The King, the Assassin, and the Wax Woman.
The first day of Ascot, 19 June 1832, was a
dull damp day as King William IV and Queen Adelaide drove down the race course
in their carriage procession to watch the races from the Royal Stand. As the
King got out of his carriage the military band struck up the National Anthem and
he ascended the steps to the Royal Box as fast as his portly 66-year-old body
would let him. The usual enthusiastic welcome was subdued and looking around he
could see few of the familiar faces of his Lords with their ladies who usually
attended. He was puzzled at first until he remembered that he had signed into
law the Great Reform Act twelve days earlier. This Act, so long resisted by the House of
Lords, reformed the electoral procedure, making the election of Members of
Parliament a fair representation of the people. Was the poor attendance at
Ascot a sign of disapproval of the King or just in response to the poor
weather? Whatever the reason that day would be remembered for its violent turn
of events.
The would-be assassin was set upon and handed over to Bow-street officers (the police force at the time) who removed him to the magistrate’s room under the stand. When news of the attack permeated through the crowd they pushed forward towards the foot of the royal stand and their horror turned to relief when just minutes later the King made an appearance to show he was unharmed. The sight of such a large crowd bursting into elated cheers of relief moved the King to tears.
The perpetrator, now a subdued wretch awaiting his fate, was examined by the magistrates. He admitted the offence and insisted he had no accomplices. Witnesses, including some from the Royal party, gave evidence after which the Magistrates concluded this was an assassination attempt and therefore High Treason. He was sent to prison at Abingdon.
Dennis Collins by Thomas Fairland, 1842 NPG D34047.
National Portrait Gallery.Meanwhile the King, now fully recovered,
and the Queen, stayed watching the racing until nearly six o’clock in the
evening. In contrast to their arrival when they departed from the royal stand they
left to a crescendo of enthusiastic cheers from all classes. The event caused a
wave of public affection for the King after months of division during the long
political wrangling before the passing of the Reform Bill.[1]
Although at the time the incident was
regarded as a highly treasonable assassination attempt, subsequently historians
have dismissed it as a minor stone-throwing incident caused by discontent over
the Reform Bill, but it was more than that. It was a cry for help.
The would-be assassin, Dennis Collins was
put on trial at Abingdon, on Wednesday, the 22nd of August. He was charged on
several counts with assaulting his Majesty, with intent to kill and murder him,
with intent to maim and disable him, and with intent to do him some grievous bodily
harm. Prior to the trial there was a debate about his sanity and he himself
said twice in his lifetime he had been confined as a lunatic, but he believed
he suffered from a “hot and irritable temper” caused by the injustice he met
from authority.[2] Any suspicions about his state of mind were
dispelled at his trial when he appeared dressed smartly and with a new wooden
leg made for the occasion. In his defence the prisoner, clearly more
intelligent than his initial appearance suggested, made a compelling speech in
his own defence to the Court:
"I own myself in a great fault for
throwing these stones at his Majesty. I was in Greenwich Hospital on the 16th
of December last, as an in-pensioner. I had been there eighteen months. The
ward-keeper was sweeping the place, and I told him he had no business to sweep
it more than once a day; the boatswain's mate abused me, and I returned it. A
complaint was then made to Sir Richard Keats (the Governor), and I was expelled
for life. I petitioned to the Lords of the Admiralty to have the pension which
I had before I went into the hospital restored to me. I am entitled to that
pension by an Act passed in the reign of George IV. which entitles a pensioner
to have the same pension which he had before he became an in-pensioner, unless
he struck an officer, or committed felony, or did anything of the kind, which I
did no such thing. On the 19th of last April I petitioned the King to have my
pension restored. He answered by sending the petition to the Lords of the
Admiralty, and Mr Barrow, the secretary, sent a letter to me at a public-house,
the Admiral Duncan, with the same answer the King gave. The answer was that his
Majesty could do nothing for me. This was partly in writing and partly in
print. I had neither workhouse nor overseer to apply to, and had not broke my
fast for three days; mere distress drove me to it. His Majesty never did me an
injury, and I am exceedingly sorry I threw a stone or anything else at his
Majesty. On the 17th of the present month I went to Admiral Rowley's; he swore
at me and kicked me. I can only say I am very sorry for what I have done, and
must suffer the law. They had no right to take my pension from me, to which I
was entitled by Act of Parliament."[3]
Dennis Collins, an Irish-born sailor, was
57 years old. He volunteered for the Navy In 1797 and served for just over two
years before he lost his left leg in an accident whilst stowing the booms on
HMS Atalanta. He then became a cook on several Royal Navy ships. He received a
pension of £8 a year after losing his leg which was later increased to £14
year. He had been admitted to the Greenwich Hospital on five separate
occasions, each time exhibiting unruly behaviour and being asked to leave. Since
December 1831 he had been begging and now desperate and with no means of
support he felt he had no hope and he might as well be shot or hanged. He made
the long walk from London to Ascot to make a final protest to the King and let
the authorities end his misery.
