William Palmer, the Rugely Poisoner

William Palmer often turns up on lists of historical serial killers. Though his trial for murder is generally considered a settled case, it was judged without any hard evidence. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Okay, I
don't know why humans are wired this way, but the
idea of serial killers is almost always gruesomely intriguing. So

(00:24):
what better topic to trot out for Halloween. This particular
case is one that's often talked about when poisoners come up.
When we were doing in a season of Lady Poisoners
or Criminalia, we couldn't do it because it involves a man,
but it kept showing up in relation to things as
a comparative. Uh. And even though it's generally considered a
settled case, there's a lot about it and how it

(00:47):
turned out that doesn't really involve any hard evidence at all.
We are talking today about William Palmer, who is also
known as the Rougually Poisoner, and we do want to
give a little heads up here that while there is
obviously murder in the mix, there is specifically brief mention
of children dying, so just know that going in. So.
William Palmer was born on August six, eight, twenty four,

(01:10):
to Joseph and Sarah Palmer and Rugelie, Staffordshire, England. Joseph
was employed as a sawyer and died when William was twelve.
That left Sarah with an estimated seventy thousand to seventy
five thousand pounds and eight children. William was the sixth
of the Palmer siblings. Yeah, that was a significant amount

(01:31):
of money, but she did also have to raise a
lot of children on her own after that. William went
to school near his home and Rugely, and he developed
a reputation as a trickster at an early age. He
was not a good student, His peers often accused him
of cheating, and well before he had reached his teenage years,
he was in the habit of engaging in petty theft.

(01:53):
He wasn't the kind of boy who would shake down
anyone or do anything violent, but if he found money unattended,
even if he knew that money belonged to someone, and
even if that someone was a family member, he just
took it. And in some accounts of his life, the
event of his father's death is pointed to as this
moment where he may have started justifying his stealing habit

(02:14):
as a means of helping his mother, but that sort
of seems like conjecture or like kind of backwards engineering
a gentler version of his personality. But as he grew
into a young man, in addition to continuing his perpetual
obsession with money and stealing, William also developed a reputation
as a womanizer. When he finished school, William took up

(02:36):
a position as an apprentice to a chemist in Liverpool
that was roughly eighty miles northwest of where he'd grown up,
at a firm called Evans and Company. Initially this seemed
to go well, although he was once again getting into
some trouble not long after, as a young man instead
of a child, and this was way more criminal than

(02:57):
trickster like. Before long, the chemist was getting complaints about
orders that people had paid for but had never been filled.
Apparently William was taking the orders and then pocketing the
cash and never actually filing the requests with the chemist.
He denied any wrongdoing, though, and was fired after just
three months. Next, William studied medicine in London, first as

(03:22):
an apprentice to surgeon Edward Tilecoat, but this also soon
went awry. For one thing, Palmer was scamming Tilecoat's patients
in small time money cons and he was also rumored
to have gotten mired in a scandalous scheme where he
had promised to marry a young woman, took her father's
small life savings which he was given to plan the

(03:43):
wedding and get the couple started in life, and then
he broke up with the young lady in question and
just kept all the cash. And he had developed a
fairly extensive gambling habit which people knew about. And none
of this was good for the reputation of his mentor, Tilecoat,
and William was dismissed from his apprenticeship. He kept pursuing

(04:03):
a career in medicine, though, and moved to the Stafford
Infirmary to work as a student. He wasn't very interested
in actual study, though, and was more likely to be
out drinking than focusing on medical texts. He did manage
to barely pass his exams and qualified as a doctor
in the late summer of eighteen forty six. Just a
few months after that, he was once again in the

(04:25):
middle of a scandal, and this one had fatal consequences.
In October eighteen forty six, William was drinking with a
plumber and glazier named George Ably. Palmer had invited Ablely
to a pub called the Lamb and Flag, and there
are a couple of different ways the particulars of this
story are told. In one version, Palmer just continuously kept

(04:50):
brandy refilled for Ably until well after the man was intoxicated.
He bet the plumber half a sovereign uh that he
could not drink one more lass, which Able did. In
another version, the bet was offered that Ably couldn't drink
two tumblers of brandy, one right after the other. Whichever
way this played out, Ably took the bet, drank the brandy,

