Edward Oxford (19 April 1822 – 23 April 1900) was an English man who attempted to assassinate Queen Victoria in 1840. He was the first of seven unconnected people who tried to kill her between 1840 and 1882. Born and raised in Birmingham, he showed erratic behaviour which was sometimes threatening or violent. He had a series of jobs in pubs, all of which he lost because of his conduct. In 1840, shortly after being dismissed from yet another pub, he purchased two pistols and fired twice at Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert. No-one was hurt.
Oxford was arrested and charged with high treason. A jury found him not guilty by reason of insanity and he was detained indefinitely at Her Majesty's pleasure at the two State Criminal Lunatic Asylums: first at Bethlem Royal Hospital and then, after 1864, Broadmoor Hospital. Visitors and staff did not consider him insane.
In 1867 Oxford was given the offer of release if he relocated to a British colony; he accepted and settled in Melbourne, Australia, under the new name "John Freeman". He worked as a decorator, married and became a respected figure at his local church. He began writing stories on the seedier aspects of Melbourne life for The Argus, which were published under the pseudonym "Liber". He later published a book, Lights and Shadows of Melbourne Life, which looks at both the wealthy and seamy parts of Melbourne.
Oxford's trial, and the later M'Naghten case, led to an overhaul of the law on criminal insanity in England. In January 1843 Daniel M'Naghten murdered Edward Drummond—the private secretary to the Prime Minister—mistaking him for the Prime Minister, Robert Peel. Like Oxford, M'Naghten was also found not guilty on the grounds of insanity. The cases of Oxford and M'Naghten prompted the judiciary to frame the M'Naghten rules on instructions to be given to a jury for a defence of insanity.
Biography Early life: 1822–1840 Edward Oxford was born in Birmingham, England, on 19 April 1822. His parents were George Oxford and his wife Hannah ( Marklew). The couple met in Birmingham's Hope and Anchor tavern, which was owned by Hannah's parents; George was a goldsmith and chaser and earned an average of £20 a week. Edward was the third of the couple's seven children, although only four survived until 1829. According to Jenny Sinclair, Edward's biographer, George's behaviour was erratic when he was younger and he was an "impulsive and a heavy drinker" by the time he was twenty. George and Hannah's relationship was abusive and George, at various times, threatened, starved, beat and threw a pot at Hannah, which left her with a scar. George died in June 1829 when Edward was seven years old, by which time the family were living in London.
On her husband's death, Hannah returned to Birmingham with Oxford before they moved back to London, where Hannah initially became a housekeeper for a banker. According to the historian Paul Murphy, Oxford's behaviour as a youth was erratic and he had "fits of unprovoked, maniacal laughter"; this behaviour caused the failure of two food outlets his mother was then operating. By 1831 Oxford was being cared for by his maternal grandfather in Birmingham and had begun working for a tailor. When he was fourteen Oxford was sent to work at the King's Head, an aunt's pub in Hounslow, then part of Middlesex. His erratic behaviour continued: he turned off the gaslights when the pub was full of customers, assaulted someone with a large chisel or screwdriver—for which he was found guilty of assault and fined £1 10s 6d—and fired an arrow at another boy, injuring him.
When the King's Head closed eleven months after his arrival, Oxford took a series of jobs in other London pubs. He was dismissed from the Shepherd and Flock in Marylebone High Street after he attacked a colleague with a knife; he lasted only a few months at the Hat and Flowers in St Luke's, and four months at the Hog in the Pound in Oxford Street, where he was on a salary of £20 a year. He was sacked on 30 April and given his quarter's salary of £5. After leaving the Hog in the Pound, Oxford moved in with his mother and sister at 6 West Place, West Square, Lambeth.
Assassination attempt: April to June 1840
Three days after he lost his job, Oxford went to a shop in Blackfriars Road and spent £2 on two pistols and a powder flask. He practised in his back garden, firing the guns charged with powder, but probably not loaded with shot; he also visited a shooting gallery in Leicester Square, where he practised with their guns. About a week after he moved in, he hit his mother for no apparent reason and threatened her with a pistol; she returned to Birmingham shortly afterwards, leaving Oxford in Lambeth with his sister Susannah and her husband William Phelps. Over the next month Oxford invented a fictional organisation, Young England, a pseudo-military revolutionary group of which he was the leader. He drew up a document of eleven rules, signed by the fictitious A. W. Smith; the first of these was "That every member shall be provided with a brace of pistols, a sword, a rifle and a dagger; the two latter to be kept at the committee room". He drew up a list of principal members—all fictitious—into ranks of president, council members, generals, captains and lieutenants, and each rank had a "mark of distinction" to signify their position, such as a black bow (for the president) or a large white cockade (for council members).
