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monarch. The act was retroactive; Hadfield’s legal acquittal resulted in a lifetime of mental confinement. He was conveyed to Bethlem Hospital, which in 1800 was located not in Southwark,but in Moorfields, north of the river. He escaped in 1802, but was quickly caught in Dover, attempting to flee to France, and sent not back to Bethlem but to Newgate Prison for fourteen years. When arrangements were being made to move Bethlem from Moorfields to Southwark, the government requested that Bethlem establish special sections for female and male criminal lunatics; the governors of the Hospital agreed, and Hadfield was one of the first sent to the new building, in 1816. There he grew old, “grumbling and discontented,” clearly chafing under a lifetime of imprisonment, and petitioning repeatedly for release. He had renewed hopes for his freedom when Victoria came to the throne, and he asked her to recognize his sanity and his service to the nation and make him a Chelsea Pensioner. But it was Victoria’s pleasure, as it had been her grandfather’s and her uncles’, to detain him.
    By the time, then, that Oxford was disturbing the neighborhood and the lunatics, both criminal and non-criminal, with his pistol-shots, Hadfield was old, hopeless, and ill of tuberculosis, having “no desire to again mix with the world.”
    Within weeks, Oxford would meet the old man.
    For more than a month after buying his pistols, Oxford invariably spent the early part of his days at home, leaving the house in mid- or late afternoons, returning in the evening. His first destination was usually Lovett’s coffee shop on the London Road, two blocks away from West Square, between the obelisk at St. George’s Circus and the snarl of streets leading from Elephant and Castle. At Lovett’s, Oxford had access to London’s newspapers. He scanned the employment columns of the Morning Advertiser , apparently having not given up the possibility of seeking employment in yet another public house. He could follow the movements of the Queen, set out in the Court Circular, published in a number of newspapers. He also was able to follow the latest news, and therefore, with the rest of the nation, he must have been captivated by the breaking news of one of the most sensational murders to occur during Victoria’s reign.
    In the very early morning of 6 May 1840 (two days after Oxford bought his pistols), sounds of alarm burst out in the aristocratic neighborhood of 14 Norfolk Street, tucked between Park Lane and Park Street, within sight of the northeast corner of Hyde Park. It was the home of 72-year-old Lord William Russell, great-uncle of Lord John Russell, who was at the time the Colonial Secretary in Her Majesty’s government. Upon rising that morning, Lord Russell’s housemaid had discovered signs of disorder throughout the house. In the drawing room, Lord William’s writing desk had been smashed open. By the street door, several of his possessions were found wrapped in cloth. In the kitchen, drawers were forced open and plate was missing. The housemaid hurried to the attic to wake the cook, who, in turn, sent her to wake the valet, in the next room; she did so, oddly finding the man almost fully dressed. Housemaid and valet—a man by the name of François Benjamin Courvoisier—surveyed the kitchen, concluded that a burglary had occurred, and rushed upstairs to check upon their master. They discovered Russell’s corpse, his throat slit from ear to ear: his carotid artery and jugular vein severed. Russell’s right thumb, as well, was nearly cut away from the rest of his hand. Though his blood had not spurted widely, as might be expected with a wound of this kind, he had bled copiously: blood was pooled deeply around his head, and had dripped through in a puddle under the bed. The servants sent immediately for the police.
    While the scene pointed at first to a botched and somehow interrupted