself that a sum of £500 should be paid to a Mr. Pratt, of 5 Queen
Street, Mayfair, to-morrow without fail; £300 has been sent up to-night, and
if you would be kind enough to pay the other £200 to-morrow on the receipt
of this, you will greatly oblige me, and I will give it to you on Monday at
Tattersall’s.” Then there is a postscript which I will read, but make no
comment upon it now—“I am much better.” What is the fair inference from
these two letters? I submit to you that the inference is that at that date Cook
was making himself very useful to Palmer. Pratt was pressing him for an
additional sum of £200 when he had need of all his money, and Palmer
having communicated his difficulty to Mr. Cook, Cook at once comes
forward and writes to his agent to pay that £200. And the letter shows more
—you may have forgotten that letter, but it was read in the first hour after
the speech of my learned friend the Attorney-General; you may have
forgotten it, but I read it to you word for word—the passage, “£300 has
been sent up to-night,” shows that Cook knew all about it, and probably had
an interest in Palmer’s transactions with Mr. Pratt; it was inserted merely
for the purpose of putting a good face upon it to Mr. Pratt, as a man does
who, not having a farthing of the sum that he wants to pay, will pretend that
he has to pay more, in order to represent that he has got a portion of what he
wants to pay, and he says, “Will you lend me a little more; I am not entirely
dependent upon you for the sum that I have to pay”; or it means that on that
day £300, which had come to their hands in some way or other, was by
Cook made applicable to the convenience of Palmer—one of those things it
means; whichever way you take it, it proves to demonstration that Palmer
and Cook were playing into each other’s hands in respect of that heavy
incumbrance upon Palmer; and that Palmer could rely upon Cook as a fast
friend in any such little difficulty as that; and though his difficulties sound
large when we talk of £11,500, the difficulty of the day was nothing like
that, because in the spendthrift, reckless way in which they were living,
putting on bills from month to month, and paying what sounds an enormous
interest per annum, the actual outlay on the day was not always so
considerable. I submit to you that letter shows that on the 16th of
November, when they say he was poisoning Cook, Cook was behaving to
him in the most friendly way, was acquainted with his circumstances,
willing to assist in the relief of his embarrassments, and actually to devote a
portion of his earnings to the purposes of Palmer. It is perfectly plain, but I
will make it plainer if you will attend to me for a moment longer. You will
remember that part of the case of my learned friend is this. He says that he
intended to defraud Cook; that Palmer having left Cook ill in bed at
Rugeley, ran up to town on the Monday, intending to despatch him on the
Monday night or the Tuesday; that he ran up to town, went, not to Fisher,
who was the agent of Cook, but to Herring, who was his own agent, and
told Herring that he was authorised by Cook to settle his Shrewsbury
transactions at Tattersall’s, thereby getting command over Cook’s winnings;
that he applied them to his own purposes, and, having done so, determined
to put Cook out of the way. That is their case. We had the evidence of Fisher
on the first day. Fisher is evidently a shrewd, intelligent man; no friend of
Palmer’s. He gave, I do not mean to say improperly, I did not wish to throw
imputations, but he gave a twist to the dosing at Shrewsbury against Palmer.
On the Monday, as on the Tuesday, Cook, though generally indisposed, was
during great part of the day quite well, according to the evidence; on the
Monday he saw his trainer, Saunders, he saw his two jockeys; he got up and
was shaved; he was comfortable the whole day, and the theory is that he
was comfortable because Palmer was not there to dose him—you will see
how grossly absurd it is presently. He was well on the Monday, quite well
on the Tuesday; now, if Palmer had gone up to London, representing that he
would do Cook’s business for him through Cook’s own agent, Fisher,
Palmer might be perfectly certain if that was done on the Monday Fisher
would write to Cook on that night to say that the thing was done and made
straight; Herring, you see, does do it the moment the thing is settled
between Palmer and Herring; Herring represents Palmer as saying, “You
must write me word about some part of the transactions”; he says, “No, I
shall write Mr. Cook word at Rugeley.” Do not you think Fisher would have
done the same? and if Cook had not known that Palmer intended not to go
to Fisher but to Herring, do you not think Cook would have been surprised
on the Tuesday morning at not hearing that he had seen Palmer, and that the
transactions were settled? Could Palmer, as a man of business, have relied
upon Cook’s not being alarmed at Fisher’s not doing it? We had the
evidence of Fisher, who says, “On the 17th of November, at Cook’s request,
I paid £200 to Mr. Pratt; his account in the ordinary course would have been
settled at Tattersall’s on Monday, the 19th. I advanced the £200 to pay Pratt;
I knew that Cook had won at Shrewsbury, and I should have been entitled to
have deducted that £200 from his winnings if I had settled his account at
Tattersall’s; I did not settle the account.” That explains the whole
transaction. Cook and Palmer understood each other perfectly well; it was
the interest of both of them that Palmer should be relieved from the
difficulty of the pressure of Pratt, and accordingly Cook said, “As to the
settlement, it shall not go through Fisher; we will have the £200 from
Fisher; it shall not be paid to him on Monday; I will let Palmer go up and
settle the whole thing through Herring.” And that is what was done; and
accordingly Fisher has never been paid since.
