Queen Victoria 's would-be assassins all gave different reasons - but most did it for the Fame.
But that fame worked both ways - for them and for Victoria.
The attempts on her life and her response to them made Victoria better known and better liked. Victoria said, “It is worth being shot at, to see how much one is loved.”
It was a shot of much-needed good Public Relations for a throne whose previous monarchs had been unpopular.
None of the would-be assassins made it into the history books like John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln’s murderer.
All of them lived for many years after trying to kill the Queen. They came from nowhere, were in the public eye for a short time following their attempts, then disappeared back into obscurity.
Most of them pleaded insanity at their trials which helped to strengthen how future insanity pleas were legally prosecuted.
After the assassination attempt by Roderick MacLean in 1882 by firing a revolver at her in a train station, Victoria made sure the legal definition of insanity well defined.
Only one attempt on Victoria’s life actually injured her, and it was the only one not made with a gun.
In 1850, an ex-soldier named Robert Pate hit her over the head with an iron-tipped cane while she was in the courtyard of her home, leaving the Queen with a black eye, a welt and a scar.
However, she appeared two hours later in Covent Garden to prove that she was well and that her injury wouldn’t stop her from seeing her subjects.
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