Jane Ridley

Taking a pop at the Queen

On 10 June 1840 an 18-year-old out-of-work Londoner named Edward Oxford cocked his pistol and fired two shots at Queen Victoria as she made her daily carriage drive with Prince Albert on Constitution Hill. Oxford was mobbed by the crowd, who shouted ‘Kill him!’ He was charged with high treason. Though he claimed that his cheap flintlock pistol was loaded, no ball was ever found. Oxford, who (according to Prince Albert) was ‘a little mean-looking man’, delighted in the attention the shooting brought him. During the trial the family insisted that he was mad. He was found guilty but insane, and sentenced to confinement for life in Bethlem hospital.

Oxford was the first of seven men who attempted to kill or assault Queen Victoria. These attacks have received little attention in the history books, and they made only a fleeting impression at the time. Paul Thomas Murphy has had the inspired idea of writing the reign through the stories of Victoria’s would-be assassins.

Taking a pop at the Queen was a short cut to celebrity. The second attempt, a year later, was made by a ne’er-do-well named John Francis. Aged 20, he had quarrelled with his family and got into debt in a failed venture to set up a tobacco shop. In desperation, he bought a cheap pistol and fired at the Queen. Unlike Oxford, he was sane and, though he insisted that his pistol was not loaded, was sentenced to death (this was later commuted to transportation).

Only a few weeks later, Victoria was targeted by a deranged 17-year-old hunchback dwarf named John Bean. He pointed a dodgy pistol loaded with fragments of clay pipe at her. He managed to escape, but was eventually arrested after the police had rounded up all the hunchbacks in London answering to his description.

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