Now, there is a letter to which I will call your attention, of the
19th November, 1855, from Palmer to Pratt—“Dear Sir,—You Serjean
will place the £50 I have just paid you, and the £450 you will t Shee
receive from Mr. Herring, together £500, and the £200 you received on
Saturday,” that is, the £200 that Fisher paid to Pratt at the express request of
Cook “towards payment of my mother’s acceptance for £2000, due 25th
October, making paid to this day the sum of £1300.” Can you doubt when
you take all that together—the dining together on the Friday—Cook writing
that letter to Fisher, saying it was of the greatest importance to him as well
as to Palmer that the £200 should be paid in order to pacify Pratt, can you
doubt that on that day Cook was a most convenient friend to Palmer, and
that he could not by any possibility do without him. But it does not end
there. Cook died on the Wednesday morning early, the 21st; if we want to
know what effect that death had on Palmer, and what interest he had in it,
Palmer’s mouth being sealed, we must get it from Pratt. Nobody else that
we know knows anything about it; Cook is gone. On the 22nd November,
the day after the death—and I am sure you will make some allowance for a
day having elapsed after the death of Cook before he wrote—Palmer writes
thus to Pratt—“Ever since I saw you I have been fully engaged with Cook
and not able to leave him.” Now, unless he murdered him, that is the truest
sentence that ever was expressed. He watched the bedside of his friend; he
was with him night and day; he attended him as a brother; he called his
friends around him; he did all that the most affectionate solicitude could do
for a friend that was ill, unless he was plotting his death—“And I am sorry
to say after all he died this day, so that you had better write to Saunders; but
mind, I must have ‘Polestar’ if it can be so arranged; and should any one
call upon you to know what moneys Cook ever had from you do not answer
the question.” Then he says, “I sat up two full nights with Cook.” That he
sat up the whole of the night may not be true, but he was ready to be called
if Cook should be ill; and Elizabeth Mills says after the first serious
paroxysm, when she went to bed, she left Palmer in the arm-chair, sleeping
by the man whom they say he intended to murder. No! murderers do not
sleep by their victims in that way. What is the answer? I read it to you in
order that you may see what ruin Cook’s death brought upon Palmer. The
answer of Pratt is—and you will see how much it increased the difficulties
of Palmer—“I have your note, and am greatly disappointed at the non-
receipt of the money as promised, and at the vague assurance as to any
money. I can understand that your being detained by the illness of your
friend has been the cause of your not sending up the amount.” Attend to this
paragraph—“The death of Mr. Cook will now compel you to look about as
to the payment of the bill for £500, due the 2nd of December. I have written
Saunders informing him of my claim, and requesting to know by return
what claim he had for keep and training”; so that the very first effect of
Cook’s death was, in Pratt’s opinion, who knew all about it, to saddle
Palmer alone with the sum of £500. He says, “The death of Cook will now
compel you to look about as to the payment of the bill for £500 on the 2nd
of December.” We will investigate the transaction out of which that bill
arose, and you will see, I venture to say, that I can satisfy you conclusively
that the transaction out of which that bill arose was a transaction for Cook’s
accommodation, for which Palmer had lent his name to accommodate
Cook, and for which upon Cook’s death Palmer became primarily and alone
responsible. It will be for you to judge, if I prove that to you, whether it
suited Palmer at that moment to stand before the holder of that £500 bill—
some client of Pratt’s—as the only man liable upon it, and whether there
was the same chance, supposing it had been for his own accommodation, of
putting it on, as they call it, after Cook’s death, as there might have been
before. But let me be fair to the prosecution, and state to you now the view
that the Attorney-General takes of that £500 transaction. As I told you, I
mean to meet his case foot to foot, and to show, and I hope to show him,
that there is nothing in it; that if he, as the law officer of the Crown, had had
the option of taking up this case or not, he would not have taken it up; that
the Crown never would have appeared upon it, but because the universal
feeling of the country was such as to render it impossible that the case
should not be tried after the verdict of wilful murder obtained on Dr.
