Queen Victoria is a massive figure in British history, but did you know she survived eight assassination attempts?
This week we recount how the unflappable Queen herself survived all the attempts on her life, refused to hide away in her palace, and even used herself as bait for one would-be assassin. Plus we get into the legacy these attempts on a reigning monarch’s life had on legal history, and the compassion the Royal Family showed to her attackers.
THE FIRST ATTEMPT: EDWARD OXFORD
Born Princess Alexandrina Victoria of Kent on May 24 1819, she married her cousin Prince Albert in 1840, three years after she took the British Throne in June 1838 following the death of her uncle King William the fourth.
The first assassination attempt came on June 10 1840, exactly four months after their wedding on February 10 1840. The newly married couple left Buckingham Palace in a carriage heading towards Hyde Park, they had barely left the palace grounds when 18 year old barman Edward Oxford fired two shots at the Queen with a pistol. The shots missed and Oxford was taken down by members of the crowd who gathered outside of the palace.
Unphased by the would-be assassin, Victoria and Albert continued their journey and went for their day out in Hyde Park. Prince Albert later wrote that this was “to show the public that [they] had not…lost all confidence in them.”
While the Royal couple may have come away unscathed, Edward Oxford was tried for treason due to the attempted regicide of Queen Victoria – which is the proper name for trying to off a member of the royal family. The jury found him not guilty by reason of insanity and he was detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure in the State Criminal Lunatic Asylum, also known as Bethlem Royal Hospital and later moved to the infamous Broadmoor Hospital.
In 1867 Oxford was offered conditional release from Broadmoor, the condition being that he had to leave the UK and re-settle in one of the colonies. He left for Australia, which was known for being a place where the Brits sent their criminals and established numerous penal colonies all the while destroying the lives of Aborigonal Australians. Oxford lived in Australia under a new identity: John Freeman. He worked as a painter and lived out his days in Melbourne.
Oxford always denied guilt, maintaining that the gun was only loaded with powder and that he was motivated by a desire for infamy and notoriety rather than anything political. He died in Melbourne in April 1900 at the age of 78.
JOHN FRANCIS
The second attempt on Queen Victoria’s life came just two years later on May 28 1842. The Queen and Prince Albert were once again riding in an open carriage, this time returning to Buckingham Palace from a church service at the nearby St James Palace. They were riding along The Mall.
Albert reported seeing “a little, swarthy, ill-looking rascal” point a pistol at the queen and pull the trigger – but the gun failed to fire and the would-be assassin quickly disappeared into Green Park which borders The Mall. The Prince reported the incident to royal security, but reportedly began to think his eyes must have been deceiving him when he discovered that no one else in the royal convoy had noticed the strange occurrence.
The prince dismissed his doubts until the following day when the royal household began to hear reports that a young boy in the crowd along The Mall had seen the exact same thing as Prince Albert. And so a sting operation was set up.
It was decided that on May 30 1842 Queen Victoria and Prince Albert would take a carriage ride through the parks near the palace in an attempt to lure out the would be assassin. Reports claim that the Queen refused to confine herself indoors whilst the gunman was on the loose.
The couple set off on their journey accompanied in the carriage by only two officers, Colonel Charles Arbuthnot and Lieutenant Colonel William Wylde.
Prime Minister John Peel deployed plain clothes police officers to the nearby parks and along the carriages route, all of them with a description of the ill-looking rascal. Sure enough a shot rang out just five paces from the carriage. Undercover officers pounced on the shooter who once again missed his mark.
The shooter was revealed to be John Francis, an out of work carpenter. He was tried for High Treason and found guilty on Friday, June 17 at the Criminal Court in London. He was initially sentenced to death by hanging, but in a remarkable move, Queen Victoria commuted his sentence to life in Australian exile, which was technically known as transportation for life.. In John Francis’ case this life in Australian exile meant he had to live the rest of his life in Australia, but that he was also sentenced to hard labour in the penal colony once he got to Australia.
He was released on a Ticket of Leave in 1867. In the British colonies a ticket of leave gave prisoners some freedoms to find employment but they had to remain in a specified area, they could even bring their family over to the colony if they so wished or if they were unmarried they were free to marry as long as they remained living in the local area, so it was a bit like an early form of parole.
Unfortunately, we don’t really know a lot more about John Francis or what became of him in Australia.
JOHN BEAN
Now you would think that after two assassination attempts in two days, Queen Victoria might have been given a bit of a reprieve by the general public, but no!
Less than six weeks later there was a fourth attempt on her life.
On July 3 1842 history repeated itself when 17 year old John William Bean loaded a pistol with pieces of broken clay pipe and waited for the royal convoy. Also worth noting is that this attack was the day after she commuted John Francis’ sentence to life in exile.
