After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Who tried to kill Queen Victoria?

Episode Date: June 1, 2026

Queen Victorian was an icon of Britain at the zenith of its power... but that didn't mean she was invulnerable to attack. In today’s episode, we’ll be exploring some of the many assassination attempts on Victoria's life. We’ll be discussing the massive changes Britain was experiencing during this time and how this might have motivated these attackers… Some of them are pretty wild.Our guest today is Professor Kate Williams, historian and author whose new book ‘Regina: A New History of Women and Power’ is out in June! She’s also the cohost of the podcast ‘Queens, Kings and Dastardly Things’Edited by Tim Arstall. Produced by Tomos Delargy. Senior Producer is Freddy Chick.For tickets to see Anthony and Maddy talking about her new book, Hoax, click here: https://www.conwayhall.org.uk/whats-on/event/hoax/Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

An aging Queen Victoria steps down from her carriage. A man steps forward, and then he raises a revolver. The shot fires out, and the crowd panics. But for Victoria, it's a moment that she's painfully familiar with at this stage. This is the last of eight assassination attempts that she'd suffer in her long reign. Time and again, men, and they were all men, tried to kill her. Why did Queen Victoria become such? a target. What motivated her assassins? And what do these attacks reveal about Victorian society?

From the drastically changing world of Victorian Britain, welcome to After Dark. Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Anthony. Of course, Maddie is away discovering a cure for boredom. She will be back once she has discovered that cure. But until then, I've been joined by a bevy of brilliant historians over the last few months. And of course, no stranger to After Dark. This is her second time round, we have Professor Kate Williams back. Hello, hello. We've been talking about your new book, Regina. And in our last episode, we talked about Budica and all the great machinations she had

against the Roman incursions in Britain. We're skipping forward quite a lot now into the 19th century. And we're going to talk about the one and only Queen Victoria. My first question on this on my briefing notes for you, Kate, is it's surprised that maybe anybody might even need to know who this is. But for people who might not know, they may exist in the world, who is Queen Victoria? Queen Victoria, the longest-reigning monarch after Elizabeth II. Elizabeth II pipped her at the post. She ruled throughout the 19th century and she was never really expected to become queen.

She was George VIII, seven sons, six daughters. She was a daughter of one of the younger sons, not really in pole position to be queen, but the elder brothers died. they didn't have children. And so she came to the throne. And her name, she said, I'm the first person ever to be called Victoria. Now, that's not true. We've seen some in the parish records. But I think we can say she was the first sort of elite,

certainly the first royal person to be called Victoria. And to the contemporaries, it was this totally crazy name. It was her mother's name, French, with an A on the end. So she was called after the enemy, you know, born just a few years after the end of Battle of Waterloo. So she's called after the enemy. a strange, made-up French name, and yet she becomes the queen who crafts an era, the Victorian era, one of wild industrialisation, the growth of the factory, the growth of the railway, and also the huge extent of the empire, the oppressive British empire, this period of great expansion

in the country, this period of horrific empire expansion, and the suffering of those at the bottom of the Victorian system, whether it's in the empire or the very poor in the Victorian city. I mean, they are the ones who make all the sacrifices for what is a huge growth in the middle classes. And Victoria, she's the emblem of that middle class power. She really symbolises, I think she's a mistress of spin, whether it's her with her Christmas tree setting off the fashion for Christmas across the world pretty much on the Christmas tree.

And once Victoria's got a Christmas tree, everyone's got to have a Christmas tree, or Victoria, in her white wedding, which transforms weddings for good or ill for the rest of time. So Victoria is this vision of this middle-class queen because it is a world of the very powerful middle classes. It's so interesting, and this is why the book is so amazing, in that you forget that Victoria is not a royal name at this time. It's such a small detail. but actually it's such a key detail.

And then when you expand that out to include her place in empire, we're going to be talking today about some of the assassination attempts on her life throughout her reign. And you talked about that impact of empire and how she oversaw this, this as empress in some positions. But actually, it sometimes came back on her too. And that movement of empire had an impact on her, on her person in a very physical and violent way sometimes. We're going to get into all of those things. Just before we do, I want to talk again, we spoke about this in the last episode a little bit about how Victoria in real terms, what we talked about it with Budica before, but now I want to talk about how Victoria and power sit in your mind. We have a queen.

We talk about, you know, again, like you've mentioned, the Christmas trees, her position as a wife, you know, her position as a mother as a grandmother later. And so these are all potentially more acceptable, I use that word, very loosely, feminine qualities that we have assigned to her and that she assigned to herself, as you say, very much so during her reign. But let's talk about the more masculine side of, or the perceived masculine side of power now. And the type of power that she actually did wield during this time, what was her real power? You know, we're beyond a time now of absolute monarchy. this is not the time of divine right. Nonetheless, she's the head of an empire. So how does that parisit with this unassuming woman?

