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Shooting Victoria

Page 57

by Paul Thomas Murphy


  122: “Guilty, he being at the time insane”: Times 11 July 1840, 7; Morning Chronicle 11 July 1840, 7; Townsend 150.

  122: “Mr. Baron ALDERSON.—Then, you find the prisoner guilty but for his insanity”: Times 11 July 1840, 7.

  Chapter 7: Bedlam

  123: Oxford remained in custody at Newgate for a week, until an order arrived from the Home Office for his transfer to Bethlem: Times 27 July 1840, 5.

  123: Oxford “did not betray the slightest emotion” upon hearing that the time had come: Times 27 July 1840, 5.

  124: Albert would show them to the Queen: Longford 152.

  124: The distinctive towering dome of the hospital, still visible today in the truncated building’s present incarnation as the Imperial War Museum, was added four years after this: Andrews et al. 408.

  125: A medical record from 1864 when Oxford was removed from Bethlem to Broadmoor notes that the medical staff “had always considered him sane”: Moran, “Punitive” 188. 125: … for the first years of his confinement, he was prohibited from reading newspapers: “Young Oxford in Bethlehem Hospital,” Era 26 December 1841:3.

  125: Sir Peter Laurie … informed his mother that he had a “repugnance to mingle” with them and refused to leave his room: Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser 20 August 1840, 4.

  125: One other inmate was notorious for his aloofness, one who had no friends, and “could not be prevailed upon for some years to walk about with or join the other patients”: Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser 20 August 1840, 4.

  125: He had, according to a witness seventeen years before, long since stopped showing any symptoms of insanity: Moran, “Origin” 516n.

  125: … “the loss of liberty,” he claimed, “was worse than death”: Moran, “Origin” 516n.

  126: Oxford happened to be one of the very last male patients to make the trip, by train, from London to Crowthorne (and Broadmoor). Soon after, Bethlem’s criminal buildings were demolished: Andrews et al. 503.

  127: … Melbourne approached the Queen with the delicate issue that had been on the minds of everyone since the shooting: it was quite possible that the Queen could die, leaving an infant child as her heir: Longford 152.

  127: A Regency Bill was in order, such as the one created ten years before, when Victoria became heir apparent, and which held her mother, the Duchess of Kent, sole regent in the event of her King William’s death: Longford 35.

  127: “I don’t hide from myself that there will be all manner of objections, such as his youth, his want of acquaintance with the country and its institutions, &c.”: Von Stockmar 2:39.

  128: Stockmar and Melbourne had no problems convincing both Peel and Wellington that Albert should be sole Regent; both claimed that this was their position exactly: Von Stockmar 2:40, 42.

  128: Sussex stood before the House of Lords on 21 July, proclaiming himself to be personally disinterested in the Bill, but to have questions about it: Times 22 July 1840, 3.

  128: “Three months ago,” Melbourne told Victoria, “they would not have done it for him. It is entirely his own character”: Woodham-Smith, Queen Victoria 216.

  128: “I am to be Regent—alone—Regent, without a Council”: Duff 178.

  128: As King Leopold wrote to Albert’s private secretary, George Anson, the bill “had helped the Prince immensely”: Woodham-Smith, Queen Victoria 216.

  128: “It’s a great pity they couldn’t suffocate that boy, master Oxford, and say no more about it”: Dickens, Letters 2:81–2.

  PART 2: THE GAUNTLET

  Chapter 8: Most Desperate Offenders

  133: … the Times reported one nobleman, a true connoisseur of hangings, who had attended the last four or five of them: Times 24 May 1842, 8.

  134: two hundred City and Metropolitan police were stationed between scaffold and spectators: Times 24 May 1842, 8.

  134: Crowds at public executions could be fickle: Gatrell, 67, 98–100.

  134: “… you will leave the world unrespected and unpitied by any one”: Times 14 May 1842, 8.

  134: … “a good deed done”: For the details of Good’s murder, see Times 8 April 1842, 13, 9 April 1842, 7; Morning Chronicle 9 April 1842, 7.

  134: Queely (or Quelaz) Shiell, who had made his fortune as the largest slaveholder on the West Indian island of Montserrat: 1841 England census (incorrectly transcribed as Queeley Thiel); Browne 114; Dodd 64; Shiell and Anderson.

  134: There, Good bought on credit a pair of breeches: Times 8 April 1842, 13.

  135: Good planted his back against the door and refused entry: Morning Chronicle 9 April 1842, 7; Times 8 April 1842,13.

  135: “My God, what’s this?”: Times 8 April 1842,13.