Taylor’s evidence; and because the Crown, having seen the absolute
necessity of its being tried, felt that it would abandon the duty of protecting
every one of the Queen’s subjects if it did not take care that a man with so
much prejudice against him, that man leading the life that Palmer led, and
disgraced by forgeries to a large amount, as it is said, and a gambler by
profession, should not have a fair trial. There was no other way of securing
a fair trial for this man, as the Attorney-General at once saw—there was no
possibility of his being saved but by giving the counsel who defended him
all the information that my friend had himself. We will see what his view is.
My learned friend states it upon his instruction in this way. He is bound, as I
told you in the beginning, in prosecuting this case to prosecute it
strenuously; he is bound to put the facts together according to his
instructions in such a way that, if they will and ought to establish guilt, it is
brought home. Prosecutions must be conducted in that way, or the guilty
would escape in nine cases out of ten. And therefore my friend, upon the
view of the evidence—a comparatively superficial one—thinks that this is
the theory upon which it appears probable that Palmer plotted the death of
Mr. Cook. I will read to you from my friend’s speech, with reference to the
£500 bill transaction; and, as I understand it, it is the greatest mistake that
was ever committed, and would not stand for a moment but for the popular
prejudice against Palmer. I think I can satisfy you that is so—“Pratt still
declining to advance the money”—that is the £1000 which Palmer wanted
him to advance—“Pratt proposed an assignment by Cook of two racehorses,
one called ‘Polestar,’ which won the Shrewsbury race, and another called
‘Syrius.’ That assignment was afterwards executed by Mr. Cook in favour
of Pratt, and Cook was entitled to the money raised on that security, which
realised £375 in cash and a wine warrant.” They twist it in this way, that
Palmer, having forged the endorsement of Cook, and being afraid of
detection, put Mr. Cook out of the way. That is the view they take of that
case. I think I can satisfy you it is impossible that that can be the correct
view. It cannot, by any possibility, as it seems to me. It is for you to judge.
We know exactly what took place; we had it from Pratt yesterday. What
took place was this. Palmer applied for the loan of £1000; Pratt said, “I
can’t let you have it.” Palmer said, “Will you discount a bill for £500?”
Pratt said, “Not without security.” Palmer said, “What security will you
take; it is for the accommodation of Mr. Cook? I have undertaken to get the
enclosed bill cashed for Mr. Cook; you had a £200 bill of his.” He reminds
him that he had been paid a £200 bill, and he says, “He is a very good and
responsible man; will you do it, and I will put my name to the bill?” So that
it was represented to Pratt as a transaction for the accommodation of Cook;
and Pratt’s answer is, “If Mr. Cook chooses to give me his security I have
no objection, but he must execute a bill of sale of his two racehorses,
‘Polestar’ and ‘Syrius,’ and he must execute a power of attorney, and
signature to it must be attested by some solicitor in the country, so that I
may be quite sure that it is really a valid security; and upon those terms, if
you will get all that done, and Mr. Cook will submit to all that, I will give
him £375 in money, £65 wine warrant, charging him £10 for expenses, and
£50 for discount”—making up the sum of £500; that is what Pratt is willing
to do. There is no doubt at all, you know, that Cook attached the highest
value to “Polestar”; he was not going to execute a bill of sale with a power
of attorney to enable the mortgagee or assignee to enforce it at once; he was
not going to do that, and not get any money for doing it; he knew the value
of “Polestar” and “Syrius”; “Polestar” was probably backed for the
engagements on which he won the money at Shrewsbury. My friend says he
never received that £375; it is in the last degree improbable that he never
received that money; I put it to you as men of sense that he must have
received it; do you think that he remained after executing the bill of sale on
the 6th of September the whole time from that day to his death without
writing to Pratt—“Why, you have the bill of sale of my two horses, and I
have not got any money upon them”? Is it credible, can you believe Cook,
who was as much in want of money as Palmer; do you think he would
throw away his property in that way, and let Pratt obtain from him a bill of
sale and get no money upon it? It is incredible; the only pretence for setting
it up is this, it is a perfectly fatal one that will not stand before sensible men
for a minute. Along with the cheque for £375 he sent £315 to Palmer for his
own purposes; but my friend says Palmer, having got this cheque for £375
payable to order, fraudulently appropriated it to himself; forged the name of
Cook upon the back of it, and kept Cook in ignorance of the transaction. Is
