August 22, 2016 • 30 mins
Not long after young Victoria became queen, a young man got into Buckingham Palace, wandered around, and attempted to steal several items. It was merely the first of many visits to the palace he would make.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to steph you missed in History Class from how
works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Holly Fry and I'm Tray C. V. Wilson. So I'm
doing another one of those things where I want to
talk about Queen Victoria, but not really so much about
(00:22):
Queen Victoria, but a thing that happened to her and
a character that is often kind of left out of
biographies of her. He shows up in some and not
in others, and he's kind of fascinating. So for context,
Britain's King William the Fourth died at to twelve am
on June of eighty seven, and that meant that his niece,
who was Victoria and who had turned eighteen just one
(00:45):
month earlier, was now the new monarch. Because Victoria was
so young and had lived for the most part so
sheltered away from the world by her mother, the Duchess
of Kent, and her mother's comptroller, Sir John Conroy. I
will talk about both of them at length if you
get me started. At a party, all of Great Britain, though,
was fascinated by this young, unmarried queen, and for some
people that fascination was really intense so simply by virtue
(01:08):
of being so young and considered kind of fresh at
this time when there was a lot of politics going on,
uh in Great Britain that were you know, seated in
in lots of years of bureaucracy and corruption in some cases.
But this new queen, because she was new, she was
romanticized and she really became the celebrity object of affection
(01:31):
for many young men. Uh. And today we're going to
talk about one young man in particular who seemed really
obsessed with the Queen, and he is sometimes described as
being obsessed with her, perhaps romantically, although that's not always
clear in my opinion, but that obsession played out in
the form of repeated break ins at the royal residence
at Buckingham Palace. I will say, knowing several people in
(01:55):
my life who have been stoked, that if you have
been stoked, this episode might alarm And yes, for sure,
I mean he's often like one of the main biography
that I read about him specifically is called Queen Victoria's stalker.
Like he's often referred to as the first celebrity stalker. Definitely,
(02:17):
if if you are creeped out by things like that,
or if it is something that is a sensitive subject
for you, this one may not be the episode for you.
So because of some rather ridiculous organizational arrangements regarding the
keeping of the house and the grounds of Buckingham, different
government offices were often in charge of duties that overlapped
(02:38):
in ways that just made things incredibly inefficient at the palace.
For example, the laying of a fire fell under the
duties of the office of the Lord Steward. The lighting
of the fire was the responsibility of the Lord Chamberlain. Yeah,
and those are like offices that fall under them, so
it's not it's servants under them. Stuff that's communicated downward.
(03:02):
It was very ridiculous. Almost any biography that you look
at a Victoria or that talks about Buckingham Palace uh
during her reign will go into detail on how weird
it is like that to get anything done was just
like an an act of God, almost like you couldn't.
(03:22):
The windows were washed inside by one group outside by another,
so they were never completely clean at the same time,
like just tons of crazy stuff like that. And security
suffered in this system. There was actually no one person
or office in charge of security. There were guardsmen who
were armed, but they reported through their own structure, like
a military style structure, and not to the various offices
(03:45):
of the palace. And the pages and the porters reported
two completely different departments. And so none of these groups
who would have theoretically been seeing things that were going
on in the palace and kind of keeping watch over things,
communicated with each other at all. While the young man
(04:05):
we're focusing on today was a persistent problem, he was
not the first to exploit this problem of an incredibly
lax palace security. A little more than a year after
Victoria became queen, a silversmith named Thomas Flower was found
asleep in a chair near the monarchs monarch's bedroom. He
claimed that he wanted to marry the queen, but he
(04:28):
was considered pretty much a harmless one time offender, like
this one odd outlier where he yeah, and he did
seem pretty harmless, I mean, as someone who would break
into your house, goes all right. He was definitely like
full of flowery language about how she thought she was
pretty and he didn't want to upset anybody, and you know,
(04:49):
but the realization that Victoria had attracted another obsessed fan,
and that the person in question had access to Buckingham
Palace came a year and a half into her reign,
and that happened on December fourty eight, and at around
five am, palace night porter William Cox was startled when
a boy covered in soot opened the door to the
(05:10):
room he was sitting in, stared at him for a
moment and then shut the door. And Cox opened the
door to follow the boy and attempted to inquire as
to whether he was there to service the chimneys, but
he couldn't find anyone. He did, however, find a bag
of stuff on the floor. In the bag where some clothes, coins,
a book, and a dress sword and the weapon belongs
(05:33):
to an officer of the Royal Household, the Honorable Charles
Augustus Murray. So Cox went to the man's room to investigate.
There was no answer when Cox knocked on Murray's door,
so the porter, who had access to all the palace
rooms via a master key, unlocked the door and let
himself in, and it was immediately apparent that the intruder
(05:55):
had been in Murray's room. Murray himself was away at
the time, but soot was every even in the bed
linens and that's It was then tracked throughout the residence
and it appeared that the boy had even been in
the Queen's private apartments, going by where all of these
soot smudges were, and like Murray, thankfully the queen was gone.
She had actually stayed at Windsor Castle the night before this.
(06:16):
So they started a hunt in Earnest for this mystery trespasser,
which at this point included police as well as palace staff,
and he was captured, wriggled away and then escaped through
a window before he was finally nabbed by a constable
out on a lawn. He turned out to be a
young man of an unknown age, although estimates varied from
(06:38):
a young teenager to possibly even a man in his
early twenties, and on this boy's person were a number
of stolen items, including ladies undergarments believed to be the queens.
They were tucked in between two layers of trousers that
he wore, one on top of the other. Uh and
when questioned, he claimed to be Edward Cotton of Hertford,
and he offered no answers to questions regarding how he
(06:59):
had access to the palace or how long he had
been there. It had been presumed that he must be
a chimney suite because he was so coated with foot.
