Shooting Victoria (79 page)

176:   The Queen in the meantime would not present herself as a target by going out in her carriage until she absolutely had to: TNA PRO MEPO 3/18.

177:   Rowan thus ordered his detective (in all but name) Inspector Pearce to join the two inspectors assigned to the Palace and patrol Green and St. James's parks in plain clothes, watching for anyone who fit the description Albert had given: TNA PRO MEPO 3/18.

177:   This time Murray saw them, and patiently listened to the boy's excruciatingly drawn-out tale: Martin 1:121.

177:   Murray, with less of a sense imminent danger than Laurie had shown, or perhaps an awareness of Sir James's work schedule at the Home Office, wrote the three a letter for Graham and told them to call on the Home Secretary that afternoon between two and three:
Times
2 June 1842, 6.

177:   “I was present,” Rowan wrote with exasperation, “during a very long Examination of the Lad who saw the pistol presented made tediously long by the impediment in his speech”: TNA PRO MEPO 3/18.

178:   He ordered his clerks to write up “as many written descriptions of the offender to be made out as there are entrances with St. James Park”: TNA PRO MEPO 3/18.

179:   She told Albert's secretary, George Anson, that she had had for some time a premonition that such a “mad attempt” would be made: Martin 1:122n.

179:   Albert noted that, upon confirmation of Sunday's attempt, “we were naturally very much agitated, Victoria very nervous and unwell”: Martin 1:121.

179:   He indeed claims that a doctor recommended she deal with her agitation by going out: Martin 1:121.

179:   Victoria rode out, she informed her Uncle Leopold, because she honestly felt she had no other option: Victoria
Letters
(first series) 1:398.

180:   “I must expose the lives of my gentlemen,” she wrote to her uncle, “but I will not those of my ladies”: Longford 170.

180:   Her lady in waiting, Lady Portman, and her maids of honor, Matilda Paget and Georgiana Liddell, waited in vain that afternoon to be called; Liddell, thus shunned, stalked off to grumble in the palace gardens: Bloomfield 44; Longford 170.

180:   … they were on the lookout for the assailant, and, as Albert thought, “would seize him on the least imprudence or carelessness on his part”: Martin 1:122.

180:   The weather was superb that evening: Martin 1:122.

180:   Later, Victoria's visiting Uncle Mensdorff helpfully told her “one is sure not to have been hit when one hears the report, as one never hears it when one is hit”: Martin 1:122n.

180:   “Looking out for such a man was not
des plus agreables”
: Victoria
Letters
1:398.

181:   “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”: Martin 1:122.

181:   “I had seen the prisoner half an hour before this,” Trounce later told authorities:
Times
11 June 1842, 6.

181:   But Arbuthnot, feeling in his gut that something was wrong as they approached Constitution Hill, rode up to the postilion and demanded he ride even faster until they reached the Palace Gates:
Times
18 June 1842, 7.

182:   He was later to speculate that the speed of the carriage saved the Queen's life:
Times
18 June 1842, 6.

182:   He stood at attention and smartly saluted the Queen as she passed: TNA PRO MEPO 3/18.

182:   … a “theatrical attitude,” according to one of many witnesses: TNA PRO MEPO 3/18.

182:   “It was not as if I had seen him fire the Pistol—I could have then laid hold of him sooner, or if I had known he was going to fire it.…” he sputtered guiltily in a police report: TNA PRO MEPO 3/18.

182:   Wylde meanwhile galloped from Albert's side toward Francis:
Times
18 June 1842, 7.

182:   Allen had seen the flash from the pistol and heard the shot:
Times
11 June 1842, 6.

183:   Other witnesses—Colonel Arbuthnot in particular—agreed that the pistol's report was sharp and loud, the sign “of a pistol well loaded and rammed”: TNA PRO TS 11/80.

183:   Victoria, on the other hand, was certain that the shot was not loud at all—certainly, less loud than when Oxford had shot at her: Jerrold,
Early Court
360.

183:   Albert was sure Francis aimed low, the bullet going under the carriage; others claimed it went above; one of the Queen's grooms, riding behind her, thought Francis actually aimed not at the Queen, but at the hind wheel of her carriage: Martin 1:122;
Morning Chronicle
31 May 1842, 5; “John Francis.”