it credible, that during three whole months Cook, who knew that he had
executed a bill of sale of his two racehorses, and I will show you was in
want of money, should have allowed it to remain so? Is it not much more
probable that the signature of Cook was put on there with his full
knowledge? It is not suggested that there was any attempt at imitating his
handwriting. Is it not more probable that Cook, who wanted the ready
money, and who would probably be put to inconvenience if he did not get
the ready money, but only the means of getting it two days later—that
Palmer should let him have the £315 cash which was sent up, and Palmer
take the cheque? I will show you there is reason for believing that to be the
case; I will put it to you, in the first place, whether it is probable he would
be silent for three months. Palmer writes, “I will thank you to let me have
the £315 by return of post if possible; if not, send it to me by Monday
night’s post to the post office, Doncaster. I now return you Mr. Cook’s
paper, and he wants the money on Saturday if he can have it; I have not
promised it for Saturday, so please to enclose it with mine in cash in a
registered letter, and he must pay for its being registered.” So that you see
Palmer wanted it to be sent like his own, and Cook wanted it to be sent in
cash. “Do not let it be later than Monday night’s post.” Pratt writes
acknowledging the receipt of the document, saying he will send him his
money to Doncaster, and endeavour to let Cook have his money at the same
time. On the 10th of September Palmer writes to Pratt that he must send
him for Mr. Cook £385 instead of £375 and the wine warrant, so that he can
hand it to him with the £385. Accordingly, here is an intimation that Cook,
who wanted the money on the very day, was inconvenienced by only
getting a cheque on London which he could not immediately change, and
therefore Palmer gave him the money and took the cheque. It is remarkable,
when we look at the banking account of Palmer at Rugeley, the £375 is paid
in by somebody to Palmer’s account, but the £315 is not paid into Palmer’s
account at all; that is the only sum paid in on that day, so that I put it to you
upon these facts, Pratt saying in a letter which accompanies the money, “I
am obliged to send a cheque for Mr. Cook, for I have not received the
money, which I shall do no doubt to-morrow”; so that not being able to send
cash to the full amount he is obliged to do that which did not suit Cook; he
sent him a cheque which he could not cash on the day he got it; he is
obliged to send it to London unless he could find some friend down there,
and that delays him for a whole day. I submit to you as the true version of
the transaction that the bill was accepted for Cook’s accommodation; Cook
gave as security for it the two horses, “Polestar” and “Syrius”; Cook never
complained to Pratt during the rest of his life that he had not received the
money upon it. It appears in the correspondence that Cook wanted the ready
money, and that he wanted it on Saturday, and it would be probably
inconvenient if he had got it a bit later than Monday; though Palmer would
not promise to get it sooner than Tuesday. What says Palmer in his letter,
which is not written for the purpose of this case, but written at the date of
this transaction, that he, Palmer, would let Cook have the cash that was
sent, and he himself take the cheque with Cook’s authority, and put Cook’s
name on the back of it; and how else can you account for the silence of
Cook, for the fact that the £375 is paid into the account of Palmer at
Rugeley, and no trace of the other large sum of £315? That is well worthy
your consideration. You cannot account by any reasonable mode for the fact
that the security given for that £500 was Cook’s horses, and Cook
remaining quiet about it for three months after he had executed a regular
bill of sale, except the supposition that it was for Cook’s accommodation,
and Cook got the best part of the money; and, if so, Palmer’s name being on
the bill, what is the effect of Cook’s death? Gentlemen, what Pratt, who
knew all about it, says is, “The death of Cook makes you liable for that sum
of £500 due on the 2nd December.” I submit to you, on the second ground
of motive, which my learned friend suggested, the case has altogether
failed, and that it is perfectly clear that at the date of Cook’s death Pratt was
of opinion that the death of Cook threw a further liability on Palmer of
£500; he tells him so in that letter. How could it be his interest to kill him?
We already find the difficulties which Cook’s death brings upon Palmer; the
bill of £500, the danger of the loss of “Polestar,” which he wanted very
much to have, and which Pratt would, of course, unless Palmer paid the
£500, send to the hammer, and realise so shortly; we find that inquiries
were at once apprehended on the part of Cook’s friends as to the money
Pratt had paid to Palmer out of those two bill transactions, and the value
which Mr. Cook had received for any endorsement which he had given.
