Timeline Great Britain (D) 1800-1859
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1800 Jan 24,
Edwin Chadwick, British social reformer, was born.
(MC, 1/24/02)
1800 Feb 11, William Henry Fox
Talbot (d.1877), British inventor and pioneer in instantaneous
photography, was born.
(AHD, 1971, p. 1312)(V.D.-H.K.p.273)(HN, 2/11/01)
1800 Mar 17, English warship
Queen Charlotte caught fire and 700 people died.
(MC, 3/17/02)
1800 Mar 28, The Parliament in
Westminster passed an Act of Union formally binding Ireland with
England and abolished the Irish parliament. The Act of Union
entailed the loss of legislative independence of the Irish
Parliament. The Act of Union received royal assent on August 1 and
became effective on Jan 1, 1801.
(www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/614673/Act-of-Union)(SFEC,
12/22/96, Z1 p.6)(WSJ, 11/20/98, p.W6)
1800 Apr 16, George Charles
Bingham, British soldier, was born. He commanded the Light Brigade
during its famous 1854 charge. [see Oct 16, 1797, Lord Cardigan]
(HN, 4/16/01)
1800 May 15, King George III
survived a 2nd assassination attempt.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1800 Sep 5, Malta surrendered
to British after they blockaded French troops.
(MC, 9/5/01)
1800 Oct 25, Thomas Babington
Macaulay (d.1859), England, poet and historian, was born. "No
particular man is necessary to the state. We may depend on it that,
if we provide the country with popular institutions, those
institutions will provide it with great men."
(AP, 11/30/97)(Econ, 10/30/04, p.48)
c1800 During the Napoleonic Wars Britain briefly
occupied the Banda Island of Run and successfully transplanted
nutmeg to Malaya, Singapore and Ceylon.
(WSJ, 5/21/99, p.W7)
1800 Lieven Bauwens stole a
spinning "mule jenny" machine from Britain. He had it dismantled and
smuggled out in a cargo of coffee. This enabled the textile industry
in Ghent to greatly expand. Britain sentenced Bauwens to death in
absentia and Ghent made him a hero.
(SFEC, 11/21/99, p.T11)
1800 The population of London,
the largest city in Europe, was about one million.
(Econ, 6/30/12, SR p.3)
1800-1830 The Regency Period of England. It was
named after George Augustus Frederick, Prince of Wales, who became
prince regent in 1811.
(WSJ, 3/26/99, p.W10)
c1800-1900 J.H. Salisbury was a 19th century
English dietician who recommended a diet of ground steak for a
variety of ailments including pernicious anemia, tuberculosis and
hardening of the arteries. His name gave rise to "Salisbury steak."
(WUD, 1994, p.1262)
1801 Jan 1, The Act of Union
formally binding Ireland with England and abolishing the Irish
parliament, became effective.
(www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/614673/Act-of-Union)(SFEC,
12/22/96, Z1 p.6)(WSJ, 11/20/98, p.W6)
1801 Jan 28, Francis Barber
(ca. 1735 – 1801), the Jamaican manservant of Samuel Johnson
(1752-1784), died at the Staffordshire General Infirmary.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Barber)(http://tinyurl.com/2njdfy)
1801 Feb 7, John Rylands,
merchant, philanthropist, was born in England.
(MC, 2/7/02)
1801 Mar 10, Britain conducted
its first census in order to find out how many men were available
for conscription.
(Econ, 1/12/08,
p.75)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Census)
1801 Apr 2, The British navy
defeated the Danish at the Battle of Copenhagen.
(AP, 4/2/99)
1801 Apr 28, Anthony
Ashley-Cooper, the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury and a leading social
reformer of the Victorian Age, was born. Shaftesbury labored to
establish schools, to abolish the use of small children as chimney
sweeps, and to wipe out child prostitution. He was a vocal opponent
of slavery but had little respect for the United States’ President
Abraham Lincoln and thought the South should be permitted to secede
from the Union.
(HNQ, 6/10/01)
1801 May 6, British Lt. Thomas
Cochrane, commander of the 14-gun sloop HMS Speedy, engaged and
captured the 32-gun Spanish frigate El Gamo. The climactic battle in
Patrick O’Brian’s novel “Master and Commander” is based on the
Speedy’s fight with El Gamo. Cochrane was later elected to
Parliament, pointed out corruption and was arrested on trumped up
charges. After that he served as the first commander of Chile’s
navy, then Brazil’s navy and the Greek navy before returning to
England. In 2000 Robert Harvey authored “Cochrane: The Life and
Exploits of a Fighting Captain.”
(ON, 11/04, p.1)
1801 Jun 14, Former American
Revolutionary War General Benedict Arnold died in London.
(AP, 6/14/01)(ON, 11/01, p.5)
1801 Dec 24, Richard
Trevithick, inventor of the steam locomotive, completed a road test
of his 1st "traveling engine" in Camborne, England.
