Shortly after his marriage began a series of suspicious deaths which were attributed to Palmer after investigation started into the circumstances attending the death of Cook. An illegitimate child he had by a Rugeley woman died after it had visited him. Mrs. Thornton, his mother-in-law, was persuaded to live at his house, and she died within a fortnight. Palmer acquired property from her by her death. In 1850 a Mr. Bladon, a racing man, stayed for several days with Palmer, who owed him £800 for bets. Bladon died in circumstances very like those attending Cook’s death, and Palmer buried him with the haste he attempted in the case of Cook, and he narrowly escaped a similar accusation.
In 1854 Palmer effected insurances to the amount of £13,000 on his wife’s life. Within six months she died much as Bladon had died, and as Cook was to die. Dr. Bamford, a medical man of eighty-two, whom Palmer seems to have hoodwinked into serving his purposes, certified the death of Mrs. Palmer, as he had done the death of Bladon, and as he was to certify a year later that of Cook. Palmer drew the insurance money from the offices concerned. They were influenced by the popular suspicions and rumours in Rugeley and in the sporting circles Palmer frequented, but they paid after some hesitation and suggestion of inquiry, and Palmer was freed from the most pressing of his liabilities. His diary contains this entry--“Sept. 29th (1854), Friday--My poor, dear Annie expired at 10 past 1.” Nine days after this--“Oct. 8th, Sunday--At church, Sacrament.” Nine months after his maidservant, Eliza Tharm, bore an illegitimate child to him. Within three months of his wife’s death Palmer, with the assistance of Pratt, the moneylender, whose claims had been met by the insurance on Mrs. Palmer’s life, was making proposals to various offices, amounting to £82,000, on the life of his brother Walter. Ultimately an insurance for £13,000 was effected, and the policy was lodged with Pratt to secure advances. After this the rest of Palmer’s life-history is directly connected with the story of the trial. The account we have given will suggest the, perhaps unprecedented, interest with which the trial was anticipated throughout the Midlands, and afterwards with what absorbed attention it was followed by all England as well as on the Continent.