It is more than 120 years since Britain last buried a reigning Queen — and back in 1901, the impact of Queen Victoria’s death on the nation was as great as 2022’s outpouring of grief and respect for Elizabeth II.
On the streets of London, unprecedented crowds came to pay tribute to a much-loved sovereign — in moving scenes that will be echoed in the capital today…
A million people were preparing to make their way to the centre of London for the funeral procession of Queen Victoria, a greater crowd than had ever been known before in the capital.
Rich and poor alike, whether from smart West End homes, villas in the suburbs or city slums, all felt a compulsion to be there. They could not stay at home on the day the great Queen was to be buried. She had died a week before, aged 81, after 63 years on the throne, at Osborne House, her holiday home on the Isle of Wight.
Now, on Saturday, February 2, 1901 — designated a Day of National Mourning by the new King — her coffin would cross the Solent on the Royal Yacht Alberta, passing through an avenue of 30 battleships and cruisers, before transfer to the royal train at Portsmouth Harbour.
From there the train would slowly make its way to London, where the coffin would be carried on a gun carriage through the streets of the capital.
There would be no public lying-in-state — in her will, she had specifically ruled that out.
A million people were preparing to make their way to the centre of London for the funeral procession of Queen Victoria, a greater crowd than had ever been known before in the capital
But there would be a two-hour window as her coffin was borne in a military procession from Victoria Station to Paddington Station, before being taken by train to Windsor for her funeral at St George’s Chapel. This would be the People’s Farewell, their last homage.
The newspapers left no one in doubt about the significance of the occasion. ‘It will mark the close of an era,’ said the Morning Advertiser, ‘the most wonderful this nation has passed through, as the greatest Queen the world has ever known passes by to her final rest.’
The author Arthur Conan Doyle went even further, describing the Queen as ‘a saint’. There were few, if any, dissenting voices. As the Times put it: ‘Love of the Queen has become one of the great silent and abiding factors in our national life.’ Everywhere, the sense of loss was tangible.
‘There are few people who are not affected by a sense of personal bereavement and regret,’ the Standard told its readers. ‘She has left as many mourners as she had subjects.’
The day before the funeral, thousands tramped the route from Victoria to Paddington, stopping to watch shopkeepers emptying their front windows to make way for tiers of seats or look up at workmen festooning the fronts of buildings in black and purple.
hoardings were covered up or removed, so that no hint of commercial activity could interfere with the dignity of the occasion. The real business of the day, though, was being done by those with seats to sell.
Prices rocketed in Piccadilly. Front-row seats at 25 guineas (equivalent to £1,800 today) were all sold out and one hotel with a particularly good view along the road was said to have let out a room for a staggering £500 (£43,000 today).
It was still dark on Saturday when the night horse trams brought the first Londoners from the suburbs to the centre of the capital. Mourners from other parts of the country had also arrived at the mainline stations in the middle of the night and were wandering the streets, trying to keep warm in the bitter cold.
Conan Doyle, looking at the sad and bewildered faces on the street that day, knew he was not alone in wondering where England would stand now that she was gone
As dawn broke, the city was already on the move but not in its usual way. Shops and businesses stayed shut and shuttered.
There were no tradesmen’s carts in the street. Instead, horse-drawn omnibuses and cabs, all crammed from top to bottom, filled the roads, alongside long lines of people walking. Many had set out on foot from their homes in the suburbs at 4am.
In Edgware Road, the morning milk cart was making its round as men and women began claiming their places, spreading rugs out on the pavement and laying out food for the day.
The high ground in Hyde Park had already been claimed and the steps and the slope around the statue of Achilles were full.
In Piccadilly, carpenters putting the finishing touches to stands and hanging purple coverings were working in their Sunday-best suits so they could join the spectators when their job was finished.
From 8am, 30,000 troops in grey greatcoats were in position lining the route, both as a guard of honour and to hold back the crowds, which by now were already eight-deep in Hyde Park.
At railway stations on the outskirts of London, the platforms were thick with people and when the trains arrived they jammed themselves in, 16 to a carriage intended for eight. They sat on laps and hung from the straps; they stood in the guard’s van.
No one complained at the inconvenience. There was little chatter and the atmosphere was quiet and contemplative. This was not an outing, it was a solemn duty.
It was not idle curiosity that drew them; they were not there to gawp. They knew they stood on a faultline in history. They were trying to grasp this moment of change as it was happening, and be part of it.
Now the trains were pulling into Charing Cross, King’s Cross, Marylebone, and the crowds spilled out on to the streets to join the throng going westward.
In Piccadilly it was impossible to find a space on the pavement after nine o’clock, and the masses pouring in were ushered down the middle of the road towards the park. But even this flow was too great and had to be stopped.
Soldiers and police formed lines across the side streets to stop the crowds coming through — but the pressure was so great that more than once the human barricades gave way. Further north, Oxford Street was a solid sea of humanity, all dressed in black, moving slowly towards the park, then halted by a bottleneck at Marble Arch as thousands more came up the stairs from the Underground railway station.
This was as close to the procession as most would get.
For others, mainly young men and boys, trees gave the best vantage point. Opposite Buckingham Palace, a single small thorn tree had seven people clinging precariously to it.
