Shooting Victoria (9 page)

On the contrary, Victoria and Albert chose, for the next hour and then for the next few days, to expose themselves fully to her public. In doing so, she and Albert signified that absolute trust existed between them and their subjects, and demonstrated their belief that no would-be assassin could come between them. As Albert told his grandmother, he and Victoria decided to ride on in public “to show her public that we had not, on account of what
happened, lost all confidence in them.” In return, they were showered with an immense and spontaneous outpouring of loyalty and affection, and enjoyed several days of national thanksgiving for the preservation of the monarchy—and the preservation of
this
monarch, and her husband and unborn child. In an instant, Lady Flora Hastings and the Bedchamber Crisis, and all suspicions about her German husband, were forgotten. Victoria's personal courage and her unerring sense of her relationship with her people were responsible for it all.

As she and Albert rushed toward Hyde Park, Victoria decided to alter her route. The news of the shooting, she knew, would travel with electric speed. Since very soon the Duchess of Kent in her mansion in Belgrave Square would hear the story, Victoria decided that she would personally tell her mother what had happened. Before they had reached the top of the hill, then, she again spoke to Albert; he directed the postilions to proceed at the usual pace through the Wellington Arch at the entrance of Hyde Park, and then veer south down Grosvenor Place to the Duchess's residence, Ingestre House. They remained there until seven, and then set out to complete their turn around the Park.

By this time, Oxford's attempt was the single topic of conversation throughout London, and the Park had filled with Londoners of all social classes, the elite on horseback, all others on foot. The Queen's aunt, the Duchess of Cambridge, was there with her children, as was Prince Louis Napoleon. All hoped to get a glimpse of the Prince and the Queen; all were by now aware of her “interesting condition,” and all (including, initially, Albert) were concerned that the shock of the attempt had had an effect upon the child; all yearned to demonstrate their loyalty and sympathy. The
Times
describes the joyous and spontaneous ceremony that followed:

… the apprehensions of the bystanders were in some degree relieved by seeing the Royal carriage containing the Queen and Prince Albert return along the drive
towards the palace at about 7 o'clock. The carriage was attended by a great crowd of noblemen and gentlemen on horseback who had heard of the atrocious attempt in Hyde Park, and on seeing the carriage return accompanied it to the Palace gates, and testified their delight and satisfaction at the escape of her majesty and the prince by taking off their hats and cheering the Royal couple as they passed along. The joy of the populace was also expressed by long and loud huzzahs, and indeed the enthusiastic reception of her Majesty and the Prince by the assembled crowd must have been highly gratifying to them both. Her Majesty, as might well be supposed, appeared extremely pale from the effects of the alarm she had experienced, but, notwithstanding the state of her feelings, she seemed fully sensible of the attachment evinced to her Royal consort and herself by repeatedly smiling and bowing to the crowd in acknowledgement of their loyalty and affection.

In everyone's mind—all, that is, except for Oxford's—both the Queen and the Prince had shown an amazing amount of courage under fire. Once inside the Palace and in private, Victoria and Albert were able give in to the powerful emotions they had been experiencing during the shooting. By one account, Victoria burst into tears; by another, Albert held her and kissed her repeatedly, “praising her courage and self-possession.” Before long, they gathered themselves for their next audience: Victoria's royal relatives and London's leading politicians—Melbourne, Peel, John Russell, the Home Secretary Lord Normanby, on hearing of the shooting, had rushed to the Palace to see them. Victoria quickly rallied, and soon went to dinner “perfectly recovered.”

While Victoria and Albert moved forward to their triumphant procession, Oxford experienced his own procession—a hostile and
derisory one. Bystanders began rushing toward Oxford before his second shot, and the first to reach him were Joshua Lowe, a spectacle-maker, and his nephew Albert, who had been running beside the royal carriage as it made its way up Constitution Hill. Joshua seized Oxford, while Albert disarmed him. Now holding both pistols, Albert Lowe
appeared to be the shooter, and William Clayton, a cabinetmaker, fell upon him, calling him a “confounded rascal” while struggling for the pistols, succeeding in wrestling one of them away. This annoyed Oxford; it took attention away from himself. “I am the man who fired; it was me,” he cried out. Then, it seemed to Oxford, everyone who could grabbed hold of him: “in an instant several persons seized me by the skirts of the coat, some took hold of my trousers, others twisted their hand into my handkerchief, and all within reach of me had me by the collar. Some could not get to my coat, and being resolved to have some share in the apprehension, seized me by the shirt-collar.” The restraint, Oxford later claimed, was completely unnecessary, “as I had no intention to run away.”