(ON, 4/04, p.5)
1801 Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
English poet, wrote to Sir Humphrey Davy a letter in which he says:
"I seem to sink in upon myself in a ruin, like a Column of Sand,
informed and animated only by a Whirl-Blast of the Dessert."
Coleridge had become addicted to opium in this year.
(OAPOC-TH, p.71)(WSJ, 4/15/99, p.A20)
1801 Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl
of Elgin, took the 2,500 year-old bas-reliefs from the Parthenon in
Greece while he served as the British ambassador to the Ottoman
Empire. 17 figures and 56 panels were put on display at the British
Museum in 1816. Around 1939 the marbles were subjected to a botched
scouring operation that damaged 40% of the collection.
(SFC, 12/2/99, p.D6)
1801 The London Stock Exchange
formed. British government debt was the only security traded and
this remained so until 1822.
(Econ, 4/2/05, p.70)(Econ, 12/24/05, p.104)
1801-1866 Jane Welsh Carlyle, English writer: "In spite of the
honestest efforts to annihilate my 'I-ity,' or merge it in what the
world doubtless considers my better half (historian Thomas Carlyle),
I still find myself a self-subsisting and alas! self-seeking ME."
(AP, 8/27/98)
1801-1921 A single Parliament legislated all the
British Isles. A history of the archipelago was written in 2000 by
Norman Davies: "The Isles."
(WSJ, 3/9/00, p.A24)
1802 Jan, In London, England,
William Cobbett (1763-1835) set up the Weekly Political Register. It
spread dissent during the post-war recession.
(Econ, 12/23/06,
p.103)(www.nndb.com/people/245/000049098/)
1802 Mar 24, Richard Trevithick
was granted a patent in London for his steam locomotive.
(ON, 4/04, p.5)
1802 Oct 22, Samuel Arnold
(62), English composer, died.
(MC, 10/22/01)
1802 England passed its first
law regulating child labor.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R28)
1802 Britain levied the first
English income tax to raise money to fight Napoleon. William Pit the
Younger 1st introduced the income tax to finance the war against
France.
(SFEC, 4/5/98, Z1 p.8)(Econ, 9/10/05, p.53)
1802 Edward Howard, English
chemist, determined that the iron in meteorites was a unique blend
of iron and nickel that did not occur in known terrestrial rocks.
(ON, 7/02, p.5)
1802 A British exploring party
led by Matthew Flinders landed on a 96-mile-long island southwest of
Adelaide and slaughtered 31 kangaroos for a feast. This 3rd largest
island off Australia was thus named Kangaroo Island. Flinders named
the Great Barrier Reef and found a passage to the Corral Sea.
(SFEC,12/21/97, p.T6)(SSFC, 3/24/02, p.C22)(WSJ,
7/23/04, p.W12)
1802 In Australia the
Aboriginal warrior Pemulwuy (b.~1750) was shot dead. His head was
cut off and believed to have been placed in a jar and sent to
England. He opposed British settlement and was described by Sydney's
then governor Philip King as "a terrible pest to the colony" but
also "a brave and independent character."
(AFP, 1/15/10)
1802 The Rosetta Stone was
seized by the British in Egypt after the defeat of Napoleon’s army
and was sent to England.
(RFH-MDHP, p.182)
1802-1828 Richard Parkes, English watercolorist.
(Hem., 3/97, p.94)
1802-1838 Letitia Landon, English poet: "Few,
save the poor, feel for the poor."
(AP, 1/21/00)
1802-1876 Harriet Martineau, English writer and
social critic: "Religion is a temper, not a pursuit."
(AP, 6/7/99)
1803 Feb 21, Edward Despard
became the last person drawn & quartered in England.
(MC, 2/21/02)
1803 May 16, Great Britain and
France renewed their war.
(PCh, 1992, p.362)
1803 May 18, Great Britain
declared war on France after General Napoleon Bonaparte continued
interfering in Italy and Switzerland.
(HN, 5/18/99)(ON, 11/99, p.4)(SC, 5/18/02)
1803 May 23, Lord Elgin and his
family were detained in Paris. Elgin's family was allowed to proceed
but he was arrested and declared a prisoner of war.
(ON, 11/99, p.4)
1803 Jul 8, Frederick Augustus
Hervey (b.1730), the 4th Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry, died.
He had toured Europe with his own cook and entourage and inspired a
number of hotels to take on the Bristol name.
(WSJ, 9/27/08,
p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Hervey,_4th_Earl_of_Bristol)
1803 Jul 23, Irish patriots
throughout the country rebelled against Union with Great Britain.
Robert Emmett led the insurrection in Dublin.
(HN, 7/23/98)(MC, 7/23/02)
1803 Aug, The British Sec. of
State invited Mungo Park to lead a 2nd expedition into Africa.
