On This Day in History: April 7
Violet Gibson attempts to assassinate Mussolini
They called her crazy, but shooting fascist chucklefuck Benito Mussolini in the face seems more the act of a sane person. That’s what Violet Gibson did, and she gave no explanation for it. Because, really, what explanation is needed?
--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: April 7, 1926--
Mussolini came to power in Italy in 1922 via a fascist coup d’état. And being fascist, he sucked, using his secret police to eliminate all opposition to his dictatorial reign. His douchey example inspired other fascist fucksticks such as Hitler in Germany, Franco in Spain, and Salazar in Portugal.
Violet Gibson was an Irish aristocrat, the daughter of Baron Ashbourne, who lived a life of privilege. She was also a sickly child at a time when medicine had few clues on how to deal with that shit. People said she was kind of an asshole, too, prone to fits of violence. As an adult she suffered even more health issues that caused chronic pain, and in 1922 she had a breakdown and was admitted to a mental hospital. She was released after two years, and in 1925, while living in Rome, attempted to take her own life by shooting herself in the chest, but she survived.
The following year the target of her ire switched from herself to Mussolini. On April 7, 1926, Mussolini was walking amongst the crowd in Rome. Gibson, who was 50 years old at the time, walked up to him and fired a shot directly at his face, but his head moved at that precise moment and the bullet only grazed his nose. She pulled the trigger a second time, but the gun misfired, and she was tackled by the crowd.
The mob almost lynched her, but the police arrived and saved her life because they wanted to beat her up themselves back at the jailhouse. Some cops just like doing that kind of thing. Especially cops for fascist regimes.
Her powerful family begged for her release, saying hey she’s crazy send her home and we’ll lock her up in the bin for good. Mussolini said yeah sure why not, get the crazy bitch outta my country. The British government said swell thanks Benito you’re an alright guy.
And that’s what happened. She spent 29 years, the remainder of her life, locked up in a mental hospital in Northampton, England. You’d think that after they saw the shit Mussolini pulled in subsequent years they might have reconsidered and released Gibson and pinned a bunch of medals on her, but nope. They instead adopted the attitude of “Bitches be crazy. Lock ‘em up.” Good thing times have changed since then and we’ve learned to respect women. Wait. Fuck.
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It's not often you give me a local angle in one of your posts but as I live in Northampton I had to look up which hospital she was in. The biggest was St Crispin's which is now disused but apparently she was in St Andrew's which is still a psychiatric hospital.