July 2 in Victorian History
What the Victorians were up to on this date, year by remarkable year.
1881
President Garfield is shot
At a Washington railway station, the embittered office-seeker Charles Guiteau shoots President James Garfield in the back. Garfield lingers for eleven weeks before dying of his wounds -- and of his doctors' unwashed hands. The assassination finally forces reform of America's corrupt spoils system.