They Hanged My Saintly Billy (66 page)

The
Lord
Chief
Justice,
gazing
sternly
at
Serjeant
Shee,
said: 'According
to
the
last
account
we
heard,
it
was
in
the
prisoner's possession.'

Serjeant
Shce
replied
with
a
reproachful
cough:
'My
Lord,
I don't
think
there
is
any
proof
of
his
ever
having
touched
it.'

Here
the
Attorney-General
interrupted:
'We
will
show
that
it lay
in
the
dead
man's
room
on
the
Tuesday
night
before
his
death, and
that
the
prisoner
was
afterwards
observed
looking
about

Yet
nobody
at
The
Talbot
Arms
Hotel
claimed
to
have
seen
the book
later
than
the
Monday
night,
when
Elizabeth
Mills
noticed it
hanging
from
the
mirror.

Nor
did
the
Lord
Chief
Justice
point
out
the
patent
discrepancy
between
a
statement
promised
from
Elizabeth
Mills
by
the Attorney-General;
namely,
that
she
handed
Cook's
cup
of
coffee, ordered
on
the
Monday
morning,
to
Dr
Palmer
(who
therefore had
an
opportunity
of
doctoring
it);
and
the
statement
which
she actually
made,
namely
that
she
gave
it
directly
to
Cook.
He
also withheld
comment
on
the
even
graver
discrepancy
pointed
out
by Serjeant
Slice
between
her
statements
at
the
inquest
and
at
the trial.
Whereas
she
had
told
the
Coroner
that
the
broth
tasted
very good,
and
mentioned
no
harmful
after-effect,
her
new
story
was that
she
had
been
seized
by
violent
vomiting
which
incapacitated her
for
five
hours.
Moreover,
her
original
deposition
contained no
reference
to
the
tw
itchings
and
jerkings
which
she
now
described
with
much
pantomimic
by-play.

It
was
noted,
too,
that
the
Lord
Chief
Justice
eulogized
all
the medical
witnesses
called
for
the
Crown
and
allotted
seats
in
Court; while
seeming
to
regard
all
witnesses
for
the
Defence
as
ignoble or
inferior
beings
since,
by
his
own
orders,
they
were
condemned to
stand.
Some
of
these
he
offered
undeserved
disrespect,
and applauded
only
one,
Dr
Wrightson
of
Birmingham,
whose
evidence
lent
some
slight
support
to
Professor
Taylor's
theories.
His recommendation
of
Sir
Benjamin
Brodie
went:
'The
jury
will take
into
consideration
the
solemn
opinion
of
this
distinguished medical
man:
that
he
never
knew
a
case
in
which
the
symptoms he
has
heard
described
arose
from
any
disease.
He
has
witnessed the
various
diseases
that
afflict
the
human
frame
in
all
their
multiplicity,
and
he
knows
of
no
natural
disease
such
as
will
answer
the symptoms
which
he
has
heard
described
in
the
case
of
Cook;
and, if
death
did
not
arise
from
natural
disease,
then
the
inference
is that
it
arose
from
other
causes.'

The
alleged
cause
was,
of
course,
strychnine
poisoning.
Now, Sir
Benjamin
Brodie
based
his
solemn
opinion
on
two
irreconcilable
statements:
the
first
made
by
Elizabeth
Mills—who
was proved
to
have
greatl
y
enlarged
and
embroidered
on
the
evidence she
gave
at
the
inquest—and
the
other
by
Dr
Jones
of
Lutterworth, whose
evidence
had
remained
unchanged.
If
what
Elizabeth
Mills swore
was
all
true,
and
if
Sir
Benjamin
was
omniscient,
then
the Lord
Chief
Justice
might
have
been
justified
in
saying
that
Cook's symptoms
accorded
with
no
known
disease,
and
that
strychnine might
therefore
be
suspected—except
that
neither
did
some
of
the symptoms
reported
coincide
with
those
expected
from
strychnine poisoning.
On
the
other
hand,
if
Elizabeth
Mills
lied,
th
en
the description
of
Cook's
deadi
as
given
by
this
Dr
Jones,
a
trained medical
practitioner,
became
perfectly
consistent
with
natural disease.
This
is
to
say:
if
Mr
Stevens
and
Mr
Gardiner
had
influenced
Miss
Mills
by
culling
a
number
of
symptoms
from
the recent
case
of
Mrs
Dove,
who
had
died
from
strych
nine,
and
suggesting
that
she
had
noticed
them
in
Cook;
and
if
she
perjured herself
in
swearing
to
these;
and
if
her
evidence
must
be
given equal
value
with
Dr
Jones's—why,
then
Sir
Benjamin
Brodie could
hardly
make
any
other
reply
than
he
did
when
asked
the question.
How
could
he
assign
the
cause
of
Cook's
death
to
any known
disease,
when
most
of
the
symptoms
were
fictitious
and irreconcilable
with
the
genuine
ones?

Serjeant
Shee
made
great
efforts
to
bring
out
this
point
in
cross-examining
Sir
Benjamin:

S
erjeant shee
.
Would
you
think
that
the
description
of
a
chamber
maid,
and
of
a
provincial
medical man
who
had
seen
only
one
case of
tetanus,
could
be
relied
on
to
state
what
sort
of
disease
Cook's was?