Shooting Victoria
Page 68
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.”
501: Monro appeared personally at the inquest and used the occasion to expose the dynamite plot to the public: Times 27 October 1887, 12.
501: The detonators he threw into a local pond: TNA PRO HO 144/209/ A48131.
501: … he dragged the slabs into the back garden and into the lodging house’s water closet: TNA PRO HO 144/209/A48131.
501: On the evening of the seventeenth, a stranger came to his lodgings: TNA PRO CRIM 1/27/3.
502: … for some time he remained in Monro’s mind as a potentially dangerous loose end of the Jubilee Plot: HO 144/1537/2.
502: … a letter had arrived from Lowell with a draft for more money—and a prepaid passage to Boston on the Cunard Line: TNA PRO CRIM 1/27/3.
502: From the back garden of Callan’s lodgings, the police were able to collect over twenty-five pounds of sodden dynamite, which police chemists were able to determine to be of American make: TNA PRO CRIM 1/27/3; “Thomas Callan, Michael Harkins.”
502: He was released in 1892: TNA PRO HO 144/209/A48131.
502: … “the most harmless of all the dynamiters with whom I have been brought into contact”: TNA PRO HO 144/209/A48131.
502: “Poor Tommy Callan”: “Poor Tommy Callan.”
503: … he was thrown from a cart, smashed his leg, and died: “Poor Tommy Callan.”
503: His assassination inspired Leon Czolgosz to kill American President William McKinley a year later: Laucella 85.
503: Bertie and Princess Alexandra chose to forgo their usual trip to Biarritz: St. Aubyn, Edward VII 302.
503: … a boy jumped upon the carriage footboard, thrust a pistol through the window, and from six feet away fired two shots at the Prince: Times 5 April 1900, 6.
503: Bertie later enjoyed joking in letters to his friends about the “pauvre fou”: St. Aubyn, Edward VII 302.
503: he was already a fanatical member of an anarchist club: Magnus 265; Brust 49.
504: The Prince of Wales asked Belgian authorities not to treat Sipido too severely: Brust 50.
504: He w
as later extradited to Belgium, where he was confined in a penitentiary until he reached the age of twenty-one: Times 22 November 1900, 5; 30 December 1905, 5.
504: … “there were crowds out, we could not understand why, and thought something must be going [on], but it turned out it was only to see me”: Weintraub, Queen Victoria 514.
505: The second, under the direction of the Queen’s imperialist Minister for the Colonies, Joseph Chamberlain, celebrated the greatness of the British Empire: Lant 219.
505: … the Queen, in 1897 no longer able to walk into St. Paul’s for the Thanksgiving Service, refused to be carried inside, and instead viewed from her carriage a short Te Deum on the cathedral steps: Lant 223–24, 244–45; Matthew and Reynolds.
505: “No one ever, I believe, has met with such an ovation as was given to me, passing through those six miles of streets”: Hibbert, Queen Victoria 457.
506: “Everywhere,” Victoria wrote, “the same enormous crowds and incessant demonstrations of enthusiasm”: Hibbert, ed. 343.
506: “I saw your Majesty three times in the streets and in the Park”: Rennell 41.
506: Victoria lived for eight months after that: For Victoria’s last days, see Tony Rennell’s Last Days of Glory: The Death of Queen Victoria.
506: “Another year begun, and I am feeling so weak and unwell that I enter upon it sadly”: Rennell 57.
507: She died in the arms of her grandson Kaiser William, “a look of radiance on her face”: Rennell 137–38.
507: … past a million of her subjects in the metropolis: Rennell 247.
508: “Reported sane since his reception,” his Bethlem case notes state, that opinion restated emphatically with the same entry repeated through the years: “no change”: Bethlehem Royal Hospital. The statement that Oxford was perfectly sane was repeated, and reasserted, in his Broadmoor records held in the Berkshire Record Office, BRO D/H14/D2/1/1/1.
