KILLING QUEEN VICTORIA: HOW (NOT) TO SHOOT A MONARCH

On a late spring evening in June, 1840, a young man could be seen loitering on a footpath at Constitution Hill, close to Buckingham Palace.

Edward Oxford: on a mission

His name was Edward Oxford, an unemployed waiter with an unhealthy obsession with guns and target practice.

Over the previous months, he’d spent a great deal of time at the shooting galleries in The Strand and Leicester Square. Now, he was hoping to put his skill to good use.

It was almost 6pm - the hour when the young Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were accustomed to take their evening drive through London. They did so in an open phaeton - a low carriage that was pulled by two horses.

The queen's evening ride

Edward Oxford had had made a study of their evening drives and knew they were rarely accompanied by anything more than two outriders. The queen presented an easy target for someone as proficient as Oxford.

Even more enticing - from his viewpoint - was that she was four months pregnant with her first child. If he succeeded in killing her, he stood a near certain chance of also killing her heir (assuming the child was a boy).

A week before the assassination attempt, Oxford had taken himself to a shop in Lambeth owned by a former school friend named Gray. He bought fifty copper percussion caps and asked Gray where he could buy bullets and gunpowder. Gray sold him powder and told him where he could get hold of ammunition.

Two shots ring out

At around 4pm on 10 June, Oxford took up position on Constitution Hill. After a long wait, he heard the sound of horses’ hooves. It was the queen and her husband: as expected, they were riding without guards.

As their phaeton swung passed Oxford’s hiding-place, he lunged forwards and fired both pistols in rapid succession. It was not immediately clear if the queen had been hit, for the carriage rattled off down Constitution Hill. Horrified onlookers dragged Oxford to the ground and pulled the weapons from his hands.

He made no effort to struggle and nor did he attempt to hide his attempt on the queen’s life.

‘It was I, it was me that did it,’ he said, somewhat incoherently.

Absolute chaos as the queen rides away

He was arrested that evening and charged with treason. Once in custody, he asked the police if the queen was injured. He was informed she was unharmed.

The police now began to interrogate him, and soon found him to be unusually compliant. In fact, he appeared happy to tell them everything.

He admitted that his pistols had been loaded; he also gave them his home address so they could search the place. They found a locked casket containing a sword and scabbard, two pistol-bags, powder, a bullet mould, five lead balls, some of the percussion caps.

They also found details of a dangerous  underground military society called Young England, complete with a list of officers serving in this clandestine organization.

Each member was said to be armed with a brace of pistols, a sword, rifle and dagger. The police even unearthed correspondence between Oxford and his fellow members.

But once they set to investigate Young England more closely, it was found to exist only in Oxford’s imagination. The entire society, its members and its rules were all invented.

Oxford’s Old Bailey trial was postponed for almost a month as police undertook a thorough investigation of his motives. They also searched the crime scene, but were unable to find the bullets that Oxford said he’d fired.

An early policeman, c 1840

Now, he dramatically changed his story, saying that the guns had contained only gunpowder.

When the trial finally opened amidst huge publicity, Oxford seemed completely detached. Witness after witness testified that he came from long line of alcoholics with a tendency towards mental instability. Oxford certainly seemed to fit the family mould - a deranged individual with an eccentric streak.

The jury acquitted him, declaring him not guilty on the ground of insanity. The queen was furious, but there was nothing she could do. She did, however, have the satisfaction of seeing him sentenced to be detained ‘until Her Majesty’s pleasure be known.’

Oxford spent the next 24 years in the Lunatic Asylum of Bethlem, South London. He was a model prisoner: courteous, friendly and obliging. He taught himself French, German and Italian, along with Spanish, Greek and Latin. He also spent his time drawing, reading and playing the violin, and was later employed as a painter and decorator within the asylum.

In 1864, he was transferred to Broadmoor, by which time it was clear he was a danger to no one - not even himself. He admitted that he’d never wanted to kill the queen; rather, he'd wanted to secure notoriety for himself.

The young queen

He was finally released in 1867, on condition that he leave for one of the Empire's overseas colonies and never return.