Victoria is, as you said, this image of domestic femininity. That's what she's made into, even though that wasn't the case at home with Prince Albert, her husband, or certainly with her nine children, or with her ministers, who she was always berating and asking for questions. But she's given this image of sentimental domesticity and plenty of other queens are told they don't behave, like Victoria, Rana vla, Madagascar is told, you'd be a bit more like Queen Victoria. She's busy resisting empire. She says, I don't think so.

And Victoria is the embodiment of, I mean, this is the problem with her, that they can't get their head around Victoria. On one hand, they're delighted to have this image of purity and like her horrendous Hanoverian uncles and their dodgy reputation. So she's pure, but at the same time, she's female. And there's a fascinating cartoon that I write about it in the book when she's coming to the throne and there are these two women talking. And one says, oh, now we've got a queen on the throne. We can have a parliament of women and we can do what we want.

Go where we want. Do whatever we want because the queen will set us free essentially. Now, that's the fear, isn't it? Society is terrified of having a female monarch because she might give too much power to women. and there's no parliament of women and Victoria herself says she doesn't agree with votes for women. I think she probably didn't agree

by that point in her life, but she certainly couldn't say if she did. So she has to walk the line between acceptable femininity, but she is the image of power. She's the constitutional monarch, but it's more than the constitutional monarch. She does have some power over the laws.

Now, it's a misnomer, isn't it, Anthony, that lesbianism is not on the statute book because Victoria was, oh, I can't believe women do that. I've never heard of that. Heavens above, no, ladies would not. That it really was more about the ministers who didn't want it discussed in Parliament because they didn't want to. But wives getting any ideas.

But Victoria can have an influence over the laws, which will come up for one of our cases. So she does have power, he does have masculine power. And where she has, I think, a lot of significant power is in terms of her dealings with Prince Albert. He wants it to be a joint monarchy like William and Mary. That's what he wants. And she very much makes it clear to him,

you forget my love, that I am the sovereign. Now, the country doesn't want a German man being joint monarch. They've had a lot of that. They've had a lot of that. They don't want that. But still, this dealing with Albert, who is really, it's a battle for power in the marriage. And every time she gets pregnant, Albert tries to sort of seize more power because he thinks,

you know, she'll be too ill and she's got to go on leave and I'm just going to take it. But she is, I think. She is a woman who encompasses all these contradictions about a period in which women both across the empire, a lot of the last queens are female, women have power, but yet it's deprived of them. And I do think it's significant that the Married Women's Property Act comes in during Victoria's reign by which married women keep their property. Because it's always been a problem about queens and a husband. Because if you marry, your husband owns everything right down to your shoes and your socks, how can you be a queen and keep your country? And that's always been the perennial problem, Mary the First, Elizabeth I, and now finally with Victoria,

we have the Married Women's Property Act. So when Elizabeth II comes to the throne, no one says, oh, well, Prince Philip must own everything now. Although there's a world in which Prince Philip might have been quite keen to own everything at certain points. But, you know, that's a discussion for another day. We have arrived in 1837. It is the beginning of an 18-year-old Victoria's reign. As you say, there is this strange thing that's happening because what's often referred to as the inconvenience of a female rule has taken place because Victoria is now on the throne.

No men left. Oh, my goodness. There's nobody that can fill this role. Nonetheless, we've come out of a lot of chaos with the four Georges. and that actually we could do with a little bit of settlement, a lot of infighting between the royal family over centuries at this point and different generations. There's an opportunity here.

So there's things milling around around this young woman as she takes to the throne. Not everybody is happy, however, for various different reasons. And the first person I want to introduce into this equation is a man named Edward Oxford. And I believe this is the first attempt. on her life. So talk us through Oxford's attempt. Victoria has seven men, eight assassination attempts on her life. She starts, this first one is in

1840 when she's 21 and pregnant with her first child. The last one is when she's in her early 60s. So they span much of her life, is this shooting Victoria. And, you know, she does say at one point, well, it is worth being shot at to see how much one is loved. Even that she uses as propaganda. Because her uncle says, what is this strange mania for Queen's shooting? She's fine. She's like, I can use it, it's fine.

I can use it. Now, Victoria and Albert are creatures of habit. They go out at the same time every day. That's good for us, isn't it? We're supposed to be creatures of habit, I understand from Instagram, although it's not really my world. So she and Albert go out every evening to take the air in constitutional Hill, Constitutional Hill, just next to Buckingham Palace.

