DEATH AT BANQUET.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21118, 27 February 1932, Page 2 (Supplement)

DEATH AT BANQUET.

SOLICITOR'S DRAMATIC END.

SEIZURE AFTER WITTY SPEECH. COUNSEL IN NOTABLE CASES. Death came with dramatic suddenness on the night of January 20 to Mr. Freko Palmer, a well-known London solicitor. Ho collapsed at tho Connaught Rooms, Kingsway, just after ho had concluded a speech at a Masonic dinner. The speech was one in which Mr. Palmer responded far the visitors, and one of those at the dinner, described it as the most sparkling of hfegareer. Shortly before 10 p.m./ Mf.'.Palmer sat down. Ho turned to Sis right-hand neighbour. "Did that sound all right?" he asked. "It was magnificent. You were splendid," was the reply. The next speaker had hardly said more than a few words when Mr. Palmer was seen to be ill in his chair. He was removed to the grand hall of tbe Connaught Rooms, and his doctor, who was present, followed. Within a few minutes Mr. Palmer had died. A legal correspondent wrote to tho Daily Mail: —Frederick Freko Palmer was an old Marlborough boy, and though he was admitted a solicitor in 1884, it was with no intention of specialising in the type of practice with which his name has been so honourably identified for many years. Mr. Palmer was articled to a firm of conveyancers and had that, kind of work in mind when one day a client of the firm had occasion to take a solicitor

to Marylebono Police Court. It was not in the firm's line," but they entrusted the job to young Freke Palmer, v.-ho was at tho time just starting as a solicitor. He went arid to use his own phrase, found there was a living to be made in that class of work. A small unoccupied ground floor which had been used ns a hairdresser's shop, almost adjacent to the police court was taken by Mr. Palmer at a rent of about 30s. a week In time, with the growth of his business, ho came to occupy not only the shop floor but both houses. One of Mr. Palmer's earliest cases was the trial of Mrs. Pearcey, who was executed in 1890 for what is known as the Kentish Town murder. In 1920 he defended cx-Police-Sergeaut Goddard on a charge of accepting bribes in connection with illegalities in West End night clubs. Five yearn earlier Mr. Palmer had stepped into tho limelight when, at Bow-street Police Court, he defended Mine. Fahmy in tho celebrated case in which she was charged with murdering her husband, Ali Bey Fahmy, a wealthy young Egyptian, in a West End hotel. After a sensational trial Mme. Fahmy was acquitted at the Old Bailey.