On a number of occasions Victoria’s ministers were disturbed by purported Fenian ‘plots’ to assassinate her, and on 14 October 1867 the police uncovered Fenian plans in Manchester to mount a new attack on the Queen. General Charles Grey wanted to surround Balmoral with troops. Security was accordingly stepped up, and the Queen asserted that it was all ‘Too foolish!’
5
Extra warships began patrolling the Isle of Wight in sight of Osborne. It was all ‘such a bore’,
6
the Queen declared when for the umpteenth time she was warned that out of the lanes near Osborne or the woods near Balmoral Fenians might spring, overpowering the protective John Brown, and carry her off to a dreadful fate. Reluctantly, for a while, she accepted the increased numbers of sentries and outriders.
In all there were seven assassination attempts on the Queen’s life, and John Brown was involved with two of them. The first ever attempt on her took place on 10 June 1840, just a few months after her marriage. As her low phaeton climbed London’s Constitution Hill, a deranged eighteen-year-old called Edward Oxford fired two shots at her. She was unhurt. Oxford was committed to Newgate prison; found ‘guilty, but insane’ he was subsequently detained at Bethlehem Royal Hospital, Moorfields, and latterly at Broadmoor. He eventually went under supervision to Australia where he died. On Sunday 30 May 1842, again while driving on Constitution Hill, Queen Victoria was fired at by twenty-year-old John Francis. Found guilty of the capital offence of treason, the Queen reprieved Francis and the death penalty was commuted to transportation for life to Norfolk Island in the Pacific. A few weeks later, on Sunday 3 July 1842, as she drove to the Chapel Royal, St James, John William Bean made an attempt on her life but was thwarted. Bean was given eighteen months imprisonment, under a new Bill which reduced the charge from ‘high treason’ to ‘high misdemeanour’.
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The fourth attempt on her life was made on 19 May 1849 when the insane Irishman William Hamilton attacked the Queen with an empty gun. He was transported for seven years. On 27 June 1850 the Queen was attacked by Robert Pate, a retired lieutenant in the 10th Hussars, who struck her across the face with a cane. Pate was tried for assault and sentenced to seven years transportation. John Brown was involved with the sixth attempt on Queen Victoria’s life. It occurred two days after the Thanksgiving Service at St Paul’s for the recovery of the Prince of Wales, and of all the attempts up to that date it was the one which frightened her most.
The attack took place as the Queen returned to Buckingham Palace following a drive through Regent’s Park on 29 February 1872. The would-be assassin was an eighteen-year-old, undersized, scrofulous youth. Arthur O’Connor lived at 4 Church Row, Houndsditch, a district of London that social historian and
Punch
editor Henry Mayhew described as full of ‘Jewish shopkeepers, warehousemen, manufacturers and inferior jewellers’. O’Connor worked there for an oil and colour manufacturer.
Armed with a flintlock pistol, O’Connor watched Queen Victoria leave Buckingham Palace at 4.30pm in an open landau with her Lady-in-Waiting Jane Churchill, and Princes Arthur and Leopold. On the box sat John Brown, while her two equerries, the Crimean Veteran General Arthur Hardinge and Lord Charles Fitzroy, rode on either side of the carriage. The escort was completed with Charles Tomkins as outrider at the front and mounted postilion John Cannon at the rear. As the Queen completed her drive O’Connor climbed the 10ft high railings at Buckingham Palace, and, unobserved, sprinted across the courtyard and took up position at the Garden Entrance to the palace, intent on intercepting the carriage. In her
Journal
Queen Victoria took up the story:
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. The Equerries had dismounted. Brown had got down to let down the steps, and Jane C[hurchill] was just getting out, when suddenly someone appeared at my side, whom I first imagined was a footman, going to lift off the wrapper. Then I perceived that it was someone unknown, peering above the carriage door, with an uplifted hand and a strange voice, at the same time the boys [Princes Arthur and Leopold] calling out and moving forward. Involuntarily, in a terrible fright, I threw myself over Jane C. calling out, ‘Save me,’ and heard a scuffle and voices! I soon recovered myself sufficiently to stand up and turn round, when I saw Brown holding a young man tightly, who was struggling, Arthur, the Equerries, etc., also near him. They laid the man on the ground and Brown kept hold of him till several of the police came in. All turned and asked if I was hurt, and I said, ‘Not at all.’ Then Lord Charles Fitzroy, General Hardinge, and Arthur came up saying they thought the man had dropped something. We looked, but could find nothing, when Cannon, the postilion, called out, ‘There it is,’ and looking down I then did see shining on the ground a small pistol! This filled us with horror. All were as white as sheets, Jane C. almost crying, and Leopold looked as if he were going to faint.
