In 1897 Queen Victoria created twelve pages of written instructions for her funeral and burial. However, without her family knowing Victoria had also created a second secret list, which was to only be read by her physician and dresser, Sir James Reid and Mrs Tuck, following her death. In the evening of 25th January 1901, three days after she breathed her last, the Queens custom made lead lined cedar and oak coffin arrived at Osborne House. The following morning Reid and Tuck began arranging the items exactly how Victoria had directed.
Before Victoria’s body had even been placed into the coffin there was already an inch and a half of sentimental items that represented members of her family. Two of the most famous items placed in her coffin are Prince Albert’s dressing gown and a plaster cast of his hand, which Victoria had gone to bed with every night after his premature death in December 1861.
The next item is a cloak that the couple’s third child, Princess Alice, had made as a gift for Prince Albert. Alice had been the first of Victoria and Albert’s nine children to pass away, coincidentally on the eighteenth anniversary of her fathers death, so this piece seems like a fitting representation of them both for Victoria to take into the afterlife.
As we already know, Victoria loved sentimental clutter and like her desk at Osborne House, Victorias coffin was filled with a number of family photographs. According to James Reid, ‘Over these was laid the quilted cushion made to fit the shape of the coffin, so that it looked as if nothing had been put in’. The coffin was then moved next to Queen Victoria before Reid, the Queens dressers and several members of her family lifted Victorias body on top. She was dressed in a white satin dressing gown and her wedding veil, a symbol that her grief was over and she was greeting Albert as his eternal bride. Before leaving the room, Queen Alexandra placed a small bouquet containing Scottish thistles on the body as a final gift to her mother-in-law. Once everyone was out for the room Dr Reid completed the last of Queen Victoria’s requests. These are perhaps the most controversial.
It’s well known that Victoria loved jewellery, something she wasn’t going to give up in death. Bracelets and necklaces were layered on her wrists and neck. Rings were placed on every finger. Her engagement and wedding rings were placed on her right hand. Why not on her left? I hear you ask. Well this is where it gets interesting. Against her family’s knowledge, Victoria had requested for the wedding ring that had once belonged to John Browns mother to be placed on her ring finger. In the same hand Victoria had also asked to hold ‘a photo of Brown and his hair in a case’, which James Reid ‘wrapped in tissue paper, and covered with Queen Alexandra’s flowers’ so that the family wouldn’t find out. While we’ll never know her reasoning for this, it is certainly a topic for speculation so let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.
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Published by Shannon McInulty
Hi! I’m Shannon, owner of Queen.Victoria.Roses. I began researching Queen Victoria when I was 16 and have made it my mission to teach people all about her personal life, family and iconic reign.View all posts by Shannon McInulty
