Shooting Victoria (18 page)

seven

B
EDLAM

O
xford remained in custody at Newgate for a week, until an order arrived from the Home Office for his transfer to Bethlem. Now that the threat of death was removed, he was visibly more cheerful. Keeping watch over him now was a single jailer, who had been released from the order to limit his conversation; both he and Oxford lost their reserve, and talked. Oxford's mother, his sister, and his uncles Edward and Charles visited him, and he now spoke at length about his attempt, regaling his hearers with the details of the shooting as if it were a great adventure story, a bravo's exploit.

On 18 July, Governor Cope received the order from the Home Office for an immediate transfer. He personally went to Oxford's cell and told him to get ready; the two would go to Bethlem together. Oxford “did not betray the slightest emotion” upon hearing that the time had come, apparently accepting the possibility of a lifetime of confinement at the asylum, even if he hadn't accepted the possibility of his own insanity.

Cope and Oxford climbed into a hackney-coach for the trip south of the Thames. The coach traveled toward Ludgate Hill, away from the looming walls of Newgate, and then down to the Thames on Bridge Street, and over Blackfriars Bridge, leaving behind the London of the Queen—of Whitehall and St. James, Buckingham Palace and the expansive parks—as Oxford returned to the neighborhoods of his childhood: gritty Southwark and Lambeth. He would never again cross the river. As he passed down bustling Blackfriars Road, if he wasn't too absorbed in friendly chatter with Governor Cope, he might have noticed in passing Hayes's general goods store, where he had bought his “Brummagem” pistols. (The pistols were now the property of the state. Albert would show them to the Queen, and for decades it was thought that one of them ended up in Scotland Yard's Crime Museum.
*
) The coach continued to St. George's Fields, past the ornate charitable institutions there, and down Lambeth Road. If Oxford had any sense of nostalgia about the few last weeks he spent with his family, he very likely craned his neck there, looking back as the coach passed St. George's Road; he could just catch a glimpse of West Square. The carriage then pulled up before Bethlem.

Governor and prisoner ascended the stairs and passed the tall Ionic columns of the portico, topped by a small cupola. (The distinctive towering dome of the hospital, still visible today in the truncated building's present incarnation as the Imperial War Museum, was added four years after this.) Inside, Cope relinquished authority over Oxford to those at the hospital. No record was made of his admittance, but certainly he was examined as to the nature of his illness, and then likely bathed. Though during his trial the medical witnesses had diagnosed Oxford with everything from congenital imbecility to “moral insanity” and “lesion of the will,” the doctor at Bethlem
very likely concluded none of these things, but rather concluded he was about to send a sane man into indefinite confinement in the male criminal lunatics' wing. A medical record from 1864 when Oxford was transferred from Bethlem to Broadmoor notes that the medical staff “had always considered him sane.”

Oxford was taken into the wards, escorted down a long corridor to the right—the male patients' wing—and further escorted down another corridor, a darker one, in which signs of confinement—cells and heavily barred windows—were much more evident: he was now in the ward for male criminal lunatics. He was shown his cell. He would be locked in there at eight o'clock every night, until eight the next morning. He would spend the coming years largely cut off from the outside world. Visitation with relatives was allowed once a month, and his mother could only see him behind bars, several yards away from her, so far away she could hardly hear him. And for the first years of his confinement, he was prohibited from reading newspapers. Oxford's social world, then, was almost entirely restricted to his fellow lunatics, and during the day, he could interact with them as much as he liked. For a time, he chose not to, at all: Sir Peter Laurie, an alderman as well as a governor of Bethlem, informed his mother that he had a “repugnance to mingle” with them and refused to leave his room. Later accounts of his commitment, however, note his gregariousness. One other inmate was notorious for his aloofness, one who had no friends, and “could not be prevailed upon for some years to walk about with or join the other patients”: an old man with a very discernible wound to the head. James Hadfield, whose own shooting resulted in the Act of Parliament that led to Oxford's own indefinite detainment at Bethlem, was now sixty-eight or sixty-nine years old. He had, according to a witness seventeen years before, long since stopped showing any symptoms of insanity. He was sick with tuberculosis, and he was desperately tired of his confinement for the last forty years at the pleasure of three kings and a queen: “the loss of liberty,” he claimed, “was worse than death.”

For six months, the two would inhabit the criminal lunatics ward together. It is not known if Oxford's natural glibness returned to him in time, and triumphed over Hadfield's world-weariness. But it is tempting to think that the two looked into each other's eyes, and spoke, driven by professional curiosity, perhaps—or because they were the only living members of that most exclusive group: would-be British regicides: Oxford with the fresher memory, and yet relating it in a way that made him out to be the hero, and Had-field, more bewildered, haltingly remembering that violent night in the Drury Lane Theatre, forty years before.

Hadfield died on 23 January 1841. Oxford lived on, a resident of the criminal lunatics' wing for over two decades, until that wing closed down upon the opening of Broadmoor Asylum, an entire hospital devoted to the confinement and care of the criminally insane. Oxford happened to be one of the very last male patients to make the trip, by train, from London to Crowthorne (and Broadmoor). Soon after, Bethlem's criminal buildings were demolished. Between them, then, Hadfield and Oxford witnessed the entire history of Bethlem's criminal lunatics' wing.

