Chapter One
Author | Richard D. Schneider |
Pages | 11-22 |
Cae Oe
Daniel M’Naughten for “a most determined at-
tempt to assassinate the private secretary of Sir Robert Peel in the
open street, and in the broad face of day,” as e Times put it, might
have seemed straightforward enough. At about : on the afternoon
of January , , Edward Drummond had left the prime minister’s
Downing Street oce in the company of the Earl of Haddington, the
First Lord of the Admiralty, a staunch member of Peel’s cabinet and a
close personal friend of Drummond’s since the s when both men
had served under Prime Minister George Canning. ey proceeded
together up Whitehall to Haddington’s residence at the Admiralty,
Drummond bidding his colleague farewell and continuing up White-
hall to Drummond’s Bank on Charing Cross Road. One of England’s
leading nancial institutions (many of the royal family’s accounts had
been kept there since the time of George III), the bank had been
founded by Edward Drummond’s grandfather.
After a short visit with his older brother, Charles, who was a part-
ner at the bank, Drummond headed back to his apartment on Down-
ing Street at about four o’clock. He was partway between the Horse
Guards and the Admiralty when a man approached him from behind,
drew a pistol from inside his jacket, and “putting the muzzle into the
back of the unsuspecting gentleman,” then red.
Immediately after the pistol was discharged, a policeman, who had
witnessed the act, rushed up to the criminal. In the meantime, the
gunman returned the recently-red pistol to his jacket, then drew an-
other loaded pistol and was in the act of pointing it at Drummond
when the policeman seized him and pinioned his arms from behind.
e pistol was discharged, but “the aim of the assassin being thus di-
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