(ON, 7/00, p.10)
1803 Sep 8, A high pressure
steam boiler, made by Richard Trevithick, exploded at a corn mill in
Greenwich, England, and 3 men were killed. A worker had left a heavy
wrench on the safety valve and gone fishing.
(ON, 4/04, p.5)
1803 Sep 23, British Major
General Sir Arthur Wellesley defeated the Marathas at Assaye, India.
(HN, 9/23/98)
1803 Thomas Robert Malthus
(1766-1834), English political economist, authored the 2nd edition
of his 1798 “An Essay on the Principle of Population.” This edition
introduced the idea of moral restraint.
(Econ, 5/17/08,
p.94)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthus)
1803 John Dalton, British
chemist and physicist, pointed out that the fact that chemical
compounds always combined in certain proportions could be explained
by the grouping together of atoms to form units called molecules.
(BHT, Hawking, p.63)
1803 The steel ink pen was
developed in Birmingham, England.
(SFC, 12/13/06, p.E3)
1804 Jan 31, British
vice-admiral William Bligh (of HMS Bounty infamy) fleet reached
Curacao (Antilles).
(MC, 1/31/02)
1804 Mar 7, John Wedgwood,
founder (Royal Horticulture Society), died.
(MC, 3/7/02)
1804 Jun 3, Richard Cobden,
English economist and politician, was born. He became known as 'the
Apostle of free trade.' He led the Anti-Corn League, which in
1839-1846 fought to remove price controls and import barriers for
wheat.
(HN, 6/3/99)(Econ, 6/5/04, p.10)
1804 Aug 25, In England Alice
Meynell became the 1st woman jockey.
(chblue.com, 8/25/01)
1804 Oct 2, England mobilized
to protect against an expected French invasion by Napoleon.
(MC, 10/2/01)
1804 Oct 5, The Nuestra Senora
de las Mercedes, a Spanish galleon, was sunk by the British navy
southwest of Portugal with more than 200 people on board. In May
2007, Odyssey Marine Exploration announced that it had discovered a
wreck in the Atlantic and its cargo of 500,000 silver coins and
other artifacts worth an estimated $500 million. Spain claimed this
was the Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes. In 2009 Peru pushed claims
to the silver coins arguing that they were minted in Lima. In 2012 a
US judge ordered that the treasure be returned to Spain.
(AP,
5/8/08)(www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/24/usa.spain)(AP,
1/29/09)(SFC, 2/18/12, p.A7)
1804 Dec 21, Benjamin Disraeli
(d.1881), Prime Minister of Great Britain (1868, 1874-80), was born.
He instituted reforms in housing, public health and factory
regulations. "Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a
regret." In 1993 Stanley Weintraub published "Disraeli: A
Biography."
(AP, 10/21/97)(WSJ, 11/17/98, p.21)(HN,
12/21/98)(MC, 12/21/01)
1804 Most of the sculptures
from the Parthenon, removed under the orders of Lord Elgin, arrived
in London.
(ON, 11/99, p.4)
1804 The Royal Horticultural
Society was formed.
(WSJ, 5/30/01, p.A1)
1804 The Royal Watercolour
Society was formed.
(Hem., 3/97, p.94)
1804 Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(32), poet, fled to Malta and worked as an assistant to the civilian
governor. He returned to England in 1806.
(WSJ, 4/15/99, p.A20)
1804 A motion in British
Parliament for abolition of the slave trade passed in the House of
Commons 124 to 29, but was defeated in the House of Lords.
(ON, 4/05, p.2)
1804 In England John Barrow
(1764-1848) was appointed Second Secretary to the Admiralty by
Viscount Melville, a post which he held for forty years (apart from
a short period in 1806-07 when there was a Whig government in
power).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_John_Barrow,_1st_Baronet)
1804 Sir George Cayley,
England’s “father of aeronautics,” built and flew the world’s first
successful model glider.
(NPub, 2002, p.4)
1805 Jan 31, Mungo Park set
sail from Portsmouth to Africa where he planned to navigate the
Niger River to its mouth.
(ON, 7/00, p.10)
1805 May 25, William Paley
(b.1805), orthodox Anglican writer, died. He is remembered today
primarily for classical formulation of the teleological argument for
the existence of God. Arguing from the analogy of a watch and
watchmaker, Paley suggested that the analogy offered evidence that
the universe includes order and design, hence a Designer.
(www.wmcarey.edu/carey/paley/paley.htm)(www.thebookofdays.com/months/aug/30.htm)
1805 Aug 9, Austria joined
Britain, Russia, Sweden and the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia in the
Third Coalition against Napoleonic France and Spain.
(HN, 8/9/98)(HNQ, 10/19/98)
1805 Oct 17, Vice Adm. Horatio
Nelson wrotea letter to the governor, Rear Admiral John Knight just
four days before the historic Battle og Trafalgar, in which Nelson
was killed. In it Nelson declared he was "anxious for an Easterly
wind," as that would encourage the enemy to leave port and finally
face the British.
