Queen Victoria

August 16, 2026 by Rev. Dr. Ed & Janice Hird in Light Magazine

As told in the delightful movie Mrs. Brown, Queen Victoria had a great love for the Scottish Balmoral Castle. The Queen actually preferred Scotland to England. As a result, everything Scottish suddenly became fashionable. Tartans, reels, bagpipes and sporrans were considered cultured and refined where before they had been hidden away when friends from England arrived.

Queen Victoria also had a preference for Scottish doctors, in particular Sir James Simpson of Edinburgh. Her appointment of James Simpson in 1847 as one of her Majesty’s Physicians was symptomatic of Victoria’s innovative leadership style. He was Professor of Midwifery at the University of Edinburgh. Despite the prejudice many have today to all things ‘Victorian’, Queen Victoria helped open the doors to modern science and medicine. Even as a child, she led the way as the first member of the Royal Family to be vaccinated for smallpox. Later as Victoria was to give birth in 1853 to her eighth child, Prince Leopold, she turned to Sir James Simpson, the father of modern anesthetics, for help.