Curious doings at Buckingham Palace, 1838-1841:

• In December 1838, a porter discovered 15-year-old Edward Jones in the marble hall. He had stolen linen and a regimental sword, but a jury acquitted him.
• In November 1840, the same boy scaled the wall and entered the palace again, this time leaving undetected.
• The following day a nurse found him under a sofa in the queen’s dressing room. “He said that he had sat upon the throne, that he saw the queen, and heard the princess royal cry.”
• After three months in prison he returned immediately — in March 1841 he was found eating in one of the royal apartments.

This last earned him three more months’ correction, this time with hard labor, and this apparently cured him. But others would follow: In July 1982 Elizabeth II awoke to find 32-year-old Michael Fagan in her bedchamber. “He thinks so much of the Queen,” Fagan’s mother explained. “I can imagine him just wanting to simply talk and say hello and discuss his problems.”