(05:13):
and then stumbled out of the pub, and two hours
later George Able was dead. Whether Palmer had intended for
the man to meet his end, he was implicated in
town rumors, although he was never charged with any crime.
Not long after this incident, William Palmer moved to London,
maybe to get away from this whole thing. He got

(05:34):
a job at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and he started a
courtship with a woman named Anne Thornton, who sometimes went
by Annie and Thornton was the daughter of Anne Mary Thornton,
who is often referred to as Mary in recountings of
Palmer's life, and will follow suit to keep things from
getting confusing. Anne's father was Colonel Brooks, who had not

(05:56):
been married to Mary when Anne was born. Brooks did
acknowledge his daughter. She's listed in some records as Anne Brooks,
and she was provided for in his will. The colonel
died by suicide in eighteen thirty four, and at that
point Annie inherited eight thousand pounds. So Annie's fortune was
not a secret and it may well have been the

(06:16):
source of Palmer's attraction to her. William Palmer was consistently
described as charming, and when Anne Thornton met him, she
definitely found him so as well. But Palmer's reputation was
also not a secret. A lot of people viewed him
with suspicion, and Anne's family was pretty direct in telling
her that this suitor was bad news and that he

(06:38):
was probably just after her money. So when he initially
proposed marriage and did not accept, but William was persistent.
After an almost two year courtship, to which to Ann
seemed to have proven that this man truly cared for her,
the two of them were finally married in eighteen forty seven.
They made their home and usually renting a house on

(06:59):
Market Street for reported twenty five pounds a year, and
William's medical practice was run from there at the house.
The marriage was tense from the start. I feel like
this is a recurring theme in recent episodes. It wasn't
because of anything between William and Anne, but because William
and Anne's family did not get along. Ann's mother, Mary Thornton,

(07:19):
had always been suspicious of Palmer and had been pretty
vocally against this match. So when her new son in
law immediately started borrowing money from her once they were
officially family, she lent it to him for An's benefit,
but she was ceaselessly irritated and and William welcome his son,
William Brooks Palmer in October of eighteen. Three months later,

(07:43):
in January of eighteen forty nine, Mary went to the
Market Street house to stay with her daughter and son
in law. Sometimes this is characterized as a visit, but
you'll also see it described more that she was moving
in with them because of her failing health. Regardless, it
was a brief stay. She died on January eighteenth, two

(08:03):
weeks after arriving her cause of death was listed as
apoplexy by the doctor who examined her. That doctor's name
was Bamford. Bamford is going to show up a lot.
He was an elderly doctor that was friends with William Palmer. Uh.
There was a payout for Anne after Mary's death of
twelve thousand pounds, although uh it seems that this was

(08:24):
not in a lump sum and William had been expecting more.
He clearly viewed his marriage to Anne as a source
of income, and between what he believed to be a
weak inheritance and his ongoing frustration and larger fortune being
parceled out in quarterly payments, he felt like he was
being cheated. This was particularly the case because he spent

(08:47):
all of the couple's money far faster than it was
coming in. So even though his wife was very wealthy
on paper and should have kind of been set for life,
in reality there was a massive debt accruing complicate the
family finances even further. Palmer, who already had a propensity
for gambling, started becoming interested in horse racing, and through

(09:10):
this interest he became acquainted with a man named Leonard Blayden.
Before meeting Bladen, William had gotten himself into even deeper
trouble with money because he had become the owner or
part owner of several race horses. He made some pretty
desperate sales of horses at a loss because he kept
finding himself in need of quick cash. Yeah, exactly what

(09:32):
somebody with a gambling problem needs is to buy into
the system that he gambles in, and also in a
way that is very expensive, like horses are not cheap
to keep. U And Blaydon, who worked for Cherrington's brewery,
loaned William Palmer money after the two had become acquainted,
but it very quickly became apparent that getting that money

(09:53):
back was going to be difficult. In early May, the
two men went to the Chester races together. Bladen had
a very lucky day of bedding and came away from
the races with several hundred pounds. On top of that,
Palmer told him that if he came back to Rugely
with him, he could finally pay him back the money
he was owed, and Bladon agreed, and he wrote a

(10:14):
note to his wife that he was going to stay
with the Palmer's But after arriving at William and and
Palmer's home, Bladen started to feel unwell. He was in
really a lot of pain pretty quickly, and then he died.
The cause of death was listed as injury of the
hip joint five or six months abscess in the pelvis.

