The 19th century was a period where assassinations of world leaders came very much in focus inspired most probably by the French Revolution when King Louis XVI and Queen Marie-Antoinette were executed. It was going to be the rise of political protest. In 1820, the Duc de Berry was fatally stabbed and attempt was made on the life of Louis-Philippe. He was to be blown with a machine gun. In Russia, Tsar Alexander  II was hounded. He nonetheless survived seven assassination attempts before being killed by a bomb in 1881. The Empress of Austria, Elizabeth, was murdered in 1898 by an anarchist “for doing nothing to improve the social position” of the people while in the US, three American Presidents were shot dead in the course of the century.

 In England, Prime Minister Spencer Perceval became the first and only British PM to be gunned down, in the House of Commons in May 1812, by one frustrated bankrupt businessman, John Bellingham. He felt there was a “want of redress of grievance”. Bellingham was hanged a few days later. The mood was clouded with fear as world leaders were increasingly targeted. The other Prime Minister, Robert Peel, had a narrow escape. The would-be assassin, Daniel Mc Naughton, shot the PM’s private secretary in the back thinking he was Peel. A case of mistaken identity it was but Mc Naughton was acquitted on ground of insanity. The “Mc Naughton Rule” as it came to be called was later used as a precedent for acquitting criminals in the British judiciary.

 Queen Victoria, who reigned through the major part of the century and still happens to be in history the longest-serving monarch was luckier than Perceval or for that matter Tsar Alexander who fell on the seventh attempt on his life. She survived eight attempts from 1840 to 1882 and died of illness in 1901. Victoria gave, according to Historian Paul Thomas Murphy, author of the book, “Shooting Victoria”, a fresh definition of the British monarchy that drew the British people closer to it and till today stands as a symbol of values cherished in British society.

As such, the pompous celebrations of royal weddings, Jubilees, the walkabouts and the openings, the appearances on the royal balcony, these are regarded as Victorian creations and while sympathy and affection grew with every assassination attempt, Queen Victoria forged “a sense of daily responsibility to the public” that made her the darling of her subjects. After the last attempt on her life in 1882, she wrote to her daughter Beatrice saying, “it is worth being shot at to see how much one is loved”.

Despite the threats to her life and the risk she was exposed to, Victoria declined to retreat behind the castle walls. She insisted on being seen by the people saying protection came from them. As a gesture of loyalty, they lined up the streets of London cheering as she rode past almost daily in her carriage. One of the direct consequences of her frequent risky appearances was the decision by the government to bring wide ranging reforms to the British police which was woefully in an amateurish state. The creation of such units as the famous Scotland Yard and plainclothes detectives as well as new legislations to deal with would-be assassins pleading insanity started from there.

While most assassins or ‘revolutionaries’ were men imbued with a higher level of intelligence and knew how to plan their coup, in contrast, the assailants of Queen Victoria were unkempt and ‘mad’ whose aims were not to overthrow the Queen but to seek some kind of fame. None of them had a grudge against the Queen; neither against any member of the royal family. But it was realised taking a pop at the Queen became a shortcut to celebrity.

The first attempt on the Queen’s life was made in June 1840 when Edward Oxford, a barman of a London pub, set the template for others to follow. He dreamt of a career as Admiral in the Royal Navy but frustrated that his “greatness was not recognised”, decided to make himself popular. He waited for the royal carriage to pass by, armed with two dueling pistols. His shots missed the carriage which at that moment was rushing down Constitutional Hill. It was said that if the shots had killed the Queen who was four months pregnant with her first child, the British monarchy would have been erased. But 18-year old Oxford got his fame when Madame Tussaud installed a wax work of Oxford in her museum with the caption at his feet reading, “The Lunatic Edward Oxford”. Sentenced to death for high treason, he was subsequently acquitted –“not guilty by reason” of insanity. He was banished to Australia.

