The Koh-I-Noor diamond – a Victorian disappointment

In 1849 the ruler of the Punjab, the 10-year-old Duleep Singh, was forced to sign over his kingdom along with the Koh-I-Noor diamond to the British.

Five years later he travelled to England, where he spent the rest of his life in exile, but not before giving Queen Victoria permission to re-cut the diamond, a permission he later came to regret and which led to his referring to the Queen as ‘Mrs Fagin’ i.e. a receiver of stolen goods. (To be fair to the Queen, she was uncomfortably aware that the diamond was loot, which was why she was anxious to secure Duleep Singh’s forgiveness for having appropriated it in the first place.)

Before the re-cutting, it was one of the star attractions in the Great Exhibition. Long queues formed to enter a kind of tent where visitors viewed the diamond in a large bird cage, where it was surrounded by gas jets intended to make it shine. It refused to oblige. Most visitors were deeply disappointed by what they saw. In the illustration below, you can almost hear them saying, “Is that it?”