Shooting Victoria (92 page)

477:   The jury was then sworn without challenge:
Pall Mall Gazette
19 April 1882.

477:   … a “matter of grave consideration for the jury”:
Times
20 April 1882, 11.

477:   … “satisfaction would be felt by every subject of the Queen at the thought that it was not from the ranks of those who were sane that a hand had been raised against our gracious Sovereign”:
Times
20 April 1882,11.

477:   “At the time of committing this act,” Williams stated, “he was an irresponsible agent”:
Daily News
20 April 1882, 3.

478:   Maclean's family, who could have provided volumes of evidence as to their brother's oddities, had, in their desire to detach themselves from their embarrassing relative, successfully requested that they not be called: TNA PRO HO 144/95/A14281.

479:   … “an absolutely irresistible moral impulse, as strong as if it was physical”:
Times
20 April 1882, 11.

479:   … “decidedly he would know at the time he fired the pistol that he was doing a wrong act”:
Daily News
20 April 1882, 3.

479:   … “the real question of right or wrong does not present itself to a man in such a state”:
Daily News
20 April 1882, 3.

479:   “I do not think he was capable of appreciating the nature and quality of the act he committed”:
Daily News
20 April 1882, 3.

479:   “Crown authorities had come to the conclusion that the prisoner's mind was not in a healthy state”:
Times
20 April 1882, 11.

479:   … “men of undoubted ability and large experience”:
Daily News
20 April 1882, 3.

480: A week later, Home Secretary Harcourt ordered a warrant for his transfer; a week after that, Maclean made the short trip from Reading to Crowthorne and entered Broadmoor Asylum: TNA PRO HO 144/95/A14281; BRO D/H14/02/2/1/1095.

480:   … his life “saturated with insanity and its symptoms”
Times
20 April 1882, 9.

480:   … “the jury took the only course compatible with the medical testimony, which did but itself confirm the impression produced by the bare narrative of the facts”:
Daily News
20 April 1882, 4–5.

480:   … in striking contrast to the painful ordeal Charles Guiteau had inflicted upon the American public:
Birmingham Daily Post
20 April 1882, 4.

480:    “Am greatly surprised & shocked at the verdict on McLean!” she declared, confiding in her journal “it is really too bad”: RA VIC/ MAIN/L/14/131; RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ/1882 19 April 1882.

481:   “It is Oxford's case over again”: RA VIC/MAIN/L/14/133,134; rpt. White 61.

481:    If an assailant such as Maclean “is
not
to be considered
responsible
for his actions,” she wrote angrily, “then indeed
no one
is safe any longer!”: RA VIC/MAIN/L/14/133.

481:   “This always happens when a Liberal Government is in!”: RA VIC/ MAIN/L/14/134.

481:   “She was angry at the result of the Maclean trial as she does not understand the verdict of ‘Not Guilty'”: Journal of Lewis Harcourt 20 April 1882, rpt. White 61.

481:   William Gladstone, to whom the Queen fired an incredulous telegram the moment she heard the verdict, was baffled: Hamilton 1:254.

481:    “I did not then understand Your Majesty to disapprove”: RA VIC/ MAIN/L/14/132.

481:   Maclean's lifetime of confinement was more strongly guaranteed with the insanity verdict than it would have been with a guilty verdict, Harcourt argued: RA VIC/MAIN/L/14/139.

482:   Granville noted the relief of finding Maclean to be a madman, and tried to flatter the Queen, praising her “calm and serene courage, when so highly tried”: RA VIC/MAIN/L/14/138.

482:   “Mr. Gladstone humbly feels with Your Majesty that when an individual, such as Maclean, has probably been sane in respect to the particular act for which he is tried”: Guedalla 2:186–87.

483:    … he expressed himself “deeply impressed with the gravity of the subject”: Guedalla 2:187.

483:   … he concurred absolutely with Victoria's position that the stigma of guilt would prevent “dangerous misapprehensions in morbid minds”: Victoria
Letters
(second series) 3:278–79.

484:   She “
very reluctantly
” gave her consent, “but said it was a great mistake”: Victoria
Letters
(second series) 3:276.

484:   “The Queen cannot but feel that it will have the effect of a triumph to Home Rule and of great weakness”: Guedalla 2:188.

