Today, Buckingham Palace is one of the most famous symbols of the British monarchy in existence, but the building we're so familiar with now is a relatively recent addition. The property itself has belonged to the royal family for over 400 years, and at one time housed the monks of Westminster Abbey.
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00:00There's been plenty of opportunity for people to shuffle off this mortal coil while they're
00:04visiting Buckingham Palace. Has it happened? You bet. Here are the only people to die there — that
00:09we know of, anyway. The original owner of Buckingham House was also the first to die there.
00:15John Sheffield was a former military man who became a Knight of the Garter in 1674,
00:20then went on to become Lord Chamberlain, and then, in 1703, the Duke of Buckingham and Normanby.
00:26He was also a poet. In fact, he had a bunch of enemies, and that seems to be one of the reasons
00:30he turned to poetry. Hey, when you can't eviscerate your enemies with a sword, you might as well do
00:35it with words. According to The Queen's House, A Social History of Buckingham Palace, Sheffield
00:40loved Buckingham House and often wrote that his garden and salon were filled with pictures,
00:44some good, but none disagreeable. He boasted about the view and the library and the birds
00:49outside his window, and seems to have been a bit bored with politics towards the end of his life,
00:54to the point where he really wasn't doing much beyond hanging out at home and writing letters
00:58about how awesome his house was. It's not super surprising, then, that he ended up dying in
01:03Buckingham House at the age of 72, mostly because it seems like he wasn't too keen to ever leave.
01:09But can you blame him? Hugh Chamberlain, the younger,
01:12came from a long line of midwives, and they were kind of a big deal. In fact,
01:16according to the British Medical Journal, his family is believed to have invented obstetric
01:20forceps, though for whatever reason they took great pains to keep their invention a secret.
01:25That was a few generations before Hugh the Younger's time, though.
01:28Hugh was educated at Trinity College in Cambridge and became a doctor at the age of 25.
01:33He was well-respected and spent his later years hanging out with the Duchess of Buckingham,
01:38which is probably why he ended up dying in Buckingham House in 1728.
01:42According to the thrillingly named Memoirs and Correspondence of Francis Atterbury Vol. 2,
01:47Hugh had been suffering from an unknown illness for a long time, so it's likely he planned to die
01:52at Buckingham in the presence of his friends, the Duchess and her son, the younger Duke of Buckingham.
01:57Edward VII was the second child of Queen Victoria and the great-grandfather of Queen Elizabeth II,
02:03and has the honor of being the only British monarch who was born and also died in the
02:07palace walls. Edward reigned for just over a decade. Like his descendant, Prince Charles,
02:12he was Prince of Wales for a very long time. His mother was in her 80s when she died,
02:17so he didn't become king until he was practically an old man. Despite his short reign,
02:21Edward was well-liked and even got the nickname Peacemaker because of his skill as a diplomat.
02:26His methods are a bit outdated today, but worked well enough then,
02:30like more powerful monarchs before him. Edward used his familial bonds with European royalty
02:35to build stronger relationships between England and neighboring nations.
02:38Edward was the last British monarch to use any of what little power he had,
02:43but it seemed to take a toll on him. In 1910, he had a series of heart attacks,
02:47but refused to rest, saying,
02:49"'No, I shall not give in. I shall go on. I shall work to the end.'"
02:53That's pretty much exactly what happened. He died just a few days later.
02:57What happened next was heartbreaking. His wife wouldn't let anyone touch his body,
03:01and he stayed where he was for eight days,
03:03until someone finally put him in a coffin and took him out of Buckingham Palace.
03:07Prince Philip's mother died at Buckingham Palace just a couple of years after the
03:11royal family brought her out of Greece, where she'd spent time defying Nazis and
03:15taking care of sick people. Yes, Princess Alice had a much more colorful history than her own son,
03:20who was mostly known for things like playing squash during the birth of Prince Charles and
03:24just kind of existing. His mother, on the other hand, had a much more interesting,
03:28if not exactly happy, life. Alice was the great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria.
03:33She was also deaf, though her family gave her no special treatment.