So any time you ever watch a Buckingham Palace royal event, most of the journalists are standing on Constitutional Hill around there. And it's while she's trundling past in her open carriage, and there's a big spectators go, they love seeing the queen. She makes it very much. She's a queen to be seen. Her wedding, which was only a few months before, this is 1840, so it's married in February, this is now June.

You know, her wedding was a big public event. you all saw her riding in her beautiful gown, which we never had been the case of all weddings before. People are used to seeing Victoria, and this is part of her power, being accessible to the ordinary people in the carriage. And she's going along, and a young man, he's 18, called Edward Oxford, gets a gun and he holds it up and he shoots her. And he shoots her and he actually has two guns. And Victoria says she remembers it and she writes in her diary that then the carriage stopped I mean great, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The carriage stops. Great security. Yeah, great. It's hopefully not what, you know, the presidential campaign would do. So the carriage stops and she sees him and she sees him shoot twice and she ducks. And then she and Albert then command the carriage to drive on, carry on.

They are going to seem unafraid and on they go, which is her policy in all of it. But Edward Oxford is then apprehended by a man in the crowd. who were all scandalised because they love the Queen. He is apprehended and this man takes his two guns. And then the crowd thinks that it's the other man who done it. Oh, the guy who's tackled him. Albert, I believe his name was.

And Edward Oxford said, no, no, it's me, everyone. I did it. So I did it because he's determined to be known for it. And he's arrested and he's put on trial, but he's put on trial for treason. Yes. And this is hanged and quartered. This is a very medieval punishment that he's put on trial for.

And when he's put on trial, there are two main questions. Was he insane and was the gun loaded? Was it actually loaded with a bullet or was it just gunpowder? Therefore, he's just trying to scare the queen and not kill the queen. And Edward Oxford has really, I think, he is part of the underworld of the poor. in Victorian London. He's been working as a pot boy. That means the glass collector in various different pubs. He was fired from a pub, his last pub at the end of April, and then he goes, a few days later and goes to buy a gun. They're clearly, Anthony, seems to be a lot of guns

on the black markets. Yeah, they're around, right? He can just buy a gun quite easily. And it's such a fascinating contradiction. Victorian London, claiming it's so peaceful and it's peaceful and it's delicate and civilised and the crinolines and all the, all the rest of it, but actually, you can buy a gun. I want a gun. He says he buys a gun, and he, unlike we believe, all the rest of the assassins, does put some effort into practicing. So he goes to a gun range in Leicester Square, a shooting range in Leicester Square and practices. And then he goes out and shoots Victoria. But, you know, the police do a very careful scan around the area and they can't find a bullet. They can't find a bullet. So this is the question,

did he just mean to scare the queen? And there are a lot of people saying that he was insane. some of his former employers, the pub landlord, say he used to laugh manically at times. And then when they search his room, they find that he's been part of a big conspiracy called Young England. And there are minutes and they all have to bear arms. And everyone's terrified.

Is this a German conspiracy? Because Victoria dies. And of course the baby she's carrying, the throne goes to her. uncle, the Duke of Hanover, that no one wants him to be king. He'll later get whipped up into a very, very strange murder set up. Yes. Oh my God.

Set up in St. James's Palace. No one wants him around. And is it for him him? Is it, is it the left wing? Is it people fighting back? But in the end, it's found that Edward Oxf has totally made up, Young England. It's a totally invented conspiracy. and it is defined that the jury decide that he was insane, that he was mad.

And Victoria is very annoyed by this. She's very annoyed that he was defined as mad. And so he's sent off to Bedlam to the hospital there. And he's a model patient there. He knits and he learns languages. And a lot of the staff there don't actually think he's insane. Oh, really? Oh, isn't that fascinating?

I didn't know that last little. They're like, hold on. They are dubious that he's insane. And in the 1860s, he is then given the chance to go to Australia. They decide that they can free him, but they're not going to free him to let him trundle around London and go to the shooting range again. Or goodness knows what. So he's sent off to Australia. And one of his keepers, the guards, the wardens at the hospital, gives him money for the passage.

Because the government's not paying his passage. He has to find the money for himself. and he's poverty-stricken young man. So one of his warders gives him the money and various other monies are raised. He sets off to Australia and then does rather well. He ends up in Melbourne. He writes a book about Melbourne life

and he marries a lady who's a comfortably off lady and he keeps writing to this warden. He writes to the warden throughout his life and he writes to the warden saying, my wife doesn't know. Stop it. She doesn't know. So he had a whole.

life in Australia? As a, I think, a very respectable. Upstanding member of society. Upstanding member of society, writing quite a good book about different people's lives in Melbourne, happily married. Does he have children? And no one knows. No, we don't believe so.

