Queen Victoria's underwear stolen at Buckingham Palace... three times.

Queen Victoria had an unusually determined visitor. And since it happened in the late 1800s, we can confirm this is the story of the original royal celebrity stalker.

Known to the press as ‘the boy Jones’, teenager Edward Jones was caught in the palace three times during her reign – but probably sneaked in more often than that.

...and we thought Megan, Duchess of Sussex had security concerns! this happened at a time when there was no royal security at all.

Boy Jones stole food and pieces of Queen Victoria's underwear, and claimed to have sat on the throne.

Dr Jan Bondeson, a senior lecturer at Cardiff University, spent five years researching his subject.

In an interview with the BBC, Dr Bondeson claimed that "Edward Jones was a very weird character and apart from Queen Victoria, he was never interested in women.

"He gained access to the palace through unlocked doors or unshuttered windows on the ground floors - there was no royal security in those days," he said. It was difficult to say how Jones's obsession started with Queen Victoria, who was the British Empire's monarch from 1837 to 1901, but the 14-year-old only ever targeted her when she was at Buckingham Palace.

"He was caught three times and admitted being in there a fourth time but it was likely he was there many other times.

"He took the queen's underwear the first time, and the third time he stole food from the kitchen and twice he was caught sitting on the throne.

"He was caught with the queen's underwear stuffed down his trousers."

What do we know exactly about Boy Jones?

According to Dr Bondeson, he "was a very solitary character but he was not schizophrenic or classed as mad, just odd.

"He was extremely ugly, with a wide mouth and low brow and he never washed, which is why people thought he was a chimney sweep."

What happened to him?

The British government eventually kidnapped him and sent him to Brazil. When he escaped and returned, they imprisoned him on a ship for six years then sent him to Australia. He worked there as a town crier before his death on Boxing Day 1893.

The whole thing was satirised for decades in the British and Colonial press:

"He was very annoyed about always being known for being the queen's stalker and felt persecuted by the jokes, even in Australia," says Dr Bondeson.

Why was he "Kidnapped"?

There were nowhere near the stalking laws back then as there is now.

In 2010, Dr Bondeson told the BBC that Boy Jones was tried by the British privy council in secret but, because what he had done was not technically a crime, he could not be sent to prison for a long time.

"He was initially sentenced to three months as a rogue and vagabond but he kept stalking the Queen so the government decided to get rid of him."

He was deported to Australia where he sold pies but came back to Britain.

Jones's brother persuaded him to go to Australia again and he became the town crier of Perth.

It is not known what exactly was the allure for Boy Jones, was it the Queen herself or was it Buckingham Palace itself, which seems to be a favourite of 19th and 20th century burglars?

We may never know what exactly happened or why, especially given how secretive the Royal Family is by nature, but one thing we do know is that Megan and Harry are not the first people to have an issue with Royal Security, and I'm sure wont be the last!

REFERENCES & CREDIT:

• "Story of Boy Jones who stole Queen Victoria's underwear". BBC. 2 February 2011.; citing Bondeson 2010.
• Dickens, Charles (5 July 1884) "The boy Jones", All the Year Round, pp. 234–37.
• Strachey, Lytton (1921) Queen Victoria.
• Thomas Murphy, Paul. "Jones, Edward". Oxford University Press. Retrieved 9th March 2021.
• Bondeson, Jan. "The strange tale of the first royal stalker". Express.co.uk. Retrieved 9th March 2021.
• Punch, Volume 1: July–December 1841.