(10:35):
That is once again that that same elderly doctor writing
that death certificate. After that death, William actually claimed that
Bladen had owed him money, and he was brazen enough
to ask Leonard Bladen's widow for it. He said that
he was owed sixty pounds. Mrs Bladen was immediately suspicious

(10:56):
of William Palmer. She knew that he had owed her
husband money when he died. Leonard had included that information
in his letter to her, and she was also suspicious
that no money had been found in her husband's effects
when he died, because he had also told her that
he had won money at the races. His betting book
was also missing, and she gave Palmer no money. Kind

(11:19):
of made it clear that she suspected him, and he
backed off. We're going to take a quick break from
all of this grim business and take a moment for
a word from some of our sponsors. In eighteen fifty two,

(11:41):
Palmer's uncle Joseph Bentley died. That was on October that year.
He had allegedly perished after having been challenged to a
drinking contest by his nephew. But Joseph was sixty two
he was not in great health to begin with, so
even if those were the circumstances of his passing, this
was not looked at as a particularly odd situation. Before

(12:03):
Joseph Bentley's death, starting in late eighteen fifty, the Palmer's
had four more children, but none of those babies lived
past infancy. Their daughter Elizabeth died at ten weeks old
on January six, eighteen fifty one. A son named Henry
died exactly a year later to the day, when he
was one month old. Another son, Frank, died on December nineteen,

(12:27):
eighteen fifty two, which was the same day he was born.
And finally, a baby named John, he was born on
January eighteen fifty four, died three days later. All of
the infants causes of death were the same, which was convulsions.
At the same time, these were considered to be normal,

(12:47):
if tragic occurrences. It was thought I was just a
run of bad luck for the Palmer's. Yeah into mortality
was a kind of common occurrence at this point in
this area. So even though it looked terribly awful, nobody
really suspected anything but that bad luck that they were
having seemed to continue in their finances because they were

(13:09):
falling deeper and deeper into debt. William's gambling had, of
course continued, it had only gotten worse, and then he
started forging notes in his mother's name to keep borrowing money,
and he was very aware that he could end up
in debtor's prison. And that's why seven years and to
Anne and William Palmer's marriage, the husband took out a

(13:31):
life insurance policy on his wife that was worth thirteen
thousand pounds. He actually tried to take out several policies
with different companies, but was only able to secure one
with the Prince of Wales Insurance Company. The year he
took out the policy, which was eighteen fifty four. He
made the first premium payment in the amount of seven
hundred fifty pounds and died on September twenty nine of

(13:54):
eighteen fifty four at the age of twenty seven. There
was a cholera outbreak in limit the time, and Ann
Palmer was believed to have died from it. She was
buried in the Palmer family vault, and William quickly put
together the paperwork to claim the payout on her insurance policy,
which he received in very short order, and he used
that cash to pay off the many people that he

(14:16):
owed money to. In early eighteen fifty five, just a
few months after Ann's death, Palmer was once again forging
bills in his mother's name to get creditors to give
him money, but that wasn't working particularly well anymore. Some
of the creditors were suspicious and asking to speak with
Sarah Palmer about her son's assurances that she could cover

(14:38):
any money that he borrowed. William was really backed into
a corner. He could not let his mother find out
about this gambling debt, and in eighteen fifty five, a
repeat of the circumstances of Ann's death played out, this
time with William's brother, Walter Palmer. William insured his siblings
life for fourteen thousand pounds, made one payment the policy,

(15:00):
and then suddenly Walter died. Walter was living alone. At
the time, he was married, but he and his wife
had separated due to Walter's alcoholism, and while William had
attempted to take out a whopping eighty four thousand pound
policy on Walter. He was turned down for that, but
once again Prince of Wales's insurance company was there with
a policy approval in that fourteen thousand pound amount. That

(15:24):
single premium, as we said, had been paid, but this
time it was paid directly by one of William's creditors.
He basically said like, Hey, I don't have the fast
cash for this, could you go ahead and pay for it.
That payment was made just before Walter's death on August five.
Because of Walter's history of alcohol misuse, this was also

