| Description | Manuscript volume [19th century], 'A memento of Margaret Nicholson and her attempted assassination of King George III', comprising printed poems and text, inserted manuscript letters, cartoons, engravings, etc, and including two autograph letters of the King, two autograph petitions of Margaret Nicholson from Bedlam, an account of the attempted assassination, and a facsimile of Shelley and Hogg's 'Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson'. |
| AdminHistory | Margaret Nicholson: daughter of a barber of Stockton-on-Tees, Durham; housemaid in three or more families; deserted by her lover, a valet, around the time of leaving her last position; lodged in the house of a stationer in Marylebone for about three years, supporting herself by taking in needlework; aged about 36, sent a petition to the Privy Council concerning usurpers and pretenders to the throne, Jul 1786; standing with a crowd at the garden entrance to St James's Palace to see the King arrive from Windsor, presented him with a paper as he alighted from his carriage, and at the same time attempted unsuccessfully to stab him, Aug 1786; at her second blow a royal attendant took the knife from her; immediately examined by the Privy Council, but a doctor declined to diagnose insanity at once; letters expressing a belief of her entitlement to the throne were found at her lodgings; again brought before the Privy Council, she was declared insane by two physicians and committed to the Bedlam Hospital; Percy Bysshe Shelley and Thomas Jefferson Hogg, then undergraduates at Oxford, published a volume of burlesque verses, 'Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson, edited by her nephew, John FitzVictor' (Oxford, 1810); Nicholson remained in Bedlam until her death, 1828. |
| CustodialHistory | Part of the library of Charles Kay Ogden (1889-1957), linguistic psychologist, founder of the Orthological Institute and originator of the language system Basic English, whose interests in language systems are reflected in the subject matter of his collection, which comprised individual manuscripts and manuscript collections dating from the 14th to the 20th century. |