Sir Alexander James Edmund Cockburn, 12th Baronet was a British jurist and politician who served as the Lord Chief Justice for 21 years. He heard some of the leading causes célèbres of the nineteenth
Portrait by George Frederic Watts
William Palmer (murderer)
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William Palmer, also known as the Rugeley Poisoner or the Prince of Poisoners, was an English doctor and murderer. A court convicted him for the 1855 murder of his friend John Cook, whom he had poison
Sir Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet
…1852 and the Common Law Procedure Act 1854. William Palmer: In his tenure as Attorney General from 1852 to 1856, he led for the crown in the trial of William Palmer of Rugeley in Staffordshire, an ex-medical man who poisoned a friend named Cook with strychnine in order to steal from his estate. Cockburn made an…
William Palmer (drawing by Joseph Simpson, 1912)
Residence of William Palmer, at Rugeley. Illustrated London News, 24 May 1856.
Dr. William Palmer's cigar case with cigar, made in France, 1840–1856
Palmer's diary recording the death of Cook