Edward Jones: “The First Celebrity Stalker”

teenage stalker who stole the young Queen Victoria's underwear. And as that intro suggests, especially because we're laughing about it, this particular stalker story has the distinction of being definitely more odd than it does scary. Absolutely So first let's set our scene. So this is nineteen century England during the Victorian Era, which is generally considered to be about eighteen thirty seven to nineteen o one, which is the life of Queen Victoria. Um but give or take a

few years uneat end. It was a period of time when there was rapid development and change happening. Victoria came to the throne in eighteen thirty seven at the age of eighteen as Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. All accounts say that she was stout and considered dowdy, and although she wasn't actually even five ft tall, she succeeded in projecting herself to be much larger.

Her reign lasted sixty three years and seven months. She was the record holder until current Queen Elizabeth seconds and Victoria's reign began at a time of the world's first Industrial Revolution. This was a time of great change for obviously the industrial but also the political, scientific, and military sectors within the United Kingdom. This is also a time when the British Empire became the first global industrial power and produced much of the world's coal, iron, steel, and textiles.

During this time, the UK changed from an agricultural country to an industrialized one, and while that was good for the middle class, a lot of people continued to suffer from deep poverty. This is also a time that gets a lot of valid discussion about colonization and the expanding of empire by taking over other people's lands. It's a strange time where development is going on and a lot of bad things are happening in the name of that development.

There were harsh factory conditions. There was unsafe housing, there was really bad sanitation, and along with all of this, of course, where's excessive drinking. Women were also in the workplace, which some people saw as a moral problem. This was a problem. There was also a decline in religious fervor at this time, right. So, in eighteen forty, two to three years after her reign began, Victoria married Prince Albert, who happened to be her first cousin. Uh, I'm gonna

leave it at that. Victoria, who was deeply in love, was the one who proposed to Albert, and during their seventeen years of marriage they had nine children. Um In fact, also at this time in Great Britain as well as elsewhere in Europe and in the United States, the idea that marriage should be based in romantic love rather than for money or another strategic reason that you can come up with romantic love was gaining popularity. Victoria also helped cement that idea, right. She was in many ways a

trend setter, right. The idea of the white wedding dress kind of goes back to her. We should also point out that she, in terms of social and Royal Moray's at the time, she had to be the one to propose. Albert could not propose to her because she was a higher station than him, which would have been just not okay at all. So it was the time of things that were more exciting than marrying for money in Royal

Bay Bees though. It was also the time of Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin and Florence Nightingale and the steam powered locomotive and the first telegraph and telephone. This was a really exciting time to be alive. We talked about our technological age and things moving so quickly that felt like this to a lot of people where they were just like, do you mean I can talk to somebody who was far away? Absolutely? Absolutely, I mean like I think, what was it? The penny black? Is that what it

was called? The very first black penny postage stamp also happened during Victoria's reign, like you could, you could connect with people in ways that you could never have connected before. And it's in this time period that Edward Jones, or as the newspapers nicknamed him, the Boy Jones, was born in London some time around eighteen four. His father was a tailor and his family was very poor but by the time that Edward Jones was fourteen years old, he

had become the first celebrity stalker. So this all started in eighteen thirty eight when Jones was overheard bragging to his employer about walking through Buckingham Palace. But no one believed that he had done this or that he would do this. The very thought of a commoner just strolling through the palace was absolutely absurd. It would be like me going Maria yesterday I was on the moon like.

It was that level of just ridiculous to the hearer, Right, I'm going to go back this weekend, like, oh my gonna all the time about you. But here's the thing, as absurd as it sounded, between eighteen thirty eight and eighteen forty one, Jones did break into Buckingham Palace way more than once. He was good at it more than once. It was like he just walked in the front door. At the end of it, he's like, hey, I'm here. Oh that kid's back right right, we know him. He's

been here a hundred and two times. So or to start at the beginning, the story of the boy Jones has been over the years basically pieced together using newspaper reports from the first years of Victoria's reign and the first time that he entered Buckingham Palace in he did it with a disguise. He disguised himself as a chimney sweeper. In History tells us that Jones was not a particularly good looking gent. He's described as having a wide mouth and a low brow and not really um super good

