82: “… the boy is mad. I am not surprised”: Clarke 196.
82: … J. Sydney Taylor, a highly reputable barrister and well-known journalist, adamant in his opposition to the death penalty: Clarke 196; Taylor; “John Sydney Taylor, Esq.” 220–21.
83: Critics claimed that he was able to testify to madness in any situation: Freemon 364.
83: Conolly’s reputation made him, to Clarke, the “most important” of the witnesses: Clarke 199.
83: … as many as 110 people, from Birmingham and elsewhere: Times 8 July 1840, 7.
83: He sent Pelham a letter: Times 18 June 1840, 5.
84: … the letter suggests “that P[rince] Albt is an ogre and the Q[uee]n an ogress”: Disraeli 280.
84: … two days before, she and Albert had attended the races at Ascot to immense crowds (many who had come to see her more than the races) and “deafening cheers from every part of the course”: Times 17 June 1840, 6.
85: … “all the world is talking about Courvoisier, and very little of the quasi Regicide.…” Disraeli 279–80.
85: For his first couple of days in Newgate, Oxford inhabited an ordinary cell among the general population: Morning Chronicle 13 June 1840, 3.
85: These cells were furnished with bench and table so that jailers could comfortably observe, and if necessary prevent the suicide of, condemned prisoners: “Newgate Prison.”
85: Gould, with another inmate who had achieved some amount of public attention at the time … had, two weeks before, attempted to break out of the prison: Times 30 May 1840, 6.
86: Phillips’s aggressive cross-examination on the first day of trial of Courvoisier’s fellow servant Sarah Manser indicated this intention: “Francois Benjamin Courvoisier.”
86: The evening before, a witness, Charlotte Piolaine, came forward with new evidence: Times 20 June 1840, 6–7.
86: “Up to this morning I believed most firmly in his innocence, and so did many others as well as myself”: Costigan 325.
87: … he questioned Inspector Tedman’s finding of a pair of bloody gloves in a trunk the police had thoroughly examined days before, finding nothing: “Francois Benjamin Courvoisier.”
87: He also attempted to discredit Mme. Piolaine’s evidence by suggesting that her hotel was nothing but a sordid gaming-den: Times 22 June 1840, 6.
87: There, he immediately attempted to kill himself by forcing a towel down his throat: Burke 473.
87: Oxford could hardly contain himself, and grinned “and with difficulty restrained his propensity to laughter”: Times 23 June 1840, 6.
88: John Bellingham: Times 16 May 1812, 2–3; Pelham 527–549.
89: “did you see how I was noticed!”: Times 8 July 1840, 7.
89: … they proceeded with pomp and solemnity, in the company of over 150 London officials, to Buckingham Palace and to Ingestre House: Times 23 June 1840, 3.
90: … the Duke of Brunswick might have been more interested in Richard Gould’s case than Oxford’s, having attended Gould’s earlier examination for burglary: Times 14 May 1840, 5.
90: Gould endeavored this time to do the same thing, without success: his attempts only earned the laughter of the court: Times 23 June 1840, 6.
90: … “there to pass the remainder of his existence in hopeless slavery, poverty and misery of the worst description”: Times 23 June 1840, 6.
91: Now, though, he sat in chains on the convict ship Eden: Times 30 June 1840, 6; “Convict Transportation Registers Database.”
91: The first of these … set out in very specific detail events surrounding the murder: Burke 473–76.
91: … the overwhelming majority of death sentences—over 95% of them—were commuted to lesser sentences in his day: Gatrell 617.
91: In his third confession—a spiritual biography of sorts, written in French—he claimed that he had been influenced to the deed by bad reading: Burke 477–80.
92: … compelling Ainsworth to write to the newspapers contradicting “this false and injurious statement”: Times 7 July 1840, 7; Morning Chronicle 7 July 1840.
92: … the resulting furor[,] was enough to kill the subgenre: Altick, Victorian Studies in Scarlet 73–74.
93: Courvoisier spent most of his last days in fervent prayer, often in the company of James Carver, Newgate’s chaplain, and M. Baup, the Swiss minister of a nearby French church: Burke 473, 483.
93: The sheriffs, besieged by applications, gave out tickets and opened a gallery that had been closed for the past fifteen years: Times 6 July 1840,10.
93: … his coffin placed in front of him: Gatrell 43.
93: … he looked up, and around the chapel, with a foolish grin on his face: Times 6 July 1840, 10.
