The Invention of Murder (75 page)

252
unearthly fire:
Senelick, ‘Prestige of Evil’, pp.110–11, traces the change in his appearance. The stage-vampire analogy is my own.
there’s Wainewright:
Cited in, amongst others, Collins,
Dickens and Crime,
p.43.
offer me the broom: Thomas Noon Talfourd, Final Memorials of Charles Lamb (London, E.
Moxon, 1848), vol. 2, pp.23–4.
going to die directly: Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit, pp.511–12.

253
your lips are:
The main adaptations were: [T.H. Higgie and T.H. Lacy], ‘Martin Chuzzlewit’, unpublished playscript, for the Queen’s Theatre, July 1844, Lord Chamberlain’s Plays, BL Add MSS 42976 (23); E. Stirling, ‘Martin Chuzzlewit’, unpublished playscript, for the Lyceum, July 1844, Lord Chamberlain’s Plays, BL Add MSS 42976 (15) [only Act I survives in the Lord Chamberlain’s collection]; [C. Webb], ‘Martin Chuzzlewit’, unpublished playscript, for the New Standard Theatre, [1844], Lord Chamberlain’s Plays, BL Add MSS 42976 (16); W.B. Webster, ‘Martin Chuzzlewit’, unpublished playscript, for the Olympic Theatre, March 1868, Lord Chamberlain’s Plays, BL Add MSS 53066 (F).
position of the criminals:
Bulwer,
Lucretia,
pp.vi-viii.

254
weak and the criminal: Cited in Burney, Poison, Detection and the Victorian Imagination, pp.54–5.

255
the insurance money:
‘Confessions of an Attorney’,
Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal,
355, October 1850, pp.241–4.
parts of his existence: Clive, Paul Ferroll, pp.18–19. any kind of work: Dickens, Little Dorrit, pp.46–7, 814.
ten thousand pounds:
Robert Surtees,
Ask Mamma, or, The Richest Commoner in England
([1857–8], London, Bradbury, Evans & Co., 1872), p.335.

256
with the murdered girl:
Cited in Dickens,
Letters,
vol. 2, p.252n.
Slinkton commits suicide:
Charles Dickens,
Hunted Down. A Story, with some account of Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, the Poisoner
(London, John Camden Hotten, [1871?]).
to marry happily:
Mary Elizabeth Braddon,
The Trail of the Serpent,
ed. Chris Willis ([1860], New York, Modern Library, 2003), p.396; Wilkie Collins,
The Moonstone,
ed. Sandra Kemp ([1868], Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1998), p.453; Wilkie Collins,
Miss or Mrs?, The Haunted Hotel, The Guilty River,
eds. Norman Page and Toru Sasaki ([1871, 1878, 1886], Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999), pp.90ff; Mary Elizabeth Braddon,
Charlotte’s Inheritance
([1868], London, Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., [n.d.]).

257
like the morning mist:
Newton,
Crime and the Drama,
p.25; ‘Who Did It? A Mystery Unmasked, or, The Track of Crime’, unpublished playscript, for performance at the Britannia Theatre, August 1867, Lord Chamberlain’s Plays, BL Add MSS 53061 (J); R.S. Hichens and H.D. Traill,
The Medicine Man,
published playscript (no publisher, title page), for performance at the Lyceum, May 1898, Lord Chamberlain’s Plays, BL Add MSS 53658 (F).
an insurance company:
De Quincey,
On Murder,
p.x; Oscar Wilde, ‘Pen, Pencil and Poison: A Study’,
Fortnightly Review,
45, January 1889, pp.41, 52. 258
achievements in poisoning
Havelock Ellis,
The Criminal
(London, Walter Scott, 1890), pp.12–17, 127.
as a hedge-hog: Anon., The Doings of William Palmer, p.14.
her lover dies: Blackwood’s,
‘Switzerland in Summer and Autumn, part 2’, 98, 1865, p.493.

262
from no other cause:
[A.S. Taylor and G. Owen Rees], ‘The Rugeley Suspected Secret Poisoning Cases. Evidence of Dr. Taylor …’,
Lancet,
19 January 1856, 1, pp.78–80; 2 February 1856, 1, pp.134–5.
were not discreet:
G. Lathom Browne and C.G. Stewart,
Reports of Trials for Murder by Poisoning… With Chemical Introduction and Notes on the Poisons Used
(London, Stevens & Sons, 1883), pp.128–9; Mayhew’s response: Extra Number, ‘Trial of William Palmer’, 27 May 1856, ‘The Rugeley Poisonings. The Trial of William Palmer … The Rugeley Number of the
Illustrated Times’
(London, ‘Illustrated Times’ Office, n.d. [1856]).