The royal couple were travelling along The Mall from the royal chapel back to Buckingham Palace when John Bean went to take his shot. But just like John Francis just a few weeks earlier the gun malfunctioned and failed to fire.
However, unlike John Francis, John Bean was not able to simply slip the gun into his pocket and blend into the crowd, he was quickly tackled to the ground by a 16 year old passerby named Charles Edward Dassett and his older brother, and the two boys took him to a local officer.
But the officer just laughed in their faces and the growing crowd around them pressured the two boys to release John Bean. All reports note that John Bean was disabled, he suffered from a serious spinal deformity which impeded his growth, leaving him hunchbacked and standing at only four feet tall. So it is possible that many bystanders thought of him as harmless or that he was being victimised by the two boys for being different.
The boys let John Bean go. But police then decided that they should probably charge the boy who had tried to kill the Queen, so over the next two weeks London police rounded up what reports from the time describe as “every hunchback they could find”. They eventually found John Bean at his family home. The boy claimed that his pistol had been loaded with more tobacco than anything else and that it was pointed at the ground, he denied any attempt to kill the Queen and protested that she was never in any danger.
John Bean could have been charged with treason, which at the time carried the death sentence, but the Royal family thought that would have been too harsh a sentence. Prince Albert actually encouraged Parliament to pass laws which would recognise lesser crimes against the monarch, such as intent to alarm, assault, and having a loaded weapon in the presence of the queen, rather than High Treason or attempted regicide, and so the Treason Act of 1842 was soon passed.
Under the new treason laws John William Bean was found guilty and sentenced to 18 months hard labour. Upon his release he faded into obscurity, although he is the only one of Victoria’s would-be assassins who was born, lived and died in London. He married twice, raised a son named Samuel, and worked as a news vendor for most of his life. The few reports of his death describe him as a troubled man who suffered from depression for much of his adult life. And in July 1882, John William Bean ended his own life by opium overdose.
WILLIAM HAMILTON
Following John Bean’s unsuccessful attempt on the monarch’s life, Queen Victoria actually had a reprieve from people trying to murder her, and for almost seven years there were no known assassination attempts. What a relief that must have been!
But all that changed on June 19 1849, when William Hamilton caught up with her.
William Hamilton was an unemployed bricklayer from County Limerick in what is now the Republic of Ireland. Now we definitely do not have time to go into the history of British and Irish relations, but we’ll do our best to give you a quick rundown of the situation at the time.
Ireland’s biggest export was potatoes, but in the 1840s the potato crop was infected with a blight which led to the Irish Potato Famine.
Between 1840 and 1850 more than one million Irish people starved to death and another million emigrated, which caused the country’s population to fall by an estimated 25%. More than two million Irish became refugees during this period. 1847, known as Black 47 was the worst year of the Great famine.
There is and always has been intense criticism of the way in which the British government treated Ireland during this time.
It is now widely accepted Ireland was actually producing enough crops to feed the population, but many farmers were tenant farmers or sharecroppers and so the landlords, most of whom were British, basically took most of the potatoes to ship out of Ireland and sell.
The Irish Potato Famine has been likened to the Holodomor, which was a man made famine in Ukraine in the 1930s. Millions of ethnic Ukrainians died as food grown in Ukraine was confiscated by Stalin’s government in Moscow and outside aid was rejected.
Since 2006 Ukraine and 15 other countries have recognised the Holodomor as genocide, and the question of genocide against the Irish has been debated for more than 150 years, but officially it is not yet recognised as such.
Queen Victoria, of course, came under intense criticism for not doing more to help the plight of the Irish during the famine.
William Hamilton had grown up in poverty in Ireland and had been forced to emigrate to England during the famine, and after spending some time in France he returned to London in 1848, and was reportedly frustrated with the lack of British assistance during the famine. So on the evening of June 19 1849, Hamilton borrowed a pistol from a friend and headed down to The Mall to wait for the royal carriage to pass.
That evening Queen Victoria and three of her children, including her eldest son who would go on to be King of England were riding in the carriage on the way back from Regent’s Park. The royal family had been making public appearances to celebrate the Queen’s birthday, and you might be thinking hey I thought this happened in June and Victoria was born in May? You would be right but the Queen, or any reigning British monarch has their actual birthday and their official birthday.
Standing in almost the exact same spot on The Mall as Edward Oxford had in 1840, William Hamilton took aim at the passing carriage and pulled the trigger. But luckily for the royal family the gun malfunctioned and Hamilton was tackled to the ground by the head groundskeeper of James’ Park. He told police that he had loaded the gun only with powder and shot it with the intention of being arrested and sent to prison as he was sick of being out of work.
