Free They Hanged My Saintly Billy by Robert Graves Page B

because the expense falls on the rates, the accommodation is wholly inadequate, and amenities are very few. Most patients regard their transference here as tantamount to a sentence of death, though the medical staff, we understand, sho w a praiseworthy devotion to the ir duties, and though one or two at least of the younger surgeons are aware not only of the anaesthetic use of ether in operations, but also of the principle of antiseptics as recently discovered by Mr Joseph Lister, house-surgeon at University College Hospital. For in practice, ether, as an unnecessary expense, is never administered; and antisepsis is difficult to achieve in an out-of-date building where hospital gangrene and pyaemia must remain a constant scourge, and where the shortage of nurses, except the drunken and incapable, rules out even elementary cleanliness in the wards.
    Hospital reform, however, is not the subject of our study; let it suffice to say that a walking-pupil in Stafford Infirmary, or any other similar institution—if he is not to become the victim of a nervous disorder—must habituate himself to distressing sights, noisome smells, and such a scene of human misery, despair, and degradation, that his susceptibilities will soon become blunted. To relieve his mind of these horrors he may well be tempted to abandon shame in the wildest larks and most outrageous debaucheries.
    William Palmer went to the Infirmary about Midsummer, 1845; but did not remain there for more than a few weeks.
    Mr Edward Jenkinson, linen-draper, a small, stout, irascible man with a huge strawberry mark spread across his face and very disagreeable features, was holding forth about William Palmer in The Dolphin Inn the other day, shortly before the trial at the Old Bailey began. Mr Jenkinson drinks neat brandy only, and can afford this luxury; for he is well-to-do and has no family to support, his physical disadvantages having decided all the women to whom he ever offered marriage that they would be far better off in any other circumstances whatsoever. The contempt with which some of them accompanied their refusal has turned him into a misogynist, though one unable to conceal the jealousy he feels for men to whom women freely yield their favours, even uninvited.
    mr edward jenkinson
    It would never have come to this, I swear, had my fellow-jurymen listened to me eleven years ago, when the first of Palmer's vile crimes came to light. He was then a walking-pupil at the Infirmary and had not yet inherited his fortune. But he talked freely about how he proposed to spend the money, and the number of foolish girls whom he persuaded that they had been born expressly for the purpose of assisting him to do so must have run into double figures. Palmer had the power of deceiving himself as a means of deceiving his victims: he proposed marriage to each in turn, and convinced himself that she was the most desirable woman alive. If the girl anticipated marriage by granting him what he asked, Palmer at once cooled towards her, as too giddy to be his wife; if, on the other hand, she refused him, he thought her cold, and abandoned the chase. It is said that he got two girls in the family way during his apprenticeship with Dr Tylecote at Haywood, and three more in Stafford; but that is mere gossip from the public houses.
    One day I was summoned to attend a Coroner's inquest on the death of a poor shoemaker named Abley, and my fellow-jurymen elected me their foreman as perhaps the most talented . .. well, for whatever reason it may have been, they elected me. The evidence was provided by Mrs Bates, the landlady. It appears that Palmer invited Abley to take a drink at The Lamb and Flag—it was a cold, raw day—and asked him what he fancied.
    'A pint of ale, if you don't mind,' says Abley.
    'Come, come,' says Palmer, 'don't stint yourself! A pint of ale falls chill on the stomach in weather like this. I'll treat you to something better. What about a sip of brandy?'
    Abley says that