Shooting Victoria by Paul Thomas Murphy Read Free Book Online Page B

he methodically shut off every gas jet in the house, plunging the crowded pub into complete darkness. “He could not account why he did so,” she claimed. “I was obligated to come down from a sick bed, at the risk of my life, to soothe him.” The King’s Head closed eleven months after Oxford’s arrival.
    Oxford then—without his aunt’s reference, she later made clear—sought employment in London, and worked for the next three years in three public houses, located ever closer to the heart of the metropolis: first, the Shepherd and Flock, on Marylebone High Street, then the Hat and Feathers, in Camberwell, and finally at the Hog in the Pound, at the intersection of Oxford and Bond Streets. He held the position of barman at these pubs, and, not surprisingly for someone who created the rank-obsessive organization of Young England, he was obsessive about his place in the public house hierarchy: as he would later protest, not a lowly potboy, but the man who drew pints, poured spirits, and oversaw the till. As a barman, he earned something around £20 a year, or approximately eight shillings a week. That pay would put him on a level with the poorest of the poor as described by social investigator Henry Mayhew in his revelatory London Labour and the London Poor . But of course Oxford had one great advantage over the street-folk described in that work: free room and board. His wages, then, were not terrible—but would never give him the wealth or independence that befitted a Captain of Young England.
    Edward Oxford’s London employers generally considered him a capable and efficient worker, though they, as well as their employees and customers, could not help but be baffled and disconcerted by hiseccentric behavior. The inexplicable, maniacal laughter continued. He would fall into deep self-absorbed trances, spells of heated internal dialogue, activity visible to onlookers only in the resultant bursts of heightened emotion. A reporter at the Morning Chronicle described one such episode, at the Shepherd and Flock:
    When not engaged in his business and while sitting down in front of the bar he has been observed by Mr. Minton and the barmaid, a respectable young woman named Evans, to be for a few minutes absorbed in deep thought, and, then, without any apparent cause he would burst into tears, and conceal his face with his hands, when on being spoken to and asked what had affected him, he would stare at the inquirer, and, suddenly starting up, give way to a fit of laughter, and proceed with his employment as usual.
    Mary Ann Forman, a barwoman at the Shepherd and Flock, recalled his “strange ways”: “laughing and crying when he made a mistake, and then he hardly knew what he was about.” John Tedman, an Inspector with the Metropolitan Police and a regular at the Shepherd and Flock, often came upon the boy crying, laughing hysterically for no reason, or sullenly silent, and noted as well his propensity for violence. He concluded quite simply that Oxford was an idiot and persuaded Mr. Minton, landlord of the Shepherd and Flock, to turn him away. Oxford moved on from the Shepherd and Flock to another pub, the Hat and Feathers, taking one great prize with him: to his fortune, Mrs. Minton had died while he was there, and in accordance with the custom of the day, Mr. Minton purchased full mourning dress for all of his employees; Oxford thus had a suit of clothing that suggested a respectability above his station.
    Trouble seemed to follow him; he tended to work for a few months at each place, impressing upon customers and co-workersalike his oddities. His employment at the Hat and Feathers lasted six months. From there, Oxford moved to the Hog in the Pound on Oxford Street. Mr. Robinson, the landlord there, had to let him go after a single quarter. “I gave him warning because he was always laughing,” Robinson claimed. “When I reprimanded him for it he still kept