Chapter One

• Author: Richard D. Schneider
• Pages: 11-22

 

Cae Oe

   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 oce 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-