Shooting Victoria (76 page)

102:   … the Duke of Brunswick was again a spectator, as were the Earls of Errol, Colchester, and Uxbridge, as well as a Baron and a Count, and a scattering of Lords and Honorables:
Times
10 July 1840, 5;
Morning Chronicle
10 July 1840, 3.

103:   … Fox Maule, Oxford's seeming friend, and his wife were among the first to arrive:
Times
10 July 1840, 5.

103:   … “picking, rubbing, and smelling” them for the next two days:
Morning Chronicle
10 July 1840, 3.

103:   These herbs, particularly malodorous rue, had been placed before the dock at every Old Bailey session for ninety years: Lawrence 296.

103:   … a founding member of the Society for the Abolition of Capital Punishment, and fought passionately for that cause in the columns of the
Morning Herald
: “John Sydney Taylor Esq.”

103:   … he had for some time been battling against a mysterious and malignant disease: John Sydney Taylor xlvii.

103:   Campbell, who would handle opening arguments, had a reputation for aggressive advocacy in his writing, his politics, and in the courtroom: Jones and Jones, “Campbell, John.”

104:   Thomas Wilde, who would handle the prosecution's closing, had admitted liabilities in his presentation of a case: Rigg, “Wilde, Thomas.”

104:   Denman was thought not to have one of the greatest legal minds of his day, but was renowned for his impartiality and courtesy—as the “personification of judicial dignity”: Jones and Jones, “Denman, Thomas.”

104:   … the clerk read the charge of High Treason against Oxford:
Morning Chronicle
10 July 1840, 3.

105:   Oxford pleaded not guilty to the charge, in a “distinct and firm tone”:
Times
10 July 1840, 5.

105:   In his opening the Attorney General anticipated and countered the defense's two-pronged defense:
Times
10 July 1840, 5–7;
Morning Chronicle
10 July 1840, 3–4.

105:   … “total alienation of the mind, or total madness, excuses the guilt of felony or treason”:
Morning Chronicle
10 July 1840, 3.

106:   … “it must be shown that at the very time, the particular time, when the offence charged was committed, he was not an accountable being”:
Morning Chronicle
10 July 1840, 3.

106:   “… rather, he was a capable employee:
Morning Chronicle
10 July 1840, 4.

107:   … “the report of the pistol attracted my attention, and I had a distinct whizzing or buzzing before my eyes, between my face and the carriage”: “Edward Oxford.”

107:   “… it was the second flash which appeared to come over the Queen's head, and it came close past me; the flash did—it seemed something that whizzed past my ear, as I stood”: “Edward Oxford.”

108:   Charles Aston Key, the surgeon who had declined to examine Oxford with the defense's medical witnesses, was present and offering advice to the prosecution: Clarke 209.

109:   In his opening Campbell read Oxford's Young England papers to the jury in full:
Times
10 July 1840, 6;
Morning Chronicle
10 July 1840, 3.

109:   The prosecution, in other words, introduced the very evidence that Oxford's defense would claim to make the strongest case for his insanity:
Times
10 July 1840, 7;
Morning Chronicle
10 July 1840, 4.

109:   … in his opening, Taylor carefully instructed the jury to keep their decisions separate:
Times
10 July 1840, 6;
Morning Chronicle
10 July 1840, 4.

109:   … “the suggestion of the ball having passed over the wall was negatived by the witnesses; but the evidence which tended to show that it had struck against the walls was perfectly inconclusive”:
Morning Chronicle
10 July 1840, 4.

110:   … an extension of the vainglory he exhibited in foolishly but harmlessly pointed a bullet-less pistol at the Queen:
Morning Chronicle
10 July 1840, 4.

110:   Taylor then turned to the evidence for Oxford's insanity:
Times
10 July 1840, 7;
Morning Chronicle
10 July 1840, 4.

110:   … the Young England papers, written in Oxford's hand, and the “creations of his own foolish fancy,” “furnished the strongest evidence against the prisoner in proof of his insanity”:
Times
10 July 1840, 7.

111:   “the mind of Her Majesty would be relieved from the unpleasant impression that any one of her subjects could be found guilty of imagining and compassing her death”:
Times
10 July 1840, 7.