He agreed and was shipped to Melbourne, where he married a widow with two children and became a respectable warden at his local church. He died a virtuous citizen, his youthful act of terror all but forgotten.

But one person could never forgive him for what he’d done: Queen Victoria was absolutely furious that he hadn’t been hanged.

When, in 1882, a second assassin, Roderick McLean, attempted to shoot her, she ridiculed the idea that men could escape the death penalty by pleading insanity.

In her eyes, all who lifted a finger against her - even if mad - should be executed. 

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TARGET AMERICA: THE MOST DARING NAZI PLOT OF WORLD WAR TWO

The men were landed under the cover of darkness - four Nazi saboteurs specially trained in the use of explosives against civilian targets.

Dasch: the leader

Their task was to undertake a series of daring strikes on America’s infrastructure, blowing up railroad bridges, power stations and tunnels. The aim was to paralyze industrial facilities that were vital to the American war effort.

Hitler himself had dreamed up the plan to destroy America from within: according to Albert Speer, he was obsessed with the idea of ‘the downfall of New York in towers of flames.’ 

Hitler's great idea: sabotage America

But Operation Pastorius was to run into trouble from the very outset and it was to have an ending that no one could have foreseen, least of all Hitler.

The operation began in the small hours of 13 June, 1942, when the German submarine, U-202, managed to land four Nazi saboteurs at the village of Amagansett on Long Island.

They were led by George Dasch, a 39-year-old saboteur who had been supplied with enough explosives, primers and incendiary devices to support a two-year terror campaign across the United States.

His three accomplices were Ernst Burger, an American citizen, Richard Quirine and Heinrich Heinck.

U-202: landed in America

A second party (of four men) was successfully landed at Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, four days later. They, too, landed with large quantities of explosives.

All had been specially trained for the mission. In the spring of 1942, they’d been sent on a three-week course at Gut Quenzsee, near Berlin, where military experts taught them how to use explosives, timed detonators and hand grenades.

Their American mission got off to a shaky start. George Dasch and his party almost drowned during their effort to get ashore in an inflatable raft on the night of 13 June.

The U-boat that had brought them to the American coastline also got into difficulties. It ran aground on a sand bank in shallow water less than 200 meters from the shore. It was only thanks to the skill and daring of the commander, Captain Hans-Heinz Lindner, that the submarine was manoeuvred off the sand bank before the first light of day broke through the sky.

I want to be in America: Amagansett beach

The four saboteurs eventually made it to the beach, where they buried their stash of explosives amidst the sand dunes. They were spotted by an American Coast Guardsman named John Cullen, whose suspicions increased when he glimpsed the Nazi U-boat off-shore.

The saboteurs pretended to be a fisherman and gave Cullen $260 as 'hush money' before heading inland. 
But Cullen informed his comrades and they instigated a search of the beach. They soon found four large crates of explosives that had been buried in the sand.

They also alerted the FBI, who launched a desperate search for the four suspected (and highly dangerous) would-be terrorists. 

Dasch and his comrades had meanwhile boarded a train to New York. Their hope was to start the terror campaign as soon as possible.

The eight accused

Shortly after their arrival in Manhattan, Dasch headed to Washington, where he dramatically turned himself in to the FBI, claiming to have become suddenly disenchanted with the Nazi terror plot against America. 

He was initially dismissed as a madman suffering from some sort of psychological disorder. It was only when he produced the mission’s budget of $84,000 (the Florida saboteurs had also been supplied with $84,000) that he was taken seriously. Interrogated for hours, he showed FBI agents the tissues on which he had written down his targets in invisible ink.

The trial of the men

Using the information he supplied, FBI agents soon rounded up his two fellow saboteurs in New York (the third, Ernst Burger, had also turned himself in). Shortly afterwards, they also arrested the four Nazis who had landed in Florida.

All eight men were put on trial before a military tribunal, on the orders of President Roosevelt. They were charged with violating the law of war and conspiracy to commit sabotage.

All eight were found guilty and sentenced to death. But Roosevelt commuted Burger’s sentence to life imprisonment and Dasch to 30 years, on the grounds that both men had turned themselves in.