(15:44):
not entirely a shocking demise. Because he lived alone. There
weren't a lot of people to say otherwise. William had,
at the end of his brother's life, made sure that
Walter always had plenty of gin on hand. But this
time Prince of Wales's insurance is not so quick to
turn around the payment on the claim. Walter's death and
the fact that Palmer had filed paperwork to take on

(16:07):
another policy, this time on an under groomer who cared
for Palmer's horses, led the insurance company to open an investigation.
That policy had some problems in the details that investigators
found puzzling. It listed his regular occupation as farmer, indicating
that he had a farm of his own, but the
reality was that he was more of an on again,

(16:28):
off again field hand and just drifted from job to
job as needed. When now worker in question, who is
named George Bates, was interviewed about this policy, he thought
it was only for four thousand pounds, not the ten
thousand pounds that appeared on the application. To top off
all of the suspicious aspects of the policy. While it

(16:49):
was signed by George Bates, it was witnessed by two
of Palmer's friends from the racetrack, so it appeared that
William Palmer had offered to help Bates set up a
life insurance policy. See had lied about the amount, intending
to take the overage for himself, and named himself as
a beneficiary. He had also promised to give Bates one
thousand pounds in the next year as an early payout.

(17:13):
The two inspectors on the case, whose names were Simpson
and Field, thought this whole situation was shady, and they
suspected that Palmer had poisoned his brother. They were not
going to pay out on Walter Palmer's policy, and they
were going to suggest to the authorities that illegal investigation
began into the matter. So Palmer was panicked. He needed

(17:33):
to pay off his debts, he needed to find a
way to do it without relying on an insurance payout,
and that sealed the fate of a man named John
Parsons Cook. So Cook and William Palmer had been friends
for a couple of years. By eighteen fifty five they
were racing buddies. Cook had been one of the men
who signed the application for George Bates's life insurance policy,

(17:55):
and like William Palmer, Cook owned a horse and he
liked to bet. But he was apparently luckier than Palmer
in that enterprise, and he had an inheritance, and he
was not carrying a huge debt. On November fifty five,
the two men attended the Shrewsbury Races together. Cook when
an estimated three thousand pounds that day when his horse,

(18:18):
named pole Star, had a good run. To celebrate the
winner had a party at the end where he was staying,
which was the Raven Hotel. Palmer attended, but left early
and headed home the next day, though he went right
back to Shrewsbury. That's because in the interim he received
another ultimatum from a creditor who was very ready to
visit his mother about all of his outstanding debts. So

(18:42):
he met that night with John Parsons, Cook and several
other of their racetrack friends. They kind of hung out
and ordered around of Brandy's, but Cook, after tossing his back,
noted an unusual burning sensation in his throat. William Palmer
kind of mocked his friend openly for saying so, kind
of hinting like that he was being a woos and
asked one of their companions to check his Palmer's glass

(19:05):
to see if they thought it looked suspicious. That glass
was empty, and it looked to have no residue in it.
Before long, Cook, who was just getting worse, was escorted
to his room by two other men of the party,
where he began throwing up a great deal and he
also told the other men that quote, I believe that
damned Palmer has been dosing me. Cook was seen by

(19:25):
a doctor, but he did not improve. The next day
Palmer was back at the track and had an abysmal outing.
He lost a great deal of money that night. He
and Cook headed back to Rugeally. Cook was still sick
but seemed to be improving slightly. He spent the night
at an inn across the street from the Palmer residence,

(19:46):
and the day after that, which was a Friday, the
two men had lunched together along with Jeremiah Smith, who
was Cook's solicitor. On Saturday morning, Palmer called on Cook
at the inn again, and this time Palmer ordered a
coffee which he shared with his friend. According to accounts,
Cook began vomiting again almost immediately. As Palmer was a doctor,

(20:07):
he cared for his friend, and on that Saturday he
had another doctor that was Bamford, come to see the patient.
The solicitor named Smith also sent soup for Cook. He
sent that to Palmer, who brought it over to the man,
and after eating it, Cook once again got worse. The
leftover soup was stored in the inn's kitchen and when
one of the staff tasted it, she also became ill. Still,

(20:31):
that same soup was once again fed to John Parsons Cook,
whose condition worsened. As Cook continued to decline, William Palmer
started to collect the winnings that were due to his
sick friend, from the successful bets that he had placed
before falling ill. He did not bring that money back
to Cook. He used some of that to pay off