263
up with demand:
Lodging-house: Mayhew,
London Labour,
vol. 1, pp.252–4;
Telegraph
and
Times
circulations: L. Perry Curtis,
Jack the Ripper and the London Press
(New Haven, Yale University Press, 2001), p.58;
Illustrated Times
and
Lloyd’s,
W.F. Bynum, Stephen Lock and Roy Porter, eds.,
Medical Journals and Medical Knowledge: Historical Essays
(London, Routledge, 1992), p.119.
the Prince Bishop: Barham, Ingoldsby Legends, p.68.

264
was Palmerston:
The story is cited in Richard Whittington-Egan,
William Roughead’s Chronicles of Murder
(Moffat, Lochar, 1991), p.318; it says something about the attitudes to Palmer, although it sounds apocryphal.
a trial’s outcome:
Palmer’s Act was, more formally, 19 & 20 Vict.c.19.

266
all came to do:
Judith Rowbotham and Kim Stevenson, eds.,
Criminal Conversations: Victorian Crimes, Social Panic and Moral Outrage
(Columbus, Ohio State University Press, 2005), pp.15–16.
Palmer was convicted:
The amount of print on the Palmer case is astounding, and a very selective overview includes: Old Bailey trial transcript, ref. t18560514–490;
Bell’s Life,
23 December 1855, 6, 13, 20 January, 3, February, 18 May, 25 May [trial supplement], 1, 15 June 1856;
Daily News,
18 December 1855, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 24, 25, 30, 31 January, 1 February, 10 March, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29 May, 2, 4, 5, 9, 16 June 1856;
Derby Mercury,
30 January 1856;
Era,
23 December 1855, 6, 20, 27 January, 18 May, 1, 8 June 1856;
Examiner,
14 June 1856;
John Bull,
22 December 1855, 5, 12, 14, 19, 21, 26, 27 January, 22 March, 17, 19, 24, May, 7, 14 June 1856;
Liverpool Mercury,
16 January 1856;
Lloyd’s Weekly,
23 December 1855, 13, 27 January, 3, 10 February, 18 May 1856;
Manchester Times,
5, 6, 12 January, 14 May, 19, 26 June 1856;
Morning Chronicle,
5 January, 21 March, 17 June 1856;
Racing Times,
24 December 1855, 14, 21, 28 January, 2 June 1856. Contemporary pamphlets and trial reports include:
The Doings of William Palmer, the Alleged Wholesale Poisoner: His Public Frauds and Private Trickeries…
(London, Frederick Mitchell, [1856]);
Illustrated Life and Career of William Palmer of Rugeley: containing details of his conduct as a school-boy, medical-student, racing-man, and poisoner …
(London, Ward & Lock, 1856);
Illustrated and Unabridged Edition of
The Times
Report of the Trial of William Palmer. from the short-hand notes taken in the Central Criminal Court.
(London, Ward & Lock, 1856);
The Most Extraordinary Trial of William Palmer, for the Rugeley Poisonings…
(4th edn, London, William Clark, 1847); [Angelo Bennett, a shorthand note-taker],
The Queen v. William Palmer: Verbatim Report of the Trial of William Palmer…
(London, J. Allen, 1856). A good twentieth-century overview and transcript: George H. Knott, ed., rev. by Eric R. Watson,
Trial of William Palmer
(Edinburgh, William Hodge, 1923). Other useful material includes: Browne, Stewart,
Trials for Murder by Poisoning;
Ian A. Burney, ‘A Poisoning of No Substance’; Michael Harris, ‘Social Diseases? Crime and Medicine in the Victorian Press’, in Bynum, Lock and Porter,
Medical Journals and Medical Knowledge,
pp.108–25; Thomas Rogers Forbes,
Surgeons at the Bailey: English
Forensic Medicine to 1878
(New Haven, Yale University Press, 1985); George Robinson,
Observations on Some Recent Cases of Poisoning
(Gateshead, D. Dunglinson, 1856).

267
Chemistry of Strychnia:
These articles and more appear in the
Lancet,
31 May, 7, 14, 21, 28 June 1856.
to its coverage:
Harris, ‘Social Diseases? Crime and Medicine in the Victorian Press’, p.114.

268
would produce tetanus:
Conan Doyle, ‘The Speckled Band’,
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,
ed. Ed Glinert ([1892], Harmondsworth, Penguin, 2001), p.178; Conan Doyle,
The Sign of Four,
p.54.
but to man:
Cited in Burney,
Poison, Detection and the Victorian Imagination,
p.2.
a view is concerned: Morning Chronicle,
14 June 1856, gives 100,000; the
Examiner
on the same day says 50,000, as did the
Era
the following day (although this article might have been taken from the
Examiner;
they are very similar); Palmer on the way to the scaffold: Henry Hawkins,
The Reminiscences of Sir Henry Hawkins, Baron Brampton,
ed. Richard Harris (London, Edward Arnold, 1904), vol. 1, p.273; George Orwell, ‘A Hanging’, in
The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell
(New York, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968), vol. 1, pp.44–8. Orwell’s knowledge of Thackeray: Simpson,
Witnesses to the Scaffold,
p.216; population of Stafford: estimated from the 1851 and 1861 censuses;
Staffordshire Advertiser
reprinted in
Daily News,
16 May 1856; the Accrington walker:
Liverpool Mercury,
27 June 1856; the complaining journalist: cited by the editor of
Lloyd’s,
Thos. [sic] Catling,
My Life’s Pilgrimage
(London, John Murray, 1911), p.59.

