Queen Victoria

Victoria

1) When was Victoria born? What do you know about her childhood and about her education?

Victoria was born on 24 May 1819 at Kensington Palace in London. Her childhood was not happy and peaceful as I imagine for a princess because her father died when she was a baby and her protective mother didn’t let her play with other children.

She was educated intensively at home by private teachers.

2) When did she become Queen? How much did she stay in charge?

Victoria became Queen at eighteen on 20 June 1837 when King William IV died. She stayed in charge for 63 years.

3) Who’s Albert? What happened in 1840?

What do you know about him and his relationship with Victoria? Tell about their family.

Albert is Victoria’s German cousin with whom she fell in love. In 1840 they got married. Albert was intelligent, well educated and responsible, interested in multiple disciplines. Albert was loved and involved in public life, but the people didn’t like him because he was a foreigner.

Between 1840 and 1857 Victoria and Albert had nine children: 5 daughters and 4 sons.

4) Who introduced the Christmas tree to Great Britain?

The husband of Victoria, Albert, introduced the first Christmas tree, since it was a German custom. Soon, the Christmas tree was popular all over Britain.

5) What happened in 1825? Which are the consequences of this event?

In 1825 the first railway opened and attracted a lot of attention. With the railway, people and goods travelled cheaply and quickly.

Railways spread in England, Scotland and Wales. In 1842 the Queen and her husband took their first train ride. Soon the royal family travelled by the Royal train, in a specially designed carriage.

6) Which are the other great changes that happened during the Victorian Age?

In the Victorian Age were invented, besides trains, cars, the telephone, electricity and photography. As a matter of fact, Queen Victoria was the first monarch to be photographed.

7) What do you know about the population during the Victorian Age?

• How did poor people live? Who wrote about them?
• Which reform passed?
• How did middle and upper classes live?

During the Victorian Age, poor people lived in terrible conditions. The children and the adults either worked in factories and mills or they were beggars (or thieves). Charles Dickens wrote about them in Oliver Twist. Queen Victoria tried to help the poor; in fact, in 1847 the Ten Hour Act limited the working day of women and children to ten hours a day. In 1870 the Education Act was passed.

The middle and the upper classes lived in clean, comfortable houses, in green areas called suburbs.

8) What’s the Great Exhibition?

On 1 May 1851 Queen Victoria opened the Great Exhibition in Crystal Palace in London. The Great Exhibition was the show of Britain’s products, inventions and machines to the world.

9) Who was Florence Nightingale? What did she do during and at the end of the Crimean War?

Florence Nightingale was a nurse whom Victoria helped, who went to Crimea with 38 nurses. She courageously set up a hospital for wounded soldiers and saved many lives. After the war Florence Nightingale opened the first school for nurses in London.

*wounded = feriti

10) What happened in 1861? How did Victoria feel about it? What was her reaction?

In November 1861 Albert caught typhoid fever, but he continued working until his death on 14 December. Victoria was devastated; it was the greatest agony of her life. She was lost without Albert.

In her sadness and misery Victoria became a recluse.

11) What happened in 1869?

In 1869 the Suez Canal was built by the French.

12) What happened in 1876?

Queen Victoria became Empress of India in 1876.

13) Who’s David Livingstone?

David Livingstone was a British missionary and a great explorer. In the 1850s he travelled extensively in Africa and made the first map of Central Africa. He discovered six lakes, rivers, mountains and the biggest waterfall in the world, called Victoria Falls in honour of the Queen.

14) What was the British Empire like in 1899? Why did people say that “the sun never set on it”?

In 1899 the British Empire was the biggest empire in the world.

People said that “the sun never set on it” because the British Empire also grew and expanded around the world.

15) When did Victoria die? Where was she buried?

Queen Victoria died on 22 January 1901 at the age of 82 at Osborne House. She was buried beside her beloved Albert at Frogmore.

16) How is she considered?

Victoria was considered the Mother of the British Empire.