The next morning, after police staff scrubbed some of the
soot and dirt off of this boy, he claimed to
be Edward Cotton. He appeared before a magistrate. He stuck
to this story that he was the son of Henry
(07:21):
Cotton of Hertford, and that he had arrived in London
twelve months earlier, had met a man who helped him
into the palace, and that he had been hiding in
chimneys or behind furniture by day and then moving about
the palace at night for all that time. Reminds me
of like the creepy Reddit threads about people discovering that
(07:42):
somebody is living in a tiny alcove in their attic right,
or like our HINTERKFK episode we talked about the person
living in the attic but his story did not hold up.
We'll get to that in a moment. He claimed that
stolen kitchen scraps had been enough to keep him fed,
and that he had actually sat in on virtually every
meeting that the Queen had had with her ministers during
(08:02):
that time. Like hiding behind furniture and listening to everything
they said. He was not, as had been believed, a sweep.
According to his story, he said he was sooty from
sleeping in the chimneys during the day. Most people did
not buy this story though. Uh. Kitchen supplies were not
locked up tightly at night, and sleeping in a chimney
by day was just a very dangerous prospect in a
(08:25):
London winter, even with the hoops that had to be
jumped through to get a fire lit in the palace,
lying on multiple different departments to come and do that work. Yeah,
they were still lighting fires. Chimney's not not safe. He
would have been potentially burned to a crisp or die
of smoke inhalation from a fire in a separate fireplace
(08:47):
that vented through the same chimney. And so because of
suspicions that still lingered that he was a sweep despite
his claims otherwise, the main chimney sweep that was employed
by the palace was consult it. Uh. He did not
work for this main chimney sweep, but they asked, could
this young man you know have worked with him at
(09:08):
one point long enough to get the layout of the
residents uh known, and then returned through a chimney on
his own later and the palace sweep was like, no,
he doesn't work for me, and these chimneys are designed
to prevent anybody getting in that way. While the police
investigated further, this young man was moved to Todd hill
Field's Bridewell prison. A survey was made of the various
(09:29):
tradesmen who had access to the palace, and many were
brought to the prison to see if they knew this
young man in custody. No one said they did until
an older gentleman named Henry Jones showed up and claimed
the boy was his fourteen year old son who had
been missing since the two had a fight a week before.
A third party who employed Edward Jones, not Edward Cotton
(09:51):
as an apprentice, was summoned and corroborated this young man's identity.
So then he went before the magistrate again. He at
least that point seemed to have the correct name. Yeah,
Cotton was an alias. He just pulled out of the air,
presumably to not get himself for his family and trouble.
(10:12):
But uh, we're going to talk about how the legal
proceedings of this case and the break in played out.
But first we're gonna pause for a sponsor break. Going
back to our story, When Edward Jones once again found
himself in court, it was to face the formal charges
(10:34):
for the theft of Murray's sword and other property. This
time around, his story was a little different about how
he had gotten into the palace. He claimed to have
followed another man in through a worker's entrance on December eleven,
just three days before he was discovered, so he had
abandoned that whole I was there for almost a year story.
Jones's barrister, William Prendergast, took a really breezy approach to
(10:58):
defending his client. He characterized Edward as a kid who
just wanted to see the inside of Buckingham Palace and
who then grabbed a few items as mementos of his visit,
even got a little lost in the fantasy of being
a royal himself. And with all of this set up,
Prendergast went on to frame the prosecution as being far
too serious and pursuing furious legal action against the boy
(11:21):
who merely had a lark of sneaking into the palace,
and that defense, along with the calling of several character
witnesses who assured jurors that Edward Jones was a good
lad landed the outcome that Prendergast had hoped for. The
jury found Edward Jones not guilty. The press had quite
(11:41):
a good time of covering this trial and verdict. While
Edward was written about by some journalists with a lot
of humor, other publications found the lack of repercussions for
his actions just completely unacceptable. Yeah, it was very divided.
There literally were people that kind of took the the
position that his barrister had of like, oh, come on,
(12:02):
this is a kid and he did something stupid and
you know, don't let it ruin his life. And other
people were like, he broke into the palace, So you know,
it's if the same thing happened today, we would probably
see a similar division play out. And there were also
satire magazines that did their whole own other take on it.
But Edward immediately returned to the apprenticeship that he had
(12:26):
before his little sojourn into Buckingham, Though his new found
fame came with all kinds of opportunities. He was allegedly
offered passage the US to make his fortune in America.
Uh and he was offered a theatrical appearance in a
stage play about his story, but edwards father, Henry, who
was a tailor, turned down these offers on his son's behalf,
(12:46):
hoping that his son would just stay the course in
his work, you know, go on to be a productive
adult and leave this affair at the palace completely behind him.
But by late eighteen thirty nine, Edward had been fired
from his job as a builder's apprentice because he was
simply not good as an employee. He soon was offered
another job running errands for an apothecary, but that didn't
(13:09):
last either, and after that, the young Jones was unemployed
for the most part, although he did occasionally help his
father out in his shop. Yeah, his work was pretty sporadic.