We don't believe so. God, if you're related to Edward Oxford, please let us know. I don't think so. I don't believe so. But yes, life, I mean, we'll see a pattern, Anthony, that a lot of these assassins end up in Australia. Okay. Having a marvelous time.

We're not casting any aspersions on Australians. Two of them end up in Melbourne. So I know you've got a lot of Australian this is. And we all love Australia. And I will talk about this. But I think quite increasingly, when you see some copycats, part of the charm is that they think I'd like to go to Australia. Oh, okay. Let's bear that in mind.

I have an image here, which I'll put this on social media as well. And it says of this particular incident with Oxford, it says, God saved the queen, exclamation point. have what you were describing, Kate. We have them going through in their open top carriage, bear in mind. Victoria is dressed all in white. This is a black and white image, but she's dressed all in white. The pure queen. The pure queen. Ribbons are flowing in her hair. She's slightly aghast. Albert is between her and the bullet as it just so happens. There's a big plume of smoke coming out of Oxford. Oxford's very well dressed in this image. I have trouble believing he's probably wearing what he's wearing in this. And then, of course, we have guards all of

round on horseback as well. But it's very much Edward Oxford shooting at the Queen on being held, what does that say before? A strong light magically discovers the means which saved Old England's hope from the assassin's aim. So there you go. It's all very, very dramatic. What's the public reaction to this then? What do they think, do they say, oh, well, you know, it's the Queen, whatever, or are they like, we must band around Victoria? Oh, they're horrified. They're horrified. They're horrified, this poor, innocent queen. And they are really horrified. And I think particularly when people realise that she was pregnant at the time as well. I mean, people, I'm sure, suspect it that quite soon after marriage, she might be pregnant. But when they realize that

she was, that's added to it as well. And it really underlines the fragility of the monarchy. If she died, who will they have? They'll end up with her uncle who everyone hates. So there's this terrible fear of losing Victoria. And it does. create this popularity. She says it creates, I'm so gratified by all my, all the affection, and how much everyone is delighted by me. So it does give her a popularity boost. I wouldn't say she needs it at this point. Sure. Because she's married and she's new on the throne and everyone's thinking she's marvellous. But there have been some pretty bad news stories, the Lady Flora Hastings scandal. No time to go into that. But there's rumblings in the background, yes.

Yes, you know, there's a lot of anger against her, including a lady-in-waiting, you know, she wouldn't change her lady-in-waiting-waiting E-T-C. So, you know, Victoria here, I think, is given a huge popularity boost. But everyone thinks it's just an isolated incident. It's an isolated incident. And it does interest me that Victoria comes to the throne, this young woman who's portrayed as the image of femininity and domesticity and purity. and how come the guns? Okay, you hinted there, Kate, that it's just the beginning. We aren't going to be able to cover all seven people slash eight attempts in this episode,

but we are going to be back after this short break to see another assassination attempt upon the queen. Kate, it is the 29th of February 1872, and there is an Irish man at the centre of this particular case. So we're skipping forward a little bit now from the first one, and a man called Arthur O'Connor. Now, I will preface this by saying, again, linking to what she said at the Starcate about the image of Victoria symbolising power,

when Ireland gained independence from Britain in the 1920s, one of the first things to be targeted were statues of Victoria. They were exploded, they were literally destroyed. And I think that's, you know, she wasn't queen at that point, but it speaks to what you're talking about, about this symbol of power, of empire of, in the case of Ireland, being places where she shouldn't be

and she comes to embody in a very literal sense, this empirical power. So it's interesting to me that we have an Irish man here in 1872. We're post-great Irish famine now. Ireland has been on its knees at this point. I think it's in total three million of the population have either died or emigrated, the country is decimated,

and we find ourselves with Arthur O'Connor. Arthur O'Connor and he, there's been another earlier Irish assassin of Victoria. Closer to the famine, right? William Hamilton, who was a bricklayer, who was unemployed, he'd been an orphan, raised in the cork, orphan school, then came over to London and been unemployed,

I think, because he'd found there was a lot of prejudice against Irish builders, Irish workers, couldn't find work, and he also was a would-be assassin of Victoria. But Arthur O'Connor is, I think, much more of a political assassin than we've generally seen. Because we've seen Edward Oxford, who made it all up, and I think part of the suffering underclass, who's seen a couple of copycats. We saw a copycat who had two goes of Victoria.

