Shooting Victoria (75 page)

74:   … Victoria and Albert emerged into a deafening sea of humanity that “all but impeded the progress of the royal party”:
Weekly Chronicle
14 June 1840, 2.

75:    “The loyalty of the English was never more finely exhibited than it was during the afternoon of yesterday”:
Times
12 June 1840, 6.

75:   On the next day, Friday, the Queen and Albert were prevented from riding as both Houses of Parliament paraded from Westminster to the Palace to present a congratulatory address:
Times
13 June 1840, 6.

76:   
… partisanship the Queen had herself shown months before in wishing to exclude the Tories from her wedding: Longford 141.

76   
The crowd outside the Palace, on the other hand, displayed a strong sense of party spirit, showing its hostility to the beleaguered Whig government:
Times
13 June 1840, 6.

76:   
On Monday, however, Westminster once again burst into celebration, as Victoria and Albert departed Buckingham Palace by carriage for Windsor:
Morning Chronicle
16 June 1840, 3.

Chapter 5: Going to See a Man Hanged

78:   … her family doctor … went so far as to claim she was “most eccentric, if not insane”: Clarke 196.

79:   Hannah spoke with the permanent undersecretary there, Samuel March Phillipps:
Morning Chronicle
13 June 1840, 3;
Times
13 June 1840, 6.

79:   Oxford was cheerful when he entered Newgate on Thursday evening:
Morning Chronicle
12 June 1840, 6.

79:   … when Alderman Laurie asked him whether he had balls in his pistols, Oxford denied it outright:
Morning Chronicle
16 June 1840, 3.

79:   … Oxford was left alone with guards who were strictly ordered to discuss nothing with him beyond his immediate needs:
Morning Chronicle
13 June 1840, 3.

80:   … reverting to fits of crying, and developing the odd habit of whistling to mask his distress:
Weekly Chronicle
14 June 1840, 2.

80:   … he cared little that he had thrown his own life away, but that he was terrified that he had “sacrificed” his mother's life as well:
Times
13 June 1840, 6.

80:   Because of this “extraordinary interference,” he refused to have anything to do with Oxford's case:
Times
16 June 1840, 5; 17 June 1840, 6.

80:   … Hannah had a “heart-rending” conversation with her son: Morning Chronicle 15 June 1840, 3.

80:   “… there are others in it”:
Morning Chronicle
16 June 1840, 3.

80:   His sister Susannah, who had more closely than anyone else watched Oxford's movements over the past month, was certain that there was no Young England:
Times
16 June 1840, 5.

80:   The police … busily collected writing samples from the residents of West Place:
Morning Chronicle
15 June 1840, 3.

81:   “The unhappy parent of Oxford states that her husband died about twelve years since”:
Morning Chronicle
13 June 1840, 3.

81:   And at Newgate the next day, Hannah spoke with the aldermen who surrounded her son, telling them of her deceased husband's insanity and abuse:
Morning Chronicle
16 June 1840, 3.

82:   … as Oxford still refused counsel, governor Cope prevented any meeting:
Times 17
June 1840, 6.

82:   Oxford proposed to Pelham that they defend his action as a foolish lark:
Morning Chronicle
19 June 1840, 3.

82:   Pelham, on the other hand, quickly resolved that the defense would prove a case “if not of positive insanity, at least of monomania, which will entitle him to the merciful consideration of the Court and jury”:
Times
17 June 1840, 6.

82:   “… the boy is mad. I am not surprised”: Clarke 196.

82:   … J. Sydney Taylor, a highly reputable barrister and well-known journalist, adamant in his opposition to the death penalty: Clarke 196; Taylor; “John Sydney Taylor, Esq.” 220–21.

83:   Critics claimed that he was able to testify to madness in any situation: Freemon 364.

83:   Conolly's reputation made him, to Clarke, the “most important” of the witnesses: Clarke 199.

83:   … as many as 110 people, from Birmingham and elsewhere:
Times
8 July 1840, 7.

83:   He sent Pelham a letter:
Times
18 June 1840, 5.

84:   … the letter suggests “that P[rince] Albt is an ogre and the Q[uee]n an ogress”: Disraeli 280.

