Queen Victoria and John Brown

[nahthatsnotforme]

Several news articles lately and a new Channel 4 documentary on Thursday presented by Rob Rinder suggesting they had a child.

I can believe they were in a relationship; she was a young woman when widowed but a child seems a
little far fetched.

Will give it a watch though.

Lets face it....so much of history is just a lot of rumours 😁

@CoffeeCantata I just googled and saw some interesting pictures I really don't want to see ever again 😂
Any men who have done that.....omg why? Why would you do that to yourself?
Ouch.

I'll wait for Jodi Taylor to theorise on this issue.
Maybe a short story : The Great Scottish Jump or The Vic and John Jump, or The Haggis Hunt where Max et al observe the pair of them.
I'm more inclined to believe the episode of Doctor Who . Tooth and Claw. Lycanthropy yes, child with ghillie not so much.

I'll wait for Jodi Taylor to theorise on this issue.
Maybe a short story : The Great Scottish Jump or The Vic and John Jump, or The Haggis Hunt where Max et al observe the pair of them.
I'm more inclined to believe the episode of Doctor Who . Tooth and Claw. Lycanthropy yes, child with ghillie not so much.

Oh no! I hope you’ll be able to ‘unsee’ those images. 😱

Yes me too. Google in this case was NOT my friend 🥺

🍌

It's a great story, and plausible until the hidden baby part. Funny how these people never want DNA tests - I wonder what Desirée Presley is up to these days?

Last summer I worked in a chateau and in the course of a few weeks two different women turned up claiming descent from the noble family. The first was apparently a well known local grifter/wind-up merchant trying to blag free entry and privileges. The second seemed sincere but her story didn't check out - it seemed to be a family legend of hers which she may have genuinely believed, but there was no record of the man she thought was her father. (I guess in wartime a lot of displaced people came up with faux identities that couldn't be verified, and an unscrupulous person might falsely claim nobility.)

Anyway, fantasists/grifters/unwell people have always claimed links to royalty and nobility. If they are genuine, they won't mind taking a test - like Puccini's grandson (I think it was) who managed to get hold of his inheritance by having the composer exhumed!

Is anyone watching? The woman with Rob Rinder is getting on my pip..

Yes I feel the same

I love a conspiracy theory. A relationship - quite possibly. Marriage and a child very unlikely IMHO. In fact nonsense.

It's rubbish.

This woman has convinced me it’s a fantasy..

Funny how these people never want DNA tests

That was the thing that always made Delphine of Belgium's claim to be King Albert's daughter seem genuine - she pushed relentlessly for a DNA test.

I am pretty convinced by the romance/marriage bit but not by the illegitimate child. I don’t think there’s any real evidence for it and frankly biology is heavily against it.

Not that it makes any difference to my view, but I would have liked to see a photo of the daughter - Mary Ann?

It’s hard to believe one hasn’t survived. I saw no resemblance to QV whatsoever in Angela, so I don’t know what Rob was seeing!

That always makes me cry! 😥

I don't believe she had a baby, she would have been right at the limit of her fertility, and for her to have her 10th baby at that age, without any medical intervention or anyone even noticing, seems very unlikely. I don't know enough about the John Brown relationship (other than the film, what a cast!) but it seems more probable they were non-sexual. She was very, very in love with Albert after all. She was also very aware of her role. I'm not sure she would have started shagging the servants, especially as she would have had to remove her mourning attire to do so - I would have thought that would have felt a bit 'off'. But obviously, I really have no idea. It wouldn't much change anything anyway, I think the line of succession is secure!

I think she simply had an almighty crush on John Brown
She was lonely after Albert died. She had no close friends and had a distant relationship with her children. John Brown filled an emotional need. There is no evidence that his feelings for her were more than those of a devoted servant.

If he was embarrassed by her displays of affection and terms of endearment he couldn’t have said so because his job depended on her. As well as his house. He may have been humouring her in view of that. She wasn’t an attractive woman even when young . Nine children later even less so.

Yes there is. It has been a legal requirement to register marriages in Scotland since 1855. No exceptions. Clergy would know this. As with all conspiracies, this “marriage” would have involved a lot of people keeping quiet. If you were so inclined you could go through registers for Aberdeenshire in the period and look for missing records - numbers which aren’t in sequence.

Agree With others - a friendship seen as inappropriate in Victorian society is one thing, a fake marriage and illegitimate pregnancy at 46 is quite another.

still, now they have done the Princes in the Tower to death, it’s another way to make money.

And similar requirements for registering children.

Rob Rinder looked like he's been taken seriously ill having to be manhandled into the summer shed to meet the American woman.

The funeral requests were very interesting though.

Is it John Candy's film about becoming king?

John Goodman, i think, King Ralph.

I don't think that they were legally married. The vicar would have to have read the banns, there would have needed to have witnesses and they would have signed a marriage certificate.

Most of my Victorian female ancestors were giving birth into their early to mid forties, so forty-six seems well within the realms of possibility to me. She would have been healthier and had access to far better medical care than my mainly quite poor family.

Perhaps they ‘got married’ in John Browns garden??