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Unexpected and Surprising Facts About England’s Iconic Queens

Khalid Elhassan February 13, 2022 38 min

13. The Queen and Her Silversmith Stalker

Buckingham Palace, circa 1837. Pinterest

An invitation to Buckingham Palace to formally see Queen Victoria was a big deal and a great honor, one that was coveted by many. On the other hand, to simply get into the palace and see the queen, informally and without any invitation whatsoever, was a cinch. Drunks often staggered in from the streets and into the palace grounds, and had little trouble in finding a comfortable spot to sleep off a bender in the royal garden. Others, with more sinister and creepy intentions, had little trouble entering the palace itself.

Such was the case with silversmith Thomas Flower, one of Victoria’s more persistent admirers. He was found asleep 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 he tired of the search, he dozed off. He was arrested and imprisoned until his 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.