A Teen Queen's Big Day: Victoria Is Crowned at Westminster Abbey

On a fine Thursday morning, London filled with people. The brand-new railways had carried an estimated 400,000 visitors into the capital — all to watch a teenage girl get a crown.

Victoria had become queen a year earlier, on June 20, 1837, when her uncle William IV died. She was 18, unmarried, and had never ruled anything. Her prime minister, Lord Melbourne, set about planning a coronation designed to do something new: present the monarchy to the people. The budget was £70,000 — more than double the "cut-price" coronation of William IV, but a fraction of the £240,000 spent on George IV's famously lavish affair.

On June 28, 1838, Victoria rode from the newly completed Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey in the Gold State Coach — the gilded carriage made for George III in 1762 — in the longest coronation procession since Charles II's in 1661. Scaffolding and grandstands lined the route; the journey took a full hour, and the crowds cheered all the way.

Inside the Abbey, things did not go quite so smoothly. The night before, Lord Melbourne had persuaded the young queen to visit the Abbey so she would know where to move during the service — though the diarist Charles Greville doubted it did much good. There had been almost no rehearsal, and the five-hour service was, in the historian Roy Strong's phrase, the last of the "botched coronations." The young MP Benjamin Disraeli wrote that everyone was "always in doubt as to what came next." But the mishaps gave the day its most beloved moment. When 82-year-old Lord Rolle stumbled and rolled down the steps of the throne while paying homage, Victoria rose, walked to the edge of the platform, and took his hands herself so he would not have to climb again. The diarist Charles Greville called it "an act of graciousness and kindness which made a great sensation," and the artist John Martin immortalized the scene in a huge painting.

Outside, London celebrated as planned: a vast fair in Hyde Park, complete with a balloon ascent, was so popular it ran four days instead of two, and Green Park glowed with fireworks the following night.

Victoria would reign for 63 years, until 1901 — an age that took her name. The queen of nine children, 42 grandchildren, and 87 great-grandchildren became the "grandmother of Europe." But it all began on June 28, 1838, when a 19-year-old walked into Westminster Abbey and, botched ceremony and all, won over a nation.

Image: Sir George Hayter, The Coronation of Queen Victoria, 28 June 1838 — public domain via Wikimedia Commons.