[Rarebooks] fa: TRIAL OF WILLIAM PALMER, MURDERER/POISONER 1856 (Palmer Act/Change of Venue)

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, July 21. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/ngnhewj

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.



Verbatim Report of the Trial of William Palmer, at the Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey, London, May 14 and following days 1856, before Lord Campbell, Mr Justice Cresswell and Mr Baron Alderson, [Tr]anscribed from the short-hand notes of Mr. Angelo Bennett… Copyright Edition. London: J. Allen, 1856. FIRST EDITION. Thick 8vo in later, but not recent, plain wraps with the original printed front cover (trimmed) and spine title laid down; 326 pp.

The complete transcript of the trial of the notorious poisoner William Palmer, who was convicted of murdering his friend and fellow racing punter John Cook, and was strongly suspected of having previously  "dosed" his wife, brother, and mother-in-law. In every case, the motive was financial, Palmer having enormous gambling debts. He was even suspected of having poisoned four of his five children in infancy for reasons of domestic economy. The publicity surrounding the crime caused such outrage in Palmer's native Staffordshire that the defense feared it would not be able to secure a fair trial there and Parliament passed the landmark Central Criminal Court Act of 1856, popularly known as the Palmer Act, allowing a crime committed outside London to be tried at the Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey, rather than locally.

Wraps with a split at the bottom of the rear hinge; some bumping/curling to the corners of the leaves; a few tidy ink corrections apparently made by a medical person with knowledge of poisons (perhaps the "G. A. Hemmings" whose signature is on the title-page of part I); a few small spots; otherwise generally clean and sound.