484:   “Is it possible that M. Davitt, known as one of the worst of the treasonable agitators, is also to be released?”: Guedalla 2:189.

485:   … “certainly the best reception I ever got in Ireland”: Spencer 1:189.

485:   “We are in God's hands. Do not be filled with alarm and fear.… I dare not dwell on the horror for I feel I must be unmanned”: Spencer 1:189.

485:   Lord Frederick Cavendish had decided that evening to walk from his office at Dublin Castle to his residence in Phoenix Park: For details of the Phoenix Park assassination, see Molony 20–27.

485:   … the two proceeded arm in arm: Spencer 1:190.

485:   “Ah, you villain!” cried Cavendish: Molony 27.

485:   That night, Queen Victoria, who earlier had made her own triumphal procession through London in order to open Epping Forest as a park, learned the horrible news via two telegrams: Victoria
Letters
(second series) 3:282–83.

485:    “How could Mr. Gladstone and his violent Radical advisers proceed with such a policy, which inevitably led to all this? Surely his eyes must be open now”: Victoria
Letters
(second series) 3:283.

485:   It did not matter to Victoria that Gladstone theorized (incorrectly, as it turned out) that the attackers were Irish-Americans and not Irishmen … : Victoria
Letters
(second series) 3:287.

486:   … “she
cannot withhold
from him that
she
considers
this
horrible event the
direct result
of what she has always considered and has stated to Mr. Gladstone and to Lord Spencer as a most fatal and hazardous step”: Victoria
Letters
(second series) 3:285.

486:   … one day after Gladstone, crushed with grief, broke down in tears while speaking in the House of Commons of Cavendish: Molony 59.

486:    “She wishes now to express her
earnest
hope that he will make
no
concession to
those
whose Actions, Speeches & writings,
have produced
the present state of affairs in Ireland & who would be
encouraged
by weak and vacillating action to make
further demands”
: Guedalla 2:194–95.

487:   “Dearest Bertie”: Victoria
Letters
(second series) 3:298–99.

487:   In the meantime, Gladstone kept to his promise to change the insanity verdict: For the progress of the Trial of Lunatics Act, see White 63–67.

488:   “He protected me so, was so powerful and strong—that I felt so safe!”: Victoria and Victoria,
Beloved Mama
137.

488:   … she pointedly did not thank Gladstone for anything else that he had achieved in the busy parliamentary session of 1883: “The Queen, before she took herself off to Scotland yesterday, treated Mr. Gladstone to a characteristic letter … referring with satisfaction to the amendment of the Criminal Lunacy Law alone out of all the measures passed this year!” Hamilton 2:475.

488:   “It will be,” she wrote, “a great security”: Victoria
Letters
(second series) 3:439.

488:   The first person stigmatized by this verdict was a woman with a history of mental disturbance, Johanna Culverwell: For the Culverwell trial, see “Johanna Culverwell.”

489:   … it was his bedraggled and faulty muse, who came to him in a trance and ordered him to “Write! Write!” during the most “startling incident” of his life, in 1877: McGonagall
Autobiography
3.

489:   … his efforts were rejected—by Keeper of the Privy Purse Lord Biddulph this time: McGonagall
Autobiography 9
.

489:   At the gate he was ridiculed and sent on his way, and threatened with arrest if he ever returned: McGonagall
Autobiography 2
.

490:   he read while the audience was permitted to throw eggs, flour, dead fish, and vegetables at him: Hunt viii.

490:   McGonagall, “Attempted Assasination.”

Epilogue: Jubilee

494:   One dynamitard was caught with brass cylinder grenades, planning to throw them from the Strangers' Gallery at the full government bench at the House of Commons: Short 180. For the other dynamite targets, see Short 50–208.

494:   … the Clan-na-Gael… agreed to refrain from violence to allow Parnell and the nationalist MPs their chance: Le Caron 246–47.

494:   A month later, at a conference in Pittsburgh, the extremists of the Clan-na-Gael resolved to recommence terror-bombing: Le Caron 247–48; Funchion 97; TNA PRO HO 144/1537.

495:   … the “Jubilee Plot” was the attempt on Victoria's life that never was: Christy Campbell provides a full-length history of the Jubilee Plot in his tantalizingly but not quite accurately titled
Fenian Fire: The British Government Plot to Assassinate Queen Victoria
.

