72 ASHGILL; OR, THE LIFE 



been hung, considered that the rolling motion of his 

 body and head as he tripped along the corridor to his 

 doom was the " natural language of love of approbation," 

 and that his tripping on the toes with a cat-like motion 

 was the result of a very large secretiveness. Palmer's 

 winnings commenced in " The Dutchman's " year, and 

 Doubt was one of his first racehorses. His downward 

 career began with the defeat of Hobbie Noble, and it 

 is chronicled that from the Derby day his sorrows began 

 and his crimes accumulated. 



" Palmer's experience," says an old writer, " as a 

 medical student at St. Bartholomew's gave him a 

 scientific knowledge of the deadly properties of 

 strychnine with which he operated upon the liver 

 of his victims. From his earliest years he evinced 

 a deep passion for the Turf, and with that passion 

 grew a stronger one for gambling. Success 

 smiled upon him so abundantly that in a brief 

 space of time from being a penniless student he rose 

 into a position of affluence, becoming the owner of a 

 Chester Cup winner and a favourite for the Oaks. 

 Sporting men in his own neighbourhood and elsewhere 

 would be proud of the slightest mark of recognition from 

 him, and treasure up a hint as a junior barrister would 

 an expression of encouragement from a Lord Chancellor. 

 Upon his return to Kugeley he scraped sufficient money 

 to buy a colt called Ferry Hill (by Plenipotentiary out 

 of Memphis), which won him two races. He won 500 

 over The Flying Dutchman at Liverpool, and following 

 Lord Eglinton's horse up at Doncaster won a stake 

 large enough to purchase a few steeplechasers to amuse 

 himself with in the winter. 



" In 1851 he came out with Doubt, with whom he 

 won the Leamington Stakes at Warwick of the 



