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By Root 201 0

attention, and it was postponed until a thorough investigation had been made into both his background and his possible motives. Insanity was used as his defence. On Thursday 9th July, the Old Bailey was packed with those citizens fortunate enough to have obtained a ticket for admission. Oxford appeared largely oblivious to proceedings. The prosecution presented a large amount of witness evidence before various family members and friends testified that Oxford had always seemed of unsound mind, and that both his grandfather and father had exhibited signs of mental illness and were alcoholics. This was important to the Victorians, for whom both drink and hereditary influence were strong causal factors for insanity. His mother, in particular, told a sorry tale of domestic violence and intimidating behaviour from Oxford’s father, which was rich in detail and must have had quite an impact at the trial. Oxford himself, she said, had always cried without apparent cause, and been prone to fits of hysterical laughter. When she had worked in a shop he would annoy the customers by laughing or making strange noises, and had been obsessed with firearms since he was a child.

Oxford’s principal medical witnesses were Dr Thomas Hodgkin, who considered that he had a ‘lesion of the will’ – that he could not control his impulses – and Dr John Conolly, Head of the Hanwell Lunatic Asylum (now St Bernard’s Hospital, Ealing), who believed that Oxford had suffered a disease of the brain, as evidenced by the shape of his head. Conolly had asked Oxford why he shot at the Queen, and Oxford replied ‘Oh, I may as well shoot at her as any body else.’ The defence called other medics too - Dr William Dingle Chowne agreed that Oxford could not control his will; while Dr James Fernandez Clarke thought Oxford was a hysterical imbecile. All agreed that Oxford was of unsound mind.

These were significant names in Victorian medicine. Conolly was the man who had destroyed every form of restraint used at Hanwell and promoted a new ‘moral’ regime of mental health care through routine and responsibility. At the time of Oxford’s trial the controversy surrounding his new ideas was in full swing. Clarke was an acclaimed medical author and a major contributor to The Lancet, while Hodgkin was an eminent pathologist who gave his name to Hodgkin’s disease. Chowne was a respected manager at Charing Cross Hospital and a leading advocate of sanitary reform.

The next day, the jury returned to acquit Oxford on the grounds of insanity. He received the sentence of all such lunatics – to be detained until Her Majesty’s pleasure be known, effectively an indefinite sentence, and one which gave rise to the Broadmoor term of ‘pleasure men’.

Within weeks, Oxford had been removed to the State Criminal Lunatic Asylum at Bethlem, then in Southwark, to begin his sentence. Some notes from Bethlem were copied up into his Broadmoor case notes. The entry for 16th February 1854 stated that ‘No note has ever been made of this case, and no record kept of the state of his mind at the time of his admission, but from the statements of the attendants and those associated with him he appears to have conducted himself with great propriety at all times.’ Indeed, he seems to have become a model patient, industrious and studious. He spent much time drawing, reading and in study, learnt French, German and Italian to a standard of virtual fluency, while obtaining some knowledge of Spanish, Greek and Latin, as well as learning the violin. The Bethlem doctors also reported that he could play draughts and chess better than any other patient. He also became a painter and decorator, and was gainfully employed within the Hospital. Of his crime, the notes stated that ‘He now laments the act which probably originated in a feeling of excess vanity and a desire to become notorious if he could not be celebrated.’

Presumably his positive influence on the ward was missed by the Bethlem authorities when he was moved to Broadmoor on 30th April 1864, even if in general the London hospital was happy to be rid of the