Queen Victoria survived eight assassination attempts during her reign. Between 1840 and 1882 she was shot at as she travelled around London in her carriage, menaced by a teenager with an unloaded pistol, and beaten over the head with a walking stick. None of the attacks caused any serious injury and, in fact, they only seemed to increase the popular sympathy for the monarch – Victoria reportedly said it was ‘worth being shot at to see how much one is loved’. But the final attempt also brought about a change in the law which affected several 1888 murder cases.
On 2 March 1882, a deranged poet called Roderick McLean fired at the Queen as she was being driven out to Windsor station in a carriage. He was charged with High Treason and after a short trial was found not guilty on the basis that he was insane and could not be held criminally liable for his actions. This didn’t mean he would be walking free from court – McLean spent the rest of his life at Broadmoor Asylum – but the Queen was disturbed by the use of the phrase ‘not guilty’ and insisted that ‘if this is the law, the law must be altered’. She wrote in a letter:
Punishment deters not only sane men but also eccentric men … a knowledge that they would be protected by an acquittal on the grounds of insanity will encourage these men to commit desperate acts, while on the other hand certainty that they will not escape punishment will terrify them into a peaceful attitude towards others.160
The Trial of Lunatics Bill was passed quickly through both Houses of Parliament to change the special verdict of ‘not guilty by reason of insanity’ to ‘guilty but insane’. In reality it was a change only in name, as the end result remained the same – detention in an asylum ‘during Her Majesty’s pleasure’. It is, however, a fact that there were no further attacks on the Queen for the rest of her reign.
How did the jury decide whether a prisoner was insane or not? Legally they had to follow what were known as the M’Naghten rules, named after the man who tried to assassinate the Prime Minister Robert Peel in 1843.
To establish a defence on the grounds of insanity, it must clearly be proved that at the time of the committing of the act, the accused was labouring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing, or if he did know it, that he did not know what he was doing was wrong.161
This insanity could be demonstrated in a number of ways and by a variety of medical conditions. In the case of Charles Latham, the thirty-year-old alcoholic who cut the throat of his long-term partner Mary Newman in Somerstown on 19 May 1888, the evidence was that he was suffering from delusions and hallucinations. Three weeks before the murder, he had been taken away to the insane ward of the St Pancras Workhouse and diagnosed with delirium tremens. Latham remained there for a week before returning to live with Mrs Newman. A neighbour who had witnessed the killing told the court that Latham ‘did not appear to recognise me … he did not appear to notice anything … he did not appear the least to understand what he was doing’. He looked ‘strange’ and ‘wild about the eyes’ when he was arrested and appeared to think his partner had been cheating on him with two police officers and a fellow lodger. On being charged with murder, he replied:
I had cause. I could not go outside my place without the man who lived in the next room was in my room with my missis. I could not go to bed without this man getting in at the window. I have heard that they have chloroformed me and taken liberties with me, but I know nothing about it. [Inspector] Dod and [Sergeant] Cobb, I have heard that they have taken a liberty with me and have had my missis all over the place.
Both officers and the twenty-eight-year-old lodger, Edward Salmon, insisted that they had had nothing to do with Mrs Newman. Latham’s only other explanation for his actions was given to the police surgeon, ‘I could not help giving it to her, for she was always nagging at me.’
According to the expert evidence given at the trial, Latham’s delusions were brought on by long-term heavy drinking. Henry Bastian, a physician at University College Hospital, said, ‘The excessive drinking had undoubtedly damaged his brain. A sane man may hold a suspicion not amounting to delusion, but a delusion is suspecting something that no sane man could suspect … the prisoner cannot even now be said to be actually of sound mind.’ It was for the jury to decide whether it was more likely than not (‘on the balance of probabilities’) that Latham was not responsible for his actions. After hearing the arguments of both prosecution and defence, and the directions of the judge, the jury returned their verdict that: ‘Latham committed the act but was of unsound mind so as not to be responsible for his actions.’ Mr Justice Hawkins, slipping into old habits, announced, ‘That is a verdict of not guilty on the grounds of insanity’, when it was in fact ‘guilty but insane’.162
Delusions were also the basis of the same verdict in the cases of John Brown, who killed his partner, and Mary Ann Reynolds, who suffocated her child. For Sarah Procter it was epilepsy. In the case of Emma Aston, it was one doctor’s opinion that ‘want of rest and want of food’ could have contributed to a temporary attack of insanity. It may be that the murder of both her children was simply too shocking to be explained in any other way. The police surgeon Charles Bass told the court, ‘I am of opinion that at the time this was done the prisoner was certainly suffering under an uncontrollable impulse to kill, and therefore was not conscious of the nature and quality of the act which she was committing, or conscious that what she was doing was wrong.’ Julia Spickernell, on the other hand, was said to have been suffering puerperal mania when she drowned her baby daughter. Her doctor, Edward Spencer, explained to the jury:
There are three kinds of puerperal mania: one which comes on in the puerperal state before the child is born, another which comes on during the state of labour or soon after, and another kind which is recognised as the insanity of lactation; she was still suckling her child at this time. It is common to get this condition in women of delicate constitution, who have borne children rapidly, and have a profuse supply of milk, especially after loss of rest or anything likely to exhaust the nervous system ... I believe that at the time she did this she was unconscious of the act, that she was incapable of appreciating the nature and quality of the act.163
Murderers might also be so insane that they could not stand trial. This happened in the case of Louisa Ostler, the twenty-three-year-old wife of a chemist’s assistant who killed her two-year-old son Percy at their home in Greenwich. Louisa, who was heavily pregnant, had been suffering from religious delusions and melancholia since December 1887. A local doctor, Charles Hartt, had decided not to place her in an asylum and advised that she be watched over by her sister Henrietta Brown at the family’s basement flat at No.55 Trafalgar Road. Dr Hartt also made daily visits to the house to check on her condition. ‘I advised the husband that if she was carefully looked after and had someone with her she would be perfectly safe and I believed that after her pregnancy was over she would probably recover. She was always a quiet and inoffensive person.’