He did it, sounds like he did a few other
odd jobs, but he didn't really have any one job
for any length of time. And in the meantime, Queen
Victoria had married her cousin, Prince Albert, on February tenth,
(13:30):
eighteen forty, and in November they had their first child,
Princess Victoria, and the following month, just two weeks after
the Princess Royal's birth, Edward Jones once again entered the
Picture and the Palace as the Queen's midwife, Mrs Lily,
who slept in the nursery, was falling asleep at one
thirty a m. On December three, eighteen forty she heard
(13:53):
a door creaking. She got out of bed and searched
in the darkness to try to find the source of
the noise, and when she saw that the door to
Queen Victoria's dressing room was solely being open, she called out,
who's there, and the door immediately slam shut. I don't
know about you, but I would freak out and lose
my mind in that situation. I am freaking out now,
(14:17):
But Mrs Lily was a quick thinker and that particular
door door bolted from the side she was on, so
she bolted it and she trapped whoever had done this
slamming inside, and after calling for help, she was then
joined by one of the Queen's pages and the Queen's
former governess, Baroness Letson, and the three of them then
opened the door and they searched the dressing room. Together
(14:41):
they found Edward Jones curled up under a sofa. Jones
was taken into custody and identified as the same intruder
from two years earlier. As with the first time that
he was apprehended, he was quite silent when questioned as
to how he got in, how long he had been there.
Lily Letson and the page had all been really calm
(15:02):
about this whole affair. So the Queen, who was in
the next room was not even awakened and didn't hear
about it until the next day. Yes, and when she
did hear about it, Victoria wrote about it in her
journal quote, Albert told me that he had just heard
when he got up that a man had been found
under the sofa in my sitting room. And then she
(15:23):
goes on to describe basically what we've just said here
about how Mrs Lily and Lateon in this page apprehended him.
Uh says later in the same entry, she writes, quote,
after he had been taken downstairs, he said he meant
no harm and had only come to see the Queen.
We have since heard that he was in the palace
once before and was half witted and had merely come
(15:45):
out of curiosity. But supposing he had come into the bedroom,
how frightened I should have been. As you will recall,
the Queen had actually been away that first time that
Jones had visited her apartment in the Palace, and it
appears that despite the news coverage of that subsequent trial,
she had been spared the knowledge that a stranger had
been in her personal space. And there's a lot of
(16:08):
theorizing about why that's the case, like that it would
look it would make the palace um staff look really bad,
So nobody really wanted to like be terribly public that
it had happened. But in any case, it was decided
that Edward Jones was going to be tried, this time
in a very old fashioned way by the Queen's Privy Council.
(16:29):
And this was a system that hadn't been employed since
the Tutor period. It had historically been used to try
people for treason that were so elevated that they could
have easily bought the outcome of a trial in regular courts.
But because Edward jones first trial had been something of
a circus thanks to this jovial and dismissive tone that
his defense took and that people bought into, he too
(16:49):
would be unlikely to get a serious trial in normal court. Additionally,
a court trial would invite all sorts of questions about
the monarchy and the palace, and this incredibly lacks security,
none of which they were eager to invite. I think
if I were the Queen at this point, I would
be like, I am moving rooms. So with another hearing
(17:13):
on the horizon, we're going to pause for another sponsor break,
and then we will come back to the story of
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With the Privy Council assembled and the hearing underway, Edward
told the assembly that when he was found in the
Queen's dressing room, that was actually the second time, at
rapid succession that he had entered the palace unobstructed. According
(19:28):
to Jones's testimony, he had scaled a wall of the
gardens and entered the palace through a window on Monday evening.
He hoped to steal a snack, but there were too
many people around, so he left. He returned Tuesday night,
wandered around for a bit and slept under the bed
of one of the servants during the day Wednesday, so creepy.
(19:51):
I creeped myself out reading that sentence. Yeah, really creepy.
Wednesday night, once everyone had settled into the evening, he
once again explored the palace, this time eventually making his
way to the throne room and having a seat in
the Monarch's chair. He then wandered around the Queen's rooms,
eventually settling under the sofa where he had been found.
(20:13):
So it's unclear if the door opening and closing that
alerted Mrs Lily had been a thwarted effort on his
part to wander a bit more, but if so, after
he had realized he had been seen, he apparently went
right back to his under the sofa hiding place. After
investigating the wall that Edward claimed to have scaled and
calling in the young man's father, Henry Jones, to scold
(20:35):
him for letting his son behaves poorly, and debating over
edwards uh mental soundness, the Privy Council opted to issue
a punishment of three months hard labor. Additionally, this whole
incident catalyzed a big examination of the palace security as well.
It should have probably the first time, or yeah, before
(20:59):
that when the other guy got in. Ever, yeah, a
press release was made giving only scant information about the
activities of Jones and how his hearing had played out.
But because this story was so tantalizing, the press hunted
downboard details and it eventually became known that Edward Jones
was in the todd Hill Street House of Corrections, and
(21:20):
he was happy to talk about all of his adventures
in the kitchen and the throne room and other areas
of the palace. So it wasn't long before all of
the particulars of this event were public knowledge. Jones told
the press that he had gained access to the palace
through a chimney rather than the more mundane window entry, which,
by the way, investigation had verified because they had found
marks on the window sill that he claimed he had
(21:42):
come in through. He also said that he was going
to write a book about this whole thing. See that's
where we get into rewarding bad behavior. Oh yeah, that's
gonna happen a lot. Edward Jones was released from his
incarceration on March second, eighteen forty one, into the custody
of his fob or. He continued to enjoy a certain
(22:02):
level of celebrity because papers were happy to print any
details that they could about him. Look he lose with
loiter outside the family home, hoping to get a glimpse
of the person who was so very good at waltzing
right into Buckingham Palace. And as we mentioned earlier, the
repeat appearance of Edward Jones in the palace had led
to a close look at the security problems there. Since
(22:25):
that second break in by Jones, the royal home had
been guarded regularly by more than two dozen police at
all times, so it came as something of a surprise
when Edward Jones was found once again inside Buckingham Palace
in the wee hours of March sixteenth, eighteen forty one,
just two weeks after he had finished his hard labor sentence.
