Queen Alexandra Christmas Box

Queen Alexandra Christmas Box

The museum was recently donated a metal box, featuring a portrait of Queen Alexandra on its lid with the inscription “Xmas 1914” and “With best wishes from Alexandra”. It immediately reminded staff of another Great War Christmas box already in the museum’s collections, commonly known as the Princess Mary Christmas Box. Over 2.6 million boxes, were produced and distributed as Christmas presents to “every sailor afloat and every soldier at the front” to show the royal family’s and by extension, the nation’s gratitude for their service and sacrifice.[1] Due to the large number produced, examples of the Princess Mary Christmas boxes are quite common, but the Queen Alexandra version is much rarer. Therefore, adding this box to our collections, provides an ideal opportunity to explore briefly the history of war-time gift giving by the royal family and to delve into the life of Queen Alexandra and her connections to Cork.

Born in 1844 in Copenhagen to parents Prince Christian and Princess Louise, Alexandra would eventually marry the Prince of Wales, Edward, who was the son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. He would become King Edward VII following the death of his mother in 1901 and Alexandra became his queen. He would visit Cork with her husband on August 11903, when the royal couple visited the 1903 Greater Cork Exhibition held in what is now Fitzgerald Park. They took the royal carriage through the exhibition and ate lunch in what is now the old museum building. Alexandra Road in the St. Luke’s area of Cork City was named in her honour.

When Alexandra became Queen in 1901, Great Britain was involved in the Second Boer War (1899-1902). It was during this war that the trend of British royals sending Christmas gifts to serving soldiers began. In 1899, following initial setbacks by British Forces in South Africa, Queen Victoria felt a gift sent directly from her to the serving troops would help to raise morale. She paid for a specially crafted tin that contained chocolates provided by well-known companies Cadburys, Rowntree and Frys. Cork Public Museum acquired one of these tins in 2022. It had been found during a house clearance, but we have been unable to link it to a particular individual. The tin is painted red and embossed with Victoria’s portrait, surrounded by a coin-like boarder and personalized message “I wish you a Happy New Year – Victoria RI”. Beside the portrait are the crest IRV topped with a crown and the inscription, “South Africa 1900”. Queen Alexandra would continue Victoria’s tradition when she came to the throne, gifting chocolate in her own specially created tins. Nowadays, these Queen Alexandra chocolate tins have not survived as well as the Queen Victoria version and are therefore extremely rare to find.

By the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, England was ruled by George V and Queen Mary, with Alexandra now in the role of ‘Queen-Mother’. Despite this, she continued to be involved in organising charitable efforts to support the war effort, with particular attention given to wounded soldiers and the nurses who cared for them. Alexandra’s Christmas tin was funded through public subscription and pre-dates the creation of the Princess Mary version, though it would not be as widely distributed or as fondly remembered. The Alexandra tin typically contained cigarettes and was created specifically for wounded soldiers based in UK hospitals and was a more modest effort when compared to the history and production of Princess Mary’s Christmas box.

The example of the Alexandra’s Christmas Box in the museum’s possession is a yellow lacquered tinned steel box with a heavily damaged profile portrait of Queen Alexandra on its front. The tin contains 17 of the original 22 cigarettes, with each one having Alexandra’s signature printed on it. A photograph of Queen Alexandra, that were produced by William and Daniel Downey of Newcastle and London, would have also been included but it is missing from the museum’s example. However, the tin does contain a small photograph of Princess Mary, which would have been included in the Princess Mary Christmas box but somehow ended up in the Queen Alexandra version. It would suggest that the unknown original owner of the box must have also received the Princess Mary’s gift.