Shooting Victoria (55 page)

No one could tell her that her ghillie was not the paragon among men—living men, that was. Besides, she wrote, “Arthur was
very
amiable and wore his pin
continuously
and repeatedly said
how much
he liked it.”

Nineteen days after Arthur O'Connor had pounded the last nail into the coffin of republicanism, Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke stood up in the House of Commons to defend its corpse. The public, eager to witness his comeuppance, filled the galleries. Dilke knew very well that he would lose this debate. But he had repeatedly called for a parliamentary investigation into the Queen's expenditures, and he was now bound by honor to do the same in Parliament. He thus approached his task with a wincing desire to get it over with. Speaking for an hour and a half, he offered none of the fireworks he had in Newcastle, seeking instead to take cover in sheer boredom, larding his speech with innumerable and questionable
facts and figures; he was, he admitted, “unutterably dull.” Gone were the crowd-pleasing lists of comically useless court officers. Gone was the rousing welcome to the coming republic. Instead was an interminable list of precedents for parliamentary oversight of the Queen's finance, and a dispassionate analysis of the growth in the royal fortune, the impropriety of that fortune reverting to the Privy Purse rather than to the nation, and a vague foreboding about the risk of the great accumulation of wealth in the hands of the monarch. It was a speech calculated to change no one's opinion.

William Gladstone then stood to champion the Queen; in the words of
Punch
, he “went smashingly into the Chelsea baronet as if he had been Chelsea china.” Dilke had tried to strip his argument of every vestige of republicanism, presenting the motion as one of economy alone. The stink of his Newcastle speech was still upon him, however, and Gladstone refused to let him forget it. Because of the Newcastle speech, Gladstone angrily charged Dilke, the whole country understood his motion to be both a personal attack on the Queen and a call for a republic. Dilke was in every particular wrong: wrong about the Queen's wealth, wrong that she cost more than her uncles or her grandfather had, wrong that the annuities for her children were unprecedented and improper. Duty toward the Queen “who reigns in the hearts of her people” impelled him to exhort the House to reject Dilke's motion. Gladstone sat down to universal cheering.

The demolition done, the House was ready to vote. But Dilke's courageous if foolhardy colleague, Auberon Herbert, jumped up, seconded Dilke's motion, and prepared to give his own speech in its defense. “A perfect storm,” as Gladstone put it, ensued. The House—and particularly the Conservatives—assailed Herbert with cries of “Divide! Divide!” which degenerated into a menagerie of catcalls, cock-crows, and howls. Large groups walked out, hoping to force an adjournment by lack of a quorum. One member only made things worse by demanding that press and strangers in the gallery be expelled, suggesting that the government wished to stifle free
discussion. The anarchy continued until Herbert finally surrendered to the bellowing and sat down. After a couple short speeches by Dilke's fellow radicals, explaining why they could not possibly support this motion, the House divided. Two voted for Dilke's motion; 276 voted against it.
*
All in all, concluded
Punch
, Dilke's attack on the Queen “was about as contemptible as that by the lad who presented the flintless and empty pistol the other day.”

Dilke was mightily relieved his short tenure as republican leader was over for good. It took some time for him to cease to be a social pariah, and in the eyes of the Queen, the damage was permanent; she could not forget the injury he had done her when her popularity was at its nadir. Ten years later, when he was offered a place in Gladstone's ministry, the Queen insisted that he not be given any office that would place him close to her, and that he publicly renounce his “earlier crude opinions.” And so he did, leaving no doubt that in the battle of ideologies, Victoria had triumphed completely over him, Odger, Bradlaugh, and O'Connor: republicanism was dead.

*
Actually, there were two monuments to Feargus O'Connor: a Gothic spire at his gravesite at Kensal Green, and a statue in Nottingham, the city he served as a Member of Parliament (Read and Glasgow 144).

*
The fact that O'Connor's pistol was obviously unloaded made little difference to her; she wrote that day in her journal “The pistol had not been loaded, but it easily might have been!” (Victoria
Letters
second series 2:218).

*
Later, Gladstone ordered O'Connor's pistol brought to the lobby of the House, to show what a harmless relic it was. The swarm of members around the curiosity grew so great that the detective in charge of it had to reclaim the weapon forcibly and flee Parliament
(Glasgow Daily Herald
1 March 1872, 5).