One go he ran away. And the second time they put some police there, and he did it again. And then they captured him. And then a poor soul who was really sad life, who suffered from scoliosis, and everyone teased him. And I think he really wanted to go to prison and perhaps go to Australia and he was really suffering. But he was given of a short sentence on the basis that we don't want any copycats. And we have William Hamilton, who's a bricklayer who doesn't really say anything in his trial. But now we have Arthur O'Connor who does, he is a political assassin.

Again, another young man, he's 17. He initially has an idea that she's going to grab Victoria when she's doing a Thanksgiving service for the health of her son, the future Edward the 7th. and he's going to grab her there at St. Paul's, but doesn't. Instead, what he does is Victoria calls it in her diary. They've been out for a drive. She's coming into Buckingham Palace. So she's imagined Buckingham Palace, as we've all seen it, just inside the gates. And she's getting out of the coach. And she says, I'm getting out of the coach. And I sense someone beside me. And she thinks it's a footman, busy going to help her. But instead, it's Arthur O'Connor. He's got over the...

the gates. He's got over the gates. He's a young fit man. He's got over the gates and he's got a gun and he's got a gun and he has it. And John Brown, the Queen's. Yes. Yes. Scottish favour. Albert has no more. Albert has passed on. And Albert's equerry in Scotland was John Brown and Victoria and John Brown create this very close friendship and endlessly debated by historians. But this is one way in which perhaps we could see why Victoria becomes so dependent on John Brown because John Brown is very fast. He's a fast Scotsman. He's got Arthur O'Connor and he gets him down on the floor very, very quickly. He sort of disables him very fast. And they find that the gun is broken would probably never have worked. And so John Brown gets him, he arrests him. And Arthur O'Connor

is then put on trial. So there's another trial, but I know what you were saying earlier, Kate, about them wanting to kind of control the narrative around these trials slightly in terms of like, let's not be publicising that there's a free trip to Australia in this. And they're beginning to panic about copycats. Yes. And actually our first man, Edward Oxford, he admits when he's in the Bedlam, the Bethlehemoss. But he says, oh, I did it for vanity. So people would recognise me.

And he actually says, when there's another attempt two years later, John Francis, he says, well, if I'd been hanged, they wouldn't be anyone trying to shoot the queen anymore. So I think there is this fear of copycats. There is this fear that it creates publicity and that it's really something the authorites are now trying to hush up. And I'm sure also, as you say, Anthony, it's a bit of a security breach. The fact that these men are managing to shoot at the Queen

to jump over the gates. Well, you mentioned her diary. This is what she says about this. And I think that gives an impression of what you're talking about there. She says, we drove around Hyde and Regents Park, returning by Constitution Hill. and when at the garden entrance a dreadful thing happened, which God and his mercy averted having evil consequences. It is difficult for me to describe as my impression was a great fright

and all was over in a minute. How it all happened, I knew nothing of. So there's this idea that the access to the body of the monarch, the access to the body of the queen, you shouldn't be able to get that close. And yet, here we are. We've got this Irish young man. And by the way, There is a trend there, not always, but these young men. A lot of them are very young, 18, 19, 17. Yes, yes. And dissatisfaction and their place in the world with Oxford going, I just wanted to be known, and this is a way to get known,

however true that might be in terms of his mental health. In terms of Arthur, though, specifically, I mentioned that he was Irish. Does he say anything about Irish nationalism? Does he say that this is why he's doing it? Is his Irishness relevant, do you think? Or how clear is the link? Yes, he wants political. prisoners freed. So the rest of them, I'd say, were some of them copycats, some of them had

miserable lives, some of them just were opportunists. There was another man who hit Victoria out over the head outside Fortinome Mason when he was passing. And she said in her diary, oh, I'd seen him in the park. And then he goes and hits her over the head. And he gets sent to Australia. He gets sent off to Australia. But I think that Arthur O'Connor, he does actually, seriously want to free Irish prisoners. And this is his vision. So that's a lot of another reason I think really why the authorities don't want a big trial. They don't want a big political trial. So he's put on trial and he's given comparatively, I'd say, light sentence. Victoria is actually afraid. So he's put on trial and he's given a comparatively light sentence.

It's only a year, really. Yeah, yeah. And then, again, off he goes to Australia. There's just these cabal of Victorian would be assassins now living in Australia. We're going to skip forward again now, 10 odd years later, or just about 10 years later, to the second of March. Well, she gets 10 years off being shot. Oh, is there a break now? There's a break now. Okay. That's interesting in itself, because what we're faced with is now an older woman who is the grandparent monarch almost.