(22:46):
This time, a police sergeant Glover was was patrolling when
he heard a noise, and then when he followed it
to the picture gallery, he found a pair of dirty
shoes on the floor. Jones was in a nearby alcove
eating cold meat and potato itatos from the kitchen this
third time around. When Edward was asked how he got in,
he simply said that he had done it the same
(23:07):
way as before, not giving details as to what that
way was, but just saying the same way I always do.
When questioned the following morning by the police, he told
them that he was gathering information for his book and
that he had hoped to eavesdrop on and record a
conversation between the Queen and Prince Consort. For that book.
(23:27):
Jones told the inspectors that he had seen a library
and read some of the books, which he proved by
naming several of the books on the shelves, and that
he had handled a coronet and some jewels. He was
next taken before the prison, but the Privy Council for
further questioning, and this time after their last uh dealings
(23:50):
with Edward Jones resulted in a huge press drama and
him getting famous for it. The Privy Council moved really
swiftly and they kept a very height lit on information.
Jones was once again sentenced to three months hard labor,
and the press went hungry when it came to details,
but just the same, innumerable articles were printed about the
(24:11):
boy Jones as he was called at this point, and
all of these were based pretty much on speculation and
in some case entirely fabricated information that was posing as facts. Some,
as before, seemed to be on Jones's side. They sort
of thought it was kind of hilarious and great that
this commoner could just stroll into the palace. Others were,
of course, staunchly against his behavior, recognizing that it was
(24:33):
horrible and creepy, and yet others just wanted to capitalize
on the story by printing various satirical pieces about it,
often at the expense of the royal family, and somewhat famously,
banker and virus Thomas Rakes wrote in his journal at
the time, quote, A little scamp of an apothecary's errand
boy named Jones have the unaccountable mania of sneaking privately
(24:56):
into bucking and Palace, where he has found secreted at
night under a so fote or some other hiding place.
No one can divine his object, but twice he has
been detected and conveyed to the police and put into
confinement for a time. The other day he was detected
in a third attempt, with apparently as little object. Lady
Sandwich wrote that he must undoubtedly be a descendant of
(25:19):
Inigo Jones, the architect, and this was of course a
play on the name of the sixteenth century Welsh architect
Inigo Jones, who constructed the Queen's House at Greenwich and
come and Garden, among other famous structures. So although it
seemed like Edward Jones was really only good at one thing,
which was getting into Buckingham Palace, he was really good
(25:40):
at it, so much so that at that point it
had made him a massive celebrity, far beyond the levels
of fame. His first two intrusions had garnered. And what
became of Edward Jones after this is a whole other story,
and so we're gonna wait and share that in our
next episode. Sorry to be all lift hanging again, but
(26:01):
his life story plays out in some really weird and
fascinating ways. I don't like this little creeper. Lots of
people didn't, and some very bad things do happen to
him along the way. But uh, yeah, it's very weird,
like the idea that this person just repeatedly was showing
up in the palace and like very close to where
(26:23):
the royal family was, particularly when you considered like that
there were points where he was there when a tiny
infant was there. There was lots of like speculation going
around the palace of like what if he had snatched
the princess, Like what if he had just taken this
two week old infant? Yeah, yeah, it was just strolling around.
(26:46):
It reminds me a bit of our live shows about
presidential assassinations, uh, and sort of the progression of their
being literally any security around the president. Yeah, because like
some of the earlier attempts were like and then a
guy just walked up and he just was there, and
then it became okay, now we actually have the secret Service. Yeah, yeah,
(27:10):
super duper strange. Uh, and creepy, because nobody wants somebody
random just hanging out in their house and going through
their stuff and stealing their undergarments and eating their food. No,
that's creepy and gross, super creepy. Do you also have
listener mail? And is it not creepy? It is not
only not creepy, it is awesome. I love it. This
is one of those things. We get lots of listener mail.
(27:32):
It's all pretty great, but every once in a while
you open one and you're just like, this is great, great, great,
And that's this one. Uh. It is from our listener, Crystal,
And she included a card. It's a little gift. I
will tell you about a moment. But in her card,
she said, Dear Holly, I'm a longtime listener all the
way back to two thousand nine and find the podcast
most delightful with its current hosts. Thank you so much.
It's so sweet. I'm redecorating my house and I'm getting
(27:54):
rid of books I don't need or want anymore, and
when I saw this one, I thought of you. Thanks
again for the awesome podcast. Uh. Crystal is the princess
of my heart because not only did she write that
card on a cute Victorian Halloween card. But the book
is French fashion illustrations of the nineteen twenties. So it's
amazing and it's sweet, and it's just so thoughtful and
(28:17):
it's cool. It's fashion close for the twenties, and it's
sort of these little isolated illustrations that were from La
Posen and I absolutely love it. It's the sweetest thing.
Thank you so much, Crystal. I cannot even tell you
how much I love this and sat at my desk
pouring over it yesterday when I should have been doing work, work, work,
(28:37):
But you gotta pause and appreciate these things. So that
is the scoop. That is my my delightful book that
came from Crystal, who was very sweet and thoughtful of
us and wrote very nice things. Thank you, Crystal. We
appreciate you so much. You would like to write to us,
you can do so at History Podcast at Houston Works
dot com. We're also on Facebook dot com, slash mist
(28:58):
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(29:18):
a search for something in the text bar, see what
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(29:39):
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In history dot com and how Stuffwork dot com for
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has to work stat two
Welcome to steph you missed in History Class from how
works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Holly Fry and I'm Tray C. V. Wilson. So I'm
doing another one of those things where I want to
talk about Queen Victoria, but not really so much about
(00:22):
Queen Victoria, but a thing that happened to her and
a character that is often kind of left out of
biographies of her. He shows up in some and not
in others, and he's kind of fascinating. So for context,
Britain's King William the Fourth died at to twelve am
on June of eighty seven, and that meant that his niece,
who was Victoria and who had turned eighteen just one
(00:45):
month earlier, was now the new monarch. Because Victoria was
so young and had lived for the most part so
sheltered away from the world by her mother, the Duchess
of Kent, and her mother's comptroller, Sir John Conroy. I
will talk about both of them at length if you
get me started. At a party, all of Great Britain, though,
was fascinated by this young, unmarried queen, and for some
people that fascination was really intense so simply by virtue
(01:08):
of being so young and considered kind of fresh at
this time when there was a lot of politics going on,
uh in Great Britain that were you know, seated in
in lots of years of bureaucracy and corruption in some cases.