It is to good Brown and to his wonderful presence of mind that I greatly owe my safety, for he alone saw the boy rush round and followed him! When I was standing in the hall, General Hardinge came in, bringing an extraordinary document which this boy had intended making me sign! It was in connection with the Fenian prisoners! Sir T[homas] Biddulph came running, greatly horrified. Then the boy was taken away by the police and made no attempt to escape . . .
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During his examination it emerged that O’Connor had endeavoured to deliver a petition to the Queen as she knelt at prayer at the Thanksgiving Service at St Paul’s. This is the document the Queen mentions in her
Journal
entry. O’Connor had been discovered lurking in a side aisle in the Cathedral the evening before the service and had been removed by the Virgers (the St Paul’s terminology for ‘vergers’). The police examination also revealed that O’Connor was the great-nephew of the Chartist leader Fergus O’Connor, and it became clear that the youth had confused Chartism – a movement of the late 1830s seeking parliamentary reform – with Fenianism. Police records showed that Arthur O’Connor came from a family who had been ‘reduced’ in social circumstances, but that he had been educated at the church school of St-Dunstans-in-the-East, Fleet Street, and that he had obtained indentures as a law stationer. He also had a history of mental derangement. On 26 February he had bought an old and useless flintlock pistol at a pawnshop in Southwark for 4
s
. Having no ammunition, he had stuffed the barrel with wads of blue paper and leather.
Queen Victoria was more than grateful to John Brown for his gallantry during the episode and caused this public announcement to be written by Secretary Ponsonby:
The Queen, who had contemplated instituting a medal as a reward for long and faithful service among Her Majesty’s domestic servants, has inaugurated the institution by conferring on Mr John Brown, the Queen’s personal attendant, a medal in gold, with an annuity of £25 attached to it, as a mark of her appreciation of his presence of mind and of his devotion on the occasion of the attack made upon Her Majesty in Buckingham Palace Gardens on 29 February 1872.
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On a much-disliked equerry
One of Queen Victoria’s equerries, General Sir Lyndoch Gardiner, was held in particular dislike by John Brown. While Gardiner was perfectly polite to Brown, the Highland Servant was irritated by Gardiner’s being a stickler for everything being just so before he could write up an order. At the beginning of one duty he enquired of Brown how the Queen was keeping. ‘The Queen’s very well,’ replied Brown. ‘It was only the other day that she said to me “There’s that dommed old fool General Gardiner coming into waiting and I know he’ll be putting his bloody nose into everything that doesn’t concern him”.’ The general’s reply is not recorded.
The Prince of Wales was annoyed at his mother’s gesture. Had not Prince Arthur been just as gallant? He received only a tie-pin. The Queen once more exhibited her strategic deafness to the Prince of Wales’s opinions.
John Brown was the hero of the hour and the public clamoured for news of the incident and to learn what was to happen to O’Connor. It was soon announced that O’Connor was to appear before the Senior Magistrate at Bow Street, barrister Sir Thomas Henry. Huge crowds blocked Bow Street and Long Acre, and the little streets to the east of Covent Garden, and extra police were called in. A delay in the legal procedures held up the start of the hearing which added to the tension. Prince Leopold, summoned as a witness, was cheered when he entered the court buildings with his party, while O’Connor was hissed. The crowd reserved its heartiest welcome for John Brown.
The charge against O’Connor was read out by Harry Bodkin Poland, a leading counsel and adviser to the Home Department. Then he read out the curious petition written by O’Connor and which he had intended to force Queen Victoria to sign. John Brown was now called to the witness box. On the public benches people craned their necks to get a view of the Queen’s personal attendant. Journalists’ pencils scribbled and all was attention when Brown’s gruff Scottish voice was heard for the first time in any court of law:
I am in the service of the Queen. Yesterday, after the Court, I went with her Maa-dj-esty for a drive. It was an open carriage. Lady Churchill sat on the right-hand side and the Queen sat on the left. Opposite Lady Churchill sat Prince Leopold and opposite the Queen sat Prince Arthur. Lord Charles Fitzroy and General Hardinge were riding on each side of the carriage. There were two outriders in front and two grooms behind . . . We drove through the garden gate, after driving through the enclosure. The carriage stopped at the entrance for the purpose of allowing Her Maa-dj-esty to alight. The left side of the carriage was towards the entrance. I got off to open the door when the carriage stopped and the Equerries also dismounted. The prisoner was between the Equerries about a yard from the carriage door. I shifted him back. The prisoner then ran round the back of the carriage to the side where the Queen was sitting. I followed him. He reached the door where the Queen was sitting and raised his hand. He placed his hand upon the carriage and I seized his neck. He dropped a pistol from his right hand. I fancy General Hardinge picked up the pistol. I kept the boy in custody until the police arrived. The Queen stood up in the carriage during the proceedings.