  135: Daniel Good bolted, slamming the stable door to, locking it, throwing the key and a lantern into a hedge, and lighting out across the fields: Times 8 April 1842, 13; 9 April 1842, 7.

  136: It had been gutted—sliced in a ghastly cross vertically from sternum to pubes, and horizontally around the top of the pelvis, in a single cut from one side of the backbone around to the other: Times 13 April 1842,14; 22 April 1842, 6.

  136: Gardiner sent Samuel Dagnall to the station house in Wandsworth to fetch help, give a description of Good, and raise the alarm: Times 9 April 1842, 7; Morning Chronicle 9 April 1842, 7.

  136: … Sergeant Palmer[,] opened the door to the adjoining harness room and was nearly knocked over by the overpowering stench: Times 8 May 1842,13.

  137: … two bloody fragments of a woman’s petticoat, “violently torn asunder”: Times 22 April 1842, 6.

  137: The Sunday before, on Good’s orders, an anxious Jane Jones had left the boy to sleep with a neighbor while she went to visit Good in Putney: Times 13 April 1842,14.

  137: He saw his father make a gift to the young woman: a gown, a shawl, a fur tippet, a pair of gloves, a pair of boots, and, in a hatbox, a blue bonnet: Times 9 April 1842, 7; 13 April 1842,14.

  138: … the trousers … which the boy swore his father never took: Times 13 April 1842, 13.

  138: … the trunk—which he first thought was the body of a pig: Times 13 April 1842, 13.

  138: Young Daniel apparently disclosed that address to one of the policemen investigating the stables: Times 8 April 1842,13; Browne 115.

  138: The metropolitan police were adept, through an established system of “route-papers,” at communicating information about breaking crimes and fleeing criminals to all metropolitan station houses and to all active officers in a matter of hours: Lock 36; Cobb 102, 188.

  138: “V division, April 6, 1842.—Absconded, about half-past 9 o’clock, from Mr. Shiell’s”: Times 28 April 1842, 6.

  139: … according to local legend, he tossed the gatekeeper his coachman’s coat as he flew by: Féret 1:65.

  139: … a policeman who had at 5 A.M. witnessed Good hailing a cab: Morning Chronicle 22 April 1842, 7.

  139: Tedman was suspended from the force for several weeks because of this mistake: Cobb 188.

  139: … he sought out his actual wife, Molly Good, whom he had abandoned a good two decades before: Times 11 April 1842, 3.

  139: Together, Daniel and Molly pawned and sold most of Jane Jones’s worldly goods: Morning Chronicle 26 April 1842, 7.

  139: The newspapers soon excoriated the police for their lack of diligence in catching the murderer: Morning Chronicle 15 April 1842, 6.

  139: … the Times reported the public sense of “unmitigated indignation” against the police: Times 15 April 1842, 6.

  140: “The conduct of the metropolitan police in the present case … is marked with a looseness and want of decision”: Times 11 April 1842, 3.

  140: Typical of the problem was … Inspector M’Gill of the Holborn division: Cobb 193–94.

  140: “Thus … the circumstance soon got circulation through the neighbourhood, and thus the chances of detection were considerably lessened”: Times 11 April 1842, 3.

  140: … he was enraged by M’Gill’s hamfisted intru
sion: Cobb 196.

  141: By a remarkable coincidence, Rose had been a constable in V Division: Morning Chronicle 18 April 1842, 3.

  141: Thomas Cooper, a morose 23-year-old who had an obsession with guns: For details of Cooper’s shooting, see Morning Chronicle 20 June 1842, 6; Times 20 June 1842, 7.

  141: The superintendent of this police division … had assigned extra officers to patrol the area: Era 8 May 1842, 7.

  141: … Charles Moss, was carefully watching a gentleman ostentatiously exhibiting a heavily ornamented watch chain: Morning Chronicle 20 June 1842, 6; Times 20 June 1842, 7.

  142: … both to reload his pistols (using grass instead of wadding to hold his bullets in place), and apparently to gulp down a vial of poison: Morning Chronicle 7 May 1842, 7; 20 June 1842, 7; Times 7 May 1842, 7.

  142: “I don’t think those pistols are loaded,” he called out: Morning Chronicle 20 June 1842, 7.

  142: One pursuer took up a brick, and another—probably Mott—a stick: Times 20 June 1842, 7.

  143: Daly reeled half a circle and fell dead: Era 19 June 1842, 7.

  143: … he was so angry at the treatment of his mother by the arresting officer, Inspector Penny, that Cooper assaulted Penny brutally: Times 7 May 1842, 7; 20 May 1842, 8.

