The Victorian Era

How Did Queen Victoria's Reign End?

Article · History & Overview · The Victorian Era, 1837–1901

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Queen Victoria’s reign ended with her death on 22 January 1901 at Osborne House, her country home on the Isle of Wight. The queen was eighty-one years old and had reigned for almost sixty-four years, longer than any British monarch before her. Her son, Edward, Prince of Wales, became King Edward VII, and the Victorian era came to a formal end. The death of the queen, in the first week of the twentieth century, was the symbolic conclusion of the long Victorian afternoon, and the beginning of what historians call the Edwardian era.

The final weeks of Victoria’s reign are well documented, and they show a queen who was physically frail but mentally alert, and who was still attending to her official duties. The political and personal context of the last years of the reign is examined in the Reign of Queen Victoria. For the broader historical setting, see The Victorian Era: A Complete Historical Overview.

The Last Months of the Reign

The closing months of the Victorian era were marked by a war. The Second Boer War, which had begun in October 1899, was still being fought in January 1901, and the news from South Africa was a constant source of concern. The British army had suffered a series of embarrassments in the early months of the war, including the defeat at Colenso in December 1899 and the disaster at Spion Kop in January 1900, and only in the second half of 1900 had the tide turned. The relief of Kimberley, the battle of Paardeberg, and the capture of Pretoria had been cause for celebration in the summer of 1900, but the war was not yet over. The guerrilla phase of the conflict, in which Boer commandos operated from the veldt, would continue until 31 May 1902.

The queen was following the war closely, and she was concerned about the army’s losses, about the conditions in the concentration camps that had been set up for Boer civilians by Lord Kitchener’s command, and about the political consequences of the war for the imperial government. She was also dealing with a long list of family concerns. Her grandson, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, was on difficult terms with the British government. Her son, the Prince of Wales, was impatient for the throne. Her daughter-in-law, Queen Alexandra, was popular and was widely expected to be a more visible monarch than Victoria had been. The queen was the linchpin of a vast and fractious family, and she knew it.

The Death of Victoria

Queen Victoria died at half past six in the evening on 22 January 1901. She had been unwell for several days, and the announcement of her death was made from Osborne House by the Prince of Wales and his household. The queen’s body lay in state in the Throne Room at Osborne, and the funeral took place on 2 February 1901. The body was transported from the Isle of Wight to London by train, and then by royal train to Windsor, where the queen was interred in the Royal Mausoleum at Frogmore, beside her husband, Prince Albert, who had died in 1861.

The death of the queen was a major event in the public life of the United Kingdom and the empire. Flags were lowered to half-mast. Theatres, music halls, and public buildings closed. Newspapers published extra editions. The prime minister, the Marquess of Salisbury, made a public statement, and the leading papers printed long editorials. The new king, Edward VII, returned from a visit to the Continent to take up his duties. The accession of Edward marked a generational change. The Victorian era was over, and the Edwardian era had begun.

The Funeral and the Legacy

The funeral of Queen Victoria was one of the great public events of the period. The gun carriage carrying the coffin was drawn by sailors of the Royal Navy, the route was lined with soldiers and civilians, and the service at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, was attended by the imperial family, the leading politicians of the United Kingdom, the prime ministers of the British dominions, and representatives of almost every state in Europe. The funeral was a moment of imperial unity, the last great ceremony of the era that had been inaugurated by the coronation of 1838.

The legacy of the queen was complex. The long reign had given the United Kingdom a stability and a sense of continuity that few other European states had enjoyed. The institutions of the British state, including the modern civil service, the modern monarchy, the modern prime minister’s office, the modern honours system, and the modern royal family as a public institution, had all matured during the reign. The popular image of the Victorian era, of black dresses, stiff etiquette, elaborate mourning, and a stern sense of duty, came in large part from the long years of the queen’s widowhood and the elaborate rituals of mourning that she practised and that were emulated across the empire. The cultural context is examined in Death and Mourning in the Victorian Era.

The Accession of Edward VII

The new king, Edward VII, was fifty-nine years old when he came to the throne, and he had been the Prince of Wales for almost sixty years. He was a much more public figure than his mother had been in the last decades of her reign, and he was a great populariser of the monarchy. The Edwardian era, the period of his reign from 1901 to 1910, was characterised by a more relaxed court, a more visible royal family, and a more confident imperial culture. The contrast between the late Victorian period and the Edwardian period is one of the standard themes of British cultural history, and it is examined in the Victorian Daily Life and Society page.

Was the End of the Reign a Surprise?

The death of Queen Victoria was not a surprise, in the sense that the queen was old and had been visibly frail for some time. It was, however, a shock in the sense that the era that bore her name was ending, and the public was not prepared for the change. The new king was a known figure, but he was a different kind of figure from his mother. The Victorian era had been shaped by a queen who had been in mourning for forty years, who had withdrawn from public life, and who had come to embody the moral gravity of the period. The Edwardian era would be shaped by a king who enjoyed society, who loved the races, and who was photographed in the new medium of the cinema. The transition, in other words, was not just from one reign to the next. It was from one kind of monarchy to another.