SIXTY YEARS ON THE TURF 



was eventually brought to book. His sinister 

 reputation I have already referred to, and after 

 Cook's death, under suspicious circumstances, the 

 gentlemen named represented to his mother and his 

 stepfather the necessity for action. " You will be 

 almost as bad as he is," they said, "if you don't do 

 something." Once the law was set in motion the 

 end was inevitable. It was never known, and it 

 never now can be known, how many people, in the 

 course of his nefarious operations, Palmer got rid of. 

 He thought no more of poisoning a man or a woman 

 to serve his ends than a chemist would of dosing a 

 cat. To the last Palmer asserted that his agent of 

 death was not strychnine. This was more or less a 

 chemical quibble, for he may have employed Nux 

 vomica, from which strychnine is obtained. If he 

 did not use Nux vomica or strychnine it is probable 

 he resorted to morphia, the active principle of opium, 

 which produces analogous symptoms. I write this 

 not of my knowledge of toxicology, but from infor- 

 mation gleaned in a conversation concerning the 

 matter with Mr. Edgar Nicholson, M.KC.S.,L.RC.P., 

 of Fenny Stratford, Bucks. 



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