I mean, she's not quite there. She lives for, you know, another 20 years, actually. But she's heading for 60 now. She's in her 60s. She is a mother and a grandmother spreading hemophilia across Europe as they go. She is. And Victoria is also much less accessible because after Albert's death, she didn't do so much of the riding round outside in the carriage anymore. She was much less accessible initially after Albert's death.

But she's out and about more. And this one is not in London. So this one's in Windsor. This one happens at the train station when she's coming in off the Royal Train, heading up to Windsor Castle and there's a shooter at Windsor train station. We've had the Irish and now we're going to have the Scots and we have Roderick McLean, who is a Scottish poet or a clerk. It's not necessarily who you're thinking is going to be an assassin. So bring us to Windsor.

She's getting off the train. She's heading up probably with some form of an entourage up to the castle. How does he get access to her? He is just there in the crowd. Gets out the gun and Victoria sees it. She sees this man with a gun. He gets out the gun to shoot her. But he's not much of an assassin, I have to say.

Two Eton schoolboys, one with an umbrella, managed to beat him up and get a hold of him. It's the most British thing in the entire world, isn't it? It's just like they're from Eden with an umbrella. So some Eton schoolboys are waving to the queen. We're using the umbrella, I presume, to have a good wave. Yeah, yeah. Beat up Roderick McLean with the umbrella, and he's swiftly arrested. Now, he's the son of a journalist.

His father edits a magazine called Fun. and his motivation, he said that he sent some poems and they were, he seems to her response from the Queen, so he's rather upset about that. It's always poets. You can't trust poets at all. They're too temperamental. You can't be allowing them out. But is there a question, I'm imagining because of that approach,

there is a question over his, what we would now term mental health or insanity status in the 19th century? Is there a history of that there? I think he, I mean, he sees the colour blue every. where he does suffer from what we would now call delusions. I think he is someone who is suffering from poor mental health. And he is declared at trial insane. Right. And he is declared insane.

And Victoria actually doesn't like this. She doesn't like the fact. She has been merciful. There was an assassin before that was sentenced to a very severe sentence. And she said, oh, no, I'll give you mercy and you can go to Australia. So, I swear you again. And this time, she says, I don't think it's right that you can be not guilty if you're insane. I think we should have a change in the law so that you are guilty but insane.

And that is brought in 1883 the year after. So she does have this influence over the law that the basic principle that if you are insane, you cannot be declared guilty of a crime, which was the whole debate in Edwards-Oxford trial. she's now saying, I want it to be changed so that you can be. And I think there was a lot of public opinion around it at the same point. But yes, Roderick McLean was declared insane. And he was the last of Victoria's assassins. And you do see more fear over and over.

And the one she's most afraid of, I think it's undeniable, is Arthur O'Connor, because he gets into Buckingham Palace. And she says, I was trembling. There was a shiver down my spine. She said, I'm not afraid. The rest of them, she keeps saying, I'm not afraid, no one scares me, I'm totally fine, don't worry about me. And Albert actually tries to encourage her, as does the ministers, to use a bulletproof

parasol. Oh, really? So Jane's Bond, it's like chain mail with silk over it. And she won't use it because she feels that it's not trusting her people, that her people love her and she won't use it. The one she's truly afraid of is the one Arthur O'Connor who gets in to Buckingham Palace. But Rojcric McLean, I think she doesn't take him very seriously. The Eton School Boys go to tea at the palace and they're given a very nice congratulation.

Oh, do they? Yeah, she'll be beating off assassins with their umbrellas. Now, one of the things I suppose that differentiates the Arthur O'Connor thing is it seems that unlike many of the men who try to kill her, there seems to be, as you've pointed out, like a political agenda there. There seems to be a cause. And I guess when there's a cause, it does imply, which is why they looked at Oxford so closely in the beginning that there might have been this larger conspiracy, it does imply that this is not where the book stops, that there's other people who might be feeling like this too and other Irish nationalists who are feeling similarly about these prisoners or about Ireland more generally. There's definitely been a very, very, very long talk about home rule in Ireland at this point. And so that's political. And then it's the political coming right up. He gets over those gates. is faced with this in very real personal, intimate terms. And that is frightening, right? That is frightening. And I think he probably could have come the nearest to killing her. Most of these shots miss. Now, Victorian bullets were pretty terrifying affairs. You weren't going

to live pretty much if you're shot by one of those bullets. I'm not a great expert, but I believe they much more likely explode within you. So it's a brutal death. But pretty much the rest of them, either don't mean to shoot her. It might just have been gun-powered her in the gun for Edward Oxford and the others, some of the others as well, or they just miss. They miss in the film Young Victoria. It's the finale and Albert gets shot and he takes the bullet in front of Victoria. But none of them managed to shoot anyone at all.

