12. Stalkers Had an Easy Time Getting Into Queen Victoria’s Palace
Those guilty of the crime of stalking Queen Victoria included a silversmith named Thomas Flower. One of Victoria’s more persistent admirers, Flower was found sleeping in a chair near the queen’s bedroom in the summer of 1838. 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 raised £50 to bail him out.
Thomas Flower’s stalking of Queen Victoria was creepy, but it paled in comparison to that of Edward Jones, a kid dubbed “Boy Jones” by palace staff. Around 5 AM on December 14th, 1838, a palace servant saw a gargoyle of a face in a window, that appeared to be smudged with soot. It belonged to an ugly youth who was impishly grinning at him. Investigation revealed that a palace room had been ransacked, so the alarm was sounded, and the hunt for the intruder was on.