183:   Trounce handed Russell the pistol; it was warm, suggesting recent discharge:
Times
11 June 1842, 5.

183:   The group marched Francis to the Porter's Lodge of the palace:
Times
30 May 1842, 5.

183:   There, he was searched: a little notebook, a key or two, a penny—and a small amount of gunpowder, screwed up in a piece of paper: enough to recharge his pistol. But he did not have any bullets:
Morning
Chronicle
31 May 1842, 5;
Times
11 June 1842, 6; 18 June 1842, 7.

183:   Wylde observed the quiver in his lips:
Morning Chronicle
18 June 1842, 7.

183:   … they led Francis across the palace to the equerries' entrance, bundled him into a cab, drove him to the Gardiner Lane station:
Times
18 June 1842, 7.

183:   Mark Russell… provided police with the whereabouts of Francis's father: Accounts differ as to Francis's father's whereabouts: one account says he was found at home, another at the theatre, and a third, Deptford.
Morning Chronicle
31 May 1842, 5;
Times
30 May 1842, 5; 1 June 1842, 6; 18 June 1842, 7;
Ipswich Journal
4 June 1842,1.

184:   Word of Francis's capture was sent around the building to Colonel Rowan, still in the process of giving orders to find the assailant of the day before: TNA PRO MEPO 3/18.

184:   In the Lords, the news was brought to the Duke of Wellington:
Times
31 May 1842, 3.

184:   In the Commons, the news could not have come at a more dramatic moment:
Times
31 May 1842, 4.

184:   … in a voice in which his “excitement well nigh overpowered his utterance,” he informed the House of the attempt: “Attempt to Assassinate the Queen.”

184:   Francis's examination was attended by members of both parties:
Times
30 May 1842, 5;
Morning Chronicle
31 May 1842, 5.

185:   “He is not out of his mind, but a thorough scamp”: Martin 1:122.

185:   … a coolness, calmness, and firmness that astonished the Council:
Freeman's Journal
2 June 1842, 2.

185:   To Colonel Arbuthnot, he asked “whether he thought he intended to shoot the queen, or whether it was done in a frolic”:
Times
30 May 1842, 5.

185:   After the examination, Francis was bundled out the back entrance and conveyed to Tothill Fields for the night:
Times
11 June 1842, 6.

185:   “Scene-shifter! No, he's a stage carpenter”:
Times
11 June 1842, 6.

185:    The next day, he was brought back to Whitehall at noon to finish his examination:
Morning Chronicle
1 June 1842, 5.

186:   … the crowd assembled outside the Home Office saw him lean back in the vehicle:
Morning Chronicle
1 June 1842, 5;
Liverpool Mercury
3 June 1842,175.

186:   … “the all engrossing topic of conversation amongst all classes”:
Times
1 June 1842, 6.

186:   … the Duchess hurried back with her brother-in-law to the Palace, where, bursting into tears, she fell upon Victoria, who calmly caressed and reassured her:
Times
1 June 1842, 7;
Ipswich Journal
4 June 1842,1.

186:   Robert Peel belied his usual coolness in an emotional meeting with the Queen: Bloomfield 44.

186:   … an excellent rendition, according to a reporter for the
Morning Chronicle
: 31 May 1842, 5.

187: “When her Majesty goes abroad among the people for the purpose of taking recreation or exercise,” John Russell said in Parliament that afternoon, “there is not one among her subjects who has less reason to fear an enemy in any single individual of the millions who constitute her subjects”: “Attack on Her Majesty.”

187:   … at around 4:30, the gates opened:
Times
1 June 1842, 6.

188:   … bursting into applause at the end of every line, and screaming “deafening acclamations” at the song's command “Scatter her enemies”:
Times
1 June 1842, 6.

188:   …
Elena da Feltre
, called by a critic an “abortion” and “utterly worthless and common-place”:
Times
1 June 1842, 6.

188:   … “relying with confidence in the generous loyalty of her people with a determination not to be confined as a prisoner in her own palace”: “Attack on Her Majesty.”

188:   … “the feeling now was of a deeper cast”: Martin 1:121n.