Just see another transaction of that date; it is not quite so clear,
as it strikes me, but yet it makes it to my mind exceedingly Serjean
improbable that Palmer should have desired the death of Cook. t Shee
Exceedingly improbable! Mr. Wetherby told us to-day that though
frequently stakes won at a race were sent up by the clerk of the course to
the winner’s bankers within a week, it was not always so, and it would not
be a matter of complaint if it was not. On the 20th of November, the day
before Cook dies, and on which he was perfectly comfortable and happy,
enjoying the society of his friend Mr. Jones, with whom he was on terms of
the greatest intimacy, and to whom he could confide any troubles that he
had, and who appears to be a gentleman in every way respectable and
intelligent—on that day Cook was well, and Mr. Jones was with him, and
there is no doubt that on that day, according to the evidence of Mr.
Wetherby, he did sign and give this cheque for £350. If Palmer killed him
that night, and by any chance the £350 should not have been sent up by Mr.
Frail, so as to be there on the next morning, he (Mr. Wetherby) would not
pay that cheque, and would never pay it after notice of Cook’s death,
though the money should come up. He never did pay it. The end of that
transaction was this, that Mr. Frail did not send it up, but made a claim upon
Cook in respect of it. Cook’s executors disputed that, and Cook’s executors
finally recovered the money, but they did not send it up to Mr. Wetherby. I
do not put it as strong as the other case, because Palmer might think that the
money would be there; but he also might think that it would not be there. It
is not at all likely that, having got the cheque for £350 from Cook, he would
run the risk of losing that money by destroying him in the night, Cook’s
friends being there, and sure to institute an immediate inquiry into his
affairs. Is that probable? I submit to you it is not. It is not likely that Palmer
could have got a cheque for £350, or Cook should have given it to him,
which should not be payable until the next day, when there might be no
funds to meet it; and with that uncertainty, is it likely that Palmer should
destroy Cook. That, therefore, is in the last degree improbable. It does not
end there—what they have said on the other side is, you know, that he got
this cheque fraudulently—he got possession of this money, and then, lest
Cook should detect it, he destroyed him. It is not at all probable that that
would answer his purpose. The moment the breath was out of Cook’s body
his friends would surround the corpse. He might be perfectly certain that
Mr. Jones would go to Mr. Stevens, that Stevens and Bradford, his brother-
in-law, would be down, and that a post-mortem examination would take
place, and instead of settling with Pratt as to this £500 bill and the £350
cheque, he would have to settle with hard men of business, men who cared
nothing for him, looked upon him as a blackleg, and would care neither for
his feeling, his interest, nor anything, but would let him go to ruin which
way he liked, not stirring a finger to save him. Do you think that was
probable? I submit to you not. It does not end there. We know from Herring
that at that very time Herring held one bill for £500 on which Cook’s name
was.
The Attorney-General—I do not think there is any proof of that.
Mr. Serjeant Shee—Whether it be so or not as to the £500, he had three
£200 bills, one of which, I think, was drawn by Cook and accepted by
Palmer, and the other two drawn by Palmer and accepted by Cook, or the
other way.
The Attorney-General—You are quite right as to the £500.
Mr. Serjeant Shee—And another bill of £500, which my
friend stated and gave proof was not his mother’s signature. So Serjean
that there was a bill for £500 not in her handwriting to which t Shee
Cook was a party, for all of which Cook either in whole or in part, unless he
rushed upon his own ruin, must provide; in respect of which, for the
accommodation of Palmer or not, Palmer could go to Cook and say, “Now,
Cook, it is true enough all these bills are for my accommodation, but what
is the use of your making a fuss about that? If I cannot pay, you must, or
your stud will be sold up; had you not better give your name to some more
bills and make it easy?” If he put Cook to death that was gone. Again, in
addition to the £500 bill, for which the bill of sale on “Syrius” and
“Polestar” was given, the bill for £500 held by Herring was a forgery,
according to their case, which there would be no excuse for not meeting; a
£500 bill in the hands of a man who wants the money is not so easily put
on; that £500 bill would very soon find its way to his mother. It would not
have suited Palmer that his mother should know—his mother was a woman
of large fortune, a respectable person I am told—she disliked his gambling
propensities though she liked her son; neither did the excellent and most
honourable man his brother, before me, who stands by him now, but who
was estranged from him simply because he disapproved of his gambling,
neither would he have given to him any countenance. If Palmer was pressed
to pay that £500, and Cook was dead, there was nothing to save him from
the exposure. Nothing! If you doubt what I say is the truth, look through the
whole of the case—find me in any portion of this most voluminous
evidence the slightest trace that there was a man in the world who would
lend his name to Palmer to enable him to get money. Is not the fact that he