  143: … he only regretted killing Daly instead of Penny: Morning Chronicle 20 June 1842, 8.

  143: … he seemed pleased to have killed a policeman: it served him right: Times, 6 May 1842, 6.

  143: “I shall never be happy until I am the death of one of them”: Morning Chronicle 20 June 1842, 8.

  144: He stuck to the same story he had blurted out the moment his sentence of death was spoken: Times 23 May 1842, 6.

  144: “I never touched the body of the woman, alive or dead! So help me God!”: Times 23 May 1842, 6.

  144: He climbed, unassisted, the steps of the scaffold to the thunderous noise of an enraged mob: Morning Chronicle 24 May 1842, 7.

  144: “Stop! Stop!” Good cried: Times 24 May 1842, 8.

  145: Hanging “was much too good for such a fellow”: Caledonian Mercury 4 June 1842, 2.

  145: Later this day he was to take a lease on a shop and parlor at 63 Mortimer Street: Times 1 June 1842, 7.

  146: His parents still lived there with his sisters Mary and Jane: 1841 England Census; TNA PRO HO 45/3079.

  146: He attempted—feebly, it seems—to survive as a journeyman carpenter in the adjoining neighborhood of Paddington: Times 1 June 1842, 7.

  146: … his father mentioned that he came for Sunday dinner: Morning Chronicle 2 June 1842, 6.

  146: He was too proud to tell them that he was finding few jobs and was almost out of money, having been too poor for the last three months to pay rent for his room: Caledonian Mercury 4 June 1842, 2; Times 30 May 1842, 5; 1 June 1842, 7.

  146: He was a close and long-standing friend of the head machinist, Henry Sloman, who had been a witness to the marriage of John Francis Sr. and Elizabeth, Francis’s mother, in 1817: London, England, Marriages and Banns, 1754–1921.

  146: John Francis Jr. had been born in November 1822: Caledonian Mercury 4 June 1842, 2

  146: … perhaps witnessing as a child the slapstick antics of Grimaldi, the sublime acting of Kean, the dazzling virtuosity of Paganini, or, more recently, the seductive dancing of young Lola Montez: Stott, throughout; Wyndham 47–52, 78, 117–120.

  146: … the census of 1841 lists John Francis Sr. as a carpenter, and his son as an apprentice carpenter: 1841 England Census.

  147: … “one of the Artisans of Your Majesty’s Theatre Royal Covent Garden … for more than 23 years”: TNA PRO HO 45/3079.

  147: Victoria and Albert had seen all these shows in the early months of 1842: Rowell 131.

  148: They employed well over a hundred men (including twenty-six carpenters) to deal with creating props and machinery: Wyndham 2.317.

  148: … a “Star of Brunswick” rising out of the ocean, “which opens as it enlarges”: Times 13 February 1840, 5.

  148: … the first performance in London in which Mendelssohn’s famous music was employed: Planché, Recollections 2:51.

  148: Madame Vestris, renowned for her beautiful legs and for displaying them without shame in breeches roles, was responsible for that innovation: Bratton; Rowell 40.

  148: The play was a hit largely because of its showstopping finale: Haugen 99.

  148: … John Francis was specifically noted for his cleverness in construction of pantomime tricks: Caledonian Mercury 4 June 1842, 2

  148: The Castle of Otranto or, Harlequin and the Giant Helmet, was arguably the most mechanically laden pantomime of all time—a “machinist’s Sabbath,” according to one historian, a pantomime possibly even written by a Covent Garden machinist, to show off his crew’s talents: Haugen 103, 107. Other accounts attribute authorship to Vestris’s and Mathew’s house-writer, J. R. Planché.

  149: The pantomime essentially ditched the frenetic human interaction which, when the clown Joseph Grimaldi ruled the pantomime stage two decades before, was crucial to the genre: Planché, Castle of Otranto; Stott.

  149: … she liked pantomime least—noting in her journal after one that it was “noisy and nonsensical as usual”: Rowell 24.

  149: … after his quarrel with his father at the end of 1841, he turned his back on Covent Garden and on his family: Caledonian Mercury 4 June 1842, 2.

  149: … a few months after he left, the Vestris-Mathews management had collapsed: Haugen 134. 149: Charles James Mathews was arrested for debt and had spent the two weeks before Good’s execution at Queen’s Bench Prison: Times 10 May 1842, 5; 23 May 1842, 7.

  150: … after extensive renovations, the theatre finally found success opening in 1847 as an opera house: Wyndham 2:179–80.

