June 2017-2 News of the Fight Soon Reached the Queen

One day in 1852, a boy named Freddie Attrill was collecting shellfish on Osborne Beach. He was approached by another boy who told him to clear off and who kicked his bucket over. Freddie retaliated by thumping the boy. Horrified attendants told him that he had just hit Prince Albert Edward, Queen Victoria's eldest son!

Freddie was later summoned to Osborne House to explain himself to the Queen. However she said that Freddie was quite right to have stood up for himself and that her son's behaviour had been wrong.

Mr. Attrill's house in East Cowes became a tourist attraction right up until the 1970s, and this modern sculpture commemorates The Fight.