93: Courvoisier … plotted to take his own life by binding up an arm with a strip of cloth and cutting a vein with a sharpened fragment of wood: Times 7 July 1840, 6.
94: … these were a celebratory bunch, mostly rowdy youths: Gatrell 63.
94: Thackeray, recording his impressions of the event in his essay “Going to See a Man Hanged,” noted the great social and moral diversity of the spectators: Thackeray 152–5.
94: … as many as 1.6 million would be sold: Gatrell 159.
94: The Times conservatively estimated 20,000 were there; Thackeray reported 40,000: Times 7 July 1840, 6; Thackeray 156.
94: Places in the windows of the houses surrounding the scaffold were going for three guineas, and for two sovereigns one could obtain treacherous places on the house-roofs: Mayhew and Binney 609; Times 6 July 1840, 6.
95: Calcraft had been Newgate’s executioner since 1829, and was to continue in that position until 1874: Boase, “Calcraft.”
95: He would also be given Courvoisier’s hanging-rope and his effects, including his clothing: Boase, “Calcraft.”
95: … Courvoisier would soon be a star attraction in Madame’s Chamber of Horrors: Biographical and Descriptive Sketches 38.
95: Calcraft drew from a black bag a rope with which he pinioned Courvoisier’s arms before him: Times 7 July 1840, 7.
95: Afterwards, they would have a hearty breakfast with Governor Cope: Gatrell 65.
95: Among this group was the celebrated actor Charles Kean: Times 7 July 1840, 7; Adams 341.
95: “… a great murmur arose, more awful, bizarre, and indescribable than any sound I had ever before heard”: Thackeray 156.
96: … his only agitation, beyond an imploring look around at the immense crowd, was a clasping and unclasping of his bound hands: Times 7 July 1840, 6.
96: William Calcraft was renowned as a bungler: Boase, “Calcraft.”
96: Long drops of several feet, designed to break the neck—drops which could go horribly wrong in their own way—were not a feature of Newgate hangings until the 1880s: Gatrell 54.
96: “He died without any violent struggle”: Times 7 July 1840, 6.
96: … “nothing but ribaldry, debauchery, levity, drunkenness, and flaunting vice in fifty other shapes”: Collins 226.
97: “I fully confess that I came away down Snow Hill that morning with a disgust for murder, but it was for the murder I saw done”: Thackeray 158.
97: One cast from that mask remained at the Governor’s office; another was exhibited at Madame Tussaud’s: Gatrell 115.
97: In the afternoon, Courvoisier’s body was buried in a passageway to the Old Bailey: Mayhew and Binney 609.
97: … Oxford was visited by an Italian artist from Manchester: Freeman’s Journal 20 August 1840, 4.
98: The LUNATIC EDWARD OXFORD: Morning Chronicle 23 September 1840:2.
98: … Clarke and two of his hand-picked team of medical experts … took a carriage to Newgate with an order from the Home Secretary in hand, to examine Oxford and decide whether he was insane: Clarke 200.
98: “I cannot believe that the prisoner is responsible for his actions”: Clarke 200.
98: At the prison, Governor Cope, still taking his position of gatekeeper very seriously, at first refused the doctors admittance: Cl
arke 201.
99: Showing no agitation whatsoever convinced at least Dr. Chowne that the boy was missing normal brain function: was, in a word, an imbecile: “Edward Oxford”; Morning Chronicle 11 July 1840, 6.
100: “This youth,” Conolly told Clarke, “cannot with such a configuration be entirely right”: Clarke 202.
100: When told he had committed a great crime, in shooting at the Queen, he seemed not to understand, replying “that he might as well shoot her as any one else”: Times 11 July 1840, 6.
100: … “he had been decapitated in fact a week before, for he had a cast taken of his head”: “Edward Oxford.”
100: … “I told him to get up and walk about the room, and the brisk manner in which he walked proved to me he was not acting a part, for I think if he had been he would not have walked so much at his ease”: Times 11 July 1840, 6.
100: … there were no bullets in his pistols, he stubbornly maintained, even when the doctors suggested to him that there had been: “Edward Oxford.”
101: “We held a consultation after the interview,” Clarke states, “and we all felt convinced that we could justly uphold the plea of insanity”: Clarke 203.
Chapter 6: Guilty, He Being at the Time Insane
102: The sheriffs, however, had just had good practice with handling the crowds: Times 10 July 1840, 5.
102: He emerged after a few seconds, at first dejected: Morning Chronicle 10 July 1840, 3.
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 “involunt
ary 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.
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