509: He deserved a horse-whipping for his actions: Warren 571.
509: Bethlem became his university: Oxford’s achievements are set out in both his Bethlem and his Broadmoor case notes.
509: He was from the start “the most orderly, most useful, and most trusted of all the inmates” there: Times 13 January 1865, 10.
509: … his painting skills were in constant demand and allowed him in time to accumulate £50 or £60: Times 13 January 1865,10.
509: … in 1876 Home Secretary Gathorne Gathorne-Hardy reviewed Oxford’s record and made him a deal: BRO D/H14/D2/2/1/96.
509: 24 years earlier, George Henry Haydon had come to Bethlem as steward, and Oxford quickly discovered in him a friend: F. B. Smith 467.
510: … the Suffolk, which the next March landed at Melbourne: Assisted and Unassisted Passenger Lists.
510: … “in the future no man shall say I am unworthy of the name of an Englishman”: Freeman.
510: Oxford took up as a painter and grainer: Argus 28 January 1870, 1.
510: He was amused to discover that people in Melbourne thought him “cosmopolitan” because of his London origins: Freeman.
510: He joined and became vice president of the West Melbourne Mutual Improvement Society: Argus 28 February 1887, 4.
510: He … published his observations in Melbourne’s leading newspaper: Argus 28 March 1874, 4; 4 July 1874, 4; 22 May 1875, 9.
510: He joined the congregation of Melbourne’s oldest Anglican church and served for several years as its churchwarden: Argus 3 January 1889, 10; 22 February 1896, 8.
510: In 1881 he married a well-off widow and became a stepfather: Argus 21 March 1881, 1.
510: “There are many old friends … in England,” he wrote to Haydon, “who would be pleased to hear of me again”: Freeman.
510: “Even my wife,” Oxford told Haydon, “the sharer of my joys, and sorrows, is no wiser than the rest of the world”: Freeman.
510: He took his secret to a grave, dying on 23 April 1900: F. B. Smith 472.
511: The place was a “purgatorial grinding mill rather than a torture chamber”: Hughes 400.
511: … he emerged triumphantly, earning a six-month remission of his stay there by raising the alarm when a fire broke out: TNA PRO HO 45/3079.
511: Two years later … he fell in love with a free sixteen-year-old girl, Martha Clarke, and married her: Archives Office of Tasmania CON 51/1/3.
511: … he found it with a Launceston builder who was impressed with his industry and sobriety: TNA PRO HO 45/3079.
511: … a petition in his support was signed by the mayors of Hobart and Launceston, Launceston’s Catholic bishop, and other notables: TNA PRO HO 45/3079.
512: … an episode in 1869 in Melbourne’s insolvency court: Argus 21 January 1869, 5; 29 May 1869, 6.
512: He died in 1885, aged sixty-three: Australia Death Index.
512: … his hard-labor sentence was modified to work at tailoring: Examiner 15 October 1842.
512: During his last month of imprisonment, his father died: London, England, Deaths and Burials.
512: He attempted to take up his father’s profession as a jeweler: London Metropolitan Archives, St. James, Clerkenwell, Register of Banns of marriage.
512: By 1851 John William Bean had given up his father’s profession: 1851 England Census. 512: He did, however, manage to marry again, in 1863: England & Wales, Free BMD Marriage Index.
513: … he is listed there as a “newsagent out of work”: 1881 England Census.
513: OPIUM POISONING AT CAMBERWELL: Lloyd’s Weekly 30 July 1882.
514: He was taken from Newgate to Millbank and then quickly on to Pentonville: TNA PRO PCOM 2/211; TNA PRO HO 24/16.
514: … critics, backed by statistics, claimed it was more likely to lead to madness than moral improvement: Mayhew and Binny 102–04n.
514: … Hamilton moved to the next rehabilitative step, shipping to the public works at the small penal colony at Gibraltar: TNA PRO HO 8/102; TNA PRO HO PCOM 2/137.
