Queen Victoria was at the time the longest reigning British monarch when she died, and
she would be surpassed by Queen Elizabeth II. Her death inside of Osborne House on the
Isle of Wight shocked the whole world, and many members of her royal family had been
summoned to her bedroom in a very small part of the huge royal residence. But the Queen
would rally a number of times, until she finally slipped away after suffering a number of strokes.
However the Queen left a number of specific requests following her death, and the funeral
of Victoria and what happened afterwards is nothing short of chaos. As she had reigned
for so long, no-one knew how to plan a state funeral or what the protocol was for one,
but in secret the Queen had instructed her doctor to ensure that a few select items were
placed in the coffin, and some of these would certainly have upset members of the royal
family.
Queen Victoria for some time had been ill and she would arrange her funeral years before
she passed away. She would die on the 22nd January 1901 at half past six in the evening
at the age of 81. Surrounding her were many of her grandchildren and also her children,
and her eldest son Albert Edward would succeed her as Edward VII. Also present was Kaiser
Wilhelm II of Germany, and her favourite pet was laid upon her deathbed following her death.
The instructions for the funeral and the mourning period had been written 4 years early, and
she was to have a military funeral befitting a soldier’s daughter and the head of the
armed forces, and she wants white instead of black. But chaos was happening on the Isle
of Wight. The royal undertaker was summoned from London to prepare her body for burial
and for the transportation of it back to England and back to London for the huge state proceedings.
However the undertaker famously forgot the Queen’s coffin such was the haste he was
in, and then a local carpenter was given the honours of making the Queens’ funeral. But
she had passed instructions to her personal physician Doctor Reid who would dress the
queen in her coffin and also prepare her body to have a number of sentimental and special
items placed inside of her coffin. Some of these would have appalled members of the royal
family.
The first request that Victoria had to be placed in the coffin was a plaster mould and
cast off her late husband Prince Albert’s hands. Albert had died in 1861 at the age
of 42, and the Queen never got over this loss as Albert was a brilliant consort, but he
was also the Queen’s great love. But following his death, the royal physicians upon Victoria’s
request made a plaster cast of his hands to make sure that the Queen had a permanent reminder
of his grasp. The first request was that these plaster casts should be placed in her coffin,
along with one of Albert’s dressing gowns that he would wear to bed. The queen kept
these for decades and even after his death would insist that the rooms that Albert frequented
were kept as if he was still alive. But these were normal requests for a woman to want reminders
of her husband to be placed in her coffin, and she also asked for the wedding ring of
her and her husband to be placed with her also.
Another moment from her wedding was her lace wedding veil, and Victoria had requested that
the lace veil she wore when she married Prince Albert should be placed on her when she was
buried. Victoria may have spent a large part of her life dressed in black, but by wearing
her symbolic white veil, it showed that her days of mourning and sadness were over, and
she believed that she would be reunited with her husband. She even requested the public
to wear white, but she also wanted further jewels and pieces of jewellery to be placed
on her body. She asked for as much of her jewellery as possible and was buried with
a ring on every finger and her neck covered in necklaces and also many bracelets on her
wrist.
Also requested for her coffin was a cape that her deceased daughter Alice had made as a
young princess for Prince Albert. Victoria was incredibly close to Alice, but in 1878
she died from diphtheria and she was the first of Queen Victoria’s children to die, and
this had a huge impact on the British monarch and she never also recovered from this loss.
The cape was a reminder of her daughter, and also her husband. Victoria also loved Scotland
and she would spend a lot of her time in Balmoral one of her homes, and she loved being out
in the Scottish highlands. She asked that a small bouquet of Scottish heather should
be placed inside of her coffin also.
But then there were many strange requests made by Victoria which would have caused some
distress to the royal family. She had insisted that she did not want to be embalmed or have
a death mask cast, but her grandson Kaiser Wilhelm II would insist on this happening
and a death mask was cast. But inside of the coffin a number of strange and bizarre items
were placed. Throughout her life, there had been much rumour regarding Victoria especially
following Albert’s death and a possible romantic relationship she may have had with
one of her servants, a Scottish man named John Brown. John Brown was a no-nonsence man
who would not shy away from telling the Queen when she was wearing something he did not
like. Brown was one of the only few people who the Queen would listen to, and he would
be the master of her horse and at times he helped the Queen massively. He would save
her from serious injury during a carriage accident, and many historians have come to
speculate that the Queen actually loved John Brown.
Others have gone further and have alluded to the fact that John Brown and Victoria may
have even been married, or that they may have had a child together. But this has not been
confirmed, and neither never will be. But the relationship she had with her Scottish
servant was close, and it is very possible and probable that the pair did love each other,
but Brown would not be everyones cup of tea. He was a man who was brash and rather uncouth,
but the Queen loved this, she loved being told straight, but her children and her heir
Edward VII would hate Brown and he would following Victoria’s death remove and hide most of
the memorials that Victoria had made to Brown following his death from alcohol related illnesses.
But what was surprising is that in secret, Victoria away from the ears of her family
and children requested to the Doctor that a lock of John Browns’ hair that she had
kept for decades was to be placed in her coffin. By doing this she may have wanted her close
companion and friend to remain with her in the grave, but Victoria would demand a picture
of Brown should be placed in the coffin also. This was placed in her left hand, and was
hidden from the royal family’s gaze when they viewed her body by a carefully positioned
bouquet of flowers. Victoria may have opened up about her love for Brown as she would say
following his death,’‘Brown was the best, truest heart that ever beat,’ and she would
also write that, ‘He had no thought but for me, my welfare, my comfort, my safety,
my happiness. Courageous, unselfish, totally disinterested, discreet to the highest degree, speaking the
truth fearlessly and telling me what he thought and considered to be "just and right," without
flattery and without saying what would be pleasing if he did not think it right. . . . The
comfort of my daily life is gone—the void is terrible—the loss is irreparable!’
It was like she had lost a second husband, and she did almost allude to this in her writing.
Her diaries interesting were doctored and altered following her death, so what they
really contained may have been lost to time, and they may have been more shocking than
it’s believed.
But with regards to her relationship with John Brown, the strangest request for Victoria’s
coffin was that the wedding ring of John Brown’s mother would be placed in her coffin, and
this was actually placed on her finger after her death. The significance of this is shocking,
based on tradition that the wedding ring of a mother would be given to a son to propose
to a woman with. Why did Victoria have this incredibly important piece of jewellery? Did
John Brown propose and give her this ring with intentions to marry the Queen. A priest
on his deathbed would confess that he did marry Victoria to Brown, but this has yet
again been disputed but what is shocking is the request that Victoria made to be buried
with this ring. A wedding ring is a symbol of partnership and of love, and of a binding
union, and Victoria wanted to remain in death bound to John Brown, a man she may have loved
and most probably did love.
The symbolism of the items relating to John Brown in Victoria’s coffin is huge, especially
as the royal family disliked him and many accused him of wielding and holding significant
power over Victoria. Her children believed she was influenced too much by Brown, but
it was clear that in death Victoria wanted to be close to him again. If the royal family
at the time would have found out about these items sneakily being placed in her coffin,
they would have been furious and all hell would have broken loose inside of the rooms
where Victoria took her final moments. The requests for the items to go inside of her
coffin were unique and strange, and they did in their best part symbolise the life of one
of the most influential monarchs that Britain has ever had. Victoria oversaw a huge amount
of change throughout her life, but her funeral would not go very well at all and it was rather
calamitous in places.
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