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In preparing this report of a trial more than half a century ago, the chief difficulty one might expect would be to obtain an accurate contemporary account. A State trial one knows where to find; but how could newspaper reports of a trial lasting twelve days, and involving the most technical evidence on anatomy, physiology, and toxicology, be relied upon for anything like accuracy? Fortunately, if this trial was not a State trial in the ordinary sense, it so seized the minds of the country at the time that a complete record is to be found in the “Verbatim Report of the Trial of William Palmer, Transcribed from the Shorthand Notes of Mr. Angelo Bennett, of Rolls Chambers, Chancery Lane,” and published in 1856. A copy is not easily met with now-a-days. Official verbatim reports of criminal trials, that is made by an officer of the Court itself, were not then known. I suppose, though it is not so stated, that Mr. Bennett’s notes were taken by him on the instructions of the Treasury for reference each day by the Court and Counsel. They are the basis of the following report. Medical and medico-chemical evidence constitutes the greater part of this trial; it is also far the most important part; and in dealing with it I have had the benefit of the professional skill of Dr. William Robertson, of Leith, who has read the proofs. Some of the evidence, as it stood, showed that it had been a little too much for the erudition of the shorthand writer, and needed editing. I hope that, with the aid of Dr. Robertson, this appears now as it was intended to be by the experts who gave it.

The question of portraits has caused some difficulty. Photographs were not common, to say the least, in 1856. Most woodcuts met with seemed not worth reproduction. This accounts for the few portraits which appear; though the number of Judges and Counsel was exceptionally large. Palmer alone is shown more satisfactorily than any of the others in the well-known figure at Madame Tussaud’s. Their modeller was present in Court and I have seen his casts of Palmer’s head and face taken after execution. The striking sketch of Palmer by Mr. Joseph Simpson, the well-known artist, has been made from a photograph of this figure, and from a contemporary print.

Palmer has the distinction of an article in the Dictionary of National Biography. Many of the contemporary accounts cannot be relied on; they are too evidently sensational and designed for excited and morbid imaginations. By the kindness of Dr. George Fleming, J.P., of Highgate, London, who is a treasury of Palmeriana and of Rugeley tradition, I have been able to use his collection of “Jane” letters. The substance of these letters appears in the Introduction. They reveal a sinister episode in Palmer’s career not to be found related elsewhere. Moreover, it was a real link in the chain of circumstances that led to Palmer’s crime and his trial. The letter from Palmer to his wife was kindly lent for reproduction by Dr. Kurt Loewenfeld, of Bramhall, Cheshire.

G. H. K.