Princess Helena and Princess Beatrice, the queen’s daughters and constant companions, could not accept that their mother could actually die and tried to maintain business as usual. Sir James Reid, the queen’s personal physician for more than 20 years, had known the end was nigh but had great difficulty convincing the royal family of the inevitable, even in the final days when they saw the queen was drifting between delirium and lucidity. Her children squabbled, her doctors quarrelled, and the public were misled and kept in the dark. The queen’s terminal decline had been rapid and had taken the family by surprise. (Photo by The Print Collector/Getty Images) How did Queen Victoria die? The queen died at the residence on 22 January 1901. Osborne House, Isle of Wight, where Queen Victoria spent her final days.
There was no one alive who could remember how to bury a monarch and this queen had asked for a full military state funeral. Her Majesty the Queen breathed her last at 6.30pm, surrounded by her children and grand-children.”Īnd so the news of the queen’s passing was announced to the world. A short while later he walked down the long gravel drive to the entrance gate where a large crowd was waiting, and pinned a small notice on to the bulletin board. All telephone and telegraph wires were to be suspended, and any servant or messenger to be prevented from leaving. Twenty-two days later, shortly after 6.30pm on Tuesday 22 January 1901, Superintendent Fraser ordered the household police to surround the queen’s Isle of Wight residence Osborne House. Victoria’s own view of the future was bleak: “Another year begun, I am feeling so weak and unwell, that I enter upon it sadly.” Her children were in denial, her government was unprepared, and the public knew nothing at all. Yet no one could contemplate the mortality of the little old lady who had sat on the throne for almost 64 years. She was confined to a wheelchair, almost blind and had lapses of memory and moments of confusion. She was visibly fading: her voracious appetite had disappeared and she had lost almost half her body weight. The fading queenĪs Queen Victoria ended the 19th century, she was not her usual self. “I am sending for my mourning trappings” observed Marie Mallet, maid of honour to the queen, “we never escape jet for long”. On Christmas day, Jane, Lady Churchill, the queen’s oldest and most trusted friend, was found dead in her bed while staying with the queen at Osborne House. A few weeks later she received the news that her much-loved grandson, Prince Christian Victor, eldest son of her daughter Princess Helena, had succumbed to enteric fever while serving with the British Army in South Africa.