about bathing regularly. Not some good higien there, right. So word is that he thought he wouldn't stand out dressed as a chimney sweep, and that apparently worked because he got in. But the visit ended for the fictitious chimney sweep when he was seen by a porter and chased out and then was captured by the authorities. And when they captured him, they found that he had the Queen's underwear hidden in his pants. I have questions because if you look at pantalets from this era, right, it's not

like a pair of underwear today. Right, It's like he had like bloomers shot. It's like fabric. Even the way they're cut is not straight cut the way we would have pants today. They had a lot of extra fabric at the back to allow movement, but it would have been probably a very very delicate, thin, really beautiful material. So he may have been able to watt it up quite tiny. But could it have been like a silk

or something. No, not for her, probably not. It probably would have been a really really nice, high grade cotton or even maybe linen. Don't quote me on this. I didn't prep And maybe they knew that he had them in his pants because there was a large bulge from like around his knees. But I mean, keep in mind, the whole reason for undergarments. It was to keep your clothes from getting soiled and to keep them beautiful. So they had to be things that could be washed. That's

why something like a silk would probably not have been it. Right, So this trial, the after the Debacle of the underpants was kind of treated like a joke, because it is as silly as it sounds, the Debacle of the underpand that's going to be the movie that we've made about. And his defense referred to the event as quote youthful folly and not for any felonious purpose, and it was kind of laughed at, just as we are. And so

Jones was ultimately acquitted because no one took it seriously. Sure, they had a fourteen year old boy who scaled the ball and came into the palace for one time. That single time, I can see taking it as a joke. But the problem became that Jones kept going back to the palace. Uh. He stole food from the kitchen, he was caught sitting on the throne twice, he slept in

the servants bed. He read the Queen's private letters, and at some point Jones also managed to make with a portrait of the queen, regimental sword, a letter, three pairs of trousers, and a collection of linen's does he have big pants? Like, maybe this is the answer to prob A portrait, a portrait of the He was actually a tiny, tiny person that was disguised as a six foot tall person. So we had lots of actor room and some skilts with some space. Right, he just walked out with it

over his own face. He's like, this is my face portrait. Yeah. Sure. But with all of these amazing feats of break ins and theft, the boy Jones became a media celebrity. So with that, we're going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsor. And when we come back, we're going to talk about what was up with palace security at this time. Welcome to Criminalia, all right, let's get to talking about just how easy it was to

scale the walls of Buckingham Palace in the nineteenth century. Today, the Queen's Guard is responsible for guarding Buckingham Palace and St James Palace in London. There are heat sensors that surround the palace as well as CCTV. The grounds are patrolled twenty four hours a day by armed guards, and yet people still attempt to break in or scale the gates, and occasionally they do. But security at the time we're talking about was nothing like it is now. It was

not at that level. It was notoriously loose and unorganized. During Victoria's reign, she was the first royal to live in Buckingham Palace and no one headed up palace security at the time. Part of the problem was that in many cases, each task of the household was managed by a separate entity, and in cases where those tas overlapped,

they were not always under the same supervisory umbrella. Marie and I had been talking earlier about sort of the infamous problem of the people who watched the outside of the windows and the people who watched the inside of the windows would not coordinate their schedules, so there was

never really a clean window. So it wasn't just security, but it was a lot of things in the palace that were operating in this sort of strange, genteel sort of chaos, and anyone and everyone, from vagrants to the casually curious, were known to jump the walls in the Victorian era, and pretty easily so, And there was a great deal of fascination when it came to the new queen. When her uncle, King William the Fourth died, he left her as a new monarch, and she was less than

a month past her eighteenth birthday. She had been raised in a very very sheltered and protective manner by her mother, the Duchess Kent, and her mother's adviser, Sir John Conroy. Victoria's entire childithood and the years leading up to her reign were spent under Conroy and the Duchess's system of

very strict rules, which they called the Kensington System. Public appearances of the princess had been carefully managed by the adult duo, and as a consequence, the general excitement over a new monarch was overlaid with intense curiosity about the teenager who was on the throne. Yeah, people really didn't feel like they knew that much about her, because even though there had been things published about her, she was still this sort of weird enigma that had been kept