But this new queen, because she was new, she was
romanticized and she really became the celebrity object of affection
(01:31):
for many young men. Uh. And today we're going to
talk about one young man in particular who seemed really
obsessed with the Queen, and he is sometimes described as
being obsessed with her, perhaps romantically, although that's not always
clear in my opinion, but that obsession played out in
the form of repeated break ins at the royal residence
at Buckingham Palace. I will say, knowing several people in
(01:55):
my life who have been stoked, that if you have
been stoked, this episode might alarm And yes, for sure,
I mean he's often like one of the main biography
that I read about him specifically is called Queen Victoria's stalker.
Like he's often referred to as the first celebrity stalker. Definitely,
(02:17):
if if you are creeped out by things like that,
or if it is something that is a sensitive subject
for you, this one may not be the episode for you.
So because of some rather ridiculous organizational arrangements regarding the
keeping of the house and the grounds of Buckingham, different
government offices were often in charge of duties that overlapped
(02:38):
in ways that just made things incredibly inefficient at the palace.
For example, the laying of a fire fell under the
duties of the office of the Lord Steward. The lighting
of the fire was the responsibility of the Lord Chamberlain. Yeah,
and those are like offices that fall under them, so
it's not it's servants under them. Stuff that's communicated downward.
(03:02):
It was very ridiculous. Almost any biography that you look
at a Victoria or that talks about Buckingham Palace uh
during her reign will go into detail on how weird
it is like that to get anything done was just
like an an act of God, almost like you couldn't.
(03:22):
The windows were washed inside by one group outside by another,
so they were never completely clean at the same time,
like just tons of crazy stuff like that. And security
suffered in this system. There was actually no one person
or office in charge of security. There were guardsmen who
were armed, but they reported through their own structure, like
a military style structure, and not to the various offices
(03:45):
of the palace. And the pages and the porters reported
two completely different departments. And so none of these groups
who would have theoretically been seeing things that were going
on in the palace and kind of keeping watch over things,
communicated with each other at all. While the young man
(04:05):
we're focusing on today was a persistent problem, he was
not the first to exploit this problem of an incredibly
lax palace security. A little more than a year after
Victoria became queen, a silversmith named Thomas Flower was found
asleep in a chair near the monarchs monarch's bedroom. He
claimed that he wanted to marry the queen, but he
(04:28):
was considered pretty much a harmless one time offender, like
this one odd outlier where he yeah, and he did
seem pretty harmless, I mean, as someone who would break
into your house, goes all right. He was definitely like
full of flowery language about how she thought she was
pretty and he didn't want to upset anybody, and you know,
(04:49):
but the realization that Victoria had attracted another obsessed fan,
and that the person in question had access to Buckingham
Palace came a year and a half into her reign,
and that happened on December fourty eight, and at around
five am, palace night porter William Cox was startled when
a boy covered in soot opened the door to the
(05:10):
room he was sitting in, stared at him for a
moment and then shut the door. And Cox opened the
door to follow the boy and attempted to inquire as
to whether he was there to service the chimneys, but
he couldn't find anyone. He did, however, find a bag
of stuff on the floor. In the bag where some clothes, coins,
a book, and a dress sword and the weapon belongs
(05:33):
to an officer of the Royal Household, the Honorable Charles
Augustus Murray. So Cox went to the man's room to investigate.
There was no answer when Cox knocked on Murray's door,
so the porter, who had access to all the palace
rooms via a master key, unlocked the door and let
himself in, and it was immediately apparent that the intruder
(05:55):
had been in Murray's room. Murray himself was away at
the time, but soot was every even in the bed
linens and that's It was then tracked throughout the residence
and it appeared that the boy had even been in
the Queen's private apartments, going by where all of these
soot smudges were, and like Murray, thankfully the queen was gone.
She had actually stayed at Windsor Castle the night before this.
(06:16):
So they started a hunt in Earnest for this mystery trespasser,
which at this point included police as well as palace staff,
and he was captured, wriggled away and then escaped through
a window before he was finally nabbed by a constable
out on a lawn. He turned out to be a
young man of an unknown age, although estimates varied from
(06:38):
a young teenager to possibly even a man in his
early twenties, and on this boy's person were a number
of stolen items, including ladies undergarments believed to be the queens.
They were tucked in between two layers of trousers that
he wore, one on top of the other. Uh and
when questioned, he claimed to be Edward Cotton of Hertford,
and he offered no answers to questions regarding how he
(06:59):
had access to the palace or how long he had
been there. It had been presumed that he must be
a chimney suite because he was so coated with foot.