Those on high were not always as considerate as they might be. In Hyde Park, a spectator in a tree carelessly tossed away a match and set fire to the soft felt hat of a man underneath.
As the numbers built up on the pavements, it became increasingly difficult for those who had bought seats to get to them. The crowd swept one woman past the front door of the house where she was expected. There was no way she could force her way back against the flow and she had to go into another house and then climb out along the roof to reach her place.
Others had been conned. An argument broke out when too many people turned up at a house on the corner of Buckingham Palace Road and Victoria Street and it was discovered that the seats had been sold several times over.
Fraudsters were out on the streets too. One man did a brisk trade selling ‘official funeral programmes’ for a penny. There was no such thing. When the buyers opened up the folded sheet of paper, they found themselves gazing at the details of the funeral of William Gladstone.
But these incidents were exceptional. The overwhelming mood of the crowd was kind and cooperative. There was no band music to entertain them, and this was no time for sing-songs. They stood in silence, just waiting.
They were packed so tightly that it was impossible to put a hand in the pocket. ‘The strength of our ribs was put to rather a severe test’ one of those in Hyde Park recalled.
As the hours ticked by, along the road from Victoria Station, the procession was beginning to form, with the bands of the Household Cavalry at the front and half a mile of foot soldiers and cavalry behind before it even reached the generals and the high officers of state.
At the station itself, kings and princes, grand dukes and diplomats were assembling on a carpet of deep purple.
Just before 11am, the royal train pulled in and a bearer party of 12 sergeants from the Guards and the Household Cavalry stepped forward to shoulder the heavy oak coffin and lay it on the gun carriage. A shaft of sunlight burst through the grey skies and, for a brief moment, flashed on the brass work on the casket before it was covered by a white satin pall. The postilions in their scarlet vests urged the eight cream-coloured horses forward and the gun-carriage swung out of the station and into the streets of London.
Behind came the new King Edward VII — his time come at last after nearly 60 years as heir to his mother’s throne — mounted on a bay charger. He rode, said one observer, ‘with a kingly dignity. Pale as he was, and worn, with the marks of much recent suffering and anxiety on his face, he looked like the ruler of a mighty empire, the heir of a long line of monarchs’.
Beside him was the German Kaiser, the late Queen’s grandson, on a white horse, and then the King of Portugal and the King of Greece. A glittering cavalry of 40 princes and dukes followed as, with rifles and swords reversed, the great ceremonial army began its slow march through the misty morning.
Seeing was believing. All along the route, the sight of the coffin provoked a great sigh from the crowd, which sounded, wrote one reporter, like ‘a strange deep whisper, which those who heard it will never forget. “The Queen! The Queen!” came from 10,000 throats and rolled in impressive simplicity all down the line.’
Women curtsied and men tugged their hats from their heads and bowed. But the moment was gone in an instant. ‘Almost before one had grasped its import,’ wrote one reporter, ‘the little casket had glided by. And so we looked our last upon the Queen, and even as we did so were reminded that life rolls on remorselessly though the greatest and the best pass away. The Queen was dead but the King lived.’
The crowd was so quiet that the wheels of the gun carriage grating on the road could be easily heard. The Duke of Argyll, riding in the procession, found it uncanny, as though he was ‘looking at vast masses through a glass that prevented sound from coming to the ears’.
For Princess Maud, a granddaughter of the Queen, following in a carriage with her mother and sisters, it was ‘all terribly sad and impressive, the crowds of people and not a single sound and all in black’.
The crowds were at their greatest in Hyde Park and up to Marble Arch. One soldier on duty in the park reckoned the crowd behind him was as many as 100 deep. And, as more came to join them from behind, they swayed. He and his fellow soldiers had to push them back with the sides of their rifles.
When the coffin came into sight, his troop were called to attention, arms reversed and heads bowed. But as it passed he sneaked a look. He was not the only one.
‘We ought to have stood with chin sunk on chest and eyes cast down. Who could do it when she was going by for the last time — the Great Queen whose uniform we so long had worn, the small devoted woman who for the nation’s good had worked so hard and done so well?’
At Paddington, the royal train that would bear the Queen to Windsor stood waiting. The royal mourners dismounted from their horses and, in their colourful uniforms and gleaming helmets, formed an honour guard across the platform through which the bearer party carried the coffin.
As Chopin’s Funeral March rang out — the Queen disliked Handel’s music (‘He tires me’) and had forbidden the playing of the Dead March — King Edward and all the other kings and princes saluted.
The royal party boarded the train and it steamed slowly out towards Windsor. ‘London had looked its last upon the Queen,’ said the Times, ‘and was left with naught but its imperishable memories.’
Most of the vast crowd were sombre as they dispersed, queueing patiently to leave Hyde Park, waiting for the tea houses to open at 2pm so they could at last get some refreshment.
They were still silent, and even the opening of the pubs at 3pm brought only a half-hearted response. Men talked in muffled tones and women refrained from laughter, according to one observer. An hour or so later, most of the drinkers had drifted away.
‘Everything was shrouded in gloom,’ the Daily Chronicle reported. ‘Such a silent Saturday night has not been seen in London within the memory of man.’
Conan Doyle, looking at the sad and bewildered faces on the street that day, knew he was not alone in wondering where England would stand now that she was gone.
Tony Rennell is the author of Last Days Of Glory: The Death Of Queen Victoria.