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      Like many another prestige project, the rebuilding of the Houses of Parliament after they had burned down in 1834 became a long, drawn-out national drama, one reported in ever more exasperated tones by the press.

      The clock tower was the last design of Augustus Pugin before his final descent into madness. It took seven years to complete – six fewer than those needed to decide on, and then to construct, the clock it would house.

      The accuracy of this was ensured by a revolutionary mechanism, the Grimthorpe Escapement. The clock became known, however, by the catchier name given to the largest of its five bells – Big Ben. This was probably a nod to the government’s First Commissioner of Works, Sir Benjamin Hall.

      The clock was started in May 1859 and the first chimes were heard in July. Yet even then, further adjustments were needed. Lighter copper hands were substituted for cast-iron ones to enable the clock to keep time. A lighter clapper had to be made, too, when the original caused the bell to crack. The building has officially been known as the Elizabeth Tower since the Queen’s Jubilee in 2012. (See Decimal Day.)

       THE DEATH OF PRINCE ALBERT

      16 December 1861

      The news of the serious illness of the late Prince Consort alarmed and amazed all England on Saturday. To the attentive readers of the Court Circular it was only known his Royal Highness was slightly indisposed, and the bulletin which on Saturday announced that his illness had taken an unfavourable turn spread dismay and astonishment throughout the country. Then, all at once, the fearful affliction which threatened Her Majesty was seen, and on every side information as to the state of his Royal Highness’s health was sought for with the most intense eagerness. The announcement which we published in our third edition of Saturday, that a change, slightly for the better, had taken place in the illustrious patient’s condition, was welcomed as almost a relief from the state of feverish anxiety under which all had waited for news. Unhappily, this slight improvement, which raised such ardent hopes wherever it was known, proved to be but a precursor of the fatal issue. During Saturday morning – at least in the early part – his Royal Highness undoubtedly seemed better, and, notwithstanding that his condition was in the highest degree precarious, the change, though sudden, was marked, and almost justified the strong hopes which were then entertained that he would recover. This change was but for a short time, and, in fact, but one of those expiring efforts of nature which give delusive hopes to the mourners round so many death-beds. Soon afterwards his Royal Highness again relapsed, and before the evening it became evident that it was only a question of an hour more or less. The Prince sank with alarming rapidity. At 4 the physicians issued a bulletin stating that their patient was then in “a most critical condition,” which was indeed a sad truth, for at that time almost every hope of recovery had passed away. Her Majesty, and the Prince of Wales (who had travelled through the previous night from Cambridge), the Princesses Alice and Helena, and the Prince and Princess of Leiningen, were with their illustrious relative during all this mournful and most trying period. The approach of death from exhaustion was so rapid that all stimulants failed to check the progressive increase of weakness, and the fatal termination was so clearly foreseen that even before 9 o’clock on Saturday evening a telegram was forwarded from Windsor to the city, stating that the Prince Consort was then dying fast. Quietly and without suffering he continued slowly to sink, so slowly that the wrists were pulseless long before the last moment had arrived, when at a few minutes before 11 he ceased to breathe, and all was over. An hour after and the solemn tones of the great bell of St. Paul’s – a bell of evil omen – told all citizens how irreparable has been the loss of their beloved Queen, how great the loss to the country.