84:    … two days before, she and Albert had attended the races at Ascot to immense crowds (many who had come to see her more than the races) and “deafening cheers from every part of the course”:
Times
17 June 1840, 6.

85:   … “all the world is talking about Courvoisier, and very little of the quasi Regicide.…” Disraeli 279–80.

85:   For his first couple of days in Newgate, Oxford inhabited an ordinary cell among the general population:
Morning Chronicle
13 June 1840, 3.

85:   These cells were furnished with bench and table so that jailers could comfortably observe, and if necessary prevent the suicide of, condemned prisoners: “Newgate Prison.”

85:   Gould, with another inmate who had achieved some amount of public attention at the time … had, two weeks before, attempted to break out of the prison:
Times
30 May 1840, 6.

86:   Phillips's aggressive cross-examination on the first day of trial of Courvoisier's fellow servant Sarah Manser indicated this intention: “Francois Benjamin Courvoisier.”

86:   The evening before, a witness, Charlotte Piolaine, came forward with new evidence:
Times
20 June 1840,
6–7
.

86:   “Up to this morning I believed most firmly in his innocence, and so did many others as well as myself”: Costigan 325.

87:   … he questioned Inspector Tedman's finding of a pair of bloody gloves in a trunk the police had thoroughly examined days before, finding nothing: “Francois Benjamin Courvoisier.”

87:   He also attempted to discredit Mme. Piolaine's evidence by suggesting that her hotel was nothing but a sordid gaming-den:
Times
22 June 1840, 6.

87:    There, he immediately attempted to kill himself by forcing a towel down his throat: Burke 473.

87:    Oxford could hardly contain himself, and grinned “and with difficulty restrained his propensity to laughter”:
Times
23 June 1840, 6.

88:   John Bellingham:
Times
16 May 1812, 2–3; Pelham 527–549.

89:   “did you see how I was noticed!”:
Times
8 July 1840, 7.

89:    … they proceeded with pomp and solemnity, in the company of over 150 London officials, to Buckingham Palace and to Ingestre House:
Times
23 June 1840, 3.

90:   … the Duke of Brunswick might have been more interested in Richard Gould's case than Oxford's, having attended Gould's earlier examination for burglary:
Times
14 May 1840, 5.

90:   Gould endeavored this time to do the same thing, without success: his attempts only earned the laughter of the court:
Times
23 June 1840, 6.

90:   … “there to pass the remainder of his existence in hopeless slavery, poverty and misery of the worst description”:
Times
23 June 1840, 6.

91:   Now, though, he sat in chains on the convict ship
Eden: Times
30 June 1840, 6; “Convict Transportation Registers Database.”

91:   The first of these … set out in very specific detail events surrounding the murder: Burke 473–76.

91:   … the overwhelming majority of death sentences—over 95% of them—were commuted to lesser sentences in his day: Gatrell 617.

91:   In his third confession—a spiritual biography of sorts, written in French—he claimed that he had been influenced to the deed by bad reading: Burke 477–80.

92:   … compelling Ainsworth to write to the newspapers contradicting “this false and injurious statement”:
Times 7
July 1840, 7;
Morning Chronicle 7
July 1840.

92:   … the resulting furor[,] was enough to kill the subgenre: Altick,
Victorian Studies in Scarlet 73–74
.

93:   Courvoisier spent most of his last days in fervent prayer, often in the company of James Carver, Newgate's chaplain, and M. Baup, the Swiss minister of a nearby French church: Burke 473, 483.

93:   The sheriffs, besieged by applications, gave out tickets and opened a gallery that had been closed for the past fifteen years:
Times
6 July 1840,10.

93:   … his coffin placed in front of him: Gatrell 43.

93:   … he looked up, and around the chapel, with a foolish grin on his face:
Times
6 July 1840, 10.

93:   Courvoisier … plotted to take his own life by binding up an arm with a strip of cloth and cutting a vein with a sharpened fragment of wood:
Times 7
July 1840, 6.

94:   … these were a celebratory bunch, mostly rowdy youths: Gatrell 63.

94:   Thackeray, recording his impressions of the event in his essay “Going to See a Man Hanged,” noted the great social and moral diversity of the spectators: Thackeray 152–5.

