Read Online Shooting Victoria by Paul Thomas Murphy - Free Book Online

III would bring about the end of kings and the end of time. Hadfield by this time considered himself a latter-day messiah who must sacrifice himself to save mankind. He bought a brace of pistols in May 1800 and wandered through London, wondering whether to kill himself to hasten the apocalypse, but held back, fearing eternal damnation. He then hit upon a plan that would bring about the end of kings and bring about the self-sacrifice he needed: he would shoot George III in a public place, and would then happily be torn apart by the crowd. On 15 May, then, Hadfield bought a second-row seat for a performance of Colley Cibber’s She Would and She Would Not , a performance at Drury Lane Theatre which he knew the Royal Family would be attending. When the King entered and came to the front of the box to acknowledge the cheering of the audience, Hadfield stood upon his seat, leveled one of his pistols at the King, and fired. The pistol’s two slugs missed the King’s head by inches, lodging in a pillar near the ceiling of the box. George reacted with notable calm, displaying, according to the Times , “that serenity and firmness of character which belong to a virtuous mind”; he put his family at ease, and they stayed to watch the entire performance. Hadfield, meanwhile, was seized and taken to a music room adjoining the stage, where he was questioned by the police, by the proprietor of the theatre (and the great dramatist) Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and—in an emotional reunion, on Hadfield’s part—by his former commanding officer, the Duke of York. He claimed that he had missed the King on purpose, wanting only to be torn apart himself, and darkly hinted at the coming chaos: “it was not over yet—there was a great deal more and worse to be done.”
    Hadfield was tried a month later. He was charged with High Treason, and by the law of the time that meant that he was entitledto the best counsel in the land, at the expense of the state. And he got just that in Thomas Erskine. Erskine mounted an insanity defense, in the face of the contemporary legal concept of that defense which held insanity to be complete derangement, and an insane man thus unable to plan a criminal act or understand its consequences. Hadfield had planned his attempt carefully—buying the gun, manufacturing his own slugs, choosing a seat at the theatre with an ideal vantage from which to shoot the King. And he arguably knew very well the consequences of his action; he hoped he could cause enough of an uproar in order to bring about his own death. Erskine argued that a man suffering from a powerful delusion might appear sane in most ways, and yet still commit an insane act. He brought forth a number of witnesses to testify to the eccentricity of Hadfield’s behavior—behavior that included an attempt to kill his infant son days before the attempt on the King. And he brought forth medical witnesses to testify both to the severity of Hadfield’s head wounds, and to the obvious insanity he demonstrated in his behavior. Chief Justice Kenyon, long before Erskine called all of his witnesses, stopped the trial, persuaded the Attorney-General, John Mitford, to agree that Hadfield was obviously deranged, and directed the jury to return a verdict of not guilty on the grounds of insanity, which they dutifully did.
    Hadfield, however, was not free. The Chief Justice, the Attorney General, and Hadfield’s own counsel agreed that Hadfield must be further confined, Erskine stating “most undoubtedly the safety of the community, and of all mankind, requires that this unfortunate man should be taken care of.” He was returned to Newgate. Four days after his trial, Mitford introduced a bill in Parliament to deal with Hadfield and those like him. The Safe Custody of Insane Persons Charged with Offences Bill empowered courts to detain those acquitted of a crime on the grounds of insanity at the pleasure of the