188:   … speakers at hundreds of congratulatory meetings across the country waxed enthusiastically about Victoria's chivalric heroism: her calmness and resolution; her “kindness … consideration … generosity”: Thus the tea-merchant Richard Twining and a colleague, W. S. Jones, at a meeting of the East India Company;
Times
4 June 1842, 6.

188:   … “we feel sure that it is no flattery to say that a finer instance of mingled heroism and generosity than this would be difficult to find”:
Morning Chronicle
1 June 1842, 5.

189:   … her action he thought “very brave, but imprudent”: Greville 2:96.

189:   … it was his understanding that the queen
would
be prudent and stay at home: TNA PRO MEPO 3/18.

189:   The
Globe
, for instance, held that “the Queen's bravery is more impressive when contrasted with the ministers' apathy”: quoted in
Morning Chronicle
3 June 1842, 4.

190:   For years Rowan's younger and in effect junior co-commissioner Richard Mayne had favored a detective branch: Cobb 95.

190:   … Waterloo veteran Charles Rowan, the prime mover behind the military structure of the police when the department was formed in 1829: Gregory.

190:   … the Commissioners forwarded a memorandum to Graham at the Home Office: For the fullest information on the formation of the detective branch, see Browne 120–122.

190:   … that omniscient knowledge of crime and criminals that Charles Dickens, who later became most enthusiastic and vocal fan of the detective branch, declared to be one of their strongest assets: Dickens,
Amusements
265–282; 356–369.

190:   Mayne had probably long had a list in mind for this occasion: Cobb 95. 190:   Senior Inspector: Ascoli 118–19.

Chapter 11: Powder and Wadding

191:   Her precarious state did not prevent the police from searching their Tottenham Court lodgings:
Freeman's Journal
2 June 1842, 2.

192:   … “the disagreeable condition of perpetually collecting pewter pots”:
Examiner
11 June 1842, 376.

192:   … “his only motive could be like Oxford to ensure a situation for life”: TNA PRO MEPO 3/18.

192:   … Oxford himself claimed that “If they had hanged me, there would have been nothing of the kind again”:
Times 4
June 1842, 6; Morning Chronicle 20 June 1842, 6.

192:   … his imitator, Francis:
Morning Chronicle
13 June 1842, 3.

192:   The procedure “flatters the diseased appetite for
éclat
and notoriety”:
Examiner
11 June 1842.

192:   … William Clarkson, a hardheaded, “rough, bluff, testy personage”: Robinson 75.

194:   … the “most perfect
sangfroid”: Liverpool Mercury
3 June 1842, 175.

195:   But the sheriffs only admitted those with written orders:
Times
18 June 1842, 7.

195:   “A child's marble—why, gentlemen, the very gravel path he was treading might have furnished him with a stone smooth or angular, quite adequate to the purpose in view”:
Times
18 June 1842, 7. For various (and varying) accounts of the trial, see
Times
18 June 1842, 7–8;
Morning Chronicle
18 June 1842, 7; “John Francis.”

196:   … for the last two weeks he had been taken in hand by a creator and purveyor of a treatment for stammering, Thomas Hunt”: Boase, “Thomas Hunt” 280;
Times
25 June 1842, 8.

196:   … “a piece fired off with ball sounds somewhat sharper than blank cartridge”:
Times
18 June 1842, 7.

196:   … the powder was “well rammed down”:
Times
18 June 1842, 7.

196:   … “what I want to know is, whether a pistol fired from the spot where the prisoner stood, if only loaded with wadding, would cause injury to the Queen?”:
Times
18 June 1842, 7.

196:   “At seven to nine feet the wadding of the pistol would wound the skin or any exposed part, such as the face, or set fire to the dress”:
Morning Chronicle
18 June 1842, 7.

197:   He became “ten times better off than he was before he committed the act”:
Times
18 June 1842, 7.

197:   “I know that the books state, and so do my learned friends, that you must give evidence of the pistols being loaded beyond powder and wadding”:
Times
18 June 1842, 8.

197:   “… though there were no ball or destructive materials,” he instructed the jury, “yet there might have been powder and wadding”:
Times
18 June 1842, 8.