On August 8, 1942, the careers of six of Hitler’s saboteurs came to an abrupt end in the electric chair of the District of Columbia jail.

Dasch and Burger fared rather better. In 1948, President Truman granted them clemency on condition that they be deported to the American Zone of occupied Germany. Dasch eventually died in 1992.

With hindsight, the men who took part in Operation Pastorius were probably too amateur to have been able to successfully undertake their mission to terrorize America.

Hitler's dream: terrorism

Edward Kerling, leader of the team in Florida, reportedly told an American friend about his secret mission. And Herbert Haupt, a member of his team, took time out to visit his Chicago-based father and ask him to buy him a black Pontiac sports car.

Hitler was disappointed with the failure of Operation Pastorius. He still harboured dreams of destroying America with sabotage and secret weapons and took keen interest in the development of the so-called ‘Amerika rocket’.

But the war was already over by the time such long-range weapons were nearing the production stage. 

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BY BALLOON TO THE NORTH POLE: THE DOOMED EXPEDITION OF 1897

At exactly 2.30pm on 11 July, 1897, a gigantic silk balloon could be seen rising into the Arctic sky above Spitzbergen.

Inside the basket were three hardy adventurers, all Swedish, who were taking part in an extraordinary voyage.

The doomed balloon

Salomon Andrée was the instigator of the mission. Charismatic and confident, he managed to persuade Nils Strindberg and Knut Fraenkel to accompany him on his historic balloon flight over the North Pole.

Andrée was confident of success. His balloon, the Eagle, used advanced hydrogen technology and he had developed a complex steering system using drag ropes.

Salomon Andree

A disastrous test flight suggested that Andrée’s confidence was seriously misplaced. The much vaunted rope-steerage system had numerous glitches and hydrogen was found to be seeping out of the balloon’s eight million little stitching holes.

The expedition ought to have been abandoned before it even took off. But Andrée overruled all objections and the launch was scheduled for the second week of July.

The problems began within minutes of getting airborne. As the balloon drifted across the sea to the north of Spitzbergen, it was weighed down by the weight of the drag ropes - so much so that the balloon actually dipped into the water.

Almost airborne

Andree jettisoned 530 kilograms of ropes, along with 210 kilograms of ballast. This lightened the balloon so much that it now rose too high: the change in air pressure caused huge quantities of hydrogen to escape through the little stitching holes.

Andrée remained optimistic, releasing a carrier pigeon with the message ‘All well on board.’

This was far from true. The first ten hours of troubled flight were followed by 41 hours in which the balloon - soaked in a rainstorm - flew so low that it kept bumping into the frozen sea.

Knut Fraenkel

The Eagle eventually crash-landed onto the sea-ice some fifty hours after taking off from Spitzbergen. No one was hurt, but it was clear that the balloon would never fly again. The men were stranded, many miles from anywhere and lost amidst an Arctic wilderness.

They were well equipped with safety equipment, including guns, sleds, skis, a tent and a small boat. Yet returning to the relatively safety of Spitzbergen involved a gruelling march across shifting, melting ice.

Nils Strindberg

The men spent a week at the crash site before setting out on their long hike. They had a reasonable quantity of food - meat, sausages and pemmican - but found it impossible to transport so much weight across the rucked-up ice. Much of the food had to be abandoned: henceforth, they were to rely on hunting for their survival.

They left their makeshift camp on 22 July and initially headed for Franz Josef Land. But the ice soon became impassable so they headed instead towards the Seven Islands, a seven-week march, where there was known to be a depot of food.

Over the ice

The terrain was so gruelling that they were reduced to advancing on all fours. But they eventually reached a place where the sea-ice had melted sufficiently for them to use their collapsible boat.

‘Paradise!’ wrote Andrée in his diary. ‘Large even ice floes with pools of sweet drinking water and here and there a tender-fleshed young polar bear!’

Their passage soon became impassable once again, forcing them to change direction. Aware that winter would soon be upon them, they built a hut upon an ice floe. But the ice broke up beneath them and they were lucky to struggle ashore onto desolate Kvitoya island.

Supper: polar bear

‘Morale remains good’, reported Andrée. ‘With such comrades as these, one ought to be able to manage under practically any circumstances whatsoever.’

It was the last coherent message he ever wrote. Within a few days, all three men were dead.

Their fate was to become one of the great mysteries of Arctic exploration.

What happened to them? They had shelter, food and ammunition and ought to have been able to keep themselves alive. In the absence of any news, the world’s media began to speculate as to what had happened.

Nils with sledge

It was not until 1930 - fully 33 years after the men were lost - that their remains were finally found. Far from answering questions, the discovery of their bodies only deepened the mystery.

The most plausible theory is that the men died of trichinosis, contracted after eating undercooked polar bear meat. They certainly had the symptoms of the disease and larvae of the trichinella parasite were found in a polar bear carcass at the site. But recent scientific evidence has thrown doubt on this conjecture.

Other suggestions include vitamin A poisoning from eating polar bear liver, lead poisoning from the food cans or carbon dioxide poisoning from their primus stove.

Their diary entries reveal that by the time they struggled ashore they were living off scanty quantities of canned goods from the balloon stores, along with portions of half-cooked polar bear meat.

They were suffering from foot pains and debilitating diarrhoea and were constantly cold and exhausted. Indeed they were so weary on their arrival at Kvitøya Island that they left much of their valuable equipment down by the water's edge.

Remains: 1930.

Nils Strindberg, the youngest, was the first to die. His corpse was found wedged into a crack in the cliff. Analysis of his clothing suggests he was killed by a polar bear.

The other two men seem to have weakened dramatically in the days that followed Strindberg’s death. As the Arctic winter struck in earnest, they lost the will to live.

It will never be known how many days they survived in their makeshift Arctic shack. By the time they were eventually found, all that remained was their diaries, a few spools of film (now developed) and a heap of bleached bones. 

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FIGHT OF THE CENTURY: BLACK VERSUS WHITE IN THE AMERICAN BOXING RING

It was a swelteringly hot afternoon. The mercury had risen above 110 Fahrenheit and there was not a whisper of wind.

But the heat inside the boxing ring in Reno, Nevada, was nothing when compared to the fiery atmosphere in the country at large.

Jack Johnson: black America.

The fourth of July, 1910, was to witness one of the most infamous boxing bouts in history - one that pitched black against white in a forlorn and foolish bid to demonstrate white racial supremacy.

The two men in the ring were both undisputed champions. Jack Johnson, the black-skinned son of an ex-slave, had been named World Heavyweight Champion in 1908 after successfully knocking out the Canadian fighter, Tommy Burns.

His victory had caused such racial animosity among whites that boxing promoters began to search for a ‘Great White Hope’ to crush the black upstart.

James Jeffires: white America

The ‘Great White Hope’ they settled upon was the former undefeated heavyweight champion, James Jeffries. He was persuaded out of retirement to challenge Johnson.

He represented the best hope for a white boxer to knock black Johnson down to size. After all, he had retired undefeated and was famous for his extraordinary strength and stamina. A natural left-hander, he possessed one-punch knockout power in his left hook.

But there was one problem. He was seriously out of shape by the time it came to fight Johnson. He hadn’t fought for six years and was hugely overweight. He also had little interest in the overtly racist fight, being quite content with his new life as a farmer.

Publicity for the fight

He was finally tempted back into the ring by the offer of a staggering $120,000.

There was intense nationwide interest in the fight and racial tension increased dramatically in the days beforehand.

‘No ring contest ever drew such an attendance,’ noted the Los Angeles Herald, ‘and never before was so 
many thousands of dollars fought for or paid by the sport-loving public to
 see a fight.’

To prevent any violence in the arena, guns were prohibited, along with the sale of alcohol.

White-skinned Jeffries remained out of the limelight until the day of the fight, whereas Johnson did everything he could to court publicity. Confident he would win, he appeared for interviews and photo-shoots. He was a celebrity athlete before his time and his constant womanising (with white women) ensured that he was a regular feature in the gossip columns.

The fight: a great deal at stake.

The fight took place on 4 July in front of 20,000 people. It quickly became clear that Jeffries was incapable of imposing his will on the young black champion. Indeed Johnson dominated the fight and by the 15th round, Jeffries had suffered enough. To the horror of his white supporters, he threw in the towel.

Johnson showed no magnanimity in victory. ‘I won because I outclassed him in every department of the fighting game,’ he said. ‘Before I entered the ring, I was certain I would be the victor.’

The outcome triggered immediate race riots across the United States. Johnson's decisive victory left many hard-line white supporters feeling deeply humiliated.

Not looking good for Jeffries.

According to the Los Angeles Herald, ‘race rioting broke out like prickly heat all over the country between whites, angry and sore because Jeffries had lost
 the fight at Reno, and negroes, jubilant that Johnson had won.’

Blacks were jubilant; they hailed Johnson's victory as a victory for racial advancement.

In some cities, the police joined forces with furious white citizens in order to subdue the black revellers. There were murders, knife-fights and even running gun battles. In New York, Chicago and other cities, violence spread throughout the poorer areas.

In all, riots occurred in more than 25 states and 50 cities. There were thirteen certified deaths and hundreds more were injured, some seriously.

It's real hot today.

The film of the fight, ‘Fight of the Century’ caused almost as much controversy as the fight itself. Many states banned it from being screened.

Within three days of the clash, there was a huge white campaign to censor Jack Johnson's victory by ensuring the film would never be shown.

The would-be censors found heavyweight support in former President Roosevelt, an avid boxer. He wrote an article supporting the banning of the film.

Not until 2005 did the Library of Congress decree that the film was of such historic importance that it should be listed on the National Film Register.

Almost a century after one of the most infamous fights in boxing history, the clash between black and white has finally been granted its official place in history. 

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HIGH JUMP: THE STRANGE DEATH OF ALFRED LOEWENSTEIN, THE WORLD’S RICHEST MAN

In the early evening of 4 July, 1928, a fabulously wealthy businessman named Alfred Loewenstein boarded his private plane at Croydon Airport.

It was a routine flight that would take him across the English and French coastlines before landing at Brussels, where Loewenstein lived with his wife, Madeleine.

Into thin air: Loewenstein

Loewenstein was instantly recognisable to the staff at Croydon Airport. Indeed he was recognisable wherever he went. A spectacularly wealthy entrepreneur, he was widely known as the world’s richest man.

Already rich before the First World War, his fortune had increased dramatically in the peace that followed. His various companies provided electric power for developing countries: before long he was being sought out by heads of state around the globe.

But he also had many enemies. In 1926, he established International Holdings and Investments Ltd. that raised huge amounts of capital from wealthy investors. By 1928, these investors wanted some return on their money.

The plane: a Fokker

Loewenstein was pleased to be flying home on that July day in 1928. It was a fine evening for flying with scarcely a cloud in the sky. The pilot, Donald Drew, was able to assure him that it would be a smooth flight.

It was to prove smooth for everyone except Alfred Loewenstein himself. He was to vanish in mid-flight and mid-air, one of the strangest disappearing acts in history.

Suicide? Murder? Or unexplained mystery? Some 85 years after Loewenstein’s disappearance, the jury is still undecided.

There were a total of six people on that ill-fated flight in addition to Loewenstein himself.

The pilot, Donald Drew, stood by the doorway of the plane as the passengers boarded. He was joined in the cockpit by Robert Little, the mechanic. The cockpit was a sealed unit with no connecting door to the rest of the plane. Once the Fokker had taken off, Drew and Little had no access to the cabin.

The other people on board included Fred Baxter, Loewenstein’s loyal valet, who accompanied him everywhere, and Arthur Hodgson, his male secretary. There were also two women, Eileen Clarke and Paula Bidalon, his stenographers.

Loewenstein : frequent flyer

Shortly after 6pm, the Fokker FVII, a small monoplane, set off down the grass runway. Within minutes the plane was airborne and climbing to its cruising altitude of 4,000 feet.

Before long, everyone on board could see the Kent coastline below. A minute or so later, they were flying over the English Channel.

At the rear of the Fokker’s cabin there was a windowless door that led into a small toilet. This room also had an exterior door - the only means of entrance and exit to the plane.

The door was clearly marked EXIT and was equipped with a spring-loaded latch controlled from inside. It took two strong men to open in mid-air, due to the slipstream pressing against it.

Loewenstein spent the first half of the flight making notes. Then, as the plane headed out over the Channel, he went to the toilet compartment at the rear.

According to statements later made by Baxter, his valet, ten minutes passed and he had still not returned to his seat. Baxter grew concerned and knocked on the toilet door. There was no answer.

Croydon Airport, circa 1920s

Worried that Loewenstein might have been taken ill, he forced open the door. The toilet was empty. Alfred Lowenstein had disappeared into thin air.

An obvious course of action would have been for the plane to divert to St. Inglevert airstrip which lay between Calais and Dunkirk. Here, they could alert the coastguard to Loewenstein’s disappearance.

Instead, the pilot landed on what he believed to be a deserted beach near Dunkirk.

In actual fact, the beach was being used by a local army unit. When they saw the plane landing, they rushed to meet it.

It nevertheless took them six crucial minutes to arrive at the stationary plane. By that time, both passengers and crew were standing on the sand.

The cabin: how they were seated

They were questioned by Lieutenant Marquailles. Pilot Donald Drew behaved strangely, evading his questions for half an hour until admitting that they’d lost Alfred Loewenstein somewhere over the English Channel.

Next to question the pilot was a professional detective, Inspector Bonnot. He was puzzled by what he was told.

‘A most unusual and mysterious case,’ he said. ‘We have not yet made up our minds to any definite theory, but anything is possible.’

He arrested no one and even allowed the plane to continue its flight to St Inglevert and thence back to Croydon.

A long way down: the Kent coast

The ensuing investigation was bungled from the outset. Loewenstein’s body was finally retrieved near Boulogne on 19 July, more than two weeks after his disappearance. It was taken to Calais by fishing boat where his identity was confirmed by means of his wristwatch.

An autopsy revealed he had a partial fracture of his skull and several broken bones. Forensic scientists concluded that he had been alive when he hit the water.

The mystery of how he fell to his death remained unanswered, though there were many theories.

Some said the absent-minded Loewenstein had accidentally opened the wrong door and fallen to his death. This was most unlikely, given that it was virtually impossible to open the cabin door in mid-flight.

Others said he’d committed suicide, perhaps because his corrupt business practices were about to be exposed.

France: it's over there...

A far more plausible (and sinister) explanation is that Loewenstein was forcibly thrown out of the plane by the valet and the male secretary, possibly at the behest of Loewestein’s wife, Madeleine. She had a very frosty relationship with her husband and was desperate to get her hands on his fortune.

One thing is clear: all six people on board were almost certainly privy to the murder. Indeed, they had almost certainly planned it carefully in advance.

One theory as to why the Fokker landed on the beach was in order that a new rear door - already stowed on board the plane - could be fitted to replace the one jettisoned over the Channel.

Buried in an unmarked tomb

This fits neatly the story of a French fisherman who recalled seeing something like a parachute falling from the sky at precisely the moment Loewenstein went missing. This ‘parachute’ was almost certainly the rear door.

If the door and Loewenstein were jettisoned over the Channel, it was the perfect crime. No one was ever charged for the murder, nor even directly accused.

As for Loewenstein, he was so unpopular that when he was finally laid to rest, it was in an unmarked grave.

Even his ‘grieving’ widow, Madeleine, didn’t show up. She doubtless had more important matters to attend to, organising and investing the fortune she’d just inherited.

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‘Giles Milton has a rare ability – a talent for sifting fine pearls from faraway sands and for transmuting the merely arcane into little literary gems.’  Simon Winchester

Enjoy the blog post? You may like to read my books: I have written eight works of popular history, all  available in print format and kindle. 

For my British readers, please click here. For my American readers, please click here. Books also available in 18 foreign languages.