There must have been times when Queen Victoria wondered whether she had a target pinned on her, as there were eight separate attempts to kill her during her reign.
Unbalanced Edward Oxford
On the evening of June 10, 1840, Edward Oxford, 18, waited on Constitution Hill in London for a carriage containing Queen Victoria and Prince Albert to pass. A document held in the Berkshire Record Office (BRO) describes what happened: “When they drew level with him, he fired two shots in succession from separate pistols at the Queen.”
No one was hit; unlike in the 2009 movie Young Victoria in which Prince Albert was shown stopping a bullet. In fact it was never established that Oxford’s weapons had bullets in them, the gunman maintained they were only loaded with gunpowder. Oxford’s motive was that he wanted the notoriety that would follow his actions.
At his trial for high treason, Oxford’s family testified he had always been of unsound mind, and the court found him not guilty by reason of insanity.
BRO says “He received the sentence of all such lunatics – to be detained until Her Majesty’s pleasure be known.” The Queen’s pleasure lasted for 25 years at which time Oxford was deported to Australia where he died in 1900.
Two Attempts on Queen Victoria’s Life in 1842
On May 29, 1842 one John Francis took a shot at the young queen in St. James’s Park. In a Biography of Queen Victoria at incredible-people.com it’s suggested his motive was the same as Oxford’s – fame. Francis missed, was convicted of high treason, which would ordinarily carry a sentence of death, but he was bundled off to a penal colony for the rest of his life.
Just over a month later John William Bean fired a pistol at Victoria. The July 3 attempt was designed to fail because Bean had only loaded his weapon with paper and tobacco. He got a remarkably lenient sentence of 18 months imprisonment.
In 1849, an Irishman named William Hamilton fired a pistol loaded only with powder at the royal carriage. He got seven years in a penal colony for his trouble.
Attempt on Queen’s Life Draws Blood
In late June 1850, Victoria was again riding in her carriage when an ex-army officer named Robert Pate tried a new tactic.
Pate came up to the carriage and whacked the queen on the head with a walking cane. The New York Times of January 15, 1899 reported that the attack inflicted “a wound upon her Majesty the scar of which she still carries.”
Pate was another one judged to be barking mad and he was sent off to a penal colony now filling up with bungling assassins.
Disgruntled Irish Threaten Queen Victoria
The would-be killers lay low for a couple decades, until February 1872. The queen was riding out of Buckingham Palace in a carriage when, as Christopher Hibbert writes (“ How Queen Victoria Dodged Seven Bullets...and a Walking Stick,” Mail on Sunday, September 17, 2000), “17-year-old youth, Arthur O’Connor, waved a pistol at her, demanding the release of Fenian prisoners - revolutionaries fighting for an independent Ireland.”
O’Connor did not pull the trigger and Victoria’s faithful servant John Brown tackled the young man; this was pretty gutsy because Brown could not have known the gun was not, in fact, loaded. O’Connor was sentenced to transportation and a flogging, but the queen spared him from the beating.
Final Attempt on Victoria’s Life
Scotsman Roderick McLean was the last hopeful murderer in Queen Victoria’s life. On March 2, 1882, she was leaving Windsor railway station where McLean was lying in wait.
However, he was spotted by some boys from nearby Eton College who set about him with their umbrellas so his shot missed.
Glen Levy at Time Magazine (August 14, 2009) records McLean’s fate: “He was tried for high treason, and the jury found him ‘not guilty, but insane,’ which sentenced him to spending the rest of his life at Broadmoor Asylum in Berkshire, England.”
Rupert Taylor - Rupert Taylor is the editor of a magazine that provides background to current events.
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