forged, if he did forge, the name of his mother conclusive that he had no
other resource? Is there the least trace of evidence that he had any other
resource than the good nature, the easiness, perhaps the folly, of Cook, who
could have renewed these bills for him—the three £200 bills and the £500
—and put them on as they say? And was it not quite certain that if Cook,
the acceptor of them, dropped, the claim would come upon Cook’s
executors, and then the executors would ascertain all about it and sell him
up? When you come to think of it, is it credible that the man under those
circumstances should desire to bring not merely the creditors and executors
of Cook—who might be supposed, though Mr. Stevens is not one of that
class, to have some pity for Cook’s friend—but men of business, down
upon him, who have no right to have any pity? A man dies, his affairs are
put into the hands of solicitors; they have a plain duty to perform, they
cannot be compassionate, they must be just; they must see the rights of their
clients the executors established in due course of law, and compromise and
arrangement with them is wholly out of the question. Can you find in any
part of this case a single living person who was willing to have done for
Palmer what Cook had been doing for him for two or three years? Does it
appear that there was one? Does it appear that Cook was a close-fisted
fellow, and did not care to do Palmer a turn? When Palmer needed the £200,
which the harpy wanted from him, Cook at once wrote and said it is a
matter of great importance to him as well as Palmer that this £200 should be
paid; and he even risked the displeasure of Fisher in doing it. Then, again,
Cook was in his senses perfectly on the Tuesday. He cannot have been very
rich at that time. He gave him the cheque for £350. How is it possible to
conceive that under those circumstances Palmer should have an interest in
the death of Cook, and yet what is the theory of the Crown? That Palmer
was convinced that he could settle his affairs as to Cook better with Mr.
Stevens than he could with Cook himself—settle these word-of-honour
transactions; these things, half of which would not bear inquiry in any way
as reasonable business transactions, with a shrewd and probably a penurious
man—deliberately thought that it would answer his purpose better to come
in contact with his executor, Mr. Stevens, whom Mr. Jones might rush up to
town and bring down with him. I submit to you with confidence, though
what I say may be inconsistent with the views generally entertained by the
public—the public, however, have never had an opportunity of looking at
all these letters—but it seems to me as clear as anything can be, that it was
the manifest interest of Palmer that Cook should live. But, in addition to its
being his interest that he should live, was it safe for him that he should die?
Palmer was a man who added to a shrewd knowledge of the world a
knowledge of his profession, and, among other things, a knowledge of
chemistry. Palmer knew perfectly well, and he had studied his profession
sufficiently when he was a young man to know perfectly well, that, if
strychnia was administered, it would in all probability throw the victim into
horrible convulsions in a very short time, and in a way so striking as to be
the talk of a small neighbourhood like Rugeley for a month or two, which
would be time enough to alarm everybody, and to provoke inquiries into the
circumstances of the death, which must certainly end, or in all probability
end, if he was guilty, in his conviction. If that was so, was he so
circumstanced at that time as to make it safe for him to run the risk of such
suspicions? His brother, Walter Palmer, had died in the month of August,
and his only hope, unless his mother forgave him or recognised those
acceptances, his only hope of extrication from his difficulties was the
getting the amount due by the Prince of Wales Insurance Company to him
as the assignee of the policy on Walter Palmer’s life; that was his only
chance. He had a chance that way, and it is plain that it was so good a
chance, as I will show you presently, that he refused an offer of return of
premium from the company; it does not appear what the amount was—and
Pratt, who was his attorney, believed the chance to be so good that he had
actually got the discounts of these large sums of money upon it, and had
resolved, under the directions of Palmer, to put it in suit. It was really the
only unpledged property he had, and how was he situated respecting it? It is
plain from the letters which were put in yesterday, and it is further plain
from a piece of evidence to which you will, I am sure, find it worth your
while to pay great attention. We had Mr. Deane called yesterday, who is the
attorney to the Prince of Wales insurance office; and for some time—though
it had ceased just at that time—but for some time previously to this month
of November, the insurance company, which, I believe, is not a very old
insurance company, were annoyed at being called upon to pay so large a
sum, and they determined to do all they could to resist it. They accordingly
sent down Inspector Field to Stafford and his man Simpson to make
inquiries, which he could not do without talking and insinuating suspicions
and raising a cloud of doubt and conjecture about Palmer, and this had been
going on for some considerable time. Now, observe the evidence of Deane,
and you will see if it is not so. He says, “The name of my firm is Chubb,
Deane & Chubb. I had been to Rugeley some time previously to the inquest.