On 10 June 1840—the eleventh anniversary of George Oxford's death—Oxford walked to Constitution Hill, near Buckingham Palace, and waited for two hours; the royal couple were known to take an evening drive most days and groups of onlookers were common at that time. At around 6:00 pm Queen Victoria—four months pregnant with her first child, Victoria, the Princess Royal—and Prince Albert left the palace in their drosky, an open-topped horse-drawn carriage, accompanied by the postillions (the drivers mounted on horses) and two outriders. The carriage passed a group of spectators by the gates to the palace and travelled along Constitution Hill; as it came within a couple of metres of Oxford, he drew out his first pistol and fired. His shot missed: he said "I have got another", drew his second pistol and fired that after the carriage. The carriage continued on to the house of Victoria's mother, Victoria, Duchess of Kent. The Queen recorded in her diary:
I was deafened by the loud report of a pistol, and our carriage involuntarily stopped. Albert was sitting on my right. We looked round and saw a little man on the footpath, with his arms folded over his breast, a pistol in each hand, and before half a minute elapsed, I saw him aim at me with another pistol. I ducked my head, and another shot, equally loud, instantly followed; we looked round and saw that the man had been quickly surrounded and seized. Albert directly ordered the postillion to drive on as if nothing had happened, to Mama's house. Just before the second shot was fired and as the man took aim, or rather more while he fired, dear Albert turned towards me, squeezing my hand, exclaiming "My God! Don't be alarmed". I assured him I was not the least frightened, which was the case.
Onlookers apprehended Oxford—some shouting "Kill him!"—and disarmed him; he did not struggle. One of the first people to reach him, Albert Lowe, took both pistols. Holding the guns, he was mistaken for the assassin, seized and beaten. Oxford, annoyed at the attention being on someone else, admitted his culpability by saying "I am the man who fired; it was me". Police soon arrived and arrested Oxford, who was taken into custody at the nearest police station, in Gardner's Lane. According to Murphy, the decision by Victoria and Albert to continue their journey rather than return to the palace "turned near-tragedy into overwhelmingly personal triumph". They returned to the palace an hour later, by which time a crowd had gathered, greeting the couple with cheers. Over the next hours and days they made themselves publicly visible, showing the public that the royal couple trusted them.
On the way to the police station, Oxford hinted that he had not acted alone, and once he was in custody, his rooms were searched and the information about Young England was discovered. Questioned by the Earl of Uxbridge—the Lord Chamberlain, the most senior officer in the royal household—Oxford again spread his tale of the conspiracy of which he was part. Subsequent newspaper speculation suggested the organisation may be connected to the Chartists—the working-class movement pressing for self-determination and democratic reforms—the Germans or a faction of the Orange Order within the Tories. The reference to Germany was concerning to some in Britain, as if Victoria had been assassinated, she would have been succeeded on the British throne by Ernest Augustus, king of the German state of Hanover. Murphy considers him "without question the most wicked, the most feared, and the most reviled of George III's sons", and observes that the reference to Augustus would have been "chilling to any British reader".
Although there was some initial doubt about whether his pistols were loaded, once Oxford was at the police station he was asked, and, in front of several witnesses, he admitted that they had been. On all subsequent occasions, he said they were only charged with powder but not with shot. Several people visited the police station to see Oxford, including Charles Murray, the Master of the Household; Fox Maule, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department; and Henry Cadogan, 4th Earl Cadogan, a member of Her Majesty's Diplomatic Service. Among those summoned to the station was a magistrate from the Queen Square police court; he charged Oxford with "maliciously and unlawfully discharging two pistols at the Queen and Prince Albert". A charge of high treason was added before the trial started. This carried a possible punishment of hanging, drawing and quartering.
The following morning Oxford was taken from the police station to offices of the Home Department in Whitehall where he was interrogated by the Marquess of Normanby, the Home Secretary. Oxford said to him:
A great many witnesses [are] against me. Some say I shot with my left, others with my right. They vary as to the distance. After I had fired the first pistol, Prince Albert got up, as if he would jump out of the coach, and sat down again, as if he thought better of it. Then I fired the second pistol. That is all I have to say at present.
That afternoon Oxford was questioned by the Privy Council, although all he would admit to was firing the pistols. That evening he was sent to Newgate Prison to await trial. While in Newgate, Oxford was examined by several doctors specialising or having a professional interest in mental illness. These included the pathologist Thomas Hodgkin; John Conolly, the head of Middlesex County Asylum at Hanwell; and the surgeon James Fernandez Clarke, who accompanied as the Oxfords' family doctor.
Trial: July 1840
The trial took place from 9 to 11 July 1840 at the Old Bailey, central London. Three judges presided: Lord Denman, Baron Alderson and John Patteson. The prosecution was led by Sir John Campbell, the Attorney General, and Sir Thomas Wilde, the Solicitor General. Oxford was represented by Sidney Taylor and William Henry Bodkin. Taylor was a member of an organisation that opposed the death penalty, and they agreed to pay Taylor's fees as long as he was the lead barrister for the defence.