Paul Thomas Murphy’s book Shooting Victoria is about the eight assassination attempts on Queen Victoria – spoiler, none of them were successful. Before reading this book I had no idea that there were any assassination attempts during Victoria’s reign and this book has lots of fascinating insight into how people lived and thought, as well as the life of the Queen.
It becomes apparent very quickly in this book that it was only chance or misfiring equipment that prevented Victoria being shot, and she was actually hit in the face with a cane by one assailant. She drove around London in open carriages and was determined to make herself visible to her people – to her credit, she carried on acting this way even after attempts on her life and vowed not to show fear. The author discusses how Victoria saw the role of monarch (or maybe, more correctly, how her husband saw it) and how she changed the connection between ruler and ruled.
The eight men who tried to assassinate Victoria were nearly all mentally ill and none of them seemed to have a well formed plan for what would happen after the demise of the sovereign. The book follows the story of each one and is a social history of disaffected men who wanted to make some sort of point, even if a couple of them were not quite sure what the point was.
The author also shows what happened when the men came to justice and how there was discussion about what the crime actually was and what sort of punishment it would warrant – the courts were actually more gentle and thoughtful than we might have expected and there were discussions at the time about how far people could be held responsible for their actions of they had mental health problems or lacked capacity in another way.
This is one of those fascinating books that I didn’t know that I needed to read until I’d read it. It is full of interesting facts and reveals quite a lot about our changing attitude to monarchy and to criminals.
Anne Is Reading 