The success of the Fisheries suggested to the King the idea of another exhibition concerned with health and hygiene, which was held in 1884, and was nicknamed the “Healtheries.” Not long before it was opened the King and Queen Alexandra suffered a great bereavement in the death of the Duke of Albany, to whom their Majesties had always been very much attached. He died quite suddenly in the south of France on 28th March, and the King instantly started for the Riviera and brought his brother’s remains back to Windsor. In the following July His Majesty, presiding at the festival of the Railway Guards’ Friendly Society, took the opportunity of his first appearance at a public dinner to express in the name of Queen Victoria and the Royal Family their thanks for the public sympathy shown on the death of the Duke of Albany. In August of this year was celebrated the jubilee of the abolition of slavery throughout the British dominions. The King attended a meeting at the Mansion-House and delivered a long and elaborate speech, evidently the result of much painstaking study, in which he reviewed the whole history of the anti-slavery movement. The news of the fall of Khartoum came as a terrible shock to the King, who had long watched with increasing interest the career of General Gordon. Indeed, General Gordon had always been one of His Majesty’s great heroes, and it was chiefly owing to His Majesty’s initiative that a fund was established for providing a national memorial to the hero of Khartoum. At the first meeting of the committee the King made a touching speech, in which he said of Gordon-- “His career as a soldier, as a philanthropist, and as a Christian is a matter of history.… Many would wish for some fine statue, some fine monument, but we who know what Gordon was feel convinced that were he living nothing would be more distasteful personally than that any memorial should be erected in the shape of a statue or of any great monument. His tastes were so simple and we all know he was anxious that his name should not be brought prominently before the public, though in every act of his life that name was brought, I am inclined to think, as prominently before the nation as that of any soldier or any great Englishman whom we know of at the present time.” It is well known that it was His Majesty’s suggestion that a hospital and sanatorium should be founded in Egypt open to persons of all nationalities. Queen Alexandra was present at the special service held in St. Paul’s on 13th March, the day of public mourning for the loss of General Gordon.