(Reuters, 7/13/10)
1805 Oct 21, A British fleet
commanded by Vice Adm. Horatio Nelson defeated a French-Spanish
fleet in the Battle of Trafalgar fought off Cape Trafalgar, Spain.
Admiral Nelson won his greatest victory and though fatally wounded
in the battle aboard his flagship, he lived long enough to see
victory: "England expects every man to do his duty." The crew
fittingly preserved his body in rum. Over 8,500 Englishmen,
Frenchmen and Spaniards were lost in the battle or the hurricane
that swept over the ships the next day. In 1807 Nelson’s surgeon
William Beatty authored “authentic narrative of the Death of Lord
Nelson.” In 1999 Barry Unsworth authored the novel "Losing Nelson."
In 2001 Joseph F. Callo edited "Nelson Speaks: Admiral Lord Nelson
in His Own Words." In 2005 Adam Nicolson authored “Men of Honour:
Trafalgar and the Making of the English Hero;” Roy Adkins authored
“Nelson’s Trafalgar,” and Adam Nicolson authored “Seize the Fire.”
(WSJ, 5/24/01, p.A20)(Econ, 6/25/05, p.82)(WSJ,
8/19/05, p.W6)(ON, 3/06, p.2)(Reuters, 7/13/10)
1805 Joseph Mallord William
Turner (1775-1851), English painter and printmaker, created his
painting “The Shipwreck.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._W._Turner)
1805 Lord Charles Cornwallis,
governor general of India, died in India.
(HNQ, 9/9/02)
1806 Jan 10, The Capitulation
of Papendorp: The Dutch in Cape Town surrendered to a British fleet.
(EWH, 4th ed, p.884)
1806 Jan 23, William Pitt (46),
the Younger, PM Great Britain (1783-1801 and 1804-1806), died. Pitt
was the founder of the modern Conservative Party. In 2004 William
Hague authored the biography “William Pitt The Younger.”
(http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/terrace/adw03/pms/pitt.htm)(WSJ,
2/9/05, p.D10)
1806 cFeb, Mungo Park drowned
in the Niger River during an attack by armed men near Bussa. He had
traveled some 1500 miles down the Niger River.
(ON, 7/00, p.12)
1806 Mar 6, Elizabeth Barrett
Browning (d.1861), English poet, was born in Durham, England. She
wrote "Sonnets from the Portuguese." "Since when was genius found
respectable?"
(AP, 3/6/98)(HN, 3/6/99)(AP, 8/12/99)
1806 Mar 30, Lady Georgiana
Cavendish, an adept negotiator for the Whigs, died at age 49. In
1999 Amanda Foreman authored "Georgiana," a biography of Georgiana
Spencer.
(WSJ, 1/7/00, p.W4)(WSJ, 4/6/00, p.A20)
1806 May 20, John Stuart Mill
(d.1873), British philosopher and economist, was born. He promoted
utilitarianism and is known as the last great economist of the
classical school. He authored "Principles of Political Economy"
wherein in theorized that production was the real basis for economic
law. He felt that the market was capable of allocating resources but
not of distributing income. "If all mankind minus one, were of one
opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind
would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if
he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
(V.D.-H.K.p.253)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R20)(AP,
1/13/00)(HN, 5/20/01)
1806 Jun 10, James Fox, British
foreign minister, introduced a bill to ban British ships from
transporting slaves to foreign countries. Parliament passed the
bill.
(ON, 4/05, p.3)
1806 Jun 27, Buenos Aires was
captured by British. [see Jul 5]
(SC, 6/27/02)
1806 Jun, Lord Elgin was
paroled by the French government.
(ON, 11/99, p.4)
1806 Jul 5, A Spanish army
repelled the British during their attempt to retake Buenos Aires,
Argentina.
(HN, 7/5/98)
1806 Jul 10, George Stubbs
(b.1724), British artist, died. His work included the publication
“Anatomy of the Horse” (1766).
(WSJ, 4/28/05,
p.D8)(www.abcgallery.com/S/stubbs/stubbsbio.html)
1806 Oct 7, Carbon paper was
patented in London by inventor Ralph Wedgewood.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1806 Oct 8, British forces laid
siege to French port of Boulogne using Congreve rockets, invented by
Sir William Congreve.
(MC, 10/8/01)
1806 In London James Beresford
published his bestselling book “The Miseries of Human Life, or the
groans of Samuel Sensitive and Timothy Testy. With a few
supplementary sighs from Mrs. Testy. In twelve dialogues.”
(http://search.abaa.org/dbp2/book336754032.html)
1806 Charles and Mary Lamb
authored “Tales from Shakespeare.” [see 1796: Mad Mary Lamb]
(WSJ, 2/18/05, p.W6)
1806 In England the tailor
Norton & Sons was founded.
