Funeral handkerchief

Many, many times over the years I have sat outside the room where my children have practised with the accompanist for their music exams. As Luke is sitting Grade 8 trumpet on Tuesday, it occurred to me that this could be my last visit. It's a house full of interesting things and one of them is this handkerchief, a souvenir of Queen Victoria's funeral procession through London on February 2nd 1901.

Queen Victoria died on 22nd January 1901 after reigning for 63 years.

She died at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. Her doctor, as she had requested, placed in her coffin her husband Albert's dressing gown, a cast of his hand and some photos. He placed her wedding veil over her face and a picture of John Brown in her right hand.

On February 1st, her coffin was placed onto the ship Alberta and taken across the Solent to Portsmouth and then by train to Victoria Station. Then it was pulled on a gun carriage by 8 white horses, to Paddington, where it boarded another train to Windsor for the funeral.

Victoria was buried next to Albert in Frogmore Mausoleum, which she had had built for him 40 years earlier.

It was the end of an era.