(20:51):
his debts, and then he bought three grains of Stryck
nine from a chemist named Salt. He made those into
two pills that he made up in his own office
and he administered these to Cook on November So this
was a week after the day that Cook had done
so well at the Shrewsbury Track. He was terribly ill

(21:11):
and a Doctor Jones was requested by William Palmer to
stay with the patient overnight. Cook had difficulties sleeping and
his condition grew worse than the night, so Dr Jones
called for Dr Palmer as things became more grave. William
Palmer gave Cook two ammonia pills within an hour, after
a horrific series of convulsions and repeatedly saying that he

(21:35):
felt like he was suffocating. John Parsons. Cook was dead.
Palmer had his friend, once again, the elderly Dr Bamford,
right up the death certificate and the cause was listed
as apoplexy. We're about to get to how everything unraveled
for Palmer after Cook's death, but first we will pause
for a word from the sponsors that keep Stuffy missing

(21:57):
hisry class going. So cook stepfather came to the end
the day after his stepson died, immediately after he had
been told what had happened, and William Palmer immediately told

(22:19):
the man who had just lost a family member that
Cook owed four thousand pounds in unpaid bills that he
could just give to him. But cook stepfather, William Stevens,
was a bit suspicious of all this, and he asked
for a coroner's inquest into the death and a post
mortem exam of the body, and he also wanted samples
from the body sent to a poison expert, Dr Alfred

(22:41):
Swain Taylor. Must post mortem was total chaos. For one,
it was held there at the hotel where Cook died
on November, and there was an audience of curious locals
to watch. For another, the men who performed it were
young and inexperienced. One was a medical student, one was
the town chemist's assistant. They did have a more experienced

(23:04):
doctor supervising, but the two of them did not have
a lot of experience themselves. And then it went poorly.
These two men were nervous. It was suspected that they
had had a drink beforehand to calm their nerves, so
they bumped into each other. They dropped Cook's organs. They
just bungled this entire thing, and as they fumbled around,

(23:25):
William Palmer was able to get ahold of the jar
where they had placed Cook's stomach contents. He took that
jar into another room. He returned it when someone noticed
it was missing. But the seal on it had been cut.
It looked otherwise intact. Yeah, he gave like the very
fumbly excuse of like, oh, I was getting it out

(23:46):
of your way. You guys seem to be you know,
you had so many things going on. I just thought
I would clear the area for you. Not suspicious at all.
When the poison expert, Dr Taylor received the specimens that
had been prepared there at the Talbot Arms, he found
the entire collection such a mess that he asked for
a second post mortem so that he could get better samples.

(24:08):
When Dr Taylor initially wrote to the coroner saying he
had found no Strict nine in the samples, Palmer heard
about it because he had bribed the postmaster to intercept
this letter. He then wrote to the coroner and asked
him to declare the death an accidental causes situation, and
he talked a ten pound note into this letter subtle uh.

(24:30):
That bribe did not work on the coroner, William webb Ward.
The final findings of Dr Taylor were that he did
not find any Strict nine in the samples, but that
he suspected that Palmer had given Cook Strict nine at
some point, as the symptoms he had were consistent with
Strict nine poisoning. The Inquest jury, having examined Dr Taylor's findings,

(24:51):
issued their verdict on December eighteen fifty five, which read
quote deceased died of poison willfully administered to him by
William Palmer. The postmaster who had intercepted the letter to
the coroner, which was a man named Samuel Cheshire, was
sentenced to two years in prison for mail tampering. But
here's the thing. That coroner's jury was not a court

(25:13):
of law, so Palmer still had to be tried in
criminal court. He was at home in bed sick when
the coroner's jury determination was issued. He was already under
warrant on forgery charges because of all of those fake
bills that he had been giving creditors in his mother's name,
but he was allowed to stay at home under guard
until he was well enough to be moved to the

(25:34):
Stafford jail. There was no way William Palmer could get
an impartial trial in Stafford, so an Act of Parliament
was enacted that would allow him to be tried in
London instead. By the time he was arrested, the rumor
mill of the town and speculation in the press had
already started to link the many deaths in William Palmer's

(25:54):
life together and to suggest that he had been responsible
for all of them. Palmer, his wife Anne, and his
brother Walter were exhumed so that they could be a
second coroner's inquest into their deaths, and Palmer's body was
in pretty good condition, but Walters was so badly decomposed
that the gory scene was written up in the papers.