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Following the witness testimony of Prince Leopold, General Hardinge and Charles Tomkins, Sir Thomas Henry committed O’Connor for trial at the Central Criminal Court. John Brown and the other main witnesses were charged to attend. Against his counsel’s advice O’Connor pleaded guilty and although Dr Harrington Tuke of the Chiswell Lunatic Asylum testified to hereditary insanity, the jury found O’Connor fit to plead; judge Sir Anthony Cleasby sentenced him to one year in prison with hard labour, and twenty strokes of the birch.
At an audience with Queen Victoria, Prime Minister Gladstone was assailed by royal disapproval of the ‘extreme leniency’ of the sentence. She implored Gladstone to set in motion the process that would have O’Connor transported lest he attack her again. The Queen’s anxiety was well founded. After he had completed his sentence O’Connor was persuaded to go to Australia, but he soon returned to Britain. On 5 May 1874 he was arrested for loitering with intent outside Buckingham Palace. He was then committed under court order to Hanwell Lunatic Asylum.
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Following the excitement of the trial and John Brown’s obvious enjoyment of his high public profile, the Highland servant attended Queen Victoria on her fortnight’s visit to Baden-Baden, on the Rhine valley slopes of the Black Forest. The Queen visited her ailing half-sister Princess Feodore of Leiningen. Once again she was using the pseudonym ‘Countess of Kent’ while travelling – no one was fooled – and she stayed at a villa outside the town.
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John Brown attended while she viewed the casinos of Baden-Baden which were dubbed the second homes of ‘the worst characters of both sexes in Europe’. Then it was back to a welter of ‘domesticity’ and junketing in Scotland.
One afternoon John Brown came to the Queen to tell her that a ‘bairn had fallen into the water’ and that estate workers and local folk were searching for him along the banks of the River Dee, then in spate. The Queen immediately set off with Princess Beatrice and her Lady of the Bedchamber, Jane, Marchioness of Ely, to help in the search. The Rattray boys, ten-year-old Jemmie and three-year-old Sandy from nearby Cairn-na-Craig, had been fishing when the younger lad had fallen into the Monaltrie Burn that feeds into the Dee. Jemmie had dived in to help his little brother, and both had been swept away. The body of poor Sandy was found next day; his brother remained missing. With John Brown the Queen paid a visit to the grieving family. Jemmie’s body was found a few days later. On the day of the children’s funeral Queen Victoria watched the ‘very sad sight’ of the cortège from her discreetly parked carriage.
On Wednesday 14 August 1872 Queen Victoria and her entourage arrived at Edinburgh from Osborne for an official visit. Escorted by a troop of Scots Greys, and with John Brown on the box, the Queen’s carriage made for what she called ‘the old, gloomy, but historical Palace of Holyrood’. Accompanied by John Brown, carrying her plaid wrap, Queen Victoria and Princess Beatrice were taken on a tour of the palace and the ruined abbey by Duncan Anderson, Keeper of the Chapel Royal. He related the history of the old palace, built next to the 1128 abbey of the Augustinian canons of Holyrood by King James IV of Scots from 1498. Its place had been etched in history by his grand-daughter Mary, Queen of Scots, whose colourful court had breathed life, murder, skulduggery and mayhem into its stones. Queen Victoria had not stayed at the palace since 1850, when she and Prince Albert were en route to and from Balmoral. This time she included a carriage drive around the old city, and visited St Matthew’s Chapel, 7½miles away at Roslin where she relaxed in the garden and read from a volume of the collected poems of James Hogg, the renowned ‘Ettrick Shepherd’, a gift from John Brown a few years earlier. After more lengthy drives around Edinburgh and its environs the Queen and her entourage left for Balmoral on Saturday 17 August.