269
pleasure, too:
The Englishwoman to the German traveller: Max Schlesinger,
Saunterings in and About London,
trs. Otto Wenckstern (London, Nathaniel Cook, 1853), pp.59–60; Anon.,
The Boy Detective, Or, The Crimes of London
(London, Newsagents Publishing Co., [1865–6]), p.46.
continued to be in doubt:
John Sutherland,
Victorian Fiction: Writers, Publishers, Readers
(Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1995), p.39, suggests that one of the maids at the Talbot Arms was bribed to say she was taken ill after tasting Cook’s broth, that the judge was ‘ruthlessly biassed’, and that the establishment closed ranks to secure a conviction. But the judge’s remarks appear fairly standard when read in conjunction with other trials of the period; and Sutherland’s main source, Robert Graves’ twentieth-century rehabilitation of Palmer, is hardly unbiased itself.
he killed Cook,
Anthony Trollope,
Phineas Redux,
ed. John C. Whale ([1874], Oxford, Oxford World Classics, 1983), vol. 2, p.178.
they were portraits:
Anon.,
Illustrated and Unabridged Edition of
The Times
Report,
British Library shelfmark 6497.b.4.(2.). The clippings have only one identifying tag, ‘The Family Fri[end?]’. The books ‘by’ the Revd Thomas Palmer and Thomas Wakley are
AN INQUIRY INTO the CHARGE of LORD CHIEF JUSTICE CAMPBELL, on the LATE TRIAL of WILLIAM PALMER, illustrative of its dangerous tendencies as destructive to the long enjoyed rights and privileges of all British subjects
(London, T. Taylor, 1856) and
The Cries of the Condemned: Proofs of the Unfair Trial of William Palmer
(London, C. Elliot, 1856); the denials by the real Revd Thomas Palmer and Thomas Wakley: in
John Bull,
‘The Late William Palmer’, 21 June 1856, and
Daily News,
letter, 9 June 1856; George Palmer:
Daily News,
31 January 1856, p.3; the
Racing Times,
23 June 1856, p.197, carries the letter from C.J. Collins regarding
Dick Diminy;
the correspondence squabble between the newspaper and the publisher then continues on 30 June, and in the
Era
on 22, 27 and 29 June.

270
produces no evidence: Alfred Swaine Taylor, Poisoning by Strychnia, with Comments on the Medical Evidence Given at the Trial of William Palmer … (London, Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, & Roberts, 1856), p.2.
at Shrewsbury Races:
Anon.,
The Most Extraordinary Trial of William Palmer, for the Rugeley Poisonings;
Southwark Police Court:
Daily News,
15 July 1856, p.6. Ch. V. Cavour [pseud. Stephanos Xenos] $$ $$ $$ 1860) [The
Cursed Doctor: The Notorious Trial of William Palmer from Contemporary English Journalism,
London, n.p.,1860]. I am greatly obliged to Chris Michaelides of the British Library for his help with this book; the background information on Xenos comes from Chris Michaelides, ‘Greek Printing in England, 1500–1900 … Stephanos Xenos, a Greek Publisher in Nineteenth-century London’, in Barry Taylor, ed.,
Foreign-language Printing in London, 1500–1900
(Boston Spa and London, British Library, 2002), pp.212ff.

271
murderer in an opera: Racing Times,
‘Tattersall’s’, and ‘The Room’, 14 January 1856; [Charles Dickens],
Household Words,
‘The Demeanour of Murderers’, 14 June 1856, p.506; Chicken/Vengeance and Gemma di Vergy:
Racing Times,
‘Vengeance’, 20 October 1856, [letter], 23 March 1857.
labelled Palmer’s house:
Trains:
Daily News,
30 June 1856, p.2; photographer:
Illustrated Life and Career of William Palmer of Rugeley,
p.103; Madame Tussaud’s:
Bell’s Life,
15 June 1856, p.3 and catalogues,
Biographical and Descriptive Sketches of the Distinguished Characters which Compose the Unrivalled Exhibition and Historical Gallery of Madame Tussaud and Sons
(London, G. Cole, 1869) and ibid. (London, M’Corquodale, 1873); Allsop’s,
Liverpool Mercury,
20 June 1856, p.1; Royal Parthenon,
Era,
4 December 1859, p.1; Staffordshire figurines: P.D. Gordon Pugh Collection, City Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent.