Albert, Prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
Prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (1819-1861), the husband of Queen Victoria. He was born in 1819, and was educated at the University of Bonn. He married Queen Victoria February 10, 1840. He was called the Prince Consort. He was a handsome man of high character, and was much attached to his wife and family. Prince Albert was well received by the British people. He refrained carefully from taking sides in British politics, though he used his influence to prevent the government from taking a seriously hostile attitude toward the North at the time of our Civil War. He was an enthusiastic supporter of science and art, giving both time and money in aid of learned associations. He died December 14, 1861. His name has been perpetuated generously. The Albert Embankment in the heart of London is an artificial stone wall along the Thames. It is three-fourths of a mile long, backed with earth, is sixty feet wide, and cost $5,000,000. The Albert Memorial at the south entrance of Kensington Gardens is a magnificent Gothic canopy on a spacious granite platform, ascended by steps on all four sides. Four marble groups at the four corners represent agriculture, commerce, manufacture, and engineering. In the center sits a colossal bronze-gilt figure of the Prince, wearing the robes of the Order of the Garter. The canopy bears in blue mosaic letters on a gold ground the inscription, "Queen Victoria and her People to the Memory of Albert, Prince Consort, as a tribute of their gratitude for a life devoted to the public good." Albert Hall, erected in London in 1871, is capable of seating 8,000 people. It contains one of the largest organs in existence. Lake Albert Nyanza , in Africa, was named for the Prince. See Victoria ; Crystal Palace
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 sketch of the Prince Consort still holds up, including his quiet intervention in 1861 to soften Britain's despatch over the Trent affair, which the editor's note dates to his final days. The clearest revision is medical: the typhoid fever named at the time has been doubted by later writers, who point to two years of prior illness and suggest a chronic abdominal disease such as Crohn's or cancer, though no diagnosis is settled. Of the monuments listed, the Albert Memorial was stripped and re-gilded in a restoration completed in 1998, while Lake Albert Nyanza — now simply Lake Albert, on the Uganda–Congo border — was renamed Lake Mobutu Sese Seko from 1973 until 1997 before the old name returned. The Crystal Palace of his 1851 Great Exhibition, cross-referenced at the end, burned down in 1936.
Written for this edition, 2026.