(Econ, 12/18/10, p.136)
1806 The British began the
construction of Dartmoor Prisoner to house French soldiers captured
in the Napoleonic Wars. It was capable of housing 10,500 prisoners
and 2,000 guards.
(AH, 10/02, p.33)
1806 Lord Grenville succeeded
William Pitt as British prime minister.
(ON, 4/05, p.3)
1806 The British wrested power
over South Africa from the Dutch and prompt the Boer farmers to
later move into the interior.
(NG, Oct. 1988, p. 564)
1807 Jan 2, Lord Grenville
presented to British Parliament a “Bill for the Abolition of the
Slave Trade,” effective May 1. He introduced it directly to the
House of Lords. It passed the House of Lords by 64 votes and cleared
the House of Commons on March 25.
(ON, 4/05, p.3)
1807 Jan 7, Responding to
Napoleon's blockade of the British Isles, The British blockaded
Continental Europe.
(HN, 1/7/99)
1807 Jan 28, London's Pall Mall
was 1st street lit by gaslight.
(MC, 1/28/02)
1807 Feb 24, In a crush to
witness the hanging of Holloway, Heggerty and Elizabeth Godfrey in
England 17 died and 15 were wounded.
(MC, 2/24/02)
1807 Mar 25, William
Wilberforce (1759-1833), evangelical member of Parliament, piloted a
slave-trade abolition bill through the British House of Commons.
This led to a labor problem in South Africa. In 1833 Britain
abolished slavery throughout the British Empire when the Slavery
Abolition Bill was read a third time
(HN, 3/24/98)(WSJ, 5/26/04,
p.A8)(www.anti-slaverysociety.addr.com/huk-wilberforce.htm)
1807 Mar 25, 1st railway
passenger service began in England.
(MC, 3/25/02)
1807 Jun 22, British officers
of the HMS Leopard boarded the USS Chesapeake after she had set sail
for the Mediterranean, and demanded the right to search the ship for
deserters. Commodore James Barron refused and the British opened
fire with broadsides on the unprepared Chesapeake and forced her to
surrender. The British provocation led to the War of 1812.
(NG, Sept. 1939, p.363)(HN, 6/22/98)
1807 Jul 2, In the wake of the
Chesapeake incident, in which the crew of a British frigate boarded
an American ship and forcibly removed four suspected deserters,
President Thomas Jefferson ordered all British ships to vacate U.S.
territorial waters.
(AP, 7/2/07)
1807 Sep 2, British forces
began bombarding Copenhagen for several days, until the Danes agreed
to surrender their naval fleet.
(AP, 9/2/07)
1807 Sep 7, Denmark surrendered
to British forces that had bombarded the city of Copenhagen for four
days.
(AP, 9/7/07)
1807 Oct 17, Britain declared
it would continue to reclaim British-born sailors from American
ships and ports regardless of whether they held US citizenship.
(AP, 10/17/07)
1807 After Britain outlawed the
slave trade people called “Recaptives,” those freed from slave
ships, were sent to join the settlers in Sierra Leone. The settlers
formed a new tribe called the Kri and created a language called
Krio.
(MT, summer 2003, p.8)
1807 Britain opened factories
to make sailing blocks for the Royal Navy as part of the war effort
against France. The factories were later cited as the world’s first
standardized mass production line.
(Econ, 11/23/13, p.82)
1808 Aug 21, Napoleon
Bonaparte's General Junot was defeated by Wellington at the first
Battle of the Peninsular War at Vimiero, Spain.
(HN, 8/21/98)
1808-1830 In 2005 William Anthony Hay authored
“The Whig Revival, 1808-1830,” a picture of the British Whigs in the
early 19th century.
(WSJ, 4/6/05, p.D11)
1809 Feb 12, Charles Robert
Darwin (d.1882) was born. He proposed that evolution was the
principle that underlay the development of all species and that man,
an animal, had evolved from nonhuman ancestors. Shortly after his
graduation from Cambridge, Darwin sailed as a naturalist with the
surveying ship HMS Beagle. All life, he said, is a struggle for
existence and some species are better able to adapt to the
environment and survive to pass along their characteristics. During
the five-year voyage, Darwin's observations of wildlife led to the
writing of his 1859 book "The Origin of the Species," in which he
proposed the theory of natural selection. Besides the "Origin of the
Species," he wrote three books on geology and devoted 8 years to his
monograph on barnacles. His last book was "The Formation of
Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms." In 1871 Darwin wrote
"Descent of Man," which demonstrated that man and ape could have had
a common ancestor. Darwin's theories were highly controversial and
unsettling to those who believed in creationism. Many Victorians
condemned Darwin as blasphemous, but many important scientists of
the day agreed with his theories. "How can anyone not see that all
observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any
service."