Three policemen from A Division—the police administrative district that covered Buckingham Palace and provided protection to the royal family—came running: George Brown and Charles Smith, who had been on duty at the Palace, and William Smith, patrolling Green Park, who jumped the palings separating the park from the road, cutting his hand in the process. They came upon a growing and quite angry crowd—an “immense assemblage,” according to the
Times
, which could only with “the greatest difficulty” be prevented from executing summary judgment upon Oxford. The police, Oxford, and the crowd, with a great deal of “hooting and execration,” proceeded to the A Division station house, which stood at the other end of St. James's Park on Gardiner Street, between Parliament and Whitehall.

En route
, Oxford took the opportunity to drop a hint that he was part of a larger conspiracy. The Lowes were suspicious of William Clayton, who still held one of Oxford's pistols, and who appeared to them to be protecting Oxford by challenging Albert Lowe. Joshua warned his nephew: “Look out, Albert. I dare say he has some friends.” Oxford, obviously thinking not of Clayton but of Young England, agreed: “You are right, I have.” The police took note of this remark.

Halfway to the station house, someone in the crowd articulated the question that would become a central one in Oxford's trial: Were there bullets in his pistols? To this Oxford answered, according to P.C. Brown, “if the ball had come in contact with your head you would have known it.” Despite the fact that the conditional nature of his remark disqualifies it as any sort of confession, the police clearly understood him to mean that his pistols were loaded. And that is likely the impression Oxford wanted to give. Indeed, at the station Oxford was asked, before a number of witnesses, whether the guns were loaded, and Oxford admitted that they were.

When they reached the station house, P.C. William Smith, not quite sure whether Clayton was a hero or an accomplice, took him as well as Oxford into custody; he was searched and locked in a cell before he was released. Oxford was searched: in his pocket were his knife, the key to his box at home, and half a crown—two shillings and sixpence—in change. The police also took note of the wear above his trouser pockets, obviously caused by the constant friction of the pistols against the fabric. Oxford was questioned by the constable on duty, James Partridge, and freely revealed his name, his age, his address, and his occupation: “a servant out of place.”

All accounts of Oxford's behavior at A Division station house suggest he was having the time of his life. Everyone around him was paying the most careful attention to his every utterance: he had suddenly become a person of great importance. The
Times
noted one interchange at the station house that captures Oxford's giddy mood. When asked his profession, he joked “I have been brought up to the bar.” A lawyer, then? “No, to the bar, to draw porter.” When asking what that meant, exactly, his questioner struck a nerve: “Are you a potboy?” “No,” Oxford replied. “I'm above that.”

His elaborate plan to represent himself as a Captain of Young England seemed to be working. In the evening, the Superintendent of A Division dispatched officers to search his room at West Place; soon they would find his box of secrets. Important people from the government and the Queen's Household were gathering to interview him. Lord Uxbridge, the Lord Chamberlain, hurried over from the Palace to learn about Oxford. Oxford was apparently delighted to see him, and asked whether the Queen was hurt. Uxbridge rebuked him for his effrontery in asking. Oxford, nonplussed, chatted amicably with him, hoping again to promote his tale of conspiracy: he had been practicing his shooting for over a month, he told Uxbridge, ever since someone had given him the pistols on the third of May, and had given him more besides: money—with the promise of much more, “as much more as he pleased.” Uxbridge, understanding Oxford's implication, told him “you have now filled your engagement.” “No, I have not,” Oxford replied. “You have, as far as the attempt goes,” Uxbridge said.