But he was so close he could have done. He absolutely could have done. And was the gun broken because he just meant to scare her? Sure. Or did he get sold a dodgy gun on this black market we've been hearing about? It could be. But I suspect that you would test a gun beforehand, wouldn't you? So probably it's most likely that he didn't mean to kill her.

He was just meaning to threaten her. Make the point. Make the point. But it's just striking, isn't it, Anthony, how leaky Buckingham Palace is. We have, you know, Michael Fagan wandering in in the 1980s and everyone, the police who were there just turning off the alarm. saying, oh, well, the alarm's gone off. I don't know what that is. And Michael Fagan wandering around, popping into Buckingham Palace.

It wasn't actually a crime until I think 2007 to go into Buckingham Palace. So the fact that he, when Michael Fagan, he has to be tried for stealing some of Prince Charles's wine, which he does. And he's let off from that. He didn't think it only drinks half of which he said it's not very good. And, you know, Princess Anne is nearly kidnapped just outside Buckingham Palace. So it is a symbol of monarchy, but also it's not very safe. I mean, the fact that those high gates could be scaled by Arthur O'Connor. And I think that, you know, people are terrified of Irish home rule.

They're terrified of the Irish power. They're terrified of the working classes. The middle classes, they know that everything they have in Victorian London, in Victorian Britain, is due to the miserable lives of the working classes. And this underworld of men that we see, I mean, London has doubled in size. It's about a million in the 1801. and by 1840 it's two million, it's expanding, and it's the bottom of society. These pot boys who are employed and sacked and paid very low wages like the pop boy Edward Oxford

or these young men who are really particularly young Irish men. And so the middle classes are terrified. So Arthur O'Connor is I think he's so terrifying to the authorities that they don't want to make a big thing about his trial necessarily at all. Yeah. I think one of the things that we need to talk about next, Kate, is potentially how this impacts the royal family and security going forward, even into our own day.

But we will talk about that when we return from this short break. So we've had these eight attempts from seven men on Victoria throughout her reign. 1882 is the last one. 1882 is the last one. I don't know why. Yeah, isn't it funny? Well, I wonder if it's something got to do with her age where they're like, I'm not going to kill an old woman.

I don't know. I don't know. It's just me. But it is, like you say, in the earlier ones, it's a young person aiming at another young person. Yeah. Yeah. So there might be something in that.

You've talked about this idea of going, oh, we're scaling a gate or we're in the park where they're doing their daily constitutions and all the rest of it. Of course, we've had George III of just realized as well. Like, there's quite a few assassination attempts on George the 3rd as well. But what does this do to security around the monarch after this time? time. Is there, again, you talked about the umbrella, the bulletproof umbrella, which is kind of hilarious. But is there, are there changes made or do they just pook along as ever? Well, they try. They try and tell Victoria to change. After her second assassination attempt from

John Francis, Peel says, just don't go out to the palace. Just stay in the palace. Never go out, never go out, never go out. And Victoria insists. Victoria insists that she must go out and she's not scared. And she's not injured. And even when she's hit over the head outside Fortner Mason, apparently the scar is visible for quite a long time, she won't have security put upon her. She simply refuses to believe that this is anything significant. And I think we often see this with monarchs. And we see it with Elizabeth I first. She's always being told by her advisors. People are trying to kill you. She's not. No, they're not trying to kill me. That doesn't mean anything. And her advice has very exercised about would-be assassination attempts that turn out not to be.

And I think we always see it with the modern royals now. Sometimes you see the modern royals. And you'll see a modern world and that's sort of dash over to speak to someone in this sort of crowd. And you can see the potty got, it's like panicking because they didn't think that was going to happen. So I think that Victoria refused to be cowed. She refused to be terrified because she knew how much of her popularity rested on being publicly seen. And I think she was gratified by the output. Well, she said she was, she was gratified by the outpouring of, oh, people saying it's the queen. We can't lose the queen. How marvelous. Oh, it's absolutely wonderful. We love the queen so much. And certainly I think in terms of political impact, it's the first one that matters the most because when Victoria doesn't have a child, that throne is going to her terrible, terrible uncle. Ernst, the Duke, who is, you know, Hanover, you know, everyone hates.

