1839 in the United Kingdom

none July 2022 1839 Constituent countries of the United Kingdom England Ireland Scotland Wales Sport 1839 English cricket season Events from the year 1839 in the United Kingdom. Incumbents Monarch – Victoria Prime Minister – William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne (Whig) Foreign Secretary – Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston Home Secretary – Lord John Russell (until 30 August) Constantine Phipps, 1st Marquess of Normanby (from 30 August) Events January – The first parallax measurement of the distance to Alpha Centauri is published by Thomas Henderson.David Gavine Henderson, Thomas (1798–1844) 2004 10.1093/ref:odnb/12915 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/12915 2011-02-16 19 January – British East India Company captures Aden. 25 January – H. Fox Talbot shows his "photogenic drawings" at the Royal Institution in London. Sara Anne Bright is also producing such photographic reproductions this year.Nick Clark The leaf storm i London 1438 2015-07-06 27 29 January – Naturalist Charles Darwin marries his cousin Emma Wedgwood at Maer, Staffordshire. February – Report on the Affairs of British North America published. 26 February – The first nationally recognised Grand National run, at Aintree. It is won by Jem Mason riding Lottery.Penguin Pocket On This Day Penguin Reference Library 0-14-102715-0 2006http://the-grand-national.co.uk/history/1836/ Grand National History 1839–1836 The-grand-national.co.uk 2011-03-11 https://web.archive.org/web/20110221095749/http://the-grand-national.co.uk/history/1836/ 21 February 2011 usurpedhttp://www.grandnational.org.uk/facts-figures.php Facts & Figures Grandnational.org.uk 2011-03-11Haywood Linda 4 April 2008 http://www.popular-nostalgia.com/a-big-long-history-of-the-grand-national-258/ A Big Long History of the Grand National Popular Nostalgia 2011-03-11 https://web.archive.org/web/20141006141420/http://www.popular-nostalgia.com/a-big-long-history-of-the-grand-national-258/ 6 October 2014 dead 1 March – Sussex County Cricket Club, England's oldest county club, is formed. 26 March – The first Henley Royal Regatta is held on the River Thames.http://www.icons.org.uk/theicons/icons-timeline/1820-1840 Icons, a portrait of England 1820–1840 2015-12-02 dead https://web.archive.org/web/20060312235958/http://www.icons.org.uk/theicons/icons-timeline/1820-1840 12 March 2006 9 April – The world's first commercial electric telegraph line comes into operation alongside the Great Western Railway line from London Paddington station to West Drayton. 19 April – The Treaty of London establishes Belgium as a kingdom with its independence and neutrality guaranteed by Britain and the other great powers of Europe. May J. M. W. Turner completes his painting The Fighting Temeraire.http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/cgi-bin/WebObjects.dll/CollectionPublisher.woa/wa/work?workNumber=NG524 National Gallery information 2010-06-29 https://web.archive.org/web/20070808190337/http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/cgi-bin/WebObjects.dll/CollectionPublisher.woa/wa/work?workNumber=ng524 8 August 2007 dead Cambridge Camden Society established by John Mason Neale, Alexander Beresford Hope and Benjamin Webb to promote Gothic architecture.http://www.ecclsoc.org/history.html History of the Society Ecclesiological Society 4 May 2011 https://web.archive.org/web/20110726013736/http://www.ecclsoc.org/history.html 26 July 2011 dead 1 May – The start of Eyre's expeditions to the interior of South Australia. 7–11 May – Bedchamber Crisis: Robert Peel asks that Queen Victoria dismiss her Ladies of the Bedchamber as a condition for his forming a government. Victoria refuses to accept the condition and Melbourne is persuaded to stay on as Prime Minister.Palmer Alan Palmer Veronica 1992 The Chronology of British History Century Ltd London 263–264 0-7126-5616-2 13 May – First Rebecca Riots targeted against Welsh turnpikes, at Efailwen in Carmarthenshire. 