111:   Taylor and Bodkin called to the stand twenty-eight witnesses, twenty-six of whom provided evidence as to the derangement of three generations of Oxfords:
Times
10 July 1840, 7, 11 July 1840, 5–6;
Morning Chronicle
10 July 1840, 4, 11 July 1840, 6; “Edward Oxford.”

111:   Oxford's father “delighted in annoying and teasing me”: “Edward Oxford.”

112:   Every oddity, it seemed, of Oxford's life was presented to the jury:
Times
11 July 1840, 5–6;
Morning Chronicle
11 July 1840, 6; “Edward Oxford.”

113:   Fly, postman, with this letter bound,/To a place they call the Pig in the Pound:
Times
11 July 1840, 6.

113:   … Oxford broke, bursting into tears and weeping bitterly:
Times
11 July 1840, 6.

113:   Passing judgment on the moral aberration of a defendant was, in the minds of most legal authorities of the time, the province of the jury, not of any witness: judging good or evil behavior was a legal and not a medical issue: Freemon 368, 373.

114:   He was in 1840 a leading citizen of Birmingham: magistrate and coroner, as well as a highly respected physician: “Edward Oxford.”

114:   “Assuming the facts which have been given in evidence to be true”:
Times
11 July 1840, 5.

115:   … he had every right to “take the opinion of a medical man upon that evidence”:
Times
11 July 1840, 5.

115:   “Mr. BODKIN …—Supposing a person in the middle of the day, and without any suggested motive …”:
Times
11 July 1840, 5.

116:   Thomas Hodgkin, the Quaker social activist and specialist in morbid anatomy (and incidentally, the one who first studied the symptoms of the disease that bears his name): Kass.

116:   “If all the appearances described were exhibited by the prisoner, and coexisted in him, I should conclude that he was insane”:
Times
11 July 1840, 6.

116:   “Lord DENMAN.—Do you consider that a medical man has more means of judging with respect to such a subject than other persons?”:
Times
11 July 1840, 6.

116:   “I am a physician to the Hanwell Lunatic Asylum, and have at present 850 patients under my care”:
Times
11 July 1840, 6.

117:   According to Chowne, lesion of the will is often a partial insanity, in the sense that sufferers can “perform the duties of life with accuracy”: “Edward Oxford.”

117:   Oxford's madness manifested itself most apparently in his “involuntary laughter, which is seldom found in sane persons”:
Times
11 July 1840, 6.

118:   “There was nothing of imbecility about them”:
Times
11 July 1840, 6.

118:   The doctors, he claimed … “went to Newgate with minds prepared to see a madman”:
Times
11 July 1840, 6.

118:   “These questions,” he told the jury, “are perfectly separate in themselves”:
Morning Chronicle
11 July 1840, 7.

118:   Dr. Conolly, he said, “a gentleman who it must be presumed was familiar with the treatment in cases of insanity, and must be an extremely good judge, has given his opinion, and the jury would give that weight they think due to it”:
Morning Chronicle
11 July 1840, 7.

119:   … “they are against me, all of them”: “Oxford” 4.

119:   “We find the prisoner, Edward Oxford, guilty of discharging the contents of the two pistols, but whether or not they were loaded with ball has not been satisfactorily proved to us, he being of unsound state of mind at the time”:
Times
11 July 1840, 7;
Morning Chronicle
11 July 1840, 7; Townsend 149.

119:   He therefore jumped up “with prompt dexterity”: Townsend 149.

120:   This Taylor “strenuously denied”: Townsend 149.

120:   The jury showed confusion about the first part of the verdict; but they were perfectly clear about the second:
Times
11 July 1840, 7.

120:   “… and in a prosecution of this kind, where the prisoner's life was at stake, it was not fitting on the part of the Attorney-general to stand up and endeavour to visit the prisoner with perpetual imprisonment when the jury found him not guilty”:
Times
11 July 1840, 7.

120:   Dr. Clarke, commenting on the trial, considered that if Taylor had pressed the issue, he could have won a full acquittal for his client: Clarke 212.