(26:15):
I'm going to read it, so just brace if you
are squeamish, maybe jump ahead. The Times ran this story
on January quote on the removal of the outer coffin.
A hole was bored in the leaden receptacle in which
Walter Palmer's body was confined, and instantly a most sickening
and noxious effluvium escaped, which permeated the entire building, affected

(26:38):
parties at the other end of the inn, and produced
a sickening effect on all in the immediate vicinity of
the coffin. Subsequently, the leaden lid was removed, and the
spectacle presented by the body was absolutely frightful. The cheeks
were so terribly distended as to extend to either side
of the coffin. One eye was opened and the mouth

(26:58):
partially so, presenting the appearance of a horrible grin and grimace.
Each limb was also swollen to prodigious proportions, and the
site was revolting in the extreme. Nearly all the jurors
were afflicted with vomiting or fainting. Ultimately, it was determined
that Walter's body was just too decomposed for additional examination.

(27:21):
But in Ant's tissue there was antimony found in multiple organs.
Dr Taylor had analyzed these samples and that was his finding.
The coroner's jury declared this to be a willful murder. Yeah,
there was definitely like kind of this inference that in
describing that that gross state of Walter's body, that he

(27:44):
had decayed so much, possibly because of something nefarious. I
was never proven, but like that was kind of the
way the papers were framing it. Palmer's trial for the
murder of John Parsons Cook began on May fourteen, eighteen
fifty six, at the Old Bailey, London. That is the
city's criminal court. It's called the Old Bailey because that's
the name of the street. The men who had been

(28:06):
drinking with Cook and Palmer when Cook first mentioned that
throat burning sensation were called for testimony. The chambermaid, who
drank the soup that Palmer brought Cook testified that she
had gotten ill from it. She also gave a pretty
graphic account of Cook's appearance and behavior while he was
staying at the Talbot Arms, including the fact that he
had said the word murder twice while he was ill.

(28:29):
The defense pointed out that Cook had been fairly frail
to start with. The defense attorney for Palmer offered up
the possibility that, based on the chambermaid's description, Cook had
actually died not of strychnine poisoning but of tetanus. But
it was when the chemist's assistant testified that things really
fell apart for William Palmer. That assistant, whose name was

(28:51):
Charles Newton, told the court that Palmer had bought Strict
nine from him on November nine, eighteen fifty five. He
had not recorded that purchase in the poison records, as
required by law, because Palmer and the chemist Mr. Salt,
who we mentioned earlier had a rather sour relationship, and
Newton had not wished to anger his boss. Palmer had

(29:13):
told Newton that he needed enough Strict nine to kill
a dog, and Newton said that Palmer also bought a
second dose of Strict nine at another shop on November.
The assistant from that shop, a young man named Charles
Joseph Roberts, confirmed the second purchase and that he had
also neglected to record the sale of the poison, as
he was legally supposed to have done. The elderly doctor

(29:37):
who had been involved, Dr Bamford, provided a written testimony
to be read in court because he was too ill
to attend. He stated that he thought the death was
caused by congestion of the brain. Other medical experts dismissed
this statement, of course. Poison expert Dr Alfred Taylor was
also called to testify. He explained that the remains had

(30:00):
been so poorly handled in the post mortem that testing
for strychnine was difficult, if not impossible, but that he
did look for it just the same as well as
other poisons. The stomach, for example, had been sent emptied
of its contents, so he did not have one of
the key samples he would have normally needed for a
thorough analysis. He did find traces of antimony, though not

(30:22):
enough to cause death. All of the medical experts who
were called admitted that they had never actually seen strychnine poisoning,
and a human only in other animals, so their expertise
was largely theoretical on the matter. The defense pointed out
that if Cook had died of Strict nine poisoning, due
to how closely it followed the date of the last

(30:43):
purchase made by Palmer, it should have been found in
those post mortem samples, even if they had been mishandled.
The prosecution made its final case that Palmer had first
weakened Cook with antimony and then finished him off with strychnine.
The defense claimed not till causes, but no one could
account for those stryct nine purchases. Yeah, there was no

(31:06):
dog produced that he had done away with there was
no other like use of it that meant any sense.
So after just an hour and fifteen minutes of deliberation,
the jury found William Palmer guilty of the murder of
John Parsons Cook. The judge sentenced him to death, and
because of that sentence, trials for the murders of Walter
Palmer and and Palmer did not move forward. William Palmer

(31:29):
was executed by hanging on June fourteenth, eighteen fifty six,
outside of Stafford Prison. There were an estimated thirty five
thousand spectators, and demand for a view of the hanging
was so great that a lot of people slept outside
the night before to make sure they could get a
good spot, even though the night of June was rainy.

