Sorry to join this conversation a couple of years after the last post, but I live just outside Rugeley and I've been doing a bit of local history research, which involves The Talbot Inn.
In 1839 a woman called Christina Collins was murdered on a canal boat, her body was found in the canal at Brindley Bank, just outside Rugeley. Her body was taken to the (you guessed it) Talbot Inn. Initially, I was sure that this must mean the Talbot Arms in Market Street, still existing, now known as The Shrew.
But it seems that, unbelievably, there were indeed 2 hostelries known as "The Talbot", within Rugeley, about quarter of a mile of each other. The Arms, as above, was in Market Street; the Inn was on the corner of Wolseley Road and Anson Street, now the site of a 3 story 1960s cuboid apartment block. They're both listed in the 1830 Pigot's Directory.
The Inn seems to have been a magnet for dead bodies... Collins in 1839 and the disinterred victims of Palmer a decade and a half later.
Not only did the Willis's business suffer from the stigma of the Palmer murders, the Arms was also renamed The Shrewsbury Arms as a direct result. Indeed, I'm sure I've read somewhere that the entire Town of Rugeley petitioned Parliament, unsuccessfully, to rename itself.