So once she has a child, it does make Victoria more secure because that you can't kill her and attempt to kill the monarchy, it will go to her daughter, then her son, the children that she had, to the son than she has, and Albert would be regent. But in terms of, you know, it always interesting because it is a sort of bizarre episode in Victorian life. And it does give us so much of an insight into the underworld of the working classes, of working class men, of disaffected working class men and insight into the newspapers

because the newspapers of course went crazy. They went wild for the shooting of Victoria, sensational, the growth of sensational newspapers which a lot of them were talking about murders and horrors. Yeah, my goodness,

now you've got the queen nearly being murdered and you see the authorities, I think, panicking about giving too much credibility or too much coverage to these murderers. But they also, I think, give us an insight into a woman on the throne because it does interest me that she has quite so many assassination

attempts that these young men, she is portrayed as this innocent, perfect queen and young man after young man comes to try and puncture that. And it is like tearing down the statues. Yeah, it's that thing, this is what I'm thinking of as you're talking there. It's this idea that there, what is the correlation? between, I'm thinking about bringing this back to, Regina bringing this back to your book. What is the correlation between these assassination attempts and her womanhood?

And maybe there is something in the fact that they stop when she's in her 60, after, you know, that last one in 1882 is the last one because maybe perception-wise, you know, this is stereotypical, and I'm not saying I endorse this in any way, shape, or form, of course I don't.

But the perception that her womanhood is moving away from her in her old age in some ways or what society values about womanhood or her ability to produce children. She's already done that. She's fulfilled those functions. She's nine of them. She got an A star for that one. So it's like I wonder if she starts to become a little bit divorced from her womanhood as she gets older, not through her own choice, but just through a societal lens.

I don't know. That's such an interesting. It's such a fascinating point because I think there is something there about a young queen and about young men shooting at a young queen. I just wonder if it had been King Victor, if there would have been quite so many attempts. I don't think so. I don't think so. It feels that there's a vulnerability there or a perceived vulnerability from these assassins.

I think so. I think there is this perceived vulnerability. And there is, of course, we see a lot of women victim of crimes during this period. And this is the flip side of the growth of the city in which women are murdered, women are sexually assaulted, women are attacked. It is an unsafe city for women. Yes. But the idea is, isn't it, that it's unsafe for women at night.

It's unsafe for working class women. But the middle class woman is safe. And the queen is safe. But she is not. There are like Arthur O'Connor. There's political motivations. and some of them are suffering severe mental illness, but also I think is there,

maybe I'm going out in a limb here, I might get into trouble about it. Are we seeing some early in-cell thinking here? I know what you mean about going out on a limb, but there's something to be said around it. It's, I don't know, there's something in it. Gender is definitely coming in here. Yes, King Victor probably wouldn't have been shot at

quite so many times. People who wanted to go to Australia might have thought of other ways to go to Australia. Just buy the five-pound to go. Yeah, shoot someone else, shoot anything, shoot someone, yes, or buy your ticket. Yeah. That it is both Victoria and the image of Victoria that if you can shoot the queen, you've made yourself famous. And what a moment for you and you shoot this vision of domestic innocence.

Who has attained something in society that is promised to men. But you are this disenfranchised pop boy, and you haven't been able to attain that. You haven't been able to attain that. And she symbolises both the power that men get, but also the riches that you will never get because she's busily representing the middle classes that you will never access. That's the, it's not just the American dream. That's the Victorian London dream. Work hard and you'll be rewarded.

Oh, no. No, no. Work hard. You'll just be fired and you'll get poorer and poorer. Although, you know, some of them do very well in their afterlife. Yes, in Australia. Very prosperous and have rather nice lives and living in Melbourne. I wonder whether they ever met.

Oh, I'm over. So nice. Some kind of club. Oh, gosh, I wish they had met. That would be so good. Somebody needs to make that as a what happened TV drama where all the assassins come together in Melbourne. I've never told my wife, but I'm going to tell you. Isn't that?

That's what's tantalizing about it. That there's a whole other life. Yeah, I tried to kill the queen, actually. Sorry about that. Don't ever, don't ever Google me. Don't Google me. It's insane. My husband's such a gentleman.

Yeah, yeah. It's lovely. Kate, it has been, as ever, every time we've been to each other, whatever else, but now that we finally had to join after such a dream, thank you for being in here. And thank you for listening and watching along. If you're only listening on a podcast platform,

do remember we have a YouTube channel now. You can go over there and see us as we talk about all things dastardly dark history. Leave us a five-star review wherever you get your podcast. because it helps other people to discover us too. And if you have any topic ideas for another After Dark episode, then you can write in at After Dark at Historyhit.com. Until next time, happy listening.