  150: Robert Gibbs, the proprietor of the Caledonian Coffee House, who had endless opportunities to observe him, considered him “idle and reckless”: Times 2 June 1842, 5.

  150: … he wrote poetry, for one thing, and preferred musing over coffee to seeking work: Times 1 June 1842, 7; Morning Chronicle 2 June 1842, 6.

  150: Francis was arrested on suspicion of stealing more than thirty-two sovereigns from an 85-year-old man he had met at a coffee house: Times 3 June 1842, 8.

  150: Charles Johns, an outfitter of chemists and tobacconists, would in two days, on Wednesday, be delivering a full inventory to Francis’s shop, and he would be expecting full payment on delivery: Examiner 4 June 1842, 360.

  151: To fill his shop, then, he lied to Johns outright, presenting himself as a young man with great expectations: Examiner 4 June 1842, 360.

  151: … bundles of Havana cigars (and imitation Havanas), bales of loose Virginia and Middle Eastern tobacco, packages of snuff; clay and meerschaum pipes: Times 1 June 1842, 10.

  151: Grimstone’s Eye Snuff: Times 1 Feb. 1842, 8.

  151: Francis’s friends at the coffee house, and the youth he slept next to, William Elam, were startled by Francis’s sudden foray into keeping shop: Morning Chronicle 2 June 1842, 6.

  151: Charles Johns was the one certain visitor to Francis’s shop on this day: Examiner 4 June 1842, 360.

  151: Francis fended him off: the executors of his grandmother’s will were being difficult, delaying on signing off on his inheritance: Examiner 4 June 1842, 360.

  152: … he would borrow £10 from “the old man”: Examiner 4 June 1842, 360.

  152: Francis was, according to those who knew him, “good-tempered” and “inoffensive,” a sober lad, patron of coffee houses, not public houses or gin palaces, who came to his meals regularly and did not stay out late at night: Times 1 June 1842, 7.

  Chapter 9: Royal Theatre

  153: Usually, that theatre housed the Italian Opera, just reaching the peak of its season with performances of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and Lucrezia Borgia: Rowell 130.

  153: Just before 10:30, the carriages drew up to the entrance on Charles Street reserved exclusively for the Queen’s use: For details of the Spitalfields ball
at Her Majesty’s Theatre: Times 27 May 1842, 6; Morning Chronicle 27 May 1842, 6; Illustrated London News 28 May 1842, 43.

  153: … the Count’s four sons, who had emerged from the carriage in front of them: Caledonian Mercury 30 May 1842, 4.

  154: … a “simultaneous sensation of delight” thrilled the audience: Times 27 May 1842, 6.

  154: … a “perfect crush”: Times 27 May 1842, 6.

  154: Admission to this ball had been pricey: Times 11 April 1842, 1.

  155: Two weeks before this ball, the British nobility had had their own chance to display their wealth when the Queen threw at Buckingham Palace a glorious, invitation-only bal masque or costume ball: For details of the Plantagenet Ball, see the Times 13 May 1842, 6–7; 14 May 1842, 6; Illustrated London News 14 May 1842, 7–9.

  155: The latest in Victorian technology—530 jets of naphthalized gas—spotlit the thrones: Caledonian Mercury 16 May 1842, 4.

  155: The gold lace of Albert’s tunic was edged with 1,200 pearls, and Victoria wore a pendant stomacher valued at 60,000 pounds: Times 9 May 1842, 6.

  156: … on 14 May 1842, the Illustrated London News—the first fully illustrated newsmagazine—published its very first issue: Illustrated London News 14 May 1842, 7–9.

  156: … the year of the worst industrial recession of the nineteenth century: Hilton 23.

  156: A series of bad harvests, dating back to the thirties, had raised food prices and the overall cost of living: T. A. Jenkins 105; Martin 1:75.

  156: Crime rates and pauperism skyrocketed: Dodds 84; Cole and Post-gate 305.

  156: … the Chartists had, with banners and bands and great hope, trundled an immense petition through the crowd-lined streets of London to Parliament: Chase 205.

  156: … 3,317,752—well over a tenth of the entire population of Britain: Chase 205. The population of Britain and Ireland, according to the petition itself, was around 26 million in 1842, a number that almost matches that of the 1841 Census. “The People’s Charter—Petition”; Hilton 6.

  156: In their petition, the Chartists claimed that the current misery facing working people was the direct consequence of a corrupt Parliament: For details of the Chartist Petition of 1842, see “The People’s Charter—Petition.”

 

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