The next morning, after police staff scrubbed some of the
soot and dirt off of this boy, he claimed to
be Edward Cotton. He appeared before a magistrate. He stuck
to this story that he was the son of Henry
(07:21):
Cotton of Hertford, and that he had arrived in London
twelve months earlier, had met a man who helped him
into the palace, and that he had been hiding in
chimneys or behind furniture by day and then moving about
the palace at night for all that time. Reminds me
of like the creepy Reddit threads about people discovering that
(07:42):
somebody is living in a tiny alcove in their attic right,
or like our HINTERKFK episode we talked about the person
living in the attic but his story did not hold up.
We'll get to that in a moment. He claimed that
stolen kitchen scraps had been enough to keep him fed,
and that he had actually sat in on virtually every
meeting that the Queen had had with her ministers during
(08:02):
that time. Like hiding behind furniture and listening to everything
they said. He was not, as had been believed, a sweep.
According to his story, he said he was sooty from
sleeping in the chimneys during the day. Most people did
not buy this story though. Uh. Kitchen supplies were not
locked up tightly at night, and sleeping in a chimney
by day was just a very dangerous prospect in a
(08:25):
London winter, even with the hoops that had to be
jumped through to get a fire lit in the palace,
lying on multiple different departments to come and do that work. Yeah,
they were still lighting fires. Chimney's not not safe. He
would have been potentially burned to a crisp or die
of smoke inhalation from a fire in a separate fireplace
(08:47):
that vented through the same chimney. And so because of
suspicions that still lingered that he was a sweep despite
his claims otherwise, the main chimney sweep that was employed
by the palace was consult it. Uh. He did not
work for this main chimney sweep, but they asked, could
this young man you know have worked with him at
(09:08):
one point long enough to get the layout of the
residents uh known, and then returned through a chimney on
his own later and the palace sweep was like, no,
he doesn't work for me, and these chimneys are designed
to prevent anybody getting in that way. While the police
investigated further, this young man was moved to Todd hill
Field's Bridewell prison. A survey was made of the various
(09:29):
tradesmen who had access to the palace, and many were
brought to the prison to see if they knew this
young man in custody. No one said they did until
an older gentleman named Henry Jones showed up and claimed
the boy was his fourteen year old son who had
been missing since the two had a fight a week before.
A third party who employed Edward Jones, not Edward Cotton
(09:51):
as an apprentice, was summoned and corroborated this young man's identity.
So then he went before the magistrate again. He at
least that point seemed to have the correct name. Yeah,
Cotton was an alias. He just pulled out of the air,
presumably to not get himself for his family and trouble.
(10:12):
But uh, we're going to talk about how the legal
proceedings of this case and the break in played out.
But first we're gonna pause for a sponsor break. Going
back to our story, When Edward Jones once again found
himself in court, it was to face the formal charges
(10:34):
for the theft of Murray's sword and other property. This
time around, his story was a little different about how
he had gotten into the palace. He claimed to have
followed another man in through a worker's entrance on December eleven,
just three days before he was discovered, so he had
abandoned that whole I was there for almost a year story.
Jones's barrister, William Prendergast, took a really breezy approach to
(10:58):
defending his client. He characterized Edward as a kid who
just wanted to see the inside of Buckingham Palace and
who then grabbed a few items as mementos of his visit,
even got a little lost in the fantasy of being
a royal himself. And with all of this set up,
Prendergast went on to frame the prosecution as being far
too serious and pursuing furious legal action against the boy
(11:21):
who merely had a lark of sneaking into the palace,
and that defense, along with the calling of several character
witnesses who assured jurors that Edward Jones was a good
lad landed the outcome that Prendergast had hoped for. The
jury found Edward Jones not guilty. The press had quite
(11:41):
a good time of covering this trial and verdict. While
Edward was written about by some journalists with a lot
of humor, other publications found the lack of repercussions for
his actions just completely unacceptable. Yeah, it was very divided.
There literally were people that kind of took the the
position that his barrister had of like, oh, come on,
(12:02):
this is a kid and he did something stupid and
you know, don't let it ruin his life. And other
people were like, he broke into the palace, So you know,
it's if the same thing happened today, we would probably
see a similar division play out. And there were also
satire magazines that did their whole own other take on it.
But Edward immediately returned to the apprenticeship that he had
(12:26):
before his little sojourn into Buckingham, Though his new found
fame came with all kinds of opportunities. He was allegedly
offered passage the US to make his fortune in America.
Uh and he was offered a theatrical appearance in a
stage play about his story, but edwards father, Henry, who
was a tailor, turned down these offers on his son's behalf,
(12:46):
hoping that his son would just stay the course in
his work, you know, go on to be a productive
adult and leave this affair at the palace completely behind him.
But by late eighteen thirty nine, Edward had been fired
from his job as a builder's apprentice because he was
simply not good as an employee. He soon was offered
another job running errands for an apothecary, but that didn't
(13:09):
last either, and after that, the young Jones was unemployed
for the most part, although he did occasionally help his
father out in his shop. Yeah, his work was pretty sporadic.
He did it, sounds like he did a few other
odd jobs, but he didn't really have any one job
for any length of time. And in the meantime, Queen
Victoria had married her cousin, Prince Albert, on February tenth,
(13:30):
eighteen forty, and in November they had their first child,
Princess Victoria, and the following month, just two weeks after
the Princess Royal's birth, Edward Jones once again entered the
Picture and the Palace as the Queen's midwife, Mrs Lily,
who slept in the nursery, was falling asleep at one
thirty a m. On December three, eighteen forty she heard
(13:53):
a door creaking. She got out of bed and searched
in the darkness to try to find the source of
the noise, and when she saw that the door to
Queen Victoria's dressing room was solely being open, she called out,
who's there, and the door immediately slam shut. I don't
know about you, but I would freak out and lose
my mind in that situation. I am freaking out now,
(14:17):
But Mrs Lily was a quick thinker and that particular
door door bolted from the side she was on, so
she bolted it and she trapped whoever had done this
slamming inside, and after calling for help, she was then
joined by one of the Queen's pages and the Queen's
former governess, Baroness Letson, and the three of them then
opened the door and they searched the dressing room. Together
(14:41):
they found Edward Jones curled up under a sofa. Jones
was taken into custody and identified as the same intruder
from two years earlier. As with the first time that
he was apprehended, he was quite silent when questioned as
to how he got in, how long he had been there.
