Published in Windlesora 26 (2010)
© WLHG
On 11 August 2009 Meridian Television featured a news item about an assassination attempt by Roderick McLean on Queen Victoria at Windsor Great Weatern Railway station on 2 March 1882. The reason Meridian used this as a news item was that the transcript of the trial has been made available on the web.
The television team was surprised to find the whole of the trial was recorded in the Windsor and Eton Express on 22 April 1882, barely two months after the crime.
Picture on the front cover of the Illustrated London News on Saturday March 11th 1882.
APOLOGIES, this image has been removed due to potential copyright issue with Alamy who have seemingly bought the rights to it.
On 4th March the newspaper carried the story on page three under a small and discreet headline ‘Attempt To Shoot Her Majesty The Queen’. The article started :
‘Great excitement was occasioned in Windsor and Eton on Thursday evening by an attempt to shoot the Queen on the arrival of her Majesty at the station of the Great Western Railway from London.’ ‘Queen Victoria accompanied by Princess Beatrice, took the 4.30 train from Paddington, arriving at Windsor at 5.25. There was the usual crowd of spectators who cheered as she drove from the station to the castle across the road. Her carriage was closed as the weather was cold and wet, and as it passed the barrier a man fired point blank at the carriage, but missed. He kept his arm with the pistol outstretched as if to fire again, but bystander James Burnside, a photographer living in Helena Road, wrenched the pistol from his hand. A number of Eton boys who had been cheering the Queen, rushed up and would have lynched the would-be assassin, one of them attacking him with his umbrella. He had to be rescued by several policemen. Mr Superintendent Hayes then arrested the man who pleaded: ‘don’t hurt me’ and then said ‘I have done it through starvation’. The Queen drove off seemingly unawares of what had happened, until she arrived at the Castle, but immediately sent a message to the station to inquire if anyone had been hurt. The prisoner was 27 year old Roderick McLean, he had been staying at 84 Victoria Cottages, Windsor since arriving from Portsmouth on foot a week earlier. During his interrogation he stated again that hunger had driven him to the crime. He was ‘certainly very wretchedly attired’.
A letter found in his pocket written by him earlier that day and not addressed to anyone read:
‘I should not have done this crime, had you as you should have done, paid the 10s per week instead of offering me the insulting small sum of 6d per week, and expecting me to live on it. So you perceive the great good a little money would have done. Had you not treated me as a fool and set me more than ever against those bloated aristocrats led by that old lady Mrs Vic, who is an incensed robber in all senses. Roderick McLean, March 2nd, 1882, Waiting-room, Great Western Railway.’
McLean was put on trial for High Treason and appeared before the Berkshire Assizes on 20 April 1882, barely 2 months after his crime, where he pleaded not guilty.
During the trial it transpired that the prisoner had suffered a serious injury to his head in 1866 and was subject to fits. He had been declared insane by a number of doctors and again by an examining professor from Broadmoor, On the recommendation of the Lord Chief Justice the jury, after 20 minutes deliberation, declared the prisoner not guilty but insane and he was ordered to be detained in custody during Her Majesty’s pleasure. He was sent to Broadmoor Asylum, where he died in June 1921.
The Queen was not happy about the wording of the verdict, and caused the passing of an Act the following year which changed the form of such verdicts to guilty but insane.
If you look up Roderick McLean on the web, you will be told that he had sent a poem to the Queen, to which he had received a ‘curt reply, therefore he decided to walk from Portsmouth to shoot her.’ This is clearly not true. The confusion may have arisen out of the fact that a poem was written later that year and sent to the Queen but she did not like it. This poem was written by Britain’s worst poet William T McGonagall, a fellow Scotsman, and called Attempted Assassination of the Queen.
Just one stanza is enough to note the quality of the poetry!
McLean must be a madman,
Which is obvious to be seen,
Or else he wouldn’t have tried to shoot
Our most beloved Queen.
This shows one needs to exercise a note of caution when getting information from the web.
Brigitte Mitchell
Sources
Windsor and Eton Express 4 March 1882 and 22 March 1882.
Assassination attempts on Queen Victoria
10 Feb 1840
Edward Oxford, 18, shot twice at Queen Victoria as she was riding in her carriage with Prince Albert in London. The Queen was expecting her first child. Edward Oxford was tried for high treason but acquitted on grounds of insanity. He was sent to Bethlehem Hospital.
29 May 1842
John Francis fired a pistol at the Queen’s carriage in St James’s Park. He was convicted of high treason and sentenced to death, but this was later commuted to transportation for life.
3 July 1842
John William Bean, a young lad, attempted to shoot the Queen, but his pistol was loaded with paper and tobacco. He was imprisoned for 18 months.
May 1849
Unemployed Irishman William Hamilton fired a pistol at the Queen’s carriage as it passed along Constitution Hill; his pistol had powder but no balls. He was sentenced to seven years transportation.
27 June 1850
Ex Cavalry officer Robert Pate beat the Queen over the head with a cane as she passed by in a carriage, crushing her bonnet and bruising her. He was transported for seven years.
1872
Arthur O’Connor, a 17 year old Irishman shot at the Queen as she alighted from her carriage. John Brown wrested the attacker to the ground, but the pistol was not loaded. He was sentenced to be transported and to be flogged, but the Queen remitted this part of the sentence.
1882
Roderick McLean shot at the Queen in Windsor.
June 1887
The Jubilee Plot was an attempt to blow up the Queen and the cabinet during a thanksgiving service at Westminster Abbey. Nobody really knows who was responsible, but they were thought to be Irish.
Windsor Local History Group 