94:   … as many as 1.6 million would be sold: Gatrell 159.

94:   The
Times
conservatively estimated 20,000 were there; Thackeray reported 40,000:
Times 7
July 1840, 6; Thackeray 156.

94:   Places in the windows of the houses surrounding the scaffold were going for three guineas, and for two sovereigns one could obtain treacherous places on the house-roofs: Mayhew and Binney 609;
Times
6 July 1840, 6.

95:   Calcraft had been Newgate's executioner since 1829, and was to continue in that position until 1874: Boase, “Calcraft.”

95:   He would also be given Courvoisier's hanging-rope and his effects, including his clothing: Boase, “Calcraft.”

95:   … Courvoisier would soon be a star attraction in Madame's Chamber of Horrors:
Biographical and Descriptive Sketches
38.

95:   Calcraft drew from a black bag a rope with which he pinioned Courvoisier's arms before him:
Times 7
July 1840, 7.

95:   Afterwards, they would have a hearty breakfast with Governor Cope: Gatrell 65.

95:   Among this group was the celebrated actor Charles Kean:
Times 7
July 1840, 7; Adams 341.

95:   “… a great murmur arose, more awful,
bizarre
, and indescribable than any sound I had ever before heard”: Thackeray 156.

96:   … his only agitation, beyond an imploring look around at the immense crowd, was a clasping and unclasping of his bound hands:
Times 7
July 1840, 6.

96:   William Calcraft was renowned as a bungler: Boase, “Calcraft.”

96:   Long drops of several feet, designed to break the neck—drops which could go horribly wrong in their own way—were not a feature of Newgate hangings until the 1880s: Gatrell 54.

96:   “He died without any violent struggle”:
Times 7
July 1840, 6.

96:   … “nothing but ribaldry, debauchery, levity, drunkenness, and flaunting vice in fifty other shapes”: Collins 226.

97:   “I fully confess that I came away down Snow Hill that morning with a disgust for murder, but it was for
the murder I saw done”
: Thackeray 158.

97:   One cast from that mask remained at the Governor's office; another was exhibited at Madame Tussaud's: Gatrell 115.

97:   In the afternoon, Courvoisier's body was buried in a passageway to the Old Bailey: Mayhew and Binney 609.

97:   … Oxford was visited by an Italian artist from Manchester:
Freeman's Journal
20 August 1840, 4.

98:   The LUNATIC EDWARD OXFORD:
Morning Chronicle
23 September 1840:2.

98:   … Clarke and two of his hand-picked team of medical experts … took a carriage to Newgate with an order from the Home Secretary in hand, to examine Oxford and decide whether he was insane: Clarke 200.

98:   “I cannot believe that the prisoner is responsible for his actions”: Clarke 200.

98:   At the prison, Governor Cope, still taking his position of gatekeeper very seriously, at first refused the doctors admittance: Clarke 201.

99:    Showing no agitation whatsoever convinced at least Dr. Chowne that the boy was missing normal brain function: was, in a word, an imbecile: “Edward Oxford”;
Morning Chronicle
11 July 1840, 6.

100:   “This youth,” Conolly told Clarke, “cannot with such a configuration be entirely right”: Clarke 202.

100:   When told he had committed a great crime, in shooting at the Queen, he seemed not to understand, replying “that he might as well shoot her as any one else”:
Times
11 July 1840, 6.

100:   … “he had been decapitated in fact a week before, for he had a cast taken of his head”: “Edward Oxford.”

100:   … “I told him to get up and walk about the room, and the brisk manner in which he walked proved to me he was not acting a part, for I think if he had been he would not have walked so much at his ease”:
Times
11 July 1840, 6.

100:   … there were no bullets in his pistols, he stubbornly maintained, even when the doctors suggested to him that there had been: “Edward Oxford.”

101:   “We held a consultation after the interview,” Clarke states, “and we all felt convinced that we could justly uphold the plea of insanity”: Clarke 203.

Chapter 6: Guilty, He Being at the Time Insane

102:   The sheriffs, however, had just had good practice with handling the crowds:
Times
10 July 1840, 5.

102:   He emerged after a few seconds, at first dejected:
Morning Chronicle
10 July 1840, 3.