Lily Letson and the page had all been really calm
(15:02):
about this whole affair. So the Queen, who was in
the next room was not even awakened and didn't hear
about it until the next day. Yes, and when she
did hear about it, Victoria wrote about it in her
journal quote, Albert told me that he had just heard
when he got up that a man had been found
under the sofa in my sitting room. And then she
(15:23):
goes on to describe basically what we've just said here
about how Mrs Lily and Lateon in this page apprehended him.
Uh says later in the same entry, she writes, quote,
after he had been taken downstairs, he said he meant
no harm and had only come to see the Queen.
We have since heard that he was in the palace
once before and was half witted and had merely come
(15:45):
out of curiosity. But supposing he had come into the bedroom,
how frightened I should have been. As you will recall,
the Queen had actually been away that first time that
Jones had visited her apartment in the Palace, and it
appears that despite the news coverage of that subsequent trial,
she had been spared the knowledge that a stranger had
been in her personal space. And there's a lot of
(16:08):
theorizing about why that's the case, like that it would
look it would make the palace um staff look really bad,
So nobody really wanted to like be terribly public that
it had happened. But in any case, it was decided
that Edward Jones was going to be tried, this time
in a very old fashioned way by the Queen's Privy Council.
(16:29):
And this was a system that hadn't been employed since
the Tutor period. It had historically been used to try
people for treason that were so elevated that they could
have easily bought the outcome of a trial in regular courts.
But because Edward jones first trial had been something of
a circus thanks to this jovial and dismissive tone that
his defense took and that people bought into, he too
(16:49):
would be unlikely to get a serious trial in normal court. Additionally,
a court trial would invite all sorts of questions about
the monarchy and the palace, and this incredibly lacks security,
none of which they were eager to invite. I think
if I were the Queen at this point, I would
be like, I am moving rooms. So with another hearing
(17:13):
on the horizon, we're going to pause for another sponsor break,
and then we will come back to the story of
Edward Jones. That sponsor is one that we both use.
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With the Privy Council assembled and the hearing underway, Edward
told the assembly that when he was found in the
Queen's dressing room, that was actually the second time, at
rapid succession that he had entered the palace unobstructed. According
(19:28):
to Jones's testimony, he had scaled a wall of the
gardens and entered the palace through a window on Monday evening.
He hoped to steal a snack, but there were too
many people around, so he left. He returned Tuesday night,
wandered around for a bit and slept under the bed
of one of the servants during the day Wednesday, so creepy.
(19:51):
I creeped myself out reading that sentence. Yeah, really creepy.
Wednesday night, once everyone had settled into the evening, he
once again explored the palace, this time eventually making his
way to the throne room and having a seat in
the Monarch's chair. He then wandered around the Queen's rooms,
eventually settling under the sofa where he had been found.
(20:13):
So it's unclear if the door opening and closing that
alerted Mrs Lily had been a thwarted effort on his
part to wander a bit more, but if so, after
he had realized he had been seen, he apparently went
right back to his under the sofa hiding place. After
investigating the wall that Edward claimed to have scaled and
calling in the young man's father, Henry Jones, to scold
(20:35):
him for letting his son behaves poorly, and debating over
edwards uh mental soundness, the Privy Council opted to issue
a punishment of three months hard labor. Additionally, this whole
incident catalyzed a big examination of the palace security as well.
It should have probably the first time, or yeah, before
(20:59):
that when the other guy got in. Ever, yeah, a
press release was made giving only scant information about the
activities of Jones and how his hearing had played out.
But because this story was so tantalizing, the press hunted
downboard details and it eventually became known that Edward Jones
was in the todd Hill Street House of Corrections, and
(21:20):
he was happy to talk about all of his adventures
in the kitchen and the throne room and other areas
of the palace. So it wasn't long before all of
the particulars of this event were public knowledge. Jones told
the press that he had gained access to the palace
through a chimney rather than the more mundane window entry, which,
by the way, investigation had verified because they had found
marks on the window sill that he claimed he had
(21:42):
come in through. He also said that he was going
to write a book about this whole thing. See that's
where we get into rewarding bad behavior. Oh yeah, that's
gonna happen a lot. Edward Jones was released from his
incarceration on March second, eighteen forty one, into the custody
of his fob or. He continued to enjoy a certain
(22:02):
level of celebrity because papers were happy to print any
details that they could about him. Look he lose with
loiter outside the family home, hoping to get a glimpse
of the person who was so very good at waltzing
right into Buckingham Palace. And as we mentioned earlier, the
repeat appearance of Edward Jones in the palace had led
to a close look at the security problems there. Since
(22:25):
that second break in by Jones, the royal home had
been guarded regularly by more than two dozen police at
all times, so it came as something of a surprise
when Edward Jones was found once again inside Buckingham Palace
in the wee hours of March sixteenth, eighteen forty one,
just two weeks after he had finished his hard labor sentence.
(22:46):
This time, a police sergeant Glover was was patrolling when
he heard a noise, and then when he followed it
to the picture gallery, he found a pair of dirty
shoes on the floor. Jones was in a nearby alcove
eating cold meat and potato itatos from the kitchen this
third time around. When Edward was asked how he got in,
he simply said that he had done it the same
(23:07):
way as before, not giving details as to what that
way was, but just saying the same way I always do.