At around 10.45 a.m. on 11 January 1888, Miss Brown decided to go out briefly to get something for dinner and left Louisa with the child in the kitchen. A few minutes later, Louisa’s husband, James, who was working at the chemist’s shop on the ground floor, decided to go and check on them while his sister-in-law was away. He entered the kitchen to find his wife standing over the body of his son, lying in a pool of blood on the floor. He had been decapitated.
‘What have you done?’ Mr Ostler asked his wife.
‘My Jim, I had only one life to take,’ she replied.
From the pools of blood it appeared that the boy’s head had been cut off with a table knife while he was sat on a chair at the end of the table. The bloodstained piece of bread he had been eating was on the tablecloth next to a child’s cane and a ha’penny.
Mr Ostler had just taken his wife to the bedroom and got her to lie down on the bed when Miss Brown arrived back at the house to discover the grisly scene in the kitchen.
Asked why she had done it, Louisa Ostler explained, ‘I’ve had a command from God to offer a sacrifice for the whole world. We shall all be redeemed and caught up and God will make known to us the mystery.’ Later she added:
I have a Beast’s nature and the child had two natures; go down and cut its other heart and feel if he is cold. The judgement will come. I am cloven and have no feeling. God has taken away my intellect and wisdom, knowledge and power and I am Satan himself.
Although Mrs Ostler had been ill for at least six weeks, both her husband and the doctor claimed that she had never shown any sign she was homicidal. Mr Ostler told the inquest, ‘My wife has never threatened to do herself or anyone else any injury … she has religious delusions and has never been left alone for any length of time of late – I have guarded against this.’ Miss Brown said that Mrs Ostler had always been very affectionate towards the child, and earlier that morning she had washed and dressed him, kissed him and given him an orange.
Dr Hartt gave evidence that not only was she unaware of the nature of her act, but she did not appreciate the nature of the proceedings against her and was unable to give instructions. The medical officer treating her at Greenwich Union Infirmary also agreed that she was ‘of unsound mind’. The result was that when she appeared before the Old Bailey on 1 February it was accepted by the prosecution that she was ‘hopelessly insane’. Legal formalities meant that a jury was sworn in to hear brief evidence before returning a verdict that she was unfit to plead. Louisa Ostler was detained during ‘Her Majesty’s pleasure’ at Broadmoor Lunatic Asylum.164
The asylum (now known as Broadmoor Hospital) was located outside London, about a mile from the village of Crowthorne in Berkshire. It had opened twenty-five years earlier on 27 May 1863, with space for around 500 inmates in seven blocks for men and two for women. During 1888, Henry Cullum; Emma Elizabeth Aston; John Brown; Mary Ann Reynolds; Sarah Ellen Procter; Charles Latham; and Louisa Ostler were all admitted and given a number and a uniform. Julia Spickernell followed in early 1889. All eight were still there at the time of the 1891 census, which reveals a total of 477 male inmates and 152 females, as well as more than fifty members of staff, including the assistant medical officer, male and female attendants, laundry women, a baker and a gatekeeper. Later censuses recorded inmates only by their initial, but it is likely that they remained there for the rest of their lives. They may have learned trades like carpentry and upholstery in the workshops, or laboured in the kitchen, the garden or the farm. They may also have heard gossip and speculation about the patient who managed to escape from the asylum on 23 January 1888.
James Kelly had been convicted of murder in August 1883 after stabbing his twenty-two-year-old wife, Sarah, in the neck with a carving knife at their home not far from Angel Islington. He was sentenced to death, but just three days before his scheduled execution date he was certified insane and taken to Broadmoor. In 1885, he took up the violin and was allowed to play in the asylum band. Two years later, he came up with a plan to fashion a key from a piece of metal he found buried in the kitchen garden. After spending weeks filing it down so that it could open the door, the key was concealed in a secret compartment in his violin case. On the chosen night, he put on the suit he was allowed to wear for band practice, went downstairs, unlocked the door to the courtyard and walked out. He had only to clamber a 6ft-high wall (later increased to 16ft) and he was free.
For the next eight years he remained on the run. Kelly, who was twenty-seven at the time of his escape, later claimed he went first to see friends at a lodging house near the docks in the East End of London. His travels then took him to Liverpool, Dieppe, New York, Pennsylvania, Los Angeles, Arizona, New Mexico and Dallas. Then, in 1896, he walked into the British Consulate in New Orleans and announced that he was handing himself in with the hope of being granted a pardon. He was put on board a steamer for Liverpool and preparations were made by police to have him taken into custody upon his arrival. However, when the two warders turned up at the dock on the evening of 26 February, they discovered that the ship had arrived a day earlier than expected. Kelly had disappeared.
Thirty-one years later, at the age of sixty-six, grey-haired and half deaf, Kelly walked up to the main entrance at Broadmoor Asylum and begged to be allowed back in. This stunning twist was reported in the News of the World under the headline: ‘Fiction and the Films outdone – returned to Broadmoor after thirty-nine years.’ Kelly was said to have told the authorities that he now wanted to ‘set his conscience at rest and pass peacefully out of existence’. He added:
I have no friends and I am alone in the world. I have wandered all these years feeling that I am a fugitive who might be pounced on by any policeman I passed. I am getting feeble now from the constant fear and I dreaded the idea of dying alone.
Kelly died two years later from pneumonia on 17 September 1929.165