455: A local surgeon, William Brown Holderness, was brought in to examine him: Daily News 3 March 1882, 5. Other early accounts claim that Victoria’s doctor, James Reid, also examined Maclean and pronounced him sane, but later denials suggest this to be unlikely.
456: Several diplomats who wished to offer up personal congratulations at the Palace were directed to call at Marlborough House: Belfast News-Letter 3 March 1882, 5.
456: Others made their way by train to Windsor Castle on the next day: Pall Mall Gazette 3 March 1882, 8.
456: The House of Commons churned for a time that evening with a growing consternation: Times 3 March 1882, 5.
456: “I hope the matter will not receive the same sort of judicial handling which a similar one as I recollect received from Mr. Justice Cleasby”: Guedalla 2:179.
456: … many had collected outside newspaper offices throughout Britain to hear the results of Bradlaugh’s bid for re-election in Northampton: Bristol Mercury 3 March 1882, 8.
457: I have before me as I write a copy of an evening paper published in San Francisco on March 2nd: Leeds Mercury 25 March 1882, 5.
457: … jamming the special telegraph wire to the Castle: Pall Mall Gazette 3 March 1882, 8; Graphic 11 March 1882, 227.
457: She received messages: Times 3 March 1882, 5; Pall Mall Gazette 3 March 1882, 8; Daily News 6 March 1882, 6; Times 6 March 1882, 6.
458: … Victoria was particularly affected by President Chester Arthur’s message to her: Aberdeen Journal 6 March 1882, 3.
458: And postbags bulging with congratulations soon joined telegrams: Aberdeen Journal 8 March 1882, 5. One newspaper reports that five hundred telegrams poured in by 6 March, another two thousand telegrams by the seventeenth. Bristol Mercury 6 March 1882, 8; Newcastle Courant 17 March 1882, 8; White 41.
458: “Telegrams, as well as letters,” she wrote in her journal on 3 March, “pouring in”: Victoria Letters (second series) 3:267.
458: … “the boys cheered as we passed … and everyone seemed so pleased”: Victoria Letters (second series) 3:267.
458: … “anything like the enthusiasm, loyalty, sympathy and affection shown me is not to be described”: Victoria and Victoria, Beloved Mama 116.
458: … the bullet had been found by Inspector Noble of the Great Western Railway: Times 4 March 1882, 10.
458: That truck had moved on to Reading, but Inspector Noble found it there that afternoon: Daily News 4 March 1882, 5.
458: … the apparent answer to which was that the bullet passed between the rear of the carriage and the rumble seat—between Victoria and John Brown: Illustrated London News 11 March 1882, 230.
459: … “for it proves,” she wrote, “that the object was not intimidation, but far worse”: Victoria Letters (second series) 3:267.
459: I am not guilty of the charge of shooting with the intention of causing actual bodily harm: Times 4 March 1882, 10.
460: He was thus a confident man when at 1:30 that afternoon, handcuffed to a plain-clothed officer, he was rushed in an open fly from the station house to Windsor Town Hall: Daily News 4 March 1882, 5.
461: “I saw the prisoner with a revolver in his hand. The line of fire was straight from my eye to one of the panels of Her Majesty’s carriage”: Times 4 March 1882, 10.
461: “Have you fired a pistol in your life?”: Daily News 4 March 1882, 6.
461: “That is a point in my favor”: Glasgow Herald 4 March 1882, 5.
462: “We have nothing to do with that”: Daily News 4 March 1882, 6.
462: … some of the crowd rushed at the carriage: Daily News 4 March 1882, 5; Times 4 March 1882, 5.
462: Superintendent Hayes, attempting to avoid confrontation by avoiding Windsor train station altogether, removed Maclean from the station in a closed fly through Eton and to the railway station at Slough: Times 6 March 1882, 6.
462: … anything less, she thought, would have a “painful effect”: Guedalla 2:181.
463: … “the dominant feeling in my mind has been that the whole of these deplorable attempts on the life of the Queen have proceeded from men of weak and morbid minds”: Guedalla 2:180.
463: … Gladstone reversed himself, and the Cabinet, meeting on Saturday, agreed to follow the precedents of 1840 and 1842: Guedalla 2:180.
463: Victoria was satisfied with Parliament, and told Gladstone so: Guedalla 2:181.
464: The address was then read “extremely well”: Victoria and Victoria, Beloved Mama 116.
464: Victoria, “visibly affected,” replied briefly to the address: Leeds Mercury 7 March 1882, 8.
464: She shook the hands of her young saviors: Leeds Mercury 7 March 1882, 8. By some accounts Victoria promised the boys a commission in the army. With or without this incentive, one of the boys, Gordon Chesney Wilson, grew up to become a true son of the Empire: he served as aide-de-camp to Baden-Powell at the siege of Mafeking, married the daughter of the Seventh Duke of Marlborough and thus became an uncle to Winston Churchill, died in battle in Ypres in the first months of the First World War, and was buried in a Flanders field (Clutterbuck and Dooner 448–49).
464: Elisabeth, a devoted huntress, had been riding to the hounds in Cheshire for the past month, and had come … to offer Victoria her congratulations and her farewells: Times 4 February 1882, 9; 7 March 1882, 10.
464: Luigi Lucheni[,] was an Italian anarchist who when caught admitted that he was out to kill the first royal he could lay his hands upon: Sinclair 174.
465: … he plunged into her body a short file sharpened to stiletto fine-ness, breaking her rib and piercing her lung, pericardium, and heart: Sinclair 177.
465: … that news was widely reported the next day, along with Maclean’s stays in a Dublin asylum as well as Weston-super-Mare infirmary: Daily News 4 March 1882, 5; Birmingham Daily Post 4 March 1882, 5; Leeds Mercury 4 March 1882, 3.
