The boy Jones

Staff found him hiding under a sofa and he was arrested and subsequently questioned by the Privy Council—the monarch's formal body of advisers.

After a voyage on a merchant ship to Brazil, Jones returned to London, where he worked for a month before disappearing and signing up to the Royal Navy—again at the instigation of the Thames Police.

After his return to Britain, Jones was arrested in 1849 for burgling houses in Lewisham, Kent (now South London), and sentenced to transportation to Australia for ten years.

[2] The Weekly Chronicle reported that as a child, Jones "manifested a very restless spirit, ... always inquisitive, active and thirsting for information".

[4] According to his father, however, Jones was lazy, pessimistic, melancholic and reserved; Henry also said his son did not mix with his siblings and treated them with open contempt.

Among the items in Jones's possession were a regimental sword, some underwear, three pairs of trousers, some foreign coins and a likeness of Queen Victoria.

His real name and background were told to the court, and he admitted that he had lied about having lived in the house for the previous year, and had only spent "a day or two" in the palace.

William Prendergast, Jones's solicitor, described how his client had a "warmth of spirit which ... had manifested itself in an inordinate curiosity to obtain a view of Buckingham Palace; and a very natural inclination it was".

The American novelist James Fenimore Cooper was one who visited, but found Jones to be a "dull, undersized runt, remarkable only for his taciturnity and obstinacy".

Just after midnight the domestic staff at the palace found Jones hiding under a sofa in an anteroom near the Queen's bedroom.

The audience room, and [Baroness Louise] Lehzen's were searched first and then mine, Kinnaird, looking under one corner of the sofa, on which I had been rolled into the bedroom but said nothing.

[27] At midday on 3 December he was taken from the police station to offices of the Home Department in Whitehall where he was interrogated by the Privy Council—the monarch's formal body of advisers.

[21] As he had been unarmed and not stolen anything, the council decided that a summary punishment was the best course of action; Thomas Hall, the Chief Metropolitan Police Magistrate wrote a warrant to send Jones to Tothill Fields Bridewell prison for three months' hard labour.

Unlike the previous hearing, there were no leaks of the events to the journalists waiting outside, and the only statement given was that Jones had been sent back to Tothill for a further three months' detention with hard labour.

Evans, concerned that he would be in trouble with his superiors, persuaded Tom Clancy—one of the Irish emigrants wanting to travel to Australia—to take the berth and pretend he was Jones to the other passengers.

[45][h] Soon after, Elgar received a letter from Jones informing him that James—the family's landlord—had taken him to Portsmouth dockyard, where he had been introduced to Captain Lord John Hay of HMS Warspite, a 74-gun third-rate ship of the line.

[43][46] The Times considered that "suspicion strongly points to the same parties who rendered themselves so notoriously conspicuous in his former abduction; and though the father of the boy is in such reduced circumstances as to be unable to take legal measures, it is probable means may be found to fathom this mysterious matter",[43] an assessment with which Jan Bondeson, Jones's biographer, agrees.

[2] Warspite returned to Portsmouth that October and Jones was allowed shore leave, although he was accompanied by a midshipman to ensure he did not try to abscond.

Hay alerted the Admiralty, who informed the police; they increased security at the palace and put some of Jones's known haunts under surveillance.

He served on board for a year and when the ship returned to Britain, Jones was transferred to HMS Harlequin, a Racer-class brig-sloop that was to continue on patrol duty in the Mediterranean.

[51] In August 1849 several burglaries and petty thefts occurred in Lewisham, Kent (now South London); a man wearing sailor's dress had been seen at the times the crimes were committed.

On 24 August a man was arrested after a wealthy solicitor had been burgled in Lewisham Road; he was found to have the stolen goods in his possession.

[52][53] In January 1853 Jones was transported on the Pyrenees, a four-masted barque, to the penal colony in Fremantle, Western Australia, arriving on 30 April.

[54] He was remembered in the memoirs of Edmund Du Cane, the soldier and prison administrator who organised convict labour in the region, who recalled: The only case that ever occurred of trespass in my grounds ... was when once the celebrated "boy Jones" (whose lofty aspirations towards high life had not met with success) broke out of the depot about ten o'clock to complain that the lights had been put out too early!

[56][57] According to Bondeson, there is limited information about Jones after his release from hard labour, but it is probable that he returned to Australia, possibly at the suggestion of his brother, who was a civil servant in the colony.

[58] The contemporary journalist Henry Lucy reports that he received a letter from a reader who told him that Jones became the town crier in Perth, Western Australia.

[2][59] Lucy related that: When he went forth, bell in hand, to perform his important functions, the naughty boys of Perth were accustomed to gather round him and make pointed inquiries as to the approaches to Buckingham Palace, the health of the Queen, and the appearance of the baby who is to-day Dowager Empress of Germany.

[64][65] Charles Hindley, the biographer of the printer James Catnach, observed that Jones was the subject of satirical pieces in the press, as well as several cartoons printed for street sale.

In the mid-1840s the writer George W. M. Reynolds published the series The Mysteries of London, which includes Henry Holford, a pot-boy; this character was a combination of Jones and Edward Oxford—the man who attempted to assassinate Victoria in 1840.

At first, they all thought I had come there to plunder, But I had no notion of stealing, not I – Pages, nurses and officers, pulled me from under The very identical couch where she lay.