William Palmer was born at Rugeley in Staffordshire on August 6, 1824 and qualified in medicine in London in 1846. He set up in practice in his home town and was, by every account, ruinously addicted to betting on horses.
The deaths around him are extraordinary. Four of his children died in infancy, all recorded as convulsions. His wife Ann died in 1854, shortly after he had insured her life for thirteen thousand pounds. His brother Walter died in 1855, also insured, also by Palmer. His mother-in-law died at his house in 1849, having made him her heir. A creditor named Leonard Bladen died at the house in 1850 with his betting book missing. He was called the Rugeley Poisoner, after his home town.
The death that hanged him was John Parsons Cook's. Cook won heavily at Shrewsbury races in November 1855, fell violently ill after drinking with Palmer, and died at the Talbot Arms in Rugeley in convulsions so severe that his body arched off the bed. Palmer had by then collected Cook's winnings and forged his signature.
The post-mortem was chaotic and the strychnine was never actually recovered, which is the weakness at the heart of the case. The prosecution relied on the symptoms, on the purchases of strychnine, on the forgeries, and on the pattern of deaths.
Public feeling in Staffordshire was such that Parliament passed a special act to move the trial to the Old Bailey. He was convicted on May 27, 1856 and hanged at Stafford on June 14 before a crowd of thirty thousand. His reported last words, stepping onto the trapdoor, were to ask whether it was safe. Charles Dickens called him the greatest villain that ever stood in the Old Bailey dock.