away from them. Right now you could see her. Yes, she is real. Um. She was described as being frightened as a young queen because of Jones, and Victoria actually wrote in her journal after the time that the boy Jones was removed from underneath the piece of furniture. Quote, if he had come into my bedroom, how frightened I would have been. But honestly, with the number of times that he got in, it kind of doesn't necessarily seem like he was stocked the queen, but more like he

was stalking the palace. But then he kept taking her stuff, So yeah, you know, there's that. And we should also point out like he was not the only one. Throughout Victoria's reign. There were, of course more stalkers. We don't know a certain number, there have been various ones bandied about. There were also attempts on her life. It was kind of all of the unfortunate side of what it meant to be a monarch. Also, it wasn't the missing Linen's

that the Palace was so worried about. Initially they were. They were more fearful that Jones might hurt or even assassinate the Queen or maybe kidnapped the Princess Royal. The monarchy wanted to get rid of Jones at any cost. So what the Palace was really really worried about was that the boy Jones may have seen things when he roamed the halls, and he may have overheard things. They weren't sure if he was privy to the secrets of

the throne or the government. They were determined to keep him quiet and to create a large distance between him and the Palace. Yet still he kept coming, and he became a little bit of a folk hero. His palace capers became the subject of songs and poems. They were also written up all the time in silicious newspapers. There was so much speculation about what he had really seen inside the palace, and exactly what the Palace was trying

to avoid was all of this. Whether those stories were true or not, they did not want it to be in the press. They did not want speculation about what might be going on. Here's the thing. It does not appear that the boy Jones ever gossiped about what he saw on these little escapades, even though he claimed early on during his break ins when he would be taken into custody, that he had intended to tell the world

what he saw, But he never really did. He just kind of mucked about quietly and often dozed off again. And this time in December, the boy Jones was discovered in the palace um. This time he was discovered underneath the sofa in the room that was adjacent to the Queen's private bedroom. And this time he was arrested, and this time he was sentenced to three months in a house of correction. Here's the thing about Jones and the palace.

Just ten days after he was released, he went back to the palace and he was found wandering in one of the royal apartments. He was eventually caught by palace guards and found himself back in front of the jury, and this time he was sentenced to three months of

hard labor at Tothill Fields Prison. The Leicester Harold reported quote, it would appear that there is now no doubt, but the account given by Jones difficult as it is to believe anything he says as to his having effected his entrance into the palace by scaling the garden wall from Constitution Hill and then passing through one of the French

windows which opens onto the lawn is correct. It is said that some of the windows were broken, and that other marks of suspicious nature were observable near the spot. Having once gained the inside of the building, the lad from his recollection of the various staircases and passages, would find perhaps but little difficulty in reaching the apartment in which he was afterwards arrested. So, after his release from hard labor in prison, Jones was yet again caught wandering

around Buckingham Palace. Um, I feel like every paragraph from now on just to just start with that. Uh so this time back at the palace. Actually, instead of a charge or trial, he was sent to do duty as a sailor in the Royal Navy, which, if he did for they say more than five years. Jones served on the HMS worst By, the h M S Inconstant and the h M S Harlequin. A year later, he finally got a chance to escape from his ship in Portsmouth

and got himself to London. However, no longer to anyone's surprise. You can guess where he was caught loitering in the vicinity of Buckingham Palace and he was immediately sent back to his ship. The last mention of the boy Jones in the media was in eight four, and that was when he was rescued after going overboard, presumably to swim back to London and get to the palace in the

waters between Tunis and Algiers. You know, I wouldn't be surprised if he was planning to swim, because there was one account that said that he walked himself to London after he got off the ship. Now it was not a good source, you know, but still the idea of the walking in the swimming to get back to it fits ragul fence. So there's actually another version that we should talk about. Um. The second version of this story regarding Jones's time in the navy actually doesn't have the

Navy in it whatsoever. There's a version of this story that suggests he was invited to join the Royal Navy in an effort to get him at sea and far away from the Palace, and in this version, Jones refused to deploy, so the monarchy kidnapped him and deported him to Brazil. And in this scenario he was kept on board a prison ship for about five to six years, without any official charge or trial, and never getting close

enough to the shore to plan an escape. We're gonna have a quick break now, and whenn't we get back, we're going to talk about how Jones ended up in Australia. Welcome back to Criminalia. So now let's talk about Edward Jones in Australia. Yeah, so during this time in the Victorian era, I think it's fairly common knowledge that convicts and other people deemed unsavory were frequently deported from Great

Britain to the penal colony that was then Australia. And after his time in the navy or aboard that prison ship, whichever you believe, Jones was deported to Australia and there he is said to have sold pies and generally kind of just tried to keep a low profile and lead something akin to a normal life. And for years in both the UK and Australia, people are said to have followed him around shouting there's the boy who went to visit the queen. Well he did, It's a true statement.

