In 1856, Dr. William Palmer made history when he was hanged for poisoning his best friend. It was not only the first trial involving strychnine, but the first that was moved because of the extensive publicity it received in the new penny newspapers that were exploding in popularity. In 1925, George Fletcher published his lifetime’s research on the case. Drawing on his family’s ties to the area, he visited Staffordshire repeatedly over several decades. He interviewed many of the people connected with the case and collected their stories and observations. His biography of Palmer was the first to feature new information about him, his murders, and the controversies surrounding his trial. This new edition of “The Life and Career of Dr. Palmer of Rugeley” brings Fletcher’s biography back into print with the original illustrations and photographs. Annotator Bill Peschel has added more than 100 annotations, two maps and essays on strychnine, Rugeley then and now, Palmer's influence on popular culture and more. This material, created especially for this edition, expands the story and explains the social and cultural references unfamiliar to today’s readers. Fletcher’s biography is part of “The Rugeley Poisoner” trilogy that includes two books published in 1856: “The Illustrated Life and Career of William Palmer” and “The Illustrated Times Trial of William Palmer.” With these three books, true-crime fans can experience early Victorian Britain where money was king, reputations ruled, and where evil lurked in the heart of a benign doctor.

William Palmer was tried at the Central Criminal Court, London, May 1856, for the murder of John Parsons Cook.

THE PRINCE OF POISONERS William Palmer was known to all in Rugeley. The son from a wealthy family had trained in London as a surgeon and returned to the English village with his beautiful, respected wife to raise a family and live out his days as a country doctor. But Dr. Palmer wanted more. More money. More excitement. More women. He dove into the shady world of horse racing, gambling heavily and spending a fortune to build his stable of thoroughbreds. When money grew tight, he found that a dosed drink or two could clear the way. He got away with it, poisoning his wife, mother-in-law, his infant children, fellow gamblers and many more, until he killed one time too many. The story of Dr. Palmer’s deadly treatments at the birth of the mass media riveted the nation and spread around the world. The sensational 12-day trial in London’s Old Bailey drew the attention of royalty (Prince Albert bought one of Palmer’s horses at auction) and literature (Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins followed the case) and made legal history as the first trial in which strychnine figured and the first to be moved because of the enormous publicity. Appearing soon after Palmer’s execution in 1856, “The Illustrated Life and Career of William Palmer” was published to cash in on the notorious case. The anonymous author combined facts and rumors about Palmer’s crimes with sketches on debauched medical students and crooked scams in horse racing, and pious meditations on Palmer’s wife. With the help of footnotes and essays, the result is a compelling, fascinating look at life in the early Victorian era, and the criminal doctor who was placed “at the head of his profession” by none other than Sherlock Holmes! Look for these other Peschel Press books on the Palmer case: “The Illustrated Times Trial of William Palmer” and “The Life and Career of Dr. William Palmer of Rugeley”.

The Case of the Deadly Doctor IT IS THE YEAR 1856. Queen Victoria has ruled for 19 years. The Crimean War recently ended after three years of bloody fighting. The elimination of taxes on newspapers unleashed a demand for stories and the bloodier the better. The arrest of Dr. William Palmer of Rugeley for murder gave the public what it wanted: a terrifying death by strychnine; a glimpse into the shady world of horse-racing; and the possibility of insurance fraud. And the horrible suspicion that the soft-spoken, placid Palmer had also poisoned his wife, mother-in-law, brother, and four of his children. The sensational 12-day trial in London's Old Bailey drew the attention of royalty (Prince Albert bought one of Palmer's horses) and inspired Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. Doctors clashed on the stand as expert witnesses and spoke out in public. The public took it all in and heatedly debated the question: Did the good doctor poison his friend under the guise of curing him? Originally published in 1856, this edition of "The Times Report of the Trial of William Palmer" reprints the court transcript, edited and corrected for the first time, along with more than 60 woodcuts restored to make them look better than the day they were printed. This edition also includes: More than 250 footnotes explaining historical, legal, and medical references Period maps of England and the Staffordshire region A glossary of medical and scientific terms Profiles of the leading legal figures in the case. The result is a fresh look at the mass-murdering country doctor and the trial that shocked Britain. The Rugeley Poisoner series also includes "The Illustrated Life and Career of William Palmer" (1856) and "The Life and Career of Dr. William Palmer of Rugeley" (1926).

One of the most notorious Victorian murders was committed by Dr George Henry Lamson, who stood trial in 1882 for poisoning his crippled brother-in-law Percy Malcolm John; he was found guilty, sentenced to death, and executed.

"Suppose that everything we think we know about the Victorians is wrong." So begins Inventing the Victorians by Matthew Sweet, a compact and mind-bending whirlwind tour through the soul of the nineteenth century, and a round debunking of our assumptions about it. The Victorians have been victims of the "the enormous condescension of posterity," in the historian E. P. Thompson's phrase. Locked in the drawing room, theirs was an age when, supposedly, existence was stultifying, dank, and over-furnished, and when behavior conformed so rigorously to proprieties that the repressed results put Freud into business. We think we have the Victorians pegged--as self-righteous, imperialist, racist, materialist, hypocritical and, worst of all, earnest. Oh how wrong we are, argues Matthew Sweet in this highly entertaining, provocative, and illuminating look at our great, and great-great, grandparents. One hundred years after Queen Victoria's death, Sweet forces us to think again about her century, entombed in our minds by Dickens, the Elephant Man, Sweeney Todd, and by images of unfettered capitalism and grinding poverty. Sweet believes not only that we're wrong about the Victorians but profoundly indebted to them. In ways we have been slow to acknowledge, their age and our own remain closely intertwined. The Victorians invented the theme park, the shopping mall, the movies, the penny arcade, the roller coaster, the crime novel, and the sensational newspaper story. Sweet also argues that our twenty-first century smugness about how far we have evolved is misplaced. The Victorians were less racist than we are, less religious, less violent, and less intolerant. Far from being an outcast, Oscar Wilde was a fairly typical Victorian man; the love that dared not speak its name was declared itself fairly openly. In 1868 the first international cricket match was played between an English team and an Australian team composed entirely of aborigines. The Victorians loved sensation, novelty, scandal, weekend getaways, and the latest conveniences (by 1869, there were image-capable telegraphs; in 1873 a store had a machine that dispensed milk to after-hours' shoppers). Does all this sound familiar? As Sweet proves in this fascinating, eye-opening book, the reflection we find in the mirror of the nineteenth century is our own. We inhabit buildings built by the Victorians; some of us use their sewer system and ride on the railways they built. We dismiss them because they are the age against whom we have defined our own. In brilliant style, Inventing the Victorians shows how much we have been missing.