Reynolds’s News on Queen Victoria’s 1887 Jubilee
6th February marked 70 years of Queen Elizabeth being on the throne, an occasion of historical significance, however viewed. She has reigned longer than any other monarch, although Queen Victoria(1837-1902) came close.
Don’t expect criticisms of Royalty to feature in the 2022 occasion although some may appear as Jubilee celebrations roll on through the year.
Matters were a little different in the nineteenth century. I’ve delved into the archives and a look at Reynolds’s News for 26th June 1887 Queen Victoria’s 50th Jubilee. It was of course a magnificent occasion with dignitaries from across the Empire as it was then. Reynolds’s reported it straight although noting that a key feature of the day was the enormous amount of dust created by crowds of onlookers to the Jubilee procession.
However Reynolds’s founded by the maverick Chartist and novelist GWM Reynolds in 1850 was fiercely anti-Royalist and pro-Republican in its reporting. It was by far the best selling newspaper of the late Victorian era, coming out every Sunday. Think broadly a rather more radical version of the Mirror.
On the 1887 Jubilee the paper carried a lengthy letter from Northumbrian the opening lines of which were:
England during the past few days has presented a painful spectacle. There has in the first place been an unparalleled waste of money. This in itself is serious but not so significant as the fashion in which many otherwise sane and sensible people have given themselves up to the made fantasy of the moment. Language of the most inflated description has been used about the Queen, which would have been almost too highly coloured if addressed to a super naturally powered individual. The sycophantic shouting of the classes has drowned out practically every other sound of protest
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