This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1916. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VIII Palmer"s Poisonings in the whole of modern British criminology there is no more appalling character than Dr. William Palmer, the Rugeley poisoner. He was a notorious evil liver, an extensive forger, and a wholesale murderer. The late Mr. Justice Stephen said of him: "No more horrible villain than Palmer ever stood in a dock." Palmer was convicted of the murder of a man named Cook, and was hanged outside Stafford Gaol on June 14th, 1856; but he was indicted for two other murders, and it is known that he had committed at least eleven of these terrible crimes, his victims including his wife and four children, all the infants dying within a few weeks of birth, and suddenly. Practically a life study has been made of the Palmer case by Dr. George Fletcher, J.P., whose story is narrated. I paid my first visit to Rugeley when I was a schoolboy, fourteen years old, and walking from the station I passed a fine house with a garden fronting on the road. A number of trippers had come into Rugeley from the adjacent Black Country, and they stared hard at this particular building, for it was the house in which Dr. Palmer had been born. As we looked at the house a woman, evidently the mistress, came out and walked to the garden gate near us, and, speaking with an extraordinary sort of pride, she said to us: "Well, I"m Mrs. Palmer, the mother of Dr. Palmer--and I"m not ashamed of it! The judges hanged my saintly Bill, and he was the best of my whole lot!" It was a dramatic incident, and I have never forgotten it, nor have I forgotten seeing John Parsons Cook, for whose murder Palmer was hanged. Cook came to Bromsgrove, where I lived, shortly before he was murdered, and I remember him playing cricket for the town club. From those early and distant days I have m...