So in the eighteen eighties, as a grown man who wished to return to being an unknown man, Edward Jones changed his name to Thomas Jones. Jones did have truly become an alcoholic and possibly also a burglar. When he decided he returned to England. His brother persuaded him to go back to Australia, which he did and he became the town crier in Perth. He died in Australia um when he was drunk and he had fallen off the Mitchell River Bridge and he landed unfortunately on his head.

So unlike what the stalker profile that today's FBI suggests, Jones never thought that he and the Queen were destined to be together. He didn't want to kill her. He's been described by modern historians as a quote very weird character and a very solitary man who, apart from his visits to Queen Victoria's palace, wasn't particularly interested in women. But what he did want to do was he wanted

to sit on the throne. He wanted to read her books, he wanted to go through her things, and in general, he wanted to enter the palace, but really not to see the Victoria or her new baby or anyone who worked or lived there, and that's what he did mostly. Um he gained access through some pretty simple methods, including security breaches like unlocked doors or unshuttered windows on the ground floor, and once he got inside, he did things like sit on the throne, he hit under the Queen's sofa,

and he stole her underwear. I would give a jillion dollars to just find out what he was thinking during any of this. As he's laying under the sofa, He's like, how am I going to get out of here? Right? Like is he like yeah, I'm in the palace, or like why do I keep doing this? He was caught on the premises three times, and he admitted that he had been in the palace a fourth time, and today historians believe that he likely entered Buckingham Palace many other

times that he just never got caught. And the thing is, he didn't always feel compelled to steal things every time he made a visit, so it's really hard to track him because the records of like, oh something's missing might not always reflect whether or not he had been there. Right, sometimes you just need to sit on the throne, Like, what are you doing this afternoon, I'm going to sit on the throne. I'm going to the moon on the moon.

So this all makes the Boy Jones the first celebrity stalker on record, um, but he was certainly not the only potential threat to Queen Victoria at this time, and certainly not the only intruder to Buckingham Palace. In fact, unwelcome guests still to this day try to break into the palace, probably on a daily basis. I would say, I mean they've got a lot of security during the summer of eight for example. To look at some of

these historical other instances that puts this right. At the same time as when the Boy Jones started his series of fourays into the Palace, there was a silversmith named Thomas Flower who was found sleeping in a chair outside Queen Victoria's bedroom. He was known about Buckingham Palace as one of the Queen's unrelenting admirers, and he ended up being sent to prison for gaining entry into the palace.

See the Boy Jones doesn't know how good he has it, so there's one more interesting Buckingham Palace intrusion story, but it's not during the Victorian period. It's during a more modern era. It's it's two. In fact, there was a man named Michael Fagan who was found inside Buckingham Palace, and like the boy Jones, the visits happened on more than one occasion. He roamed rooms that were used by Princess Diana as well as the Queen. He looked around

the palace. Allegedly he sat on the throne for a bit. I think if you break into Buckingham Palace though against like, aren't you committed to sitting on the throne? Like I'm already you know these days it's self beyond the throne? Yeah, not man. But in two breaking into Buckingham Palace was actually a civil rather than a criminal offense, so he

was actually charged with something rather hilarious. Rather than being in the palace, he was charged with the theft of a snack of cheese and crackers and the wine he had drunk while he was in the palace, which I love. He's like, how much for a square cheese? Okay? I got it, so holly. Speaking of drinking at the palace. Yes, I hear you have some drinks for us? Is that we won't be drinking at the palace. No, you're wherever you are as a palace. Um. Yes, let's think of it. This.

