There's been plenty of opportunity for people to shuffle off this mortal coil while they're
visiting Buckingham Palace.
Has it happened?
You bet: Here are the only people to die there...
that we know of, anyway.
The original owner of Buckingham House was also the first to die there.
John Sheffield was a former military man who became a Knight of the Garter in 1674, then
went on to become Lord Chamberlain and then, in 1703, the Duke of Buckingham and Normanby.
He was also a poet.
In fact, he had a bunch of enemies and that seems to be one of the reasons he turned to
poetry — hey, when you can't eviscerate your enemies with a sword you might as well
do it with words.
According to "The Queen's House: A Social History of Buckingham Palace," Sheffield loved
Buckingham House and often wrote that his garden and a salon were
"filled with pictures, some good, but none disagreeable."
He boasted about the view and the library and the birds outside his window, and seems
to have become a bit bored with politics towards the end of his life, to the point where he
really wasn't doing much beyond hanging out at home and writing letters about how awesome
his house was.
It's not super surprising that he ended up dying in Buckingham House at the age of 72,
mostly because it seems like he wasn't too keen to ever leave.
But…
can you blame him?
Hugh Chamberlen the younger came from a long line of midwives, and they were kind of a
big deal.
In fact, according to the "British Medical Journal," his family is believed to have invented
obstetric forceps, though for whatever reason they took great pains to keep their invention
a secret.
That was a few generations before Hugh the Younger's time, though.
Hugh was educated at Trinity College in Cambridge and became a doctor at the age of 25.
He was well-respected and spent his later years hanging out with the Duchess of Buckingham,
which is probably why he ended up dying in Buckingham House in 1728.
According to the thrillingly named "Memoirs and Correspondence of Francis Atterbury: Volume
II," Hugh had been suffering from an unknown illness for a long time, so it's likely he'd
planned to die at Buckingham in the presence of his friends the Duchess and her son, the
younger Duke of Buckingham.
Edward VII was the second child of Queen Victoria and the great grandfather of Queen Elizabeth
II, and has the honor of being the only British monarch who was born and also died inside
the palace walls.
Edward reigned for just over a decade.
Like his descendent Prince Charles, he was Prince of Wales for a very long time.
His mother was in her 80s when she died, so he didn't become king until he was practically
an old man.
Despite his short reign, Edward was well-liked and even got the nickname "Peacemaker" because
of his skill as a diplomat.
His methods are a bit outdated today but worked well enough then — like more powerful monarchs
before him, Edward used his familial bonds with European royalty to build stronger relationships
between England and neighboring nations.
Edward was the last British monarch to use any of what little power he had, but it seemed
to take a toll on him.
In 1910, he had a series of heart attacks but refused to rest, saying
"No, I shall not give in; I shall go on; I shall work to the end."
That's pretty much exactly what happened — he died just a few days later.
What happened next was heartbreaking: his wife wouldn't let anyone touch his body and
he stayed where he was for eight days until someone finally put him in a coffin and took
him out of Buckingham Palace.
Prince Philip's mother died at Buckingham palace just a couple of years after the royal
family brought her out of Greece, where she'd spent time defying Nazis and taking care of
sick people.
Yes, Princess Alice had a much more colorful history than her own son, who is mostly known
for things like playing squash during the birth of Prince Charles and just kind of existing.
His mother, on the other hand, had a much more interesting — if not exactly happy
— life.
Alice was the great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria.
She was also deaf, though her family gave her no special treatment.
She was expected to do everything everyone else did, including learning how to speak
three languages.
She married Prince Andrew of Greece and had five children, including Philip, who would
of course go on to become husband to the queen of England.
The family fled Greece in 1917 for various political reasons and 13 years later Alice
had what was described as a "nervous breakdown."
She was committed to a Swiss sanitarium and briefly became a patient of Sigmund Freud.
Later in life, Alice moved back to Greece.
There, she sheltered a Jewish family from the Nazis and founded an order of nuns.
The British Royal family brought her back to England in 1967, and two years later she
died in Buckingham Palace.
Flora Elizabeth Hastings was born in Scotland in 1806.
In 1834, she became a lady-in-waiting to the Duchess of Kent, who was also the mother of
the future Queen Victoria.
Flora was smart and witty and like so many other smart and witty women before and since,
she was disliked by a lot of people.
Flora traveled by carriage to London after spending Christmas of 1838 in Scotland with
her mother.
Unfortunately, her carriage driver was a man and there was no one else traveling with them,
which was pearl-clutchingly scandalous at the time.
To make matters worse, Flora became ill not long afterwards, complaining of abdominal
swelling, pain, and nausea.
Because she had some enemies and because people in those days were just as judgmental as people
today, everyone around her figured she'd become pregnant during her trip to London.
Even Queen Victoria jumped on the "Flora's pregnant" bandwagon.
Flora was finally examined by a doctor and declared to be a virgin, but her swollen abdomen
was getting bigger, and a lot of people were still convinced she was pregnant.
She endured months of ostracization until it finally became obvious she wasn't pregnant,
she was mortally ill.
She ultimately succumbed to liver cancer.
Queen Victoria, to her credit, was haunted by Flora's death and had nightmares about
the dead girl for years afterwards.
The life of a monarch is stressful, but the life of their staff is even more so, since
staff are required to hold up all the same principles and values of their royal employers
but without all the opulence and fancy meals.