As it happens, Oxford had shot at the Queen and had been arrested in A Division of the Metropolitan Police, the division operating out of the buildings at the edge of Whitehall abutting Scotland Yard. While Scotland Yard is now associated with the detective branch of the Metropolitan Police, in 1840 the Metropolitan Police technically had no detective branch. In forming the Metropolitan Police in 1829, Home Secretary Robert Peel had deliberately established that force as fully preventative, and not as investigative or detective: government spies in plain clothes were seen as something unpleasantly European—particularly French—and certainly un-British; Peel sensed that the British public was not yet ready for such a force. Moreover, there was an effective detective service in 1829: the Bow Street Runners, serving not the Commissioners of the Police, but of the London magistrates. Reforms of the year before—1839—under Home Secretary John Russell, had led to the elimination of that group, and no official detective force now existed in the metropolis. By 1840, however,
the two commissioners of the Metropolitan Police had come to look upon A Division as the special division of the force, and used its officers to reinforce other divisions, when necessary, to serve special functions outside of London—90 officers and Superintendent May traveling to Birmingham, for example, to battle militant Chartists in the Bull Ring Riots a year before. Moreover, the commissioners looked upon the higher officers of A Division as their eyes and ears, and asked them—Inspector Nicholas Pearce, a former Bow Street Runner, in particular—to undertake investigative duties across London and beyond. Thus, Pearce (with the assistance of Sergeant Otway) raced across London to prevent the duel between Louis Napoleon and the Comte Léon. Thus, Pearce took charge of several murder investigations outside A District—including the Courvoisier case—and one outside London completely. Thus, Sergeant Otway traveled to Gravesend to rearrest Gould. The station house at Gardiner Lane was, then, the location of London's unofficial detective branch, and several officers jumped into detective action soon after Oxford's arrival at the station.

Inspector Hughes and Sergeant Otway were the ones dispatched to West Place, and they arrived so quickly that the news of the shooting had not yet crossed the river to that part of Southwark. They found the landlady, Mrs. Packman, there with her sister. They broke the news to the women with great delicacy, Sgt. Otway first making sure Mrs. Packman was not Oxford's mother before telling her that Oxford had shot at the Queen. Mrs. Packman immediately told Oxford's sister Susannah, who, devastated by the news, immediately ran to her husband at the soda factory. The two policemen made a search of Oxford's room and quickly came upon his locked box. Not finding the key, they obtained a hammer and chisel from Mrs. Packman and smashed the lock. There, they found all Oxford's evidence of Young England—sword and scabbard, crepe cap with two red bows, bullet mold, some loose bullets, gunpowder—and a red pocket book, “which contained a memorandum,” as well as
other papers—Oxford's created letters, as well as the rules and regulations of the organization. Hughes and Otway clearly understood the documents to be important evidence.

They brought the evidence back to the station house, and Inspector Hughes described his findings to Lord Uxbridge and other members of the Royal Household. They tried one of the confiscated bullets in Oxford's pistols; it fitted perfectly. Inspector Hughes spoke of the rules and regulations of Young England, and there was no doubt in his mind that Oxford was indeed a member of a larger conspiracy. Then Oxford was brought from his cell and confronted with this evidence. He had meant to destroy the papers, he claimed. He did not deny that all that they had found was his, or that he was a member of Young England. He would not, however, tell them where the society met, or give the names of any other members.

Although reporters now clamoring at the station house for news weren't given full details about Young England from Oxford's documents, they were told enough to have a good idea about the size of Oxford's imagined conspiracy, about its structure, and about its political loyalties: the information from the third letter that news had arrived from Hanover was released to a reporter, and was in the newspapers the next morning. Victoria's wicked uncle was thus quickly connected to Oxford's crime.

Some time after Hughes returned to the station, Fox Maule, Undersecretary at the Home Office, arrived to coordinate Oxford's government examination. With Superintendent May he interviewed Oxford in his cell for some time: Oxford after this interview would greet Maule as a particularly close acquaintance. Maule likely imparted to Oxford the delightful news that he would be examined at the Home Office to ascertain whether there was enough evidence to try him for High Treason. Oxford spoke glibly to these two, as well as to the officers of A Division and his many visitors that night—expressing republican sentiments to some; suggesting at one time that he thought it wrong that England was ruled by a woman.