________________
“It is worth being shot at to see how much
one is loved.”
-
Queen Victoria
It is not so well known that Queen
Victoria(1819 – 1901), survived 8
assassination attempts. Not many leaders
have survived more attempts so, in terms of her quotation above, she could see
that she was greatly loved.
The attempts . . .
________________
Edward Oxford
10 June, 1840
On 10 February 1840 Queen Victoria (she was queen from 1837 to her
death) married her first cousin, Prince Albert. On 10 June 1840 HRH, four months pregnant (!) and hubby left
Buckingham Palace in an open carriage for their regular ride through Hyde Park.
Not far outside the palace gates, 18 year old Edward Oxford, described by
Albert later as “a little mean-looking
man”, fired a pair of dueling pistols at
them and missed both times. He later
claimed that there were no bullets in the pistols, just gunpowder. After Oxford was arrested and charged with
treason, a jury found that Oxford was not guilty by reason of insanity. He was sent to Bedlam, where he was a model
patient, learning to speak several languages, before moving to Broadmoor in
1864. He was discharged in 1867, deported to Australia and became a pillar of
society in Melbourne, where he changed his name to John Freeman (true). He became a housepainter and author. Queen Victoria was hostile about the
determination and felt that he should have been hanged so that his death would
have acted as a deterrent to other potential regicides.
Edward Oxford, 1856
_______________
John Francis
29 May, 1842
Two years later the royal couple were again travelling in their open
carriage, this time after attending a Sunday morning service at the royal
chapel at St. James’s Palace. John
Francis, who Albert later described as “a little, swarthy, ill-looking rascal”,
pointed a flintlock pistol at them and pulled the but the weapon failed to
fire. Francis then fled.
John Francis
________________
John Francis
30 May. 1842
Although HRH wanted to stay inside at Buckingham Palace until Francis
was caught, the authorities had a much better idea, that Queen Victoria and
Prince Albert should go out again the next day in their open carriage as bait
to flush out Francis. Albert subsequently wrote to his father “You
may imagine that our minds were not very easy.
We looked behind every tree, and I cast my eyes round in search of the
rascal’s face.” Plain-clothed officers with a description of the suspect
scoured the crowd but then a shot suddenly rang out just five paces from the
carriage. Police tackled Francis, whose shot had missed. He was sentenced to be hanged and quartered
before the Queen commuted his sentence to banishment for life.
John Francis’s second attempt.
________________
John William Bean
- 3 July, 1842
Five weeks after Francis’s bungled
assassination attempts, 17-year-old John William Bean waited for the queen’s
procession as it left Buckingham Palace to travel the short trip to the nearby royal
chapel. Bean, a stunted hunchback,
understandably was unhappy with his life.
He wanted a change, any change, even a prison sentence. As the royal carriage passed, Bean pulled out
a pistol and pulled the trigger but the gun didn’t fire. Weren’t there any firearms in London that
worked?? A bystander grabbed his wrist
but he escaped. There weren’t that many
four foot hunchbacks in London although hunchbacks were rousted for weeks
afterwards. That night Bean was arrested
at the family home. Bean said the Queen’s
life was never in danger as his pistol was loaded with more tobacco than
gunpowder and pointed to the ground. He was sentenced to 18 months of hard
labor.
________________
William Hamilton
19 June, 1849
On the above date, in the evening of the official commemoration of
her birthday, Queen Victoria rode through Hyde and Regent’s Park with three of
her children, including the future King Edward VII. Nine years earlier Edward
Oxford had stood in the same position as William Hamilton now stood. Hamilton fired at the carriage as it passed
but no one was injured and Hamilton was captured. Hamilton, an unemployed bricklayer, had moved
from Ireland to London 9 years earlier at the time of the Great Hunger. He told
the police he had fired the gun loaded only with powder “for the purpose of
getting into prison, as he was tired of being out of work.” He pled guilty and
was banished to the prison colony of Gibraltar for seven years.
Sketch from the London News of Hamilton’s attempt on the life of
Queen Victoria
________________
Robert Pate
27 June, 1850
On the above date, Queen Victoria and three of her children were
visiting her dying uncle at Cambridge House.
Pate, a former British Army officer who had descended into insanity,
came upon the Queen in her carriage as he was walking and as she was leaving.
Pate hit her on the forehead with his cane, raising a welt and blackening her
eye. As the crowd manhandled the
attacker, the Queen stood up and proclaimed, “I am not hurt.” Her black eye and welt showed otherwise. although the immense bruise on the right side
of her head and the black eye later proved otherwise. Pate, who was the only
potential assassin to harm the queen, was sentenced to seven years in the penal
colony of Tasmania. (In 1842 the
Security of Her Majesty’s Person Act had lowered the punishment to whipping and
seven years’ imprisonment or transportation.)
________________
Arthur O’Connor
29 February, 1872
If you are starting to sense patterns and repetitions in these
assassination attempts, then the next will only confirm it further.
Seventeen year old Irish nationalist Arthur O’Connor had dreams of
being an Irish martyr to the Fenian cause.
On 29 February 1872 he scaled the fence at Buckingham Palace and ran
across the courtyard without being detected.
Her Maj had been on a carriage ride in Hyde Park for Leap Year Day. When she returned to the palace entrance,
O’Connor rushed up to the side of the carriage and pointed his flintlock pistol only 30 cm (one foot) from her. John Brown, the queen’s personal servant,
seized the teenager by the neck and tackled him to the ground as the queen was
rushed to safety. O’Connor’s pistol was
broken and unusable but this was not
known to Victoria or John Brown. O’Connor
declared that he never intended to kill Queen Victoria, only to frighten her
into signing a document that would release Irish political prisoners being held
in British jails. Brown received a medal for his heroism. O’Connor received a
year in prison, 20 strokes with a birch rod and exile to Australia.
________________
Roderick Maclean
2 March, 1882
The only man who fired at the Queen with a loaded gun was Roderick
Maclean, her last attacker, who ambushed her in her carriage as she emerged
from Windsor station after arriving by train from London. The queen wrote
later, “there was the sound of what I thought was an explosion from the engine,
but in another moment, I saw people rushing about and a man being violently
hustled, rushing down the street.” Roderick Maclean, who had fired the shot at
the queen, was set upon by a group of nearby Eton students and pummeled with
their umbrellas. After his arrest, Maclean
explained that his action was the result of the frustration he felt after
sending the Queen a number of poems he had written that were not accepted by
her. At the time it was not uncommon for
struggling artists to solicit patronage from the aristocracy, including the
head of the Monarchy.
During Maclean’s sentencing, he was found not guilty of high treason,
but insane. The sentence bothered the Queen so much, she established a new law
known as “Trial of the Lunatics Act 1883.” Under the new law, the same
procedures would be enacted, but a sentence of insanity would read, “guilty,
but insane.”
MacLean spent the rest of his
life in an asylum.
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