(V.D.-H.K.p.281)(PacDis., Spg. 96, p.52)(NH,
2/97, p.69)(NH, 5/97, p.11)(HNPD, 2/13/99)
1809 Mar 12, Great Britain
signed a treaty with Persia forcing the French out of the country.
(HN, 3/12/99)
1809 May 24, Dartmoor Prison
opened to house French prisoners of war.
(MC, 5/24/02)
1809 Jun 8, Thomas Paine
(b.1737), British born political essayist, died in poverty and
obscurity in the US. His revolutionary essays included "The
Rights of Man" and "The Age of Reason." His body was exhumed in 1819
by William Cobbett, shipped to England, and kept in an attic trunk
till Cobbett died in 1835. Parts of his skeleton were later said to
be sold at auction.
(HN, 1/29/99)(HNQ, 9/21/99)(SSFC, 4/1/01, p.A7)
1809 Aug 6, Alfred Lord
Tennyson (d.1892), English poet laureate (1850), was born. His work
included: "The Charge of the Light Brigade." "Knowledge comes, but
wisdom lingers."
(HN, 8/6/98)(AP, 10/6/00)
1809 Sep 18, The London Royal
Opera House opened.
(MC, 9/18/01)
1809 Sep, The Old Price Riots
broke out in England when Covent Garden manager John Philip Kemble
raised ticket prices. The riots continued to December.
(SFC, 12/31/08, p.E2)
1809 Nov 27, Frances Anne
"Fanny" Kemble (d.1893), Shakespearian actress, writer and
anti-slavery activist, was born in London, England. Her work
included "Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation.
(WSJ, 9/21/00,
p.A24)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Kemble)
1809 Dec 29, William
Gladstone (1809-1898), British statesman and four times Prime
Minister from 1868-1894, was born. He was called the Grand Old Man
of Victorian England. He began as a devout Tory but moved over to
the liberal camp. A biography by Roy Jenkins, "Gladstone," was
published in 1995.
(CFA, '96, p.60)(AHD, p.559)(WSJ, 1/14/03, p.D6)
1809 Humphry Davy (1778-1809),
an English chemist, invented the first electric light. Davy
connected two wires to a battery and attached a charcoal strip
between the other ends of the wires. The charged carbon glowed
making the first arc lamp.
(http://www.mysteriesofcanada.com/Ontario/first_electric_light_bulb.htm)
1809 Lord Byron (1788-1824)
traveled to Spain, Albania and Greece with John Cam Hobhouse and
soon met with Ali Pasha.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Byron)
1809 Bourne’s Pottery in Denby,
Derbyshire, England, dates to this time. In 1850 it began using the
J. Bourne & Son mark.
(SFC, 4/12/06, p.G4)
1809 English poet Samuel Taylor
Coleridge published his essay “On the Vulgar Errors Respecting Taxes
and Taxation.”
(Econ, 5/19/12, p.21)
1809-1891 Alexander William Kinglake, historian.
(WUD, 1994, p.788)
1810 Feb 24, Henry Cavendish
(b.1731), British natural philosopher, died. He is noted for his
discovery of hydrogen or what he called "inflammable air" (1766).
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Cavendish)
1810 Jun 15, Englishman William
Cobbett (1763-1810) was found guilty of treasonous libel after
objecting in The Register to the flogging at Ely of local militiamen
by Hanoverians. He was sentenced to two years imprisonment in
infamous Newgate Prison. While in prison he wrote the pamphlet Paper
against Gold, warning of the dangers of paper money, as well as many
Essays and Letters. On his release a dinner in London, attended by
600 people, was given in his honor, presided over by Sir Francis
Burdett who, like Cobbett, was a strong voice for parliamentary
reform.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Cobbett)
1810 Aug 14, Samuel Sebastian
Wesley (d.1876), English composer, was born in London.
(MC, 8/14/02)
1810 Dec 22, British frigate
Minotaur sank killing 480.
(MC, 12/22/01)
1810 In Bristol the Commercial
Rooms were constructed under architect C.A. Busby.
(SFEC, 7/13/97, p.T3)
1810 The British Bullion
Committee pronounced that it was folly to let governments print as
much money as they wanted and not expect inflation.
(WSJ, 11/9/00, p.A24)
1810 The British wrestled
Mauritius from France. Indians were brought in as indentured
laborers and later waves of Chinese immigrants arrived.
(SFC, 6/24/96, p.A8)
1810 Peter Durand, a British
merchant, was granted a patent by King George III for his idea of
preserving food in "vessels of glass, pottery, tin (tin can), or
other metals or fit materials."
(www.cancentral.com/history.htm)
1810 Sake Dean Mahomed founded
the Hindoostane Coffee House, London's first known curry
establishment. Born in Patna, India in 1759, Mahomed was also the
first known Indian to write a book in English. Published in 1786, it
describes his adventures as a soldier with the East India Company's
army, his journey to Europe, his marriage to an Irish woman and
their move to London.