31 May – Important British constitutional case of Stockdale v Hansard is launched when publisher John Joseph Stockdale sues for libel after John Roberton's pseudo-medical work On Diseases of the Generative System (1811) is declared in a parliamentary report to be indecent.Loveland Ian 21–22 Political Libels: A Comparative Study Oxford Hart Publishing 1-84113-115-6 2000 https://books.google.com/books?id=I-0KdQrIS8QC&q=stockdale+v+hansard&pg=PA21 3 June – Destruction of opium at Humen begins, casus belli for Britain to open the 3-year First Opium War against Qing dynasty China. 28 June – Coal mine explosion at St Hilda pit, South Shields, kills 51.http://www.dmm.org.uk/names/n1839-01.htm St. Hilda Durham Mining Museum 2021-05-22 July – The first Royal Show (agricultural show) is held in Oxford. 4 July – Chartists riot in Birmingham. 15 July – The first clipper ship is launched in Britain, the schooner Scottish Maid at Alexander Hall's yard in Aberdeen.Scottish Maid http://www.aberdeenships.com/single.asp?index=100020& Scottish Built Ships Aberdeen City Council 2014-04-25 23 July – British forces under Sir John Keane capture the fortress city of Ghazni, Afghanistan in the Battle of Ghazni during the First Anglo-Afghan War.http://www.national-army-museum.ac.uk/exhibitions/afghanistan/page2.shtml National Army Museum : Exhibitions : Afghanistan 2007-09-12 https://web.archive.org/web/20071024133311/http://www.national-army-museum.ac.uk/exhibitions/afghanistan/page2.shtml 24 October 2007 dead 17 August – Custody of Infants Act (based largely on campaigning by Caroline Norton) permits limited rights of custody of young children to divorced mothers. 23 August – British forces seize Hong Kong as a base, as Britain prepares to wage the First Opium War. 27 August – County Police Act enables the appointment of police in rural areas.Stephen Friar The Sutton Companion to Local History rev. Stroud Sutton Publishing 2001 0-7509-2723-2 243 On 28 November, Wiltshire becomes the first county to appoint a chief constable under the act.http://www.wiltshire.police.uk/history/1839.asp Wiltshire Constabulary History https://web.archive.org/web/20071218212229/http://www.wiltshire.police.uk/history/1839.asp 2007-12-18 Wiltshire Police 2007-12-18 Wayback Machine Also this year, City of London Police Act confirms establishment of a force in the City. 30 August – The Eglinton Tournament, a recreation of a medieval tourney, takes place at Eglinton Castle, North Ayrshire, Scotland. 5 October – James Clark Ross sets out on the Antarctic expedition of Erebus 1826 6 and Terror 1813 6 which will chart much of the coastline of the continent. 19 October – George Bradshaw publishes the first national railway timetable, Bradshaw's Railway Time Tables and Assistant to Railway Travelling, in Manchester. 4 November – Newport Rising: between 5,000 and 10,000 Chartist sympathisers led by John Frost, many of them coal miners, march on Newport, Monmouthshire, to liberate Chartist prisoners; around 22 are killed when troops, directed by Thomas Phillips, the mayor, fire on the crowd.http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/citizenship/struggle_democracy/lovell.htm John Lovell and the People's Charter The struggle for democracy The National Archives Kew 2003 2019-05-11 https://web.archive.org/web/20070926235009/http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/citizenship/struggle_democracy/lovell.htm 2007-09-26 live This is the last large-scale armed civil rebellion against authority in mainland Britain and sees the most deaths. 