Prince Albert’s spirit passes into John Brown

Following Prince Albert’s death in 1861, Queen Victoria met with several mediums in an attempt to communicate with her husband once more. Whilst all of the performers were considered unsuccessful by the Queen, there is one man whose psychic skill went on to cause havoc within the royal palaces.

Just a few months after the death of Prince Albert in December 1861, a man named Robert James Lees was performing in Birmingham when Albert’s spirit supposedly spoke through him. Lees had been born in the town of Hinkley in Leicestershire in 1849 and died and is considered to be a controversial character after he claimed that he could identify Jack the Ripper using his psychic abilities. Nonetheless, it’s no surprise that Lees’ captured the attention of Queen Victoria when an account of his Birmingham performance was published in Spiritualist Magazine. Despite desperately wanting to reunite with her husband’s spirit, Victoria was sceptical of the accuracy of the claims and wanted proof that he might be telling the truth.

As one of the most recognisable people in the country Queen Victoria was unable to attend the seance herself so instead she arranged for two incognito courtiers to sit in the audience of his next performance. While they were there, they were shocked to hear Albert’s voice coming out of the man’s body. On top of this, he was sharing private information about the Queen that only her husband would have known. What makes the story even more compelling is that although Lees had never stepped foot inside the Queens court, he began talking to the courtiers and addressing them by their real names, opposed to the false ones they had given.

Soon after the performance, Lees sent Queen Victoria a letter that he claimed to be from Albert from beyond the grave. The letter again contained information that only Albert would have known and was signed off by a pet name that had been privately used by the couple. After reading the letter, Victoria was fully convinced that Lees was telling the truth and arranged for him to preform at Buckingham Palace. In total, Lees held nine seances for the Queen before Victoria asked him to join her household as resident medium. Most unexpectedly, Lees turned down her offer, supposedly on the advice of his spirit guide. He then explained to the Queen that Albert’s spirit had chosen to communicate through a different clairvoyant … her highland servant, John Brown.

Once again Victoria was apprehensive but then she remembered the last thing Brown had said to her as the family was preparing to leave Balmoral in autumn 1861. The servant had not only wished her a safe journey, but also said he hoped that they have no deaths in the family. Within weeks of their departure from Scotland, three members of Victorias family had died – including her beloved Albert. Wanting to speak to her husband once more, Victoria sent for Brown and two would often sit in the Blue Room at Windsor Castle where Albert had passed away. Through the darkness, the Queen was greeted with a voice. It wasn’t the bellowing Scottish accent of John Brown, but the angelic voice of Prince Albert.

From then on, the two were inseparable. Brown began joining Victoria on family outings, sleeping in a room adjacent to the Queen’s and Victoria even got John Brown gifts for Albert’s birthday. However, whilst rumours began spreading that Victoria was in a relationship with her servant, with tabloids even nicknaming her “Mrs Brown”, behind closed doors it was clear that John Brown was hated besides almost everyone besides the Queen. In his journal, Victorian poet Wilfred Scawen Blunt described Brown as a “rude, unmannerly fellow… [with] unbounded influence with the Queen whom he treated with little respect, presuming in every way on his position with her. It was the talk of all the household that he was ‘The Queen’s stallion’ – He was a fine man physically, though coarsely made, and had fine eyes (like the late Prince Consort’s it was said) and the Queen, who had been passionately in love with her husband… got it into her hair [head] that somehow the Prince’s spirit had passed into Brown”

As the head of the Church of England you would expect Victoria to be more secret about her strong belief in spirituality and reliance on John Brown. Nonetheless, it was this interest that caused rumours to spread that the two had become secretly married, and, of course, we can’t forget that Victoria was buried wearing John Browns mother’s wedding ring on her ring finger.

Unfortunately we will never truly know the exact nature of their relationship as many documents mentioning John Brown were destroyed immediately after the Queen’s death in 1901. However, there are more questions that remain… how did Robert James Lees know so many intimate facts about the Queen? How did he recognise those two disguised courtiers? And how did he perfectly replicate Prince Albert’s voice? I personally think John Brown, who had spent much time alone with Victoria and Albert in Scotland, told Lees the private information and plotted the whole thing as a way to get power over the Queen. But who knows, maybe it had been the power of mediumship. Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

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