Guy Fawkes' Day

Guy Fawkes' Day is the calendar marker for a London scene set on 5 November 1857. Its significance lies not only in locating that scene but in the book’s wider use of dates to separate events from later retellings: February and April 1872 mark the shooting and trial, January 1891 the documented first meeting of James Murray and William Chester Minor, and 1915 the rise of a popular but inaccurate account of that meeting.

The 1857 setting

The scene falls shortly after six on a November evening at a narrow terraced house on the north-west corner of St James's Square, in one of London's most fashionable districts. Around it stood town houses and private clubs occupied by bishops, peers, and Members of Parliament, alongside prominent shops, churches, offices, and foreign embassies. The address also housed the London research library, whose committee rented rooms to learned societies, expecting their members to share the library’s scholarly aims. The date therefore anchors the scene in a place where intellectual work sat within a markedly aristocratic social setting.

The book sets this evening against another November arrival nearly fifteen years later: William Chester Minor came to London on a wintry morning and lodged in Victoria, while the events associated with the St James's Square house began on a November evening. The contrast in time of day and quarter of the city helps introduce two strands of the book’s story without treating them as the same episode.

Dates of violence and judgment

A different calendar point marks the crime that would shape Minor's life in London. Shortly after two o’clock on Saturday morning, 17 February 1872, three revolver shots—possibly four—were heard in Lambeth Marsh. The unusual sound drew the attention of a young constable on patrol near Waterloo Railway Station and initiated the chain of events leading to the murder case.

The trial took place in early April before the Lord Chief Justice at Kingston Assizes, which still had jurisdiction over the area. The shift from a precise February night to the April courtroom marks a change from the immediate alarm of the shooting to public scrutiny of Minor’s condition. In the trial, witnesses described the extent of his illness, including his repeated fears that Irish men were entering his rooms and plotting against him.

The corrected chronology

The book’s account of dates also corrects a durable legend. A sensational story published by Hayden Church in 1915 imagined that Murray’s first visit to Minor took place in connection with the 1897 Dictionary dinner. The documented meeting, however, occurred in January 1891, six years earlier. Murray’s 1902 letter to Francis Brown recounts how he learned that Minor lived at Broadmoor and arranged to meet him; the letter later surfaced in a box among the possessions of one of Minor’s relatives.

January 1891 was not simply a date of first acquaintance. Murray and Minor saw one another regularly for almost twenty years, and their first meeting began a lasting friendship grounded in mutual respect and a shared interest in words. Placed beside the 1915 publication of Church’s story, the earlier date makes the difference between the relationship’s documented history and its more dramatic public version unmistakable.