(AP, 9/29/05)
1810-1862 The Regency Period in English
architecture. Oriental curves and cupolas influenced English
architecture.
(SFC, 9/30/98, Z1 p.3)
1811 Feb 5, George, Prince of
Wales, was named the Prince Regent due to the insanity of his
father, Britain's King George III. George Augustus Frederick became
prince regent after his father, George III, slipped permanently into
dementia. In 1999 Saul David published "The Prince of Pleasure: The
Prince of Wales and the Making of the Regency."
(WSJ, 3/26/99, p.W10)(AP, 2/5/08)
1811 Feb 11, Pres. Madison
prohibited trade with Britain for 3rd time in 4 years.
(MC, 2/11/02)
1811 Mar 11, Ned Ludd led a
group of workers in a wild protest against mechanization. Members of
the organized bands of craftsmen who rioted against automation in
19th century England were known as Luddites and also "Ludds." The
movement, reputedly named after Ned Ludd, began near Nottingham as
craftsman destroyed textile machinery that was eliminating their
jobs. By the following year, Luddites were active in Yorkshire,
Derbyshire, Lancashire and Leicestershire. Although the Luddites
opposed violence towards people (a position which allowed for a
modicum of public support), government crackdowns included mass
shootings, hangings and deportation to the colonies. It took 14,000
British soldiers to quell the rebellion. The movement effectively
died in 1813 apart from a brief resurgence of Luddite sentiment in
1816 following the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
(HN, 3/11/01)(HNQ, 5/14/01)(WSJ, 3/29/04, p.A1)
1811 Jul 18, William Makepeace
Thackeray (d.1863), English novelist and satirist, was born. His
books were published as monthly serials. "Next to excellence is the
appreciation of it."
(HN, 7/18/98)(AP, 10/28/00)
1811 Nov 16, John Bright,
British Victorian radical, was born. He founded the Anti-Corn Law
League.
(HN, 11/16/99)
1811 The book "Sense and
Sensibility," by Jane Austen (1775-1817), was published. It appeared
anonymously as “written by a lady.”
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Austen)
1811 The Dulwich Picture
Gallery opened at Dulwich College. It contained an art collection
gathered by Noel Desenfans and Francis Bourgeois, who had put it
together for the Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski, king of Poland,
before he was forced to abdicate.
(WSJ, 2/15/00, p.A24)
1811 Francis Cabot Lowell, an
American industrialist, moved to England and gathered information on
mill details. He returned to the US and started the textile industry
in New England and the Massachusetts mill town of his name.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R50)
1811 In England John Williams,
the Highway Hacker, murdered 2 whole families in the Docklands
section of London. He committed suicide while awaiting trial. A
crowd stole his body and drove a stake through his heart and buried
him in a lime pit off Cannon St. The murder later inspired Thomas De
Quincey’s essay “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.”
(SFEC, 10/17/98, p.T9)(WSJ, 6/9/07, p.P8)
1811 The British began a period
of sovereignty in Java (Indonesia).
(WSJ, 9/13/08, p.W18)
1811-1816 The Luddite bands of workman destroyed
manufacturing machinery in England under the belief that their use
diminished employment. They were named after Ned Ludd, the 18th
cent. Leicestershire worker who originated the idea. Opponents of
technology harken back to the English weavers who broke textile
machinery, apparently at the urging of their leader, Ned Ludd. [see
May 3, 1811]
(WUD, 1994, p.852)(WSJ, 4/12/96, p.B-1)
1812 Feb 7, Charles Dickens,
English novelist, was born in Portsmouth, England. His stories
reflected life in Victorian England. In his novel "Dombey &
Son," Dickens confronted the subject of money, and its use as a
measure of success. His work also included "Master Humphrey’s
Clock," published in installments like most of his novels. The
closing line of A Christmas Carol: "And so, as Tiny Tim observed,
God Bless Us, Every One!" Some of his more famous novels include
"Oliver Twist" and "A Tale of Two Cities."
(SFC, 6/17/97, p.E3)(AP, 2/7/97)(HN, 2/7/99)
1812 Feb 7, Lord Byron made his
maiden speech in House of Lords.
(MC, 2/7/02)
1812 May 7, Poet Robert
Browning was born in London.
(AP, 5/7/97)
1812 May 11, The Waltz was
introduced into English ballrooms. Most observers considered it
disgusting and immoral.
(MC, 5/11/02)
1812 May 11, British PM Spencer
Perceval was shot by a bankrupt banker in the lobby of the House of
Commons. Lord Liverpool (1770-1828) was asked to serve as PM of
Britain and he served until 1827.
(HN, 5/11/99)(WSJ, 2/9/05,
p.D10)(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRliverpool.htm)
1812 May 25, A series of coal
mine explosions took place around the Felling Colliery in
Durhamshire, England. 92 miners were killed. This prompted local
clergymen to organize the Society for Preventing Accidents in Coal
Mines.