23 November – Launch of the first British ocean-going iron warship, Nemesis 1839 2 for the East India Company, by William Laird at Birkenhead. December – New Committee of Council on education sets up a new national system of Inspectors of Schools for grant-aided establishments.George Berry Discovering Schools Tring Shire Publications 1979 0-85263-091-3 5 December – Uniform Fourpenny Post introduced, a major postal reform, whereby 4d is levied for pre-paid letters up to half an ounce in weight instead of postage being calculated by distance and number of sheets of paper.Reynolds Mairead A History of The Irish Post Office MacDonnell Whyte Ltd 1983 Dublin, Ireland 61–62 0-9502619-7-1 24 December – An enormous landslide occurs at Axmouth in Devon, creating the Axmouth to Lyme Regis Undercliff. A report by geologists William Daniel Conybeare and William Buckland is one of the earliest scientific descriptions of such an event.http://www.jurassiccoast.com/277/the-coast-uncovered-30/explore-the-coast:-a-walk-through-time-141/axmouth-to-lyme-regis:-the-undercliff-357.html Axmouth to Lyme Regis: The Undercliff, The Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site 2007-09-12 https://web.archive.org/web/20070927021500/http://www.jurassiccoast.com/277/the-coast-uncovered-30/explore-the-coast:-a-walk-through-time-141/axmouth-to-lyme-regis:-the-undercliff-357.html 27 September 2007 dead Undated Sisters of Mercy establish the first native Roman Catholic convent in England since the Reformation, at Bermondsey in London.Sioban Nelson Say Little, Do Much: Nursing, Nuns and Hospitals in the Nineteenth Century Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press 2001 978-0-8122-3614-9 registration https://archive.org/details/saylittledomuchn0000nels Michael Faraday publishes Experimental Researches in Electricityhttps://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14986 Experimental Researches in Electricity 2007-09-12 clarifying the true nature of electricity. Claimed invention of the rear-wheel driven bicycle by Kirkpatrick Macmillan in Scotland.Kirkpatrick Macmillan (1812–1878) https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/macmillan_kirkpatrick.shtml Historic Figures BBC 2011-02-12 Summer – John Ruskin visits Cornwall, regretting that reading for his Oxford degree interferes with his study of basalt at St Michael's Mount.Ruskin (1908). Complete Works 35: Praeterita https://web.archive.org/web/20170418201821/http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/depts/ruskinlib/Praeterita 18 April 2017 . London: George Allen. p.613. Ongoing Smallpox epidemic of 1837–40.Creighton Charles Charles Creighton (physician) https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/43671 A History of Epidemics in Britain 1894 Cambridge University Press II Publications Philip James Bailey's (anonymous) poem Festus.Robert Birley Robert Birley Sunk Without Trace: some forgotten masterpieces reconsidered https://archive.org/details/sunkwithouttrace0000birl registration London Rupert Hart-Davis 1962 Philip James Bailey, Festus 172–208 Charles Darwin's Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries Visited by H.M.S. Beagle under the Command of Captain FitzRoy, R.N., from 1832 to 1839. Mrs William Ellis's conduct book The Women of England: their social duties and domestic habits. Births 7 January – Ouida (Maria Louise Ramé), novelist (died 1908) 16 March – John Butler Yeats, Irish painter (died 1922) 17 June – Arthur Tooth, Anglican clergyman prosecuted for Ritualist practices in the 1870s (died 1931) 18 July – James Surtees Phillpotts, educationalist (died 1930) 4 August – Walter Pater, essayist and critic (died 1894) 19 September – George Cadbury, businessman (died 1922) 7 December – Redvers Buller, general, Victoria Cross recipient (died 1908) 22 December – John Nevil Maskelyne, stage magician (died 1917) Deaths 16 January – Edmund Lodge, writer (born 1756) 28 January – Sir William Beechey, portrait painter (born 1753) 11 April – John Galt, novelist (born 1779) 22 April – Thomas Haynes Bayly, poet (died 1839) 17 May – Archibald Alison, author (born 1757) 15 July – Winthrop Mackworth Praed, politician and poet (born 1802) 28 August – William Smith, geologist (born 1769) 24 October – Sir William Charles Ellis, physician specialising in mental illness (born 1780) 15 November – William Murdoch, inventor (born 1754) 24 December – James Smith, author (born 1775) References 2 1839 Category:Years of the 19th century in the United Kingdom Category:1839 by country Category:1839 in Europe Category:1830s in the United Kingdom