03:37She was expected to do everything everyone else did, including learning how to speak
03:40three languages. She married Prince Andrew of Greece and had five children, including Philip,
03:45who would, of course, go on to become the husband of the Queen of England.
03:49The family fled Greece in 1917 for various political reasons, and 13 years later,
03:53Alice had what was described as a nervous breakdown. She was committed to a Swiss
03:57sanitarium and briefly became a patient of Sigmund Freud. Later in life, Alice moved back to Greece.
04:03There, she sheltered a Jewish family from the Nazis and founded an order of nuns.
04:07The British royal family brought her back to England in 1967,
04:10and two years later, she died in Buckingham Palace.
04:13Flora Elizabeth Hastings was born in Scotland in 1806. In 1834, she became a lady-in-waiting
04:19to the Duchess of Kent, who was also the mother of the future Queen Victoria. Flora was smart and
04:24witty, and like so many other smart and witty women before and since, she was disliked by a
04:29lot of people. Flora traveled by carriage to London after spending Christmas of 1838 in
04:33Scotland with her mother. Unfortunately, her carriage driver was a man, and there
04:37was no one else traveling with them, which was pearl-clutchingly scandalous at the time.
04:42To make matters worse, Flora became ill not long afterwards, complaining of abdominal swelling,
04:46pain, and nausea. Because she had some enemies, and because people in those days were just as
04:51judgmental as people today, everyone around her figured she'd become pregnant during her
04:55trip to London. Even Queen Victoria jumped on the Flora's pregnant bandwagon.
05:00Flora was finally examined by a doctor and declared to be a virgin, but her swollen abdomen
05:04was getting bigger, and a lot of people were still convinced she was pregnant. She endured
05:08months of ostracization until it finally became obvious she wasn't pregnant — she was mortally
05:13ill. She ultimately succumbed to liver cancer. Queen Victoria, to her credits, was haunted by
05:18Flora's death and had nightmares about the dead girl for years afterwards.
05:23The life of a monarch is stressful, but the life of their staff is even more so,
05:27since staff are required to hold up all the same principles and values of their royal employers,
05:31but without all the opulence and fancy meals. That kind of stress, unfortunately,
05:36is what drove Edward VII's private secretary, John Gwynne, to take his own life. Details about
05:41Gwynne's death are scant — he's mostly just talked about in stories of famous British hauntings.
05:46Staff say the room he died in feels creepy, and some claim to have heard a phantom gunshot.
05:52In those days, divorce was still viewed as shameful, especially by members of the royal family.
05:57Gwynne was evidently unhappy in his marriage, or maybe it was just his wife who was unhappy,
06:01but either way, the couple divorced. According to the Sunday Guardian,
06:05Gwynne couldn't endure the scandal and took his own life in a Buckingham Palace office.
06:10Even less is known about Highland attendant Francis Clark, who is mostly remembered for
06:14one small bronze statue someone made of him in 1895 — a sort of Highland attendant action figure.
06:20There's probably someone out there who knows exactly what a Highland attendant is,
06:24but no one seems to have bothered to write it down. Based on the available information,
06:28a Highland attendant seems to be some sort of personal servant in a kilt.
06:32Francis appears in a few archived photos, and one, he's with four of the royal dogs. Evidently,
06:38at least some Highland attendant's duties included walking the royal good boys and good girls.
06:43Francis Clark joined Victoria's staff in 1870 and served for 25 years.
06:47Victoria gave him the Faithful Service Medal in 1891.
06:51He died in Buckingham Palace four years later, in the summer of 1895.
06:56William Hayes Fisher was a Victorian-era politician who actually did a lot of
06:59different things throughout his reasonably long life. He died at the age of 67. But he's
07:04not really well-remembered because, frankly, most of the stuff he did was boring. Fisher
07:09was an Oxford University graduate, a lawyer, and later a member of Parliament. He had a couple
07:14jobs as a private secretary, and he was a junior Lord of the Treasury for seven years. Asleep yet?