495:   Also in their bags—or perhaps sewn into their coats—were over a hundred pounds of American-made Atlas A dynamite in slabs, and a number of detonators.: TNA PRO HO 144/209/A48131; “Report from the Select Committee” 30; Campbell 236–37.

495:   … he was actually John J. Moroney, one of the more militant members of the Clan-na-Gael, and a close friend of the Clan's most powerful leader in America, Alexander Sullivan: Le Caron 253; Campbell 322, 373.

495:   … Michael Harkins, a sandy-haired thirty-year-old, his broad shoulders muscular from years of labor on the Reading Railroad:
Times
22 November 1887, 12; 4 February 1888, 5.

495:   … he had lived a quiet life in the factory town of Lowell, Massachusetts, operating stocking-making machinery:
Times
22 November 1887, 12.

495:   He was unmarried, and at forty-seven his hair was already graying:
U.S. Naturalization Record Indexes;
“Thomas Callan, Michael Harkins.”

495:   He had fought at the Civil War battles of Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and Lookout Mountain, and marched with General Sherman from Atlanta to the Atlantic: Historical Data Systems.

496:   “No better or braver soldier than he served in that noble old regiment”: TNA PRO HO 144/209/A48131.

496:   In March, “General” Francis Millen, a twenty-year Fenian veteran, was commissioned by the Clan-na-Gael to sail to France: Campbell 218.

496:   … in May two other conspirators … shipped to London: “Report from the Select Committee” 30.

497:   … James Monro … commanded in 1877 a Special anti-terrorist Branch, formed in 1883 specifically to track down Fenian dynamiters: Allason 4.

497:   The secret of the Jubilee Plot was an open one in the United States since at least the beginning of May:
New York Times
4 May 1887, rpt. in Campbell 226.

497:   … “a pyrotechnic display in honour of the Queen's Jubilee or in other words a series of dynamite and incendiary outrages”:
Times
1 June 1887, 8.

497:   … he then sent the Chief Superintendent of the CID to confront him and inform him that they knew about the plot and his role in it: Campbell 270–71.

498:   … for over twenty years, off and on, Millen had been an informer to the British government: Christy Campbell documents Millen's decades of double-dealing in his
Fenian Fire
.

498:   … they searched the building the day before: Lant 74.

498:   “I was never in a more delicate position in my life”: Campbell 240.

498:   … Victoria … had been reassured by her Home Secretary … that all was safe: Lant 74.

498:   … “there was such an extraordinary outburst of enthusiasm as I had hardly ever seen in London before”: Victoria,
Letters
(third series) 1:321.

499:   Victoria's children, children-in-law, and grandchildren approached and kissed her hand: Victoria,
Letters
(third series) 1:324.

499:   They all represented themselves as traveling salesmen—a dealer in tea, Thomas Callan told his landlady: “Thomas Callan, Michael Harkins”; TNA PRO CRIM 1/27/3.

499:   Thomas Callan was twice sent to Windsor Castle with a stopwatch: “Report of the Select Committee,” 31; TNA PRO HO 144/209/ A48131.

499:   Callan, too, was observed to lurk about the place: “Thomas Callan, Michael Harkins.”

499:   Harkins was later found with a newspaper clipping detailing an upcoming public appearance of the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Arthur Balfour: TNA PRO CRIM 1/27/3.

499:   Monro then quickly applied the same pressure upon Moroney that he had on Millen, setting a police guard upon him and sending a detective to his lodgings to question him “closely”: TNA PRO HO 144/1537.

500:   At the beginning of September, Joseph Cohen cashed two of the notes, writing his signature and address on them: TNA PRO CRIM 1/27/3.

500:   … Michael Harkins, with the help of a muscular cabman, moved the dynamite out of Cohen's lodgings:
Times
2 February 1888, 10.

500:   … two police descended on his lodgings demanding he give an account of himself: TNA PRO CRIM 1/27/3; “Thomas Callan, Michael Harkins.”

501:   They soon released him for lack of evidence, but Monro set upon him an around-the-clock watch by six officers who moved into his lodgings: “Thomas Callan, Michael Harkins.”