Confined to Bethlem, Oxford was soon largely forgotten as a living being, remaining forever the pitiful potboy, recalled to public consciousness every time one of Oxford's six successors made his attempt at the Queen. Nevertheless, the
tableau vivant
he had burned into the British consciousness, of a young man shooting point-blank at the young, pregnant Queen and her even younger husband—the incident Oxford had instigated with his startling action, and the royal couple had completed with their sublime reaction—had long-lasting consequences for the British monarchy. In that instant, the Queen was, politically, born again, the embarrassing and partisan fits and starts of her early reign suddenly forgotten. Mrs. Melbourne, the royal Whig, was a creature of the past. Now Victoria was Queen of all, and Albert's wife. Albert became, with the shooting, more than the adventurer
with the foreign accent, but a hero worthy of his cousin's hand. By seeking their safety among their people, and not within the safety of Buckingham Palace, the royal couple had demonstrated to the nation the Queen's fitness to rule, and the Prince's fitness to assist. The House of Saxe-Coburg Gotha gained, after Oxford's shooting, a permanent ascendancy over the House of Hanover. That bugbear King Ernest, and Victoria's other uncles Suffolk and Cambridge, were suddenly just a part of the extended royal family, peripheral in the public eye to the Queen, her Consort, and their children to come. Oxford had unwittingly ushered in the Victorian age.

A week before Oxford's trial, Melbourne approached the Queen with the delicate issue that had been on the minds of everyone since the shooting: it was quite possible that the Queen could die, leaving an infant child as her heir. A Regency Bill was in order, such as the one created ten years before, when Victoria became heir apparent, and which held her mother, the Duchess of Kent, sole regent in the event of her King William's death. In the present situation, the only question was whether Albert would be sole regent if Victoria died, or whether he would serve in a Council of Regency with others—Victoria's royal uncles. Baron Stockmar was convinced that Albert as sole Regent would be by far the superior arrangement. Seeking to ensure that a Regency bill to that effect would pass with overwhelming bipartisan support, he set out to negotiate with Tory leaders. He feared that Albert would face great obstacles: “I don't hide from myself that there will be all manner of objections, such as his youth, his want of acquaintance with the country and its institutions, &c., and that the Dukes of Cumberland, Cambridge, and Sussex, not wishing to be passed over, will endeavour to put a spoke in the wheel, the former by means of the ultra-Tories, the latter by means of the ultra-Liberals.”

Stockmar needn't have worried. He was able to ensure that the Tory opposition would side with Melbourne's government in overwhelmingly supporting the Bill, but Albert had already laid the groundwork, making it clear from before the marriage
that he preferred that the monarch (and her Consort) be above party, and culture positive relationships with both sides. He had done his best since the marriage to do exactly that. Stockmar and Melbourne had no problems convincing both Peel and Wellington that Albert should be sole Regent; both claimed that this was their position exactly. In the end, there was only a single dissenter in all of Parliament to the Bill—Victoria's Uncle Augustus, the Duke of Sussex. Sussex stood before the House of Lords on 21 July, proclaiming himself to be personally disinterested in the Bill, but to have questions about it: it did not, for one thing, make provision for the possible incapacity of the Regent. Moreover, it did not impose any restriction upon the possible alienation of the regent from the best interests of Britain: Albert could marry again, and might marry a foreigner! Indeed, Albert was a foreigner himself, and not as bound to the nation's interests as a native would be. Sussex suggested Parliament make provision for a successor-regent in the contingency of Albert's incapacity or inadequacy. He was not, he proclaimed, attempting to elevate himself in any way: the country was well aware of his complete lack of self-interest or ambition. But he was very careful to point out to the Peers that he was the closest heir to the throne actually residing in England.

His self-interest and ambition were palpable to all. Baron Cottenham, the Lord Chancellor, in responding to his speech, reassured him that he had every right to be concerned about the Regency, as a member of the royal family; then, he quickly demolished his concerns. Provision for a successor to Albert as Regent could easily be made once Albert became Regent. And the fear of Albert's marrying a foreigner who could unduly influence the monarchy was simply not justified, as it had been with the Duchess of Kent (which was why in the 1830 Regency Bill, she had been forbidden from marrying a foreign prince without the consent of Parliament): Albert would be a
male
regent and was thus—an irony, given his current situation—above the undue influence of a spouse. The bill quickly sailed through both houses without further objection and
became law before Oxford was three weeks in Bethlem. Lord Melbourne attributed the great success of the bill to Albert alone, and certainly Albert's endearing himself to the Tories had everything to do with the Bill's easy passage. “Three months ago,” Melbourne told Victoria, “they would not have done it for him. It is entirely his own character.”

Albert was jubilant, seeing the bill as “an affair of the greatest importance to me” and writing to his brother Ernest “I am to be Regent—
alone
—Regent, without a Council.” As designated Regent, Albert had not gained a whit of actual power: all was Victoria's, until her death. But symbolically, everything had changed. As King Leopold wrote to Albert's private secretary, George Anson, the bill “had helped the Prince immensely, the country thereby demonstrating the great confidence they placed in the uprightness of his character.” While in the public eye he ranked second only to Victoria, he still faced a battle with Victoria's uncles and aunts for precedence within the Kingdom. And he still faced a long wrangle with Baroness Lehzen and her cabal for political and domestic influence with his wife. But now, time was entirely on his side.

Charles Dickens took an obvious interest in the Oxford case. He was in 1840 mulling over what became his 1841 novel
Barnaby Rudge
, a novel centered upon three troubled young men, at least one of which—the vainglorious apprentice Sim Tappertit—bears more than a slight resemblance to Oxford. Within two days of Oxford's attempt, Dickens realized that the mischief that the boy had caused would not end with his sentencing. He wrote to his friend John Forster “It's a great pity they couldn't suffocate that boy, master Oxford, and say no more about it. To have put him quietly between two featherbeds would have stopped his heroic speeches, and dulled the sound of his glory very much. As it is, she will have to run the gauntlet of many a fool and madman, some of whom may perchance be better shots and use other than Brummagem firearms.”

The fools and madmen would not be long in coming.