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Dr. William Palmer: Prince of Poisoners
Victorian doctor William Palmer was the notorious "Prince of Poisoners" and the "Rugeley Poisoner".
Rugeley in Staffordshire, England was his hometown. He was born on 6th August 1824 to Joseph and Sarah Palmer. Joseph passed away when William was 12 years old and Sarah received £70,000. (Value: over £10 million/$12.6 million today).
William started work as an apprentice to a Liverpool chemist when he was 17 years old, but he was fired when money went missing.
He relocated to London where he qualified as a doctor in August 1846. He returned to Staffordshire and opened his medical practice in Rugeley.
He also began his other career as a poisoner when he met a man named George Abley in a local pub called the Lamb and Flag. He challenged George to a drinking contest; an hour or so later, an apparently inebriated George was carried home. He died that night.
Although a crime was never proved, it was strongly suspected that William Palmer poisoned George Abley so that he could ingratiate himself with George's pretty widow.
Sudden & Convenient Death of Palmer's Mother-in-Law
In October 1847 William Palmer married Ann Thornton, also known as Ann Brookes because her mother Ann was the former mistress of a wealthy Colonel Brookes.
In 1834, Colonel Brookes committed suicide and he bequeathed Ann (mother) £8000. Palmer was tempted by the money, although he didn't know exactly how large the sum was. William regularly asked his mother-in-law for money and she obliged. He loved betting on horse races, but as he wasn't good at picking winners, he was soon in debt.
Ann was staying with William and Ann Palmer on 18th January 1849 when she unexpectedly died. Local physician Dr. Bamford recorded the cause of death as apoplexy. The sum of money was less than William hoped for, and he started wondering: Where could he find some more?
At a racecourse, William Palmer made the acquaintance of Leonard Bladon. Within weeks, Bladon loaned his "friend" approximately £600; Bladon then died suddenly and agonisingly on 10th May 1850 at William Palmer's home. His cause of death was described as "injury of the hip joint, 5 or 6 months; abscess in the pelvis." The Rugeley Poisoner had struck again.
Bladon's widow discovered that his betting logbooks were missing and that he died with only a small sum of money on his person, even though he'd taken a substantial amount when he went out that day. The logbooks probably showed that Bladon lent Palmer £600; the books' disappearance was therefore convenient and advantageous to Palmer.
Palmer Murdered His Own Family Members
William and Ann's first son, named after his father, was born in autumn 1848. He lived until 1926. His younger siblings, Elizabeth, Henry, Frank and John were born between 1851 and 1854. Officially, each of them died from convulsions in early infancy, hours or weeks after their births. Infant mortality was rife and no one was alarmed by the tragedies.
It was only when justice caught up with William in 1855 that the conclusion was drawn that William Palmer poisoned each of his younger children to avoid the expense of raising them.
As Palmer's gambling debts spiraled, he frequently forged his mother Sarah's signature on documents so that his creditors pursued her; presumably she paid his bills without raising the matter with him.
In 1854 William took out a life insurance policy for his wife Ann; soon after, she passed away at only 27 years old. Luckily for him, a cholera epidemic gripped the country and her death certificate cited cholera as the cause of death.
The insurance company paid Palmer £13,000 but he needed more money to clear all his gambling debts. His often inebriated brother Walter died on 16th August 1855, shortly after William took out a life insurance policy on him. The insurance company was suspicious and they sent investigators to assess the validity of the second claim.
They learned that William Palmer was attempting to take out another life insurance policy, this time for £10,000 on the life of his employee George Bate. William was denied the payout and the £10,000 policy never went through.
John Cook's Murder: November 1855
William Palmer and his rich friend John Cook attended horseracing events in Shrewsbury in mid-November 1855. While Palmer lost a substantial sum, Cook's horse won. At a celebration hosted by William that evening, John Cook fell ill. He commented that his gin burned his throat. The following morning he told two of his friends that he believed that he was being poisoned.
He recovered but he became ill again while in Palmer's company at the Talbot Arms in Rugeley. Records differ at this point—either a bowl of broth or a glass of gin was prepared for John Cook. The chambermaid tasted whichever liquid it was, and Cook then consumed it. Both of them became seriously sick.
As Cook suffered, William Palmer collected the £1200 winnings of his "friend" then he visited the pharmacy where he purchased three grains of strychnine. He put these into tablets. William played the part of a caring doctor as he passed the pills to Cook to aid his recovery. John Cook endured an agonising death.
William Palmer Interferes at Post Mortem
When John Cook's stepfather arrived at the Talbot Arms, he couldn't find John's racing logbooks. William claimed that it didn't matter because all bets were cancelled as Cook was dead.
The uneasy stepfather asked for an inquest to be carried out. Palmer produced a death certificate that showed the cause of death as apoplexy. It was signed by Dr. Bamford, the same doctor that signed Leonard Bladon's death certificate.
A post mortem was conducted; Palmer interfered in the process. He took a jar containing Cook's stomach contents away "for safe keeping" and the medical student tasked with the post mortem was drunk. The poor quality samples sent for analysis were rejected by Alfred Swaine Taylor.
A second post mortem was carried out and this one was more successful. William Palmer attempted to have the cart carrying the evidence overturned so that the analysis couldn't be achieved.
When this failed, he persuaded a postmaster named Samuel Cheshire to remove the analysis results from the mailbag and pass them to him. (He did so and was later jailed for two years). Palmer wrote to the coroner urging him to accept that "natural causes" was the correct cause of death; a donation of £10 accompanied his letter.
"Saintly Billy" Executed at Stafford Prison
At the inquest, Alfred Swaine Taylor insisted that although the body of John Cook had no trace of any poison in it, he was confident that he was poisoned by William.
The jury agreed and their verdict was that Cook "... died of poison willfully administered to him by William Palmer".
He was arrested and sent to trial at the Old Bailey in London for murder and forgery. Autopsies were ordered for Ann and Walter Palmer's bodies. Walter's was too decomposed to work with. Taylor found antimony, a metallic compound, in Ann's remains. A murder charge for her death wasn't pursued, as a guilty verdict for Cook's case was enough to secure an execution.
The trial jury took a little over an hour to deliver their guilty verdict and William Palmer was sentenced to death by hanging.
He was publicly executed at Stafford Prison on 14th June 1856. 30,000 people attended. He was quickly buried in the prison graveyard in a grave lined with quicklime so that his body decomposed faster than normal.
Sarah Palmer, William's mother, was said to have mourned her "saintly Billy". She was quite possibly the only person that did. Charles Dickens called William Palmer "the greatest villain that ever stood at the Old Bailey."
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