The second attempt was made on 29 May, 1842 when one John Francis waited with a flintlock pistol as Victoria and Prince Albert were making a short trip from Buckingham Palace to the Chapel Royal at St James’ Palace. Francis standing in the crowd pointed his pistol at the Queen’s carriage but hesitated to fire. When Prince Albert’s roaming eyes caught him and the alarm went off, he fled.

To flush him out, a trap was laid the next day. He appeared again as the Queen and Prince Albert descended Constitutional Hill. Francis was spotted by a Police constable. He fired but to no purpose as he was quickly overpowered and taken into custody. With a charge of misdemeanor on his head, he got imprisonment and flogging as punishment and later shown the way to Australia.

 Even then, Victoria was not cowed down by threats of three attempts on her life already. Decisions where to go, when and which routes to take were her own, thus running counter to royal security measures which showed flaws and which compelled Prime Minister, Robert Peel, to consider plugging loopholes and introducing punitive laws. But deterrents such as public flogging for threatening offences other than high treason hardly proved a panacea. The series of attempts by “men of weak and morbid minds” seeking notoriety followed.

A little over a month after the failed attempt of Francis, an 18-year old hunchbacked dwarf, John William Bean, attempted on the Queen’s life on her way to church. Bean was in a state of depression, “tired to death with life”, and wanted to end it all but his gun pointed to Victoria refused to fire as he kept pressing the trigger. He was nabbed by someone in the crowd but managed to slip away from the grip of his captor. The police combed the London area, rounding up every hunchback and detaining them until they came across the one meeting the description of the assailant.

The next on the firing line was William Hamilton who saw imprisonment as a way to lead a more comfortable life – with a shelter and free food – than he was living as an unemployed bricklayer. He waited with his gun as the Queen went out in her carriage on the day of the official celebration of her birthday in 1849. His attempt was foiled but Hamilton, who pleaded guilty, got what he wanted – a seven years’ penal servitude – and was banished to Australia.

The only assailant who was able to harm the Queen was Robert Pate. He stood on Piccaddilly, pushed himself to the front of the crowd, waiting for the royal carriage to emerge. Within easy reach of the Queen, he assaulted Victoria with a cane, injuring her forehead and blackening her eyes. Pate was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment.

Arthur O’Connor’s attack on the Queen gave some sort of political hue but the extremist fringe of Fenianism disowned him and denied any involvement. He himself wrote up an edict and thought of getting the Queen to sign it at gunpoint, in which she was to order Irish prisoners in British penitentiaries to be freed. He waited outside St Paul cathedral with the edict and a poem in one hand and a pistol in the other . He wrote in the edict that in case he was sentenced to death, he was to be treated as “a brave political foe, shot by firing squad” rather than hanged like a common criminal.

The Police spotted him by his suspicious posture and denied him access inside. Two days later, he jumped over the fence at Buckingham palace, came face to face with Queen, thrust his pistol on Victoria but was knocked to the ground by her “brave and faithful” attendant, John Brown, who got a gold medal for his act of bravery. O’Connor was imprisoned and flogged and later sent to Australia.

The last one to attack Victoria was Roderick Maclean, a man who was said to be having a paranoid hatred of humanity and obsessed with the number four and colour blue. In March 1882, he confronted the Queen as she got off from the royal train at Windsor to take her carriage to ride to the nearby castle. Maclean fired a shot without attaining the Queen. He was knocked down by two Eton schoolboys and beaten to the ground with their umbrellas.

 At the trial that followed, it became clear Maclean was insane and a verdict of acquittal was going to be accepted by the Government. This verdict was not to be accepted by the Queen who had had enough of these. She was adamant that a punishment be given to him. Upon her instructions, the Prime Minister, William Gladstone, whom she described as a “half-crazy old man”, amended the law. From a verdict of insanity and acquittal, the verdict was changed to “Guilty, but insane”. Maclean spent the rest of his life confined at Broadmoor asylum “at the queen’s pleasure”.

Victoria survived and so did the monarchy. The Victorian era, as Mr Murphy puts it,heralded a rebirth of the monarchy. The communion with the people was established and changed the mood in England.