465: … Wollaston Knocker[,] recognized Maclean from the first reports of the shooting and quickly telegraphed the Mayor of Windsor: Daily News 4 March 1882, 5.
465: A few days later, Knocker’s more detailed account of Maclean’s earlier, bizarre behavior appeared in newspapers across the country: Leeds Mercury 7 March 1882, 8.
466: The Home Secretary, William Vernon Harcourt, did consider the possibility that Maclean was a part of a larger political conspiracy: TNA PRO HO 144/95/A14281.
466: Most… called for the assassination of another “crowned ragamuffin” every month: Times 26 May 1881, 11.
466: … “the present attempt on the life of Her Majesty the Queen was the work of a lunatic”: TNA PRO HO 144/95/A14281.
466: The horror one felt at learning the Queen had again been attacked, Gladstone proclaimed, was mitigated by one “remarkable consideration”: “Attempt on the Life of Her Majesty.”
468: “Your Majesty’s Law Officers are sensible how important it is that there should be in this case a power of imprisonment without any limit of time”: RA VIC/MAIN/L/14/116.
468: … “if there should be any fear of his not being convicted for intent to murder … the plea of insanity will be brought forward”: RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ/1882,10 March 1882.
469: Maclean might have “a horrid, cruel face”: RA VIC/ MAIN/L/14/115.
469: He might be the “utterly worthless” offshoot of “respectable relations”: Victoria and Victoria, Beloved Mama 116.
469: … she wrote Gladstone “she is glad to hear of this proposed arrangement for the trial of Maclean wh seems very satisfactory”: Guedalla 2:181–82.
469: “The Mayor (to the prisoner) Have you any question to put to the witness?”: Daily News 11 March 1882, 3.
470: Stephenson had little to say about Maclean’s state of mind besides noting that, as far as he could tell, there was nothing the matter with the man: Times 11 March 1882, 10.
Chapter 24: Special Verdict
472: … he argued in it both that he had no intention of whatsoever of shooting the Queen, and that he had long been, and still was, insane: Reynolds’s Week
ly 23 April 1882, 1.
472: … if his overblown prose and his later repeated but unsuccessful attempts to get the manuscript published are any indication: he apparently sought to gain with it the literary fame he knew he so greatly deserved: Reynolds’s Weekly 23 April 1882, 1; Sims 67–70; White 56. Maclean’s memoirs have disappeared, but fragments from and summaries of them appear in Reynolds’s Weekly following his trial, and in writer George R. Sims’s own memoirs, My Life: Sixty Years’ Recollections of Bohemian London.
472: … “to express from her heart how very deeply touched she is by the outburst of enthusiastic loyalty, affection, and devotion which the painful event of the 2d. inst. has called forth from all classes and from all parts of her vast Empire”: Times 14 March 1882, 10.
472: … “the bright sunshine and the sea, mountains, vegetation and lightness of the air and the brightness and gaiety of everything”: Victoria and Victoria, Beloved Mama 117.
472: Rumors that three Fenian terrorists were on their way from Paris to assassinate Victoria had reached the ears of the police who accompanied her: Nelson 35; Lamont-Brown 132.
472: John Brown did not, and drove everyone to distraction by his frantic attempts to discover the assassins: Cullen 190.
472: Victoria attributed his hypervigilance not to any actual threat, but to “his increasing hatred of being ‘abroad’”: Nelson 35.
472: Victoria and Beatrice returned to Windsor amidst the same heightened security, four days before Maclean’s trial: Daily News 15 April 1882, 5.
473: London’s cause célèbre of 1882: the Jumbo craze: For the Jumbo craze, see Chambers 116–164.
473: … last August, Jumbo had destroyed the zoo’s elephant house: Chambers 109–110.
473: When led out the next day to walk the eight miles to Millwall Docks, Jumbo similarly refused: Chambers 125.
474: In mid-March, Jumbo fever peaked, as on one day 24,007 people packed the zoo: Chambers 146.
474: … Jumbo fever subsided quickly, the British sheepishly realizing that they could go on without Jumbo: Chambers 196.
474: When on 19 April two constables conveyed Maclean up from the subterranean passage and into the dock of the small courtroom at Reading, he appeared dirtier and shabbier than ever: Williams 115; Illustrated London News 22 April 1882.
474: … a number of fashionably dressed ladies stared back at him, some through opera glasses: Pall Mall Gazette 19 April 1882, 8.
474: … “Few who looked upon him … had any doubt that insanity had marked him for its own”: Williams 115.
474: … they had otherwise provided for him well, paying for his meals at Reading Gaol: Times 13 April 1882, 9.
475: … one reporter comparing the spectators to a Nonconformist congregation: Pall Mall Gazette 19 April 1882, 8.
475: The Queen had that morning done the same, sending a primrose wreath to be placed on his grave at Hughenden: Daily News 20 April 1882, 5.
475: “We cannot help regretting,” proclaimed The Times, “that the accused has been treated so much au sérieux”: Times 19 April 1882,11.
475: “like employing a five ton Nasmyth hammer to crack a walnut-shell”: Reynolds’s Weekly 23 April 1882, 4.
476: Guiteau had managed to turn the trial into a circus: Clark 125–39.
476: “As to Maclean there is no doubt of his insanity”: Journal of Lewis Harcourt, rpt. White 52.
477: Much therefore had happened in the hour before Maclean stepped into the dock: Times 20 April 1882,11; Pall Mall Gazette 19 April 1882, 8.
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 rec
eption 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.
Shooting Victoria Page 67