Shooting Victoria (12 page)

Before returning to the prison on Saturday, Hannah and Edward Marklew retained a solicitor for Edward. William Corne Humphreys agreed to take on the case, and accompanied the family to Newgate to consult with him.

Oxford was cheerful when he entered Newgate on Thursday evening. He might be shut away in London's most notorious lockup, but he was still an object of public fascination, and like his celebrated predecessor, Jack Sheppard, if he could not see the world, the world could see him, and they came: the undersecretaries at the Home Office, Maule and Phillipps, visited him there, and a number of London aldermen, some of whom were magistrates at the Central Criminal Court, spent a great deal of time with him—at least as much out of sheer curiosity as in any official capacity. With these aldermen—James Harmer, Sir Peter Laurie, and Sir George Carroll among them—Oxford showed signs of his former giddy volubility, proudly recounting the story of his attempt—an account that was changing: when Alderman Laurie asked him whether he had balls in his pistols, Oxford denied it outright, and laughed derisively. Oxford's openness about his actions, as well as his complete unconcern for their consequences, led the aldermen to conclude him insane.

When his illustrious visitors departed, however, Oxford was left alone with guards who were strictly ordered to discuss nothing with
him beyond his immediate needs, and he began to show signs of depression and anxiety; reverting to fits of crying, and developing the odd habit of whistling to mask his distress. To Governor Cope and the prison chaplain, James Carver, he revealed his depression, acknowledging he cared little that he had thrown his own life away, but that he was terrified that he had “sacrificed” his mother's life as well.

Oxford had announced to the aldermen that he had decided to act as his own counsel during the trial, a fact that they had reported to Governor Cope, so that Cope issued an order prohibiting any interview with a lawyer. When William Corne Humphreys accompanied the Oxfords to Newgate, then, on Saturday 13 June, he never saw Edward. Humphreys was livid, concluding that the aldermen—Alderman Harmer, in particular—had encouraged Oxford to refuse legal assistance. Because of this “extraordinary interference,” he refused to have anything further to do with Oxford's case. With Governor Cope as a witness, but otherwise alone, Hannah had a “heart-rending” conversation with her son, during which he made a last-gasp attempt to promote his conspiracy theory: “there are others in it,” he told her.

That was the last time Oxford endeavored to implicate others, and the last time his mother gave any credence to the notion: neither mentioned the idea again. His sister Susannah, who had more closely than anyone else watched Oxford's movements over the past month, was certain that there was no Young England, and apparently was able to convince her mother. The police on the other hand continued to take the possibility of a conspiracy seriously, and busily collected writing samples from the residents of West Place. By the time of Oxford's trial, however, the police too had given up their theory of a conspiracy, and could offer no evidence of one.

Indeed, Oxford's defense at trial largely took shape in the days after the shooting, and Oxford's mother contributed greatly not simply to the formulation of that defense but to its promulgation. She spoke to anyone who would listen about the family madness,
and the newspapers eagerly reiterated her stories to a public hungry to know everything about the boy. Her words helped shift public opinion about Oxford from sinister desperado to pitiful victim of hereditary mental illness. Speaking two days after the shooting to the
Morning Chronicle
, she promoted just this image:

The unhappy parent of Oxford states that her husband died about twelve years since, and that during his lifetime he evinced great irritability which left little doubt of the occasional unsoundness of his mind. Upon one occasion, in a fit of excitement, he cut the bedclothes up into shreds, and on another he rode into the sitting-room on horseback. She says that at times she is afflicted with nervous delusions, and she describes her son as an inoffensive and affectionate child, and declares her belief that he committed the act in a boyish frolic, and that there were no balls in the pistols at the time. The pistols, [s]he says, he brought home about a month ago, and one morning he held one of them (empty) to her head, and threatened her in a joke, which exceedingly alarmed her.

And at Newgate the next day, Hannah spoke with the aldermen who surrounded her son, telling them of her deceased husband's insanity and abuse: offering to show Sir Peter Laurie the scar where Edward Senior had fractured her skull; Laurie declined to look, concluding that Hannah was “decidedly mad”; he had no doubt that her son was mad as well.