*
Pate.

*
Victoria changed her lady-in-waiting at the beginning of every month. Lady Jane Churchill, however, obviously shaken by the attempt, wished not to leave the Queen the day after, and with the Queen's permission followed her to Windsor, riding with the equerries in the carriage behind.

*
She was right. Most press retrospectives of the attempts written in the wake of O'Connor's attempt neglected to mention Hamilton's.

*
This was his weight as taken at Newgate upon his admission. Other accounts suggest he was heavier.

*
Whicher was one of the first eight officers appointed to the original Detective Branch in 1842.

*
On the other hand, well over a hundred silver “Faithful Service Medals” have been awarded by Victoria and her successors; they are still awarded today (Cullen 158-59n.).

*
The two who voted for the motion were not Dilke and Herbert, who acted as tellers, or vote-counters, and did not vote.

twenty–one

O
UT OF THE
C
OUNTRY

A
ccording to one of the doctors who examined him in Newgate, Arthur O'Connor's great object was “truth at all times.” He was known to quarrel with his siblings because they simply could not understand truth as he did. He absolutely refused to understand his assault upon the Queen as anything less than heroic. His parents visited him as often as they could. His mother Catherine's understanding of his plight differed greatly from his father George's. To Catherine, Arthur was still to her a “good lad” and the “best of boys” who had made a horrible mistake; now he had to endure what he had brought upon himself. Her husband George disagreed; the good lad that he had known was gone. Arthur, he believed, had changed greatly since the day in late 1866 when a cab in Chancery Lane had knocked him down, split his head open, and sent him to the hospital. He had never been the same since—had become increasingly irritable and frequently burst out in fits of irrational passion. George O'Connor began
telling his friends that his son's brain was affected. The attack on the Queen simply confirmed his worst fears.

George O'Connor had seen insanity in his family before. Back in 1853, two years before his son Arthur was born, he became deeply involved in the care of his uncle Feargus. Feargus O'Connor's behavior had by then been increasingly eccentric for years. When in June 1852 he struck two members in the House of Commons in as many days, he was arrested and examined by four doctors, all of whom deemed him insane—three of them diagnosing his illness as “general paralysis of the insane”—soon (but not yet) understood to result from syphilis. One of these doctors was the celebrated John Conolly; another was his son-in-law, Thomas Harrington Tuke, who agreed to take O'Connor in at his asylum at Chiswick. When in 1853 George's aunt Harriet petitioned to gain control of her brother Feargus's estate and remove him from Tuke's care, citing ill-treatment, George staunchly defended Tuke, successfully applying to have his uncle placed under the protection of the Lord Chancellor, in order to keep his uncle safe at Chiswick and safe from the designs of his aunt. The commission, examining him, found him frantic and incoherent, but able to sing out all of “The Lion of Freedom,” the song written in his honor. Feargus O'Connor lived on for another two years in pitiful physical decline, suffering severe epileptic seizures and losing control of his bodily functions. In August 1855, his sister—in opposition to George's wishes—applied successfully to the Court of Chancery for her brother's removal to her house. He died there in agony ten days later. George O'Connor knew what madness looked like; he knew that madness ran in his family; he was sure that physical injury to his son had brought that madness to the fore. And he trusted Dr. Thomas Harrington Tuke.

Therefore, George O'Connor turned not to a solicitor to help Arthur, but to Tuke. A week after his son's imprisonment, he met Tuke in his consulting room and explained his son's case. Tuke cautioned him: if Arthur were deemed insane at his trial, he would
be confined at the Queen's pleasure—in effect a harsher sentence than the seven years' imprisonment and two floggings that he incorrectly thought to be the maximum sentence under Peel's Act. George O'Connor understood that. He still wished that Tuke examine his son.