The Court heard his admission of being guilty
of stone-throwing, and the extenuating circumstances, but as Judge Bosanquet
told the jury, they had to decide if the act of throwing the stone was aimed at
the King with the intention to cause injury, or whether the stone had accidentally
caused injury. The jury returned a guilty verdict of intention to do harm to
the King, a highly treasonable offence; the highest crime in the land. The whole
Court was packed for the jury’s verdict. There was a collective shocked
silence, with many people sympathetic to the prisoner’s plight, as the Judge placed
the black cap on his head and said: “Dennis Collins you have been convicted
after attentive consideration of your case, of the crime of High Treason, in
devising and attempting to do some bodily harm to the person of your King and
in lifting up your hand against your Sovereign, you have destroyed that bond of
allegiance which binds the King to protect the subject, and the subject to obey
the King; and it now becomes my painful duty to pronounce upon you the sentences
of the law. It is not for my learned brother who sits by my side, and myself,
to offer any prospect of remission by us of the sentence which the law passes
upon you. You have stated that you are sorry for the offence you have
committed; if so, you can only prove your sincere contrition and repentance to your
Sovereign, who you have injured; it is to him alone you can apply and in him
alone rests the power of sparing your forfeited life. The sentence of the Court
upon you, Dennis Collins is, that you be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution,
where you are to be hanged by the neck until you are dead; your head is then to
be severed from your body, which is to be divided into quarters, and to be
disposed of as his Majesty shall think fit”. [4]
The prisoner betrayed no emotion as the sentence was announced. His greatest
fear was that he would be acquitted. He had already said that “If my Priest
would give me the Sacrament today I would a great deal be executed tomorrow
than turned out into the world to undergo all the misery and starvation that I
went through for six months before this happened.”[5]
The jurors, before leaving the court, drew up a petition to the King for clemency
for the prisoner.
Most of the newspapers reported the trial
in great detail, and there was national sympathy for Dennis Collins’
circumstances and a wish for his sentence to be commuted. The trial followed an
inquiry into the circumstances of his expulsion from the Greenwich Hospital which
exonerated the Governor after Collins was found to have been a rebellious
inmate. Nevertheless the public were appalled by his death sentence, and for
several days the newspapers were calling for commutation, which the King, a
former sailor himself, commuted ten days later to a sentence of transportation
for life. Dennis Collins was kept on a prison hulk on the Thames until he was
put aboard the Emperor Alexander which
left Sheerness on April 10 1833 arriving at Sullivan’s Cove, Van Diemen’s Land
(Tasmania) four months later.
This was not the end of the story. Whilst
awaiting trial Collins had been visited by a French lady who had purchased from
him all his old clothes, including his wooden leg, and who had replaced them
with a set of new clothes which he wore at his trial. By the end of September
an advertisement appeared in the Hampshire Advertiser, that an exhibition was
to be held at the Royal Victoria Archery Rooms, Southampton for a fortnight
only where, for one shilling, visitors could promenade around a display of
life-like figures of well-known persons. Among the new figures would be a
full-length one of Dennis Collins, taken from life, “inhabited in the identical
dress he had on when he made the atrocious attempt on his Majesty’s life.”[6]
The French woman who had visited Collins in prison was Madame Tussaud who with
her sons made wax figures of famous and infamous people for public
entertainment.
Madame Tussaud was not the only one to cash
in on the notoriety of Dennis Collins. A publisher in Fleet Street was offering
whole-length lithographic prints of Dennis Collins from a drawing by W.W. Waite
for one shilling and six pence. W.W. Waite was a well-known Abingdon artist.
This image was used in a publication detailing the life and trial of Dennis
Collins as told to his solicitor. Even
the Judge, Sir John Bernard Bosanquet, cashed in on the public interest in this
trial by publishing his own account of the trial. Music hall comedians joked,
“Dennis Collins was asked last week how near he was to the King at Ascot –
‘Within a stone’s throw’, he replied”. Poems were written about him, and for a
while there was widespread public interest in his story, but Collins would not
know about his notoriety. His imprisonment and transportation isolated him from
all of it.
On arrival in Tasmania he was put to work
on a chain gang in Port Arthur, a penal colony where the hardest criminals were
sent. He wore leg irons and was made to do hard labour in harsh conditions.
His behaviour did not improve and he was often punished by being put in
solitary confinement. Two weeks after his last solitary confinement, on 1
November 1833, he died and was buried in the Wesleyan Churchyard at Port
Arthur.[7]
He had become a household name, but he was
not around to know that. He had got his wish. As a felon he no longer had to go
hungry or beg for shelter, but his life was still a misery.
Although the Dennis Collins story has
disappeared from history books, it had unexpected consequences. The King, whose
dithering earlier in the year over the government crisis had made him
unpopular, was now reconciled in the public eye. The shock of knowing that the
King might have died gave many members of government a jolt. They suddenly
realised that if he died before the Princess Victoria came of age her Mother,
the formidable Duchess of Kent, would become Regent, a situation nobody
relished, so the monarch’s safety became an important issue.
Madame Tussaud’s astute opportunist
purchase of Dennis Collin’s clothes enhanced her waxwork exhibition by tapping
into the public’s curiosity about notorious figures. However she might not have
foreseen that by giving Collins new clothes to wear at his trial, the public
perception of the mariner changed. He was seen as no longer a villain but a
character who needed sympathy.
[1] Cawthorne, George
James; Herod, Richard S., Royal Ascot:
Its History and its Associations, (London, 1902)
[2] Morning Advertiser - Saturday 25
August 1832
[3] Griffiths, Arthur, The Chronicles of Newgate, (London, 1884). The Ex-classics website, https://www.exclassics.com/newgate/ng612.htm
[4] Saunders's News-Letter - Monday
27 August 1832
[5] Morning Advertiser - Saturday 25
August 1832
[6] Hampshire Advertiser - Saturday
29 September 1832
[7] National Maritime Museum of Ireland, https://www.mariner.ie/dennis-collins/
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