(31:50):
Throughout the trial, the press had printed all the lurid
and disturbing details of Cook's final days, and there was
a very real desire among the general populist to see
Palmer pay for the misery that he had caused his friend. Ultimately,
although it was not found legally the case, Palmer was
believed in public opinion to have committed as many as

(32:12):
fifteen murders, although all of the evidence involved was circumstantial,
The Palmer story has made its way into media in
a number of ways. Dickens called him the greatest villain
that ever stood in the Old Bailey and used his
story as inspiration in his work, basing the character of
Inspector Bucket in Bleak House on one of the investigators

(32:33):
and Cook's death. Various details about the sensational Palmer case
pop up periodically. It plays television and films, including an
Alfred Hitchcock character named Richard Palmer who kills a man
with Brandy in the film Suspicion in Palmer's story was
adapted into a drama that ran in the UK titled

(32:53):
The Life and Crimes of William Palmer. Oh, William Palmer
maybe a serial killer. We'll talk some about it on
our behind the scenes. But there are people today who
think that he was wrongly convicted. Yeah, more because just
it wouldn't hold up in a court of law to

(33:14):
day how it played out, then necessarily believing he had
never done anything wrong. Um. But in Peppier Listener Mail,
anytime we deal with something yucky, I want a pepper
or Listener mail. So um, this is from our listener Allison,
who was writing to us about Grannie Smith Apple's Uh
writes High Holly and Tracy, I must start off, like

(33:35):
so many of your letter writers and fans, telling you
how much I enjoy the podcast and that I have
been listening since the beginning many years ago, many many
hosts ago, when episodes were so much shorter and less frequent.
I'm an American who moved to Sydney right before the
pandemic lockdown that has gripped Australia into isolation. It's been
very strange to live outside the US during this time

(33:56):
and essentially house bound in a city rich with history.
I had to right in now because I just listened
to the episode featuring one of my long time favorite foods,
Granny Smith Apple's. I had no idea that I happened
to live close to where they originated, but as it
is more than five kilometers from my house, it's actually seven.
In our current lockdown restrictions, I can't take the quick
trip to see the area and thank the land for

(34:18):
my favorite snack. I also really enjoyed practically every episode,
but a standout episode at this moment in my life
was the April episode on the Rum Rebellion, which I
knew nothing about the episode had a brief mention of
John Fovo. I work for a university that is building
a new campus on Phobo Street here in Sydney. I
hadn't given the streets name one thought until that episode.

(34:40):
I really enjoyed learning just a tiny bit more about
this amazing city that I haven't had the opportunity to
explore yet. I'm also a huge fan and avid listener
of Criminalia. When I first got her, aired an add
on your podcast in an Australian accent for the University
of New England. Why would they be talking about New
England all the way over here? Of course? What an
American centric view I had. Of course there is in

(35:01):
New England here too. It's been fun, more recently to
hear your voices for Australian products and services makes the
world feel just a tiny bit smaller. Thank you again,
Alison Allison. This is so great. I hope you go visit.
You can start doing the Granny Smith tour, where you
go visit where their orchards were, maybe find the creek
where that thing originally popped up. That is an interesting thing.

(35:24):
I have a friend of another friend who um moved
to Australia not long before this all happened, and I
have such a fascination with this idea of moving to
it completely new country and then not being able to
really be in that country because of lockdown. It's got
to be a strange sensation for sure. So I hope

(35:46):
that soon you can go out and explore things and
and enjoy all that Sydney has to offer. If you
would like to write to us, you can do so
at History Podcast at iHeart radio dot com. You can
also find us on the internet on social media as
Missed in History, and you can subscribe to the podcast
on the I heart Radio app or anywhere you listen
to your favorite podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class

(36:13):
is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.