(ON, 12/01, p.6)
1812 Jun 18, The War of 1812
began as the United States declared war against Great Britain and
Ireland. The term "war hawk" was first used by John Randolph in
reference to those Republicans who were pro-war in the years leading
up to the War of 1812. These new types of Republicans, who espoused
nationalism and expansionism, included Henry Clay and John C.
Calhoun. Most of them came from the agrarian areas of the South and
West. In 2004 Walter R. Borneman authored “1812: The War That Forged
a Nation.”
(AP, 6/18/97)(HN, 6/18/98)(HNQ, 5/13/99)(WSJ,
12/16/04, p.D8)
1812 Jul 18, Great Britain
signed the Treaty of Orebro, making peace with Russia and Sweden.
(HN, 7/18/98)
1812 Jul 22, English troops
under the Duke of Wellington defeated the French at the Battle of
Salamanca in Spain.
(AP, 7/22/97)(HN, 7/22/98)
1812 Jul, British troops under
the Duke of Wellington pillaged the Spanish town of Badajos. This
prompted Wellington to call his troops "the scum of the earth."
(WSJ, 1/6/95, A-10)
1812 Aug 12, British commander
the Duke of Wellington occupied Madrid, Spain, forcing out Joseph
Bonaparte.
(HN, 8/12/98)
1812 Aug 16, Detroit fell to
British and Indian forces in the War of 1812.
(AP, 8/16/97)
1812 Aug 18, Returning from a
cruise into Canadian waters Captain Isaac Hull's USS Constitution of
the fledgling U.S. Navy encountered British Captain Richard Dacre's
HMS Guerriere about 750 miles out of Boston. After a frenzied
55-minute battle that left 101 dead, Guerriere rolled helplessly in
the water, smashed beyond salvage. Dacre struck his colors and
surrendered to Hull's boarding party. In contrast, Constitution
suffered little damage and only 14 casualties. The fight's outcome
shocked the British Admiralty while it heartened America through the
dark days of the War of 1812. [see Aug 19]
(HNPD, 8/18/98)
1812 Aug 19, The USS
Constitution, also known as Old Ironsides, got its name when it
defeated the British warship Guerriere off Nova Scotia in a slugfest
of broadsides, when cannonballs were said to have bounced off her
sides. The USS Constitution won more than 30 battles against the
Barbary pirates off Africa’s coast in the War of 1812. [see Aug 18]
(SFEC, 7/13/97, Par p.14)(AP, 8/19/97)
1812 Aug, Lt. Governor of Nova
Scotia John Coape Sherbrooke sent a naval force and 500 British
troops to conquer Maine and re-establish the colony New Ireland. The
Treaty of Ghent returned this territory to the United States and the
British left in April 1815.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Ireland_%28Maine%29)
1812 Oct 13, At the Battle of
Queenston Heights, a Canadian and British army defeated the
Americans who had tried to invade Canada.
(HN, 10/13/98)
1812 Oct 13, Isaac Brock,
English general (conquered Detroit), died in battle.
(MC, 10/13/01)
1812 Oct 22, The Duke of
Wellington abandoned his 1st siege of Burgos, Spain.
(http://www.napoleonguide.com/battle_burgos.htm)
1812 Oct 25, The U.S. frigate
United States captured the British vessel Macedonian during the War
of 1812.
(AP, 10/25/98)
1812 Edward Lear, English
writer, was born (d.1888).
(HFA, '96, p.30)(WUD, 1994, p.815)
1812 Mary Anning of Lyme Regis
in Dorcetshire, England, excavated a 17-foot-long skeleton and sold
it to Henry Hoste Henley, Lord of the Manor of Colway for £23. The
fossil was later named Icthyosaurus.
(ON, 3/01, p.5)
1813 Jan 4, Isaac Pitman,
inventor (stenographic shorthand), was born in Britain.
(MC, 1/4/02)
1813 Jan 22, During the War of
1812, British forces under Henry Proctor defeated a U.S. contingent
planning an attack on Fort Detroit.
(HN, 1/22/99)
1813 Feb 24, Off Guiana, the
American sloop Hornet sank the British sloop Peacock.
(HN, 2/24/98)
1813 Mar 8, The 1st concert of
Royal Philharmonic.
(MC, 3/8/02)
1813 Mar 15, John Snow
(d.1858), obstetrician, was born in York, England. He worked on the
epidemiology of cholera.
(ON, 5/05,
p.8)(www.johnsnowsociety.org/johnsnow/facts.html)
1813 Jun 1, The U.S. Navy
gained its motto as the mortally wounded commander of the U.S.
frigate "Chesapeake", Captain James Lawrence was heard to say,
"Don't give up the ship!", during a losing battle with a British
frