← Back to the front page

History’s Greatest Crime Sprees

Khalid Elhassan April 15, 2021 36 min

Italian mafiosi rounded up by the Fascists. Okruchy Historii

A contemporary cartoon depicting Boy Jones. Yesterday’s Papers

11. This Kid Stole Queen Victoria’s Unmentionables

After a hue and cry were raised about an intruder being loose in Buckingham Palace, a constable spotted a kid outside the building. He gave chase, caught, tackled, seized, and hauled him in. A closer look revealed that the arrestee was an unfortunately featured teenager, whose face and clothes were filthy, covered in grease and soot. He was wearing two pairs of pants, and when the outer one was removed, several pairs of ladies’ drawers fell out: Queen Victoria’s panties.

The dirty youth arrested with Queen Victoria’s underwear gave his name as Edward Cotton – subsequent investigation revealed his real name to be Edward Jones, a fourteen-year-old urchin. He had gotten into Victoria’s bedroom, and along with her panties, had stolen a letter, her portrait, and assorted linens. That he had gotten that close to the queen was bad enough, but discovering how long he had been in the palace was worse: Jones had been living in Buckingham for a year.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.