07:23He was also the government whip of the House of Commons during the same time period,
07:27and he had a few other boring-sounding jobs with boring-sounding titles. Oh,
07:31and he was Knight of Grace, Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem,
07:36whatever that is, and chairman of an insurance company. Notably,
07:40William Hayes Fisher died in the Buckingham Palace Gardens in July of 1920. For the uninitiated,
07:45the gardens at Buckingham Palace are about 40 acres of grass, trees, and shrubs featuring a lake,
07:51complete with a couple of islands and a waterfall. So while Fisher may have lived a boring life,
07:56at least he died in an interesting place. Good for him.
07:59Not much has been said about Eric Whitelaw except that he had a false arm,
08:02which he presumably got while serving during World War I with the Seaforth Highlanders.
08:07Whitelaw really doesn't seem like someone destined to die at Buckingham Palace,
08:10but that's what he did. In 1953, he was at the palace awaiting an Order of the British Empire
08:16award. It wasn't for his military service, though, in case you're wondering. It was for his,
08:20quote, services to the rubber industry and salon. Okay. Anyway, Whitelaw never got the
08:26award because he died at the palace before it could be bestowed on him.
08:30The only real record of this death that exists on the internet is an old archived
08:34copy of The New York Times, published in 1978. According to the story, a palace servant took
08:39her own life on the eve of her retirement. Ilse Farrell took her own life in her bedroom
08:45at Buckingham Palace. She was a 59-year-old widow who was just finishing her eighth year working in
08:50the palace laundry room. Details are pretty limited, but the story seems to suggest that
08:54she really didn't want to retire. So maybe her identity was so wrapped up in being a palace
08:58servant that she didn't see a future for herself as a retiree. Whatever the motivation, this is one
09:03of the palace's most tragic deaths. Margaret Macdonald served Queen Elizabeth II for 67 years,
09:10starting when the queen was a baby and ending when Macdonald died in 1993 at the age of 89.
09:15Macdonald and the queen were incredibly close. Macdonald continued to faithfully serve the queen
09:20during all of her travels and life milestones, and as a reward, the queen made her a lieutenant
09:25of the Royal Victorian Order. Late in life, Macdonald's job was basically just the official
09:30friend to the queen. She got a private room in Buckingham Palace and was not really expected to
09:35do anything except be the queen's confidant. She died in her sleep in her room at Buckingham Palace.
09:40No cause of death was ever made public, but it's probably safe to say that old age had something
09:45to do with it. Even if you're not a fan of the royal family, you probably still know about the
09:50queen's famous corgis. Because, let's be honest, corgis are downright adorable. Queen Elizabeth II
09:56has owned them since she got her first one at the age of 18. Since then, the royal corgis have been
10:01reproducing almost as fast as the royal family. But the line came to an end in 2018 with the
10:06death of Willow, the very last of the royal line of Queen Elizabeth II's corgis.
10:11The death of this particular dog is significant because it represents the end of an era.
10:15It's even a little foreshadowing. This line of corgis has been around for the queen's entire
10:19reign, and now that it's come to an end, well, let's just say there are changes in the wind.
10:25This one is a bit of a stretch, but it deserves to be included because this person,
10:29hundreds of years after his death, still will not allow himself to be forgotten.
10:33Not that anyone really knows who he is or anything.
10:36Long, long before Buckingham Palace was Buckingham Palace, there was a monastery on the site.
10:41Supposedly, the ghost of one of the monastery's former residents still wanders around nearby.
10:46And because a creepy ghost in a creepy brown robe isn't creepy enough all by itself,
10:51he's rattling chains and moaning, too. Which means he's either a superfan of Dickens at
10:56Christmas Carol or he did some misbehaving back when he was alive. One popular story
11:00says he was locked up and starved to death, which explains why he's still roaming the grounds.
11:05The monk reportedly only appears on Christmas Day, which further supports the theory that
11:09he's a Dickens superfan. Fortunately, the queen tends to spend her holidays elsewhere,
11:14so it's probably unlikely he's ever managed to show her all of her ghosts of Christmas past.
11:19To old times, my friend.