120:   Chief Justice Denman intervened. “The jury,” he said, “were in a mistake”:
Times
11 July 1840, 7.

121:   Campbell thought the prospect “monstrous” that Oxford might be “let loose upon society to endanger the life of Her Majesty or her subjects”:
Times
11 July 1840, 7.

121:   “The construction you contend for would lead to this, that if a man were charged with an offence, and the jury thought that no offence had been committed at all, yet he must be handed over to the mercy of the Crown perhaps for his life”: Carrington and Payne 9:550.

122:   “Guilty, he being at the time insane”:
Times
11 July 1840, 7; Morning
Chronicle
11 July 1840, 7; Townsend 150.

122:   “Mr. Baron ALDERSON.—Then, you find the prisoner guilty but for his insanity”:
Times
11 July 1840, 7.

Chapter 7: Bedlam

123:   Oxford remained in custody at Newgate for a week, until an order arrived from the Home Office for his transfer to Bethlem:
Times
27 July 1840, 5.

123:   Oxford “did not betray the slightest emotion” upon hearing that the time had come:
Times
27 July 1840, 5.

124:   Albert would show them to the Queen: Longford 152.

124:   The distinctive towering dome of the hospital, still visible today in the truncated building's present incarnation as the Imperial War Museum, was added four years after this: Andrews
et al
. 408.

125:   A medical record from 1864 when Oxford was removed from Bethlem to Broadmoor notes that the medical staff “had always considered him sane”: Moran, “Punitive” 188. 125:   … for the first years of his confinement, he was prohibited from reading newspapers: “Young Oxford in Bethlehem Hospital,”
Era
26 December 1841:3.

125:   Sir Peter Laurie … informed his mother that he had a “repugnance to mingle” with them and refused to leave his room:
Freeman's Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser
20 August 1840, 4.

125:   One other inmate was notorious for his aloofness, one who had no friends, and “could not be prevailed upon for some years to walk about with or join the other patients”:
Freeman's Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser
20 August 1840, 4.

125:   He had, according to a witness seventeen years before, long since stopped showing any symptoms of insanity: Moran, “Origin” 516n.

125:   … “the loss of liberty,” he claimed, “was worse than death”: Moran, “Origin” 516n.

126:   Oxford happened to be one of the very last male patients to make the trip, by train, from London to Crowthorne (and Broadmoor). Soon after, Bethlem's criminal buildings were demolished: Andrews
et al
. 503.

127:   … Melbourne approached the Queen with the delicate issue that had been on the minds of everyone since the shooting: it was quite possible that the Queen could die, leaving an infant child as her heir: Longford 152.

127:   A Regency Bill was in order, such as the one created ten years before, when Victoria became heir apparent, and which held her mother, the Duchess of Kent, sole regent in the event of her King William's death: Longford 35.

127:   “I don't hide from myself that there will be all manner of objections, such as his youth, his want of acquaintance with the country and its institutions, &c.”: Von Stockmar 2:39.

128:   Stockmar and Melbourne had no problems convincing both Peel and Wellington that Albert should be sole Regent; both claimed that this was their position exactly: Von Stockmar 2:40, 42.

128:   Sussex stood before the House of Lords on 21 July, proclaiming himself to be personally disinterested in the Bill, but to have questions about it:
Times
22 July 1840, 3.

128:   “Three months ago,” Melbourne told Victoria, “they would not have done it for him. It is entirely his own character”: Woodham-Smith,
Queen Victoria
216.

128:   “I am to be Regent—
alone
—Regent, without a Council”: Duff 178.

128:   As King Leopold wrote to Albert's private secretary, George Anson, the bill “had helped the Prince immensely”: Woodham-Smith,
Queen Victoria
216.

128:   “It's a great pity they couldn't suffocate that boy, master Oxford, and say no more about it”: Dickens,
Letters
2:81–2.

PART 2: THE GAUNTLET

Chapter 8: Most Desperate Offenders

133:   … the
Times
reported one nobleman, a true connoisseur of hangings, who had attended the last four or five of them:
Times
24 May 1842, 8.

134:   two hundred City and Metropolitan police were stationed between scaffold and spectators:
Times
24 May 1842, 8.