The secret Melbourne life of Edward Oxford, Queen Victoria’s would-be assassin

Edward Oxford faced a sentence of being hung, drawn and quartered after taking aim at the Queen. Instead, he would spend years in an asylum — and then a remarkable new life in the heart of Melbourne society.

Edward Oxford as a young man (left), Queen Victoria, and John Freeman.

IN the prosperous 1880s when our city was known as “Marvellous Melbourne”, John Freeman was a pillar of society.

The boy from Birmingham had, by luck, chosen to resettle in a city that had become one of the richest in the world on the back of the Gold Rush.

Grasping that spirit of opportunity, John Freeman became a house painter, a church warden, a writer for The Argus newspaper, a loving husband and stepfather to two children.

In short, he was a model citizen.

But Freeman harboured a terrible secret about his double identity that he took to the grave.

Forty years earlier in London, a disturbed, gun-obsessed teenager then known as Edward Oxford had stepped out of a crowd and fired two pistols at the young Queen Victoria.

Oxford was the first of seven people to try to assassinate the Queen.

His secret double identity has only recently come to light, and is explored in today’s new episode of the free In Black and White podcast, available now.

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The strange tale of redemption is unravelled in Melbourne author Jenny Sinclair’s 2012 book A Walking Shadow: The Remarkable Double Life of Edward Oxford.

On the day of the shooting attempt, the newly married and pregnant queen was out for a carriage ride with her husband, Prince Albert, outside Buckingham Palace.

“Suddenly Edward Oxford stepped forward, pulled out one pistol from his coat, fired a shot, and in the commotion that followed, fired another shot,” Sinclair says.

“(There was) pandemonium. Prince Albert pulled Queen Victoria down to get her out of the way.

“Oxford actually stepped forward and said words to the effect of, ‘It was me, I did it,’ and he was then grabbed by everybody around him.”

Edward Oxford fired two shots at pregnant Queen Victoria as she sat in a carriage with Prince Albert outside Buckingham Palace in 1840. Picture: supplied

The 18-year-old had a violent father and a bad childhood, and had just lost his job in a pub, but he also had a desire for notoriety.

“He definitely wanted to be famous, he wanted to make his name, and the best way he could see of doing that was to attach it to the name of the queen,” Sinclair says.

A court found Oxford not guilty on the grounds of insanity, and he spent the next 27 years locked up in criminal asylums.

But Oxford was far from insane, and he eventually agreed to a deal to be released if he promised never to return to England.

Oxford fled to Melbourne, adopted the appropriate new name “Freeman” and started a new life as a dignified gentleman and published author.

Edward Oxford at the Old Bailey, 1840. Picture: State Library of Victoria.

The young Queen Victoria. Picture: National Portrait Gallery, London

“Someone who made a start as he did shooting at Queen Victoria, with a pretty violent childhood, you would expect to pretty much sink to the bottom of the pile … whereas once he got out to Melbourne, he made himself quite successful, quite respectable,” Sinclair says.

“And I was fascinated by how he did that and what it said about him as a person, but also about all of us as people, I guess, how you become what you are.”

One of the great mysteries surrounding Oxford was whether he ever intended to kill the queen, because no used bullets were ever found at the scene.

Jenny Sinclair answers this crucial question in the full interview, available today on the latest episode of the new free In Black and White podcast series.

And tune in to previous episodes on Black Elsie, the singer-turned-jailbird who forged a remarkable friendship with footy great Jack Dyer, and Big Chief Little Wolf, the Navajo wrestler and showman who wowed Australian crowds when he moved to Melbourne.