It is time for the chaser. So one of the things I wanted to do, since we were talking about the Victorian era, one of my very favorites, was actually to look up and make a cocktail from that era. And so what I ended up finding was the cocktail, which was a drink that was written down in three Let me tell you a thing about this. I read this and I said, this is gonna be foul. I'll tell you what actually happened. So it's a really simple recipe. I mean you can see that this is like where

it starts where people start mixing things. This recipe is a teaspoon of fine sugar or simple syrup, two ounces of rye whiskey, rum gin or brandy, your choice. I went with brandy for mine. Three ounces of water, four dashes of bitters. You mix all that together and then you sprinkle it with nutmeg on top. I was like, this is just watered down booze. It's watered down booze. That you've dressed up, you watered it down, and you put some pants on it. But here's the thing. I

actually thought it was delightful. Um yeah, I mean I I really I expected to be like that's of me drinking water down booze and being chagrinned about it. But in fact, just that little bit of syrup and nutmeg, like you can see where someone was like, I want to make someone a drink that they can actually drink instead of just chugging straight alcohol. I will water it down, but then we have to add some other things to make it a little fancier. And you know what, it

was just fine. I would make it again, excellent. Is it going to become my go to? It is not. But because I was doing that one, I also had this moment as I was making that one where I was like, I have missed my opportunity. I want to make another drink. Really though this is inspired by the boy Jones and it's not a real recipe though it is a d I y. It's like a mad lib of a recipe. It's so simple. I love when you do choose your own adventure beverages, Like it's my favorite thing.

When you're like this, this, or this, and I'm like, I gotta make all those versions, try them all. This is really like so simple and basic that it is like a good way for people who have an experimented much with making cocktails to start playing a little bit in a really easy, hard to mess up way. It is more of a category of cocktails that I call, in honor of Boy Jones, mostly harmless. I can't I can't recall a quote from the from the trial, like, no,

there's no felonious activity going on. It's mostly harmless. Five ounces of any mixer, so a juice if you want it, soda if you prefer it, and just one ounce of a liqueur. That seems like a good match. I made one that was orange juice with triple sex, so an orange liqueur, and it kind of is a little just a very orangey drink. It's not heavy. You're not gonna be like stumbling a drunk by any means. I mean, you can do at that point, like a pineapple juice

and a vanilla liqueur. You can do a lime juice and a rose liquor. You can also do something like a lemon lime soda, like a seven upper, a sprite and then put something like a violet liqueur in there, and it's pretty and it makes it like it feels a little fancy, but it's also mostly harmless, so that

would be that would be fantastic. Yeah, you're like, of course, yeah, And I specify liqueur because for the most part, it is not true to say this, but most liquors are a little bit lower in alcohol content than a than other spirits than a liquor. Not always there are exceptions to that rule, but it also just like it's the softest. If you mess it up, it's no big deal. It's mostly harmless. Have you tried this drink using any sort of pumpkin spice flavor in anything? Yet? Sort of? I

found it is called pumpkin spice sipping cream. It's basically a cream liqueur that's that has pumpkin flavor in it. They also do a butter pecan one that's amazing. Those are great in a little bit of coffee, right, I bet, I bet? And it is like a nice especially as we are currently in the Northern Hemisphere at least in winter, so it's a nice little warm up to just put a dash. You don't need much liqueur in there great little warm coffee nummies, mostly harmless, mostly harmless. Don't drink

a million it stops being harmless, but mostly harmless. Just like the Boy Jones. It's like the starter kit to make you think about how to create cocktails that you might enjoy. I think that's great. I think a lot of people might want to, you know, do the kitchen science experiments like you do, but but aren't necessary, especially because you inspire them to do that, but aren't necessarily sure.

We're to try because I've never done that before. I'm a big fan of like pick a liqueur that you really like, and then play with it with a bunch of different mixers and see what works and what does it. Thank you again. Now I'm just gonna go make myself a cocktail. Just sit here and talk about chasers all day long, maybe, But instead what we will do is let you go about your business and thank you so

much for joining us here in Criminalalia. We're Marianne. I love to talk about not just the Chasers, but also all of these strange criminals. We will see you back here next week. Criminalia is a production of Shonda Land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio for more podcasts from Shonda land Audio. Please visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.