I know Field, the detective officer; we were solicitors to the Prince of Wales
insurance office; it was in our employment that Field went to Rugeley; he
was at Rugeley only a part of one day; he was at Stafford for three or four
days altogether; he did not see the prisoner Palmer; this visit had been
preceded by that of another officer named Simpson. Simpson went from
Stafford to Rugeley with myself and Field; he told me he had seen Palmer; I
think he went into Staffordshire in the first week in October.” Then my
learned friend asked him what they went down for; he said that they went
down to make inquiries as to the habits of life of Mr. Walter Palmer, of
whose death the Prince of Wales insurance office had shortly before
received notice; so that you see just before the death of Cook Palmer knew
himself to be an object of suspicion, but he acted as if he thought it was the
most unfounded and unwarrantable suspicion, putting the policy of
insurance into the hands of an attorney to enforce payment of it, and the
office meeting the claim by insinuations and inquiries which were of a
nature to destroy his character and to bring around his head the suspicion of
another murder.
Gentlemen, that that was so I will show you by the letters
which were put in yesterday. You see that the pressure by Pratt Serjean
upon Palmer to meet the two £1000 bills never took place until t Shee
the office disputed the payment of that policy. All went as smooth as
possible so long as Pratt held what he believed to be a good security, the
policy upon Walter Palmer’s life, who was dead; but when they began to
dispute it, then you will find that Pratt writes to Palmer and tells him the
situation of things is quite changed; he could manage the bills very well
while that policy was undisputed; but now it is disputed that quite alters the
state of things; he says, as he had somewhat anticipated, he finds they can
do nothing till the 24th, that is nothing towards compelling the office to pay,
because insurance offices generally take three months to pay; and then,
stating some other circumstances, he says, “This you will observe quite
alters the arrangement, and I therefore must request you to make
preparations for meeting the two bills due at the end of this month”; that
was where the difficulty was, that was where the pinch was. Then, he says,
he shall not flag in his exertions, and so on, and he refers to the
circumstances connected with the dispute; Mr. Pratt says—“You, Palmer,
know whether they have any ground to dispute that policy upon your
brother’s life; you are enforcing it, and if you have no right to do it it is at
your peril.” That is what it means, and then he goes on to say, “We must try
and make them pay”—that was the position in which Pratt, who was acting
for him, stood as to this Prince of Wales insurance office. He says, “In any
event, bear in mind that you must be prepared to cover your mother’s
acceptances for the £4000 due at the end of the month”; there was the
pinch, the office would not pay, the £4000 was becoming due, the holder of
the bills saw he was without security, and if anything occurred to increase
the suspicions of the insurance office, which was very reluctant to pay, the
£13,000 was lost for ever, lost beyond hope. Gentlemen, that £13,000 is
sure to be paid unless that man is convicted of murder; and that has a great
deal to do with the clamour and alarm which have been excited. So sure as
that man is saved, and saved I believe he will be, that £13,000 is paid; there
is no defence, no pretence for a defence—the letters of the office make that
plain; they took an enormous premium—knowing that the man was only
thirty, they took a premium for a man of fifty.
Mr. Attorney-General—That is not in evidence; do you mean to prove
that?
Mr. Serjeant Shee—I do not know whether I can show that to be the
actual premium, but the letters which were put in show that the premium
was enormous; and I say that as sure as he is saved that £13,000 is good for
him, and will pay all his creditors.
Now, observe the position in which he was at the moment—all the
correspondence turns upon that. This correspondence saves the prisoner, if
there is common sense in man.
Now, observe, there is another letter from Pratt containing this
passage, “I have your note, acknowledging receipt by your Serjean
mother of the £2000 acceptance, due the 2nd of October; why not t Shee
let her acknowledge it herself? You must really not fail to come up at once,
if it be for the purpose of arranging for the payment of the two bills at the
end of the month; remember I can make no terms for their renewal, and
they must be paid. I will, of course, hold the policy for as much as it is
worth,” and so on. At this time Simpson and Field were making inquiries
how a young man of thirty had died, who had had delirium tremens three
times, as their own physician, Dr. Hastings, and Mr. Wardell had informed
them. Then in a postscript he says he “casts no doubt upon the capability of
the company to pay, but that in the nature of things, with so large an amount
in question, it is not surprising that, if they think they have grounds for
resisting, they should temporise by delay.” Does not that show that at that
date at least, the 6th of October, suspicions were hanging in menacing
meteors about Palmer’s head, which would come down with irresistible
momentum and crush him upon suspicion of a sudden death by murder? Do
you believe that a man who wrote what the effects of strychnia were in his
manual would risk such a scene as a deathbed by strychnia, in the presence
of the dearest and best friend of Cook—a man whom he could not
influence, a medical man, who liked him and loved him well enough when
he knew he was ill to sleep with him in the same room that he might be
ready to attend to him in case he wanted assistance during the night? Is that
common sense; are you going to endorse such a theory as that upon the
suggestion of Dr. Alfred Taylor about the effects that strychnia produced
upon his five rabbits? Impossible, perfectly impossible! as I submit to you.