Hamilton pled guilty and he was sentenced to seven years hard labour in exile and was transported to the British colony of Gibraltar, off the south coast of Spain. After five years he was transported to Western Australia where he lived until he died at the age of 58 in Perth.
ROBERT PATE
A year and a week after William Hamilton’s failed assassination attempt came the sixth attempt on Queen Victoria’s life.
Former British Army officer Robert Pate was well known by Londoners and to the Queen herself as a bit of “lunatic”. He was a recluse, known for his wacky clothing and was often seen goose-stepping around London’s royal parks.
On June 27 1850 the Queen and some of her children were visiting one of her uncles who was dying. Pate was out for one of his walks around the park when he saw the crowd that had gathered outside the gates trying to catch a glimpse of the Queen and he went to join them.
Pate waited until the royal carriage passed through the gates and he stepped up to the carriage and struck Queen Victoria across the head with his cane. He was quickly restrained by members of the crowd and reports claim the crowd would have lynched him had a police sergeant not intervened. Queen Victoria stood up in the carriage and announced “I am not hurt!” although a black eye and huge bruise across the side of her head would soon develop.
Pate was tried on three charges: firstly unlawfully and maliciously striking the queen, secondly with alarming the queen and thirdly with breaking the peace. He did not plead insanity but his defense team asked for leniency as he suffered a momentary lapse caused by a weak mind.
As you can probably tell Pate was from a much higher social station that Queen Victoria’s other would be assassins. This high status translated into a seven year sentence in transportation, although not lifelong exile to the colonies, and Pate was shipped off to a penal colony in Van Diemen’s Land, now called Tasmania. He served one year of hard labour and was then transferred to a much more amiable work community for the remainder of his sentence.
Following his release Pate married and stayed in Tasmania for eight years before returning to London where he lived until his death in 1895. His motivations for attacking the Queen were never revealed, and he was the only person to actually cause physical harm to Queen Victoria.
ARTHUR O’CONNOR
Things were all quiet on the assassination front for the next 21 years. That was until February 29 1872 when 17 year old Arthur O’Connor scaled the walls of Buckingham Palace and sprinted across the courtyard to wait for the royal carriage. When Victoria returned from a drive around the royal parks O’Connor climbed onto the royal carriage and standing a foot away from her, he aimed a pistol at the Queen.
Victoria’s personal servant John Brown grabbed O’Connor by the neck and wrestled him to the ground whilst the Queen was rushed to safety. John Brown was credited with saving Queen Victoria’s life and he received a medal for his heroism.
O’Connor on the other hand was tried for treason, he was sentenced to a year in prison and birching which was being struck with a rod made from a birch tree, following his prison stay he was exiled to Australia.
O’Connor was the descendant of Irish revolutionaries and he always maintained that he never intended to kill or even harm Queen Victoria, but rather his intention was to frighten her into signing a document that would release Irish political prisoners being held in British jails.
O’Connor was eventually committed to the Rydalmere Hospital for the Insane in the City of Parramatta, New South Wales, where he died in 1925.
Rodderick/Frederick Maclean
The eigth and final assassination attempt on Queen Victoria’s life would take place on March 2 1882, and we can’t even confirm the name of the name of the person who did it, or at least tried to do it.
Victoria arrived at Windsor train station from London when she was immediately set upon by a man referred to by some as Frederick Maclean and others as Rodderick Maclean, aiming a gun at the Queen’s head.
28 year old Maclean managed to pull the trigger but luckily the bullet missed the Queen and he was tackled to the ground by the train conductor before being beaten up by two Eton schoolboys, in the most British way possible – the pair battered him with their umbrellas.
We haven’t been able to find out what the reason was for Maclean’s attempt on the Queen’s life, some reports say he was Irish, others Scottish – The English weren’t popular with the Scots during this period either, or ever really. But other than this there is no explanation of his motivations.
Maclean was tried for High Treason but was found not guilty by reason of insanity and confined to an asylum. It came out at the trial that he had been certified insane two years earlier. And this trial also led to a change in the law, at the Queen’s request which allowed juries to find a suspect guilty and insane at the same time.
Maclean would spend the next 39 years in Broadmoor asylum until his death in 1921 at the age of about 67.
This was the final attempt on Victoria’s life. She remained on the throne until her death on January 22 1901, reigning for 63 years and seven months – longer than any previous British monarch, although Queen Elizabeth has now surpassed that at 68 years and six months.
She was succeeded by her eldest son who became King Edward VII.
FURTHER READING:
Shooting Victoria by Paul Thomas Murphy
There Were Eight Assassination Attempts on Queen Victoria
8 Times Queen Victoria Survived Attempted Assassinations – HISTORY
7 Assassination Attempts on Queen Victoria
The Unhappy Death of John William Bean
William Hamilton, an Irishman’s Attempt to Kill Queen Victoria
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