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Queen Victoria’s Chimney Stalker and Other Creepy Moments From History

Khalid Elhassan December 11, 2019 33 min

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex - Buckingham Palace — Queen Victoria's most famous stalker was a begrimed urchin. Iluminasi

38. The Silversmith Stalker

Queen Victoria’s coronation portrait. Wikimedia

An invitation to Buckingham Palace to formally see Queen Victoria was a big deal and a great honor, coveted by many. On the other hand, just getting into Buckingham Palace and seeing the queen, informally and without invitation, was a cinch. Staggering drunks had little trouble getting into the palace grounds to sleep off a bender in the royal garden. Others, with more sinister and creepy intentions, had little trouble reaching the palace itself.

Such was the case with silversmith Thomas Flower, one of Victoria’s persistent admirers, who was found sleeping in a chair near the queen’s bedroom in the summer of 1838. Apparently, he had managed to get into the palace, then wandered around for hours trying to find the queen – Buckingham Palace was and remains a big building. Finally, after tiring of the search, he fell asleep. He was arrested and imprisoned, until friends bailed him out for £50.

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.