That kind of stress, unfortunately, is what drove Edward VII's private secretary, John
Gwynne, to take his own life.
Details about Gwynne's death are scant — he's mostly just talked about in stories of famous
British hauntings.
Staff say the room where he died feels creepy, and some claim to have heard a phantom gunshot.
In those days, divorce was still viewed as shameful, especially by members of the royal
family.
Gwynne was evidently unhappy in his marriage, or maybe it was just his wife who was unhappy,
but either way the couple divorced.
According to the "Sunday Guardian," Gwynne couldn't endure the scandal and took his own
life in a Buckingham Palace office.
Even less is known about Highland Attendant Francis Clark, who is mostly remembered for
a small bronze statue someone made of him in 1895 — a sort of Highland Attendant action
figure.
There's probably someone out there who knows exactly what a "Highland attendant is," but
no one seems to have bothered to write it down.
Based on the available information, a Highland attendant seems to be some sort of personal
servant in a kilt.
Francis appears in a few archived photos — in one, he's with four of the royal dogs.
Evidently, at least some Highland attendant duties include walking the royal good boys
and good girls.
Francis Clark joined Victoria's staff in 1870 and served for 25 years.
Victoria gave him the Faithful Service Medal in 1891.
He died in Buckingham Palace four years later, in the summer of 1895.
William Hayes Fisher was a Victorian-era politician who actually did a lot of different things
throughout his reasonably long life (he died at the age of 67), but he's not really well-remembered
because frankly, most of the stuff he did was boring.
Fisher was an Oxford University graduate, a lawyer, and later a member of parliament.
He had a couple of jobs as a private secretary and he was the Junior Lord of the Treasury
for seven years.
Asleep yet?
He was also the Government Whip of the House of Commons during the same time period, and
he had a few other boring-sounding jobs with boring-sounding titles.
Oh. and he was Knight of Grace, Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem,
whatever that is.
And chairman of an insurance company.
Notably, William Hayes Fisher died in the Buckingham Palace Gardens in July of 1920.
For the uninitiated, the gardens at Buckingham Palace are about 40 acres of grass, trees,
and shrubs featuring a lake, complete with a couple of islands and a waterfall.
So while Fisher may have lived a boring life, at least he died in an interesting place.
Good for him.
Not much has been said about Eric Whitelaw except that he had a false arm, which he presumably
got while serving during World War I with the Seaforth Highlanders.
Whitelaw really doesn't seem like someone destined to die at Buckingham Palace, but
that's what he did.
In 1953 he was at the Palace awaiting an Order of the British Empire award.
It wasn't for his military service, though, in case you were wondering.
It was for his, quote, "services to the rubber industry in Ceylon."
Oh-kay.
Anyway, Whitelaw never got the award because he died at the Palace before it could be bestowed
on him.
The only real record of this death that exists on the internet is in an old archived copy
of "The New York Times," published in 1978.
According to the story, a palace servant took her own life on the eve of her retirement.
Ilse Fairall took her own life in her bedroom at Buckingham Palace.
She was a 59-year-old widow who was just finishing her eighth year working in the palace laundry
room.
Details are pretty limited, but the story seems to suggest that she didn't really want
to retire, so maybe her identity was so wrapped up in being a palace servant that she didn't
see a future for herself as a retiree.
Whatever the motivation, this is one of the palace's most tragic deaths.
Margaret MacDonald served Queen Elizabeth II for 67 years, starting when the queen was
a baby and ending when MacDonald died in 1993 at the age of 89.
MacDonald and the queen were incredibly close.
MacDonald continued to faithfully serve the queen during all of her travels and life milestones,
and as a reward the Queen made her a Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order.
Late in life, MacDonald's job was basically just the official friend to the queen.
She got a private room in Buckingham Palace and was not really expected to do anything
except be the queen's confidante.
She died in her sleep in her room at Buckingham Palace.
No cause of death was ever made public, but it's probably safe to say that old age had
something to do with it.
Even if you're not a fan of the royal family, you probably still know about the Queen's
famous Corgis.
Because, let's be honest, Corgis are downright adorable.
Queen Elizabeth II has owned them since she got her first one at the age of 18.
Since then, the royal corgis have been reproducing almost as fast as the royal family, but the
line came to an end in 2018 with the death of Willow, the very last of the royal line
of Queen Elizabeth II's corgis.
The death of this particular dog is significant because it represents the end of an era.
It's even a little foreshadow-y — this line of Corgis has been around for the queen's
entire reign, and now that it's come to an end, well, let's just say there are changes
in the wind.
This one is a bit of a stretch, but it deserves to be included because this person, hundreds
of years after his death, still will not allow himself to be forgotten.
Not that anyone really knows who he is or anything.
Long, long before Buckingham Palace was Buckingham Palace there was a monastery on the site.
Supposedly, the ghost of one of the monastery's former residents still wanders around nearby.
And because a creepy ghost in a creepy brown robe isn't creepy enough all by itself, he's
rattling chains and moaning, too, which means he's either a super fan of Dickens' "A Christmas
Carol" or he did some misbehaving back when he was alive.
One popular story says he was locked up and starved to death, which explains why he's
still roaming the grounds.
The monk reportedly only appears on Christmas Day, which further supports the theory that
he's a Dickens superfan.
Fortunately, the queen tends to spend her holidays elsewhere, so it's probably unlikely
he's ever managed to show her all her ghosts of Christmas past.
"To old times, my friend."
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