But to proceed—I will prove to you, most clearly, the position in which he
was. On the other side of the letter of the 10th of October Mr. Pratt writes,
“Copy of solicitors’ reply”; that is, the solicitors to the Prince of Wales
insurance office. He says, “I may add that I hear the office have been
making inquiries in every direction.” To be sure, Field was employed; he is
not now in the police, but he is employed as a detective officer; he was at
Stafford, and was at Rugeley, and was making inquiries in all directions;
inquiries could be made at Stafford as well as Rugeley, and all that had
taken place at Rugeley just as easily ascertained there as at Rugeley itself;
whatever had taken place there would be known. He says they have been
making inquiries in all directions. It is plain, then, that he knew that
suspicions were then rife, or that they were endeavouring to create
suspicions, against him about the policy on the life of Walter Palmer. Here
is the very letter which the company wrote in answer to the claim, dated 8th
of October, 1855; it is from Messrs. Chubb, Deane & Chubb, the solicitors
to the office, addressed to Thomas Pratt, Esq., acknowledging the
application; and shortly afterwards Messrs. Chubb send a reply to the
application—there is no date to it, but it is enclosed in a letter of the 18th of
October from Pratt to Palmer. After apologising for not answering the letter
of the 16th instant, owing to the absence of Mr. Deane, they refer to the
“local investigation having been made, and decline to pay the claim upon
the ground that the facts disclosed in the course of the inquiry are such as
fully to warrant them in doing so.” These are letters which my learned
friend thought it right to put in yesterday; they are evidence for the Crown,
and what is the inference from them? Judge, if you please, from some of the
letters to Pratt, and the one which I read first from Pratt to Palmer. Palmer
determined that the policy should be paid; he took the advice of Sir Fitzroy
Kelly. I see here it is said, “The case will be laid before Kelly to-morrow.”
This letter came just before the end of the long vacation; the time to take
proceedings had only just commenced, in any event, because the three
months had only just expired. But so sure as anything happened by foul
play to Cook, he had no more chance of getting the £13,000 than £130,000
from the Prince of Wales insurance office—none whatever. That was the
only means he had at that time of extricating himself from those
incumbrances.
Gentlemen, I have detained you a long time upon this, but not,
I trust, too long, if the view I have submitted be one worthy of Serjean
your consideration. I infer from all this that Palmer had no t Shee
interest whatever to put Cook to death; that it was contrary to his interest in
a pecuniary point of view, and brought claims upon him, some of them
small, others of a larger amount, of which he might have shared the liability
with Cook, if not have thrown it entirely upon Cook; that it forced an
immediate settlement of the affairs of Cook, not with Cook himself, who
was an easy man—it is plain he was—and probably their solicitors, and that
therefore in a pecuniary sense he had every motive of interest to desire that
Cook should live; and further, he had no chance of getting a ready payment
from these documents—but with hard and exacting executors of the
£13,000, no chance of the sudden death of Cook passing without suspicion
and inquiry, and therefore he could not think it safe for him that he should
die.
I cannot, I think, be so much mistaken as that a considerable portion of
these observations is not well worthy your attention. I humbly contend that
the suggested motive altogether fails; and I conclude that head of the
observations which I have to address to you by saying that I submit
respectfully to you, to the Court, and to my learned friends that that portion
of this case has failed. It could not be the interest of Palmer that Cook
should die.
I now proceed to the next head, and it is impossible in dealing with this
evidence to observe altogether the order of date. I must group the facts as
well as I can in order to deal with the whole of the evidence. The question is
whether the symptoms of Cook before his death and the appearance
presented by his body after death were consistent with the theory of his
having died by strychnia poison, and inconsistent with the theory of his
having died from other and natural causes. It is under this head, gentlemen,
that I shall discuss, I hope not at undue length, the medical evidence in this
cause, and present to you such observations as occur to me upon the

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