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Erotomania and Queen Victoria: or love among the assassins?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Trevor Turner
Trevor Turner*
Affiliation:
Community Psychiatry Research Unit, Hackney Hospital, London E9 6BE
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The issue of crime and insanity in Victorian Britain is dominated by the 1843 case of Daniel McNaughton. Hounded by paranoid delusions, about which he was relatively unforthcoming despite detailed questioning, he succeeded in shooting Henry Drummond, private secretary to the Prime Minister, Robert Peel. Thinking that it was Peel himself he had shot, McNaughton is quoted by the arresting policeman as stating “he shall break my peace of mind no longer”. The furore over his trial and non-execution filtered down the century, via the McNaughton rules. Daniel himself mouldered in Bethlem and Broadmoor for the rest of his days (West & Walk, 1977, esp. p. 93). But much more prevalent in the public's eye were the seven (at least) serious assaults on the Queen. Not only did they bring about a new criminal charge (vide infra) – but their recurrence tended to promote pro-royalist sympathies as well as pro-custodial attitudes towards “the insane”.

Type
Sketches from the history of psychiatry
Information
Psychiatric Bulletin , Volume 14 , Issue 4 , April 1990 , pp. 224 - 227
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1989

References

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Note. The Casebooks of Ticehurst House are in the library of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 183 Euston Road, London NW1.Google Scholar
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