When questioned the following morning by the police, he told
them that he was gathering information for his book and
that he had hoped to eavesdrop on and record a
conversation between the Queen and Prince Consort. For that book.
(23:27):
Jones told the inspectors that he had seen a library
and read some of the books, which he proved by
naming several of the books on the shelves, and that
he had handled a coronet and some jewels. He was
next taken before the prison, but the Privy Council for
further questioning, and this time after their last uh dealings
(23:50):
with Edward Jones resulted in a huge press drama and
him getting famous for it. The Privy Council moved really
swiftly and they kept a very height lit on information.
Jones was once again sentenced to three months hard labor,
and the press went hungry when it came to details,
but just the same, innumerable articles were printed about the
(24:11):
boy Jones as he was called at this point, and
all of these were based pretty much on speculation and
in some case entirely fabricated information that was posing as facts. Some,
as before, seemed to be on Jones's side. They sort
of thought it was kind of hilarious and great that
this commoner could just stroll into the palace. Others were,
of course, staunchly against his behavior, recognizing that it was
(24:33):
horrible and creepy, and yet others just wanted to capitalize
on the story by printing various satirical pieces about it,
often at the expense of the royal family, and somewhat famously,
banker and virus Thomas Rakes wrote in his journal at
the time, quote, A little scamp of an apothecary's errand
boy named Jones have the unaccountable mania of sneaking privately
(24:56):
into bucking and Palace, where he has found secreted at
night under a so fote or some other hiding place.
No one can divine his object, but twice he has
been detected and conveyed to the police and put into
confinement for a time. The other day he was detected
in a third attempt, with apparently as little object. Lady
Sandwich wrote that he must undoubtedly be a descendant of
(25:19):
Inigo Jones, the architect, and this was of course a
play on the name of the sixteenth century Welsh architect
Inigo Jones, who constructed the Queen's House at Greenwich and
come and Garden, among other famous structures. So although it
seemed like Edward Jones was really only good at one thing,
which was getting into Buckingham Palace, he was really good
(25:40):
at it, so much so that at that point it
had made him a massive celebrity, far beyond the levels
of fame. His first two intrusions had garnered. And what
became of Edward Jones after this is a whole other story,
and so we're gonna wait and share that in our
next episode. Sorry to be all lift hanging again, but
(26:01):
his life story plays out in some really weird and
fascinating ways. I don't like this little creeper. Lots of
people didn't, and some very bad things do happen to
him along the way. But uh, yeah, it's very weird,
like the idea that this person just repeatedly was showing
up in the palace and like very close to where
(26:23):
the royal family was, particularly when you considered like that
there were points where he was there when a tiny
infant was there. There was lots of like speculation going
around the palace of like what if he had snatched
the princess, Like what if he had just taken this
two week old infant? Yeah, yeah, it was just strolling around.
(26:46):
It reminds me a bit of our live shows about
presidential assassinations, uh, and sort of the progression of their
being literally any security around the president. Yeah, because like
some of the earlier attempts were like and then a
guy just walked up and he just was there, and
then it became okay, now we actually have the secret Service. Yeah, yeah,
(27:10):
super duper strange. Uh, and creepy, because nobody wants somebody
random just hanging out in their house and going through
their stuff and stealing their undergarments and eating their food. No,
that's creepy and gross, super creepy. Do you also have
listener mail? And is it not creepy? It is not
only not creepy, it is awesome. I love it. This
is one of those things. We get lots of listener mail.
(27:32):
It's all pretty great, but every once in a while
you open one and you're just like, this is great, great, great,
And that's this one. Uh. It is from our listener, Crystal,
And she included a card. It's a little gift. I
will tell you about a moment. But in her card,
she said, Dear Holly, I'm a longtime listener all the
way back to two thousand nine and find the podcast
most delightful with its current hosts. Thank you so much.
It's so sweet. I'm redecorating my house and I'm getting
(27:54):
rid of books I don't need or want anymore, and
when I saw this one, I thought of you. Thanks
again for the awesome podcast. Uh. Crystal is the princess
of my heart because not only did she write that
card on a cute Victorian Halloween card. But the book
is French fashion illustrations of the nineteen twenties. So it's
amazing and it's sweet, and it's just so thoughtful and
(28:17):
it's cool. It's fashion close for the twenties, and it's
sort of these little isolated illustrations that were from La
Posen and I absolutely love it. It's the sweetest thing.
Thank you so much, Crystal. I cannot even tell you
how much I love this and sat at my desk
pouring over it yesterday when I should have been doing work, work, work,
(28:37):
But you gotta pause and appreciate these things. So that
is the scoop. That is my my delightful book that
came from Crystal, who was very sweet and thoughtful of
us and wrote very nice things. Thank you, Crystal. We
appreciate you so much. You would like to write to us,
you can do so at History Podcast at Houston Works
dot com. We're also on Facebook dot com, slash mist
(28:58):
in History, on interests as miss in History, on Twitter
at mist in History, on Instagram at mist in history,
or on tumbler as mist in History. We basically are
missed in History everywhere you could want to go and
find us. UH. You would like to do a little
research about whatever is knocking around in your head, you
can go to house stuff works dot com UH, do
(29:18):
a search for something in the text bar, see what
you come up with. Or you could just tootle around
the site and see what fun things reveal themselves to you.
You can also visit me and Tracy at Misston history
dot com, where we have all of our episodes of
the show ever from way back to the first hosts,
and we have show notes for any of the episodes
(29:39):
that Tracy and I have worked on, and we encourage
you come and see us. Or does it a mist?
In history dot com and how Stuffwork dot com for
more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it
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