Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner, Ian A Biddell.
March 2nd, 1882: Roderick Maclean made an attempt to assassinate Queen Victoria, as she was leaving Windsor railway station. He stepped forward from the cheering crowd and fired a pistol into her carriage.
Before a second shot could be fired, an Eton schoolboy named Gordon Chesney Wilson hit him several times with his umberlla before 2 rugby players tackled and beat him sorely. Maclean was then arrested by Superintendent Hayes.
This was the last of eight attempts by separate people to kill or assault Victoria over a period of four decades.
Tried for high treason on 20 April, the Scotsman was found “not guilty, but insane” by a jury after five minutes’ deliberation, overseen by Lord Chief Justice Coleridge. and he lived out his remaining days in Broadmoor Asylum, dying there on June 8th, 1921.
The verdict prompted the Queen to ask for a change in English law so that those implicated in cases with similar outcomes would be considered as “guilty, but insane”; this led to the Trial of Lunatics Act 1883.
Gordon Wilson, the Eton schoolboy hero who prevented further shots being fired was summoned to the castle to be officially thanked and later awarded an MVO* for his prompt action in confronting a gunman armed only with an umberella.
Elevated in society and a regular guest at the Palace, Gordon Wilson later courted and married Lady Sarah Spencer-Churchill, aunt of Winston Churchill our famous wartime Prime Minister.
As Lt.-Col. Gordon Chesney Wilson, he was aide-de-camp to Col. Robert Baden-Powell, the commanding officer at Mafeking.
(Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner, Ian A Biddell.)
* MVO refers to the Royal Victorian Order, a dynastic order of knighthood established by Queen Victoria. It recognises distinguished personal service to the monarch.