Five days later, on 12 April, Tuke examined Arthur in the company of J. Rowland Gibson, the surgeon of Newgate. The boy's pupils were dilated; his eyes glistened. His head was asymmetrical, with phrenological indications of insanity. He described his many illnesses—spitting blood, bone disease—all of which indicated to Tuke “a fanciful and hypochondriacal state of mind.” O'Connor spoke at length of his abortive attempt at St. Paul's and his attempt at the Palace, his narrative clearly indicating that “an occasion of great national excitement had developed in this poor boy a paroxysm of insanity.” Tuke could only confirm Arthur's father's fears. He recommended to George that other doctors examine his son. Four others did; three concurred with Tuke. Tuke then advised the O'Connors that Arthur should indeed plead insanity, reasoning that any number of years of medical care at Broadmoor would serve the boy better than any number of years in prison as a convicted criminal. Besides, he suggested, in the event of the boy's recovery, both his previous good character, and the Queen's well-known propensity to clemency, would surely both work to free the boy.

Tuke offered his services to the penurious O'Connors for free. No solicitor would do the same, but a band of George O'Connor's friends contributed enough to hire the firm of Dickson and Lucas, who in turn engaged J. W. Hume-Williams as defending counsel. All agreed that Arthur would plead not guilty by reason of insanity at the coming sessions.

On Tuesday the ninth of April, the grand jury at the Central Criminal Court briefly heard the testimony of two witnesses—Prince Leopold and John Brown—and quickly returned a true bill against O'Connor, for a misdemeanor under Peel's Act. Later that afternoon, O'Connor was brought before the bar. It was known
that he now had legal representation, and his trial was scheduled for Thursday. His attorney was not, however, in the room, nor were his parents. The boy appeared at first sheepish before the trappings of the law, but quickly regained his confidence. The Clerk of Arraigns asked him how he pleaded. O'Connor paused. Earlier that day, he had spoken with his mother in his cell. The scales had been removed from his eyes, he told her: he “saw the effects of what he had done.” She understood this to mean that he had been mad when he committed the act—the scales were before his eyes—and now was sane, and contrite. Most likely, neither madness nor contrition had anything to do with it. He knew what he had done; he knew that he had broken the law—and as a devoted adherent to the truth, he knew what he had to do.

He pleaded guilty.

Those in the courtroom were visibly startled by the boy's plea, aware that his family, solicitor, and attorney had for some time been working upon a defense; all were expecting a trial on Thursday. Instead, the verdict was recorded, the Deputy Recorder directed that O'Connor be brought up that day for his sentencing, and he was taken away.

George O'Connor, who had been consulting with Dr. Tuke about his son's defense when his son pleaded, did not learn about the plea until the next day, when he read about it in a newspaper. He, Tuke, and O'Connor's attorney J. W. Hume-Williams agreed that the plea must be withdrawn: O'Connor's insanity prevented him from understanding what he was doing. Hume-Williams thus stood before the presiding judge, Baron Cleasby, on Wednesday, claiming he had a “startling amount of evidence” to support the claim of O'Connor's derangement. Cleasby seemed surprised: he had not heard that there was any hint of madness in the boy when he pleaded. Nevertheless, he allowed Hume-Williams to bring up the matter at O'Connor's sentencing the next day.

O'Connor thus had a trial. The courtroom was crowded, particularly with bewigged barristers expecting the setting of new legal precedents. O'Connor was brought to the dock, now neatly dressed
and very much aware of his own importance: “he bowed neither to judge nor jury,” noted a reporter, “but posed himself as if sitting for his photograph.” His legal position was an odd one, for both his attorney and Attorney General Coleridge, appearing for the Crown, claimed to be his true advocate. Hume-Williams adopted Dr. Tuke's argument that if O'Connor were truly insane, medical care at the Queen's pleasure would better suit him than any number of years in an English prison. Coleridge, on the other hand, argued that an acquittal on the grounds of insanity would in effect ensure a worse punishment—a lifetime of confinement. Though a jury was empaneled to consider the question, it was more limited in scope than a full-blown criminal trial, for—as Baron Cleasby, a judge known to be a niggler on points of law, and never quite comfortable in a criminal courtroom, repeatedly made it clear, the hearing focused upon a single question: was Arthur O'Connor sane at the moment he pled guilty? Whether he was insane when he assaulted the Queen was not relevant. O'Connor's attorney J. W. Hume-Williams argued that O'Connor's state of mind at the time of the assault was indeed relevant and admissible, since it pointed to a long-term mental illness which endured until the moment O'Connor pled. But Cleasby would have none of it, interrupting Hume-Williams after the second sentence of his opening speech, and relentlessly afterwards, cautioning him to keep to the single question at issue.