514: … in August 1854, he was granted his ticket of leave: “Convict Database.”
515: He might have come to the attention of the authorities one more time, nearly twenty years later: West Australian Chronicle 8 September 1885, 3.
515: “… we understand that he has shown no symptoms of insanity upon the passage”: Cornwall Chronicle 16 November 1850, 808.
515: His hard work earned him an eighty-day remission of his sentence: Bolam 14.
515: Pate acquitted himself well enough to earn Abbott’s recommendation for a Conditional Pardon: TNA HO 45/3079.
515: He obtained his ticket of leave in September 1853: Archives Office of Tasmania CON 33/1/98.
515: That pardon was granted at the end of 1855: Bolam 14.
515: Announcements of the wedding said nothing of his being a convict and much about being an ex-officer of the 10th Royal Hussars: Courier, 26 August 1852, 2.
515: He and his wife Mary Elizabeth resided among the elite of Hobart, in an eleven-room mansion: Mercury 11 April 1863, 4.
516: … the old man had died in 1856, leaving the bulk of his £70,000 fortune to his only son: Times 12 August 1856, 1; Morning Chronicle 12 November 1856, 3.
516: In April 1865, the Pates, having sold their mansion, embarked on the Robert Morrison for London: Launceston Examiner 29 April 1865, 4.
516: Pate traveled to Wisbech to take care of his father’s estate and his servants, to whom he was said to be “remarkably kind”: Gardiner 330.
516: … he died in 1895, leaving his wife over £22,000: England & Wales, National Probate Calendar.
516: … an object reputed to be the cane with which Robert Pate struck the Queen went up for auction in London: Lloyd’s Weekly 1 January 1899, 17; Times (New York) 15 January 1899.
517: He was discharged eighteen months after he was committed to Hanwell as fully cured: Geary 142.
517: His father having died, he claimed that his income was the principal support of his entire family: TNA HO 144/3/10963.
517: … he would be willing to
travel to Australia if the government paid his expenses and found him employment: TNA HO 144/3/10963.
517: Henry Parkes, Premier of New South Wales, had taken a personal interest in his case and had procured him a clerkship with a prominent Sydney solicitor: TNA HO 144/3/10963.
517: O’Connor had been arrested for being drunk: TNA HO 144/3/10963.
517: “On his first visit he was a thoughtless youth”: TNA HO 144/3/10963.
517: At other times he was compelled to escape: Callan Park Hospital, Medical case book.
518: … the doctors all believed his illness was caused by what the Inspector General of the Sydney Police first termed in 1881 “habits of self-indulgence”: TNA PRO HO 144/3/10963.
518: … Morton was “suffering from considerable mental irritation which is fostered by his debased habits”: TNA PRO HO 144/3/10963.
518: … the disorder was melancholia, the cause “masturbation”: Callan Park, Medical case book.
518: … the cause of his madness was listed as “Onanism”: Rydalmere Hospital Medical File.
518: O’Connor’s asylum casebooks record instances of voices in his head, delusions of persecution, and wild hallucinations: Callan Park, Medical Case Book; Rydalmere Hospital Medical file.
518: In later years he took to writing persons of importance in New South Wales, pleading for a discharge: Rydalmere Hospital Legal Files.
519: … “you, I am sure are aware in questions of presumed insanity, duration of time of incarceration should not be considered”: TNA PRO HO 144/95/A14281.
519: “I am innocent of any guilty intentions toward the Queen”: BRO D/H14/D2/2/1/1905—in an undated petition, but dateable by internal evidence to c. April 1886.
519: “I should require at least one hundred per annum and I should not accept a farthing less whether from relations or strangers”: BRO D/ H14/D2/2/1/1905.
519: “No language could express my sorrow for the past”: BRO D/H14/D2/2/1/1905, petition dated 18 June 1885.