To create a defense for her son, then, Hannah had not only to engage a solicitor, but a medical specialist to organize a case for the boy's insanity. She and her brother found a solicitor in the East End. Jabez Pelham, who had a practice off of Ratcliffe Highway, was at first hesitant to take on the case, having heard that Humphreys was already engaged, but after consulting with that solicitor, agreed to
do so. Edward Marklew and a number of his acquaintances agreed to pay his fees.
*
Upon being engaged on Tuesday the 16th, Pelham attempted to interview Oxford at Newgate, but as Oxford still refused counsel, Governor Cope prevented any meeting. Overnight, however, Oxford changed his mind, and Pelham was able to see him the next morning. Oxford proposed to Pelham that they defend his action as a foolish lark. Pelham, on the other hand, quickly resolved that the defense would prove a case “if not of positive insanity, at least of monomania, which will entitle him to the merciful consideration of the Court and jury.”

For a medical specialist, Hannah consulted the family doctor who deemed her “eccentric, if not insane.” She could not have made a better choice. James Fernandez Clarke had treated her for years, knew Edward, and had for some time been concerned about his mental state; indeed, the instant he had learned that Oxford had been arrested, he exclaimed “the boy is mad. I am not surprised.” Clarke was, moreover, an editor of the
Lancet
, the leading medical magazine of the day, and thus was personally acquainted with England's greatest medical minds. He agreed to assist with the case, and met with Pelham to work out the specifics. Pelham had, in the meantime, engaged an attorney to argue Oxford's defense at trial: J. Sydney Taylor, a highly reputable barrister and well-known journalist, adamant in his opposition to the death penalty and willing to pursue any legal remedy to keep Oxford from the noose. Consulting with Taylor, Clarke suggested three eminent doctors besides himself who might be willing to testify to Oxford's insanity.

In 1840, psychological science was still largely anatomical science, and the psychologist, or in the terminology of the day the mad-doctor, was at best a specialized physician. General physicians were usually considered competent, and often called upon,
to treat the mental illnesses of their patients. Clarke, himself no mad-doctor, certainly considered himself well qualified to make an expert diagnosis of Oxford's psychological state. And of the three doctors he recommended to Oxford's defense, two—Drs. Hodgkin and Chowne, of Charing Cross Hospital—were pathologists and anatomists, specialists in physical disorder. Only one of those he recommended was truly a specialist in mental illness. This was Dr. John Conolly, at the time the most popular psychologist in Britain. Conolly had become superintendent of Hanwell Asylum in Middlesex the year before, and had quickly enforced a program of treatment that prohibited any restraint of patients: a revolutionary treatment, but one that, within a few years, would become the norm. Conolly's fame rested upon this system, and upon the side career he was beginning to adopt as an expert psychological witness. Critics claimed that he was able to testify to madness in any situation. Conolly's reputation made him, to Clarke, the “most important” of the witnesses. All agreed to testify, and Hannah added two more to the list: John Birt Davis and William Henry Partridge, Birmingham doctors who could testify as to the insanity of Oxford's father and grandfather.

Pelham decided to supplement this medical testimony with a barrage of witnesses—as many as 110 people, from Birmingham and elsewhere—who had witnessed three generations of Oxford family madness. And he commissioned Hannah to subpoena many of them. A week after she had arrived in London, then, Hannah Oxford took the four o'clock train to Birmingham on this mission. And on the same day—just a day after he first met with his solicitor—Oxford demonstrated that he, too, was willing to support an insanity plea. He sent Pelham a letter:

Newgate, June 18, 1840.

My dear Sir,—Have the goodness to write to Lord Normanby and ask him to let me have some books to read—such as “Jack the Giant Killer,” “Jack and the
Beanstalk,” “Jack and his Eleven Wives,” “My little Tom Thumb,” “The Arabian Nights' entertainments,” and all such books from such celebrated authors. And ask him, as a prisoner of war, whether I may not be allowed on a parole of
honour
, and on what grounds, ask him, dar (sic) he detain one of her Majesty's subjects.

I remain respectfully,

Edward Oxford

To Mr. Pelham, solicitor, Gravel-lane, London.

Oxford was far more literate, and much more cognizant of British legal process, than he made himself out to be here. He was, to put it in Victorian terms, shamming, trying too hard to appear insane: he almost certainly realized that this letter would find its way into the newspapers—as it did—and reinforce the public perception that he was an idiot. Benjamin Disraeli, reading this letter in the newspapers, saw not idiocy but canniness in Oxford's words, writing to his wife that the letter suggests “that P[rince] Albt is an ogre and the Q[uee]n an ogress”—and by implication, that Oxford is Jack, the humble but heroic fairy-tale slayer of giants. This may have not been what Oxford intended, but it is an interpretation that surely would have pleased him immensely.

Oxford likely had another motive in writing this letter: he almost certainly felt he was fading from the spotlight he so craved. Victoria's intensified love affair with her public continued: two days before, she and Albert had attended the races at Ascot to immense crowds (many who had come to see her more than the races) and “deafening cheers from every part of the course.” The hissing she had experienced there a year before, in the midst of the Flora Hastings scandal, was forgotten. But Oxford was shut away, and he had been, since his arrest, sharing prison space and newspaper columns with other criminal celebrities. On this particular day, one of his criminal colleagues was stealing public attention. As Disraeli put
it, “all the world is talking about Courvoisier, and very little of the quasi Regicide.” This day, 18 June, was the first day of Courvoisier's trial for murder.

For his first couple of days in Newgate, Oxford inhabited an ordinary cell among the general population. (Within a couple of days, however, because the elevated charge of High Treason demanded a more careful monitoring, Oxford was moved into a condemned cell, a larger cell created a few years before by knocking down the wall dividing two smaller cells. These cells were furnished with a bench and table so that jailers could comfortably observe, and if necessary prevent the suicide of, condemned prisoners.) From the start, then, Oxford was in contact with François Benjamin Courvoisier. Whether he mingled at first with Newgate's other notorious inmate, Richard Gould, is another question. Gould, with another inmate who had achieved some amount of public attention at the time—Samuel Bailey, a seaman who had attempted to murder his captain with an axe—had, two weeks before, attempted to break out of the prison. The two removed the bars of a window to Gould's cell and descended an improvised rope into a courtyard. At that point, they realized they had no way of ascending to the roof and escaping and, after a frustrated night in the open, they clambered back into their cells. Evidence of their attempt was discovered, and they were locked up more securely. If Gould was at first removed from Oxford's presence, though, joint appearances at the Central Criminal Court would soon bring them together.
*

On the first day of his trial, Courvoisier had genuine and warranted hopes of acquittal. The evidence against him was circumstantial and incomplete: prosecutors, for one thing, were unable to
account for all of the goods stolen from Sir William Russell, despite keeping Courvoisier under close watch from the morning the body was discovered. His lead attorney, Charles Phillips, intended to suggest to the jury that Russell's other servants could just as easily have committed the murder, and intended to suggest as well—with strong evidence—that the police had botched the case, tampering and planting evidence. Phillips's aggressive cross-examination on the first day of trial of Courvoisier's fellow servant Sarah Manser indicated this intention.

On the second day of the trial, however, Phillips's strategy collapsed. The evening before, a witness, Charlotte Piolaine, came forward with new evidence. Piolaine was the wife of the proprietor of a rundown French hotel in Leicester Square at which Courvoisier had worked four years previously. He had come to her some time before the murder with a package that he asked her to hold for a few days. When she read in a French-language newspaper of the murder and of police interest in the missing loot, she gathered a few witnesses, engaged a solicitor, and opened the package. It contained, among other items, silverware stamped with the Bedford crest. Piolaine was brought to Newgate, and was able to pick out Courvoisier from a number of prisoners in the yard as the one who had given her the package. The prosecution thus had compelling proof that Courvoisier had stolen from Lord William—though not proof that he had killed the man.

Courvoisier, aware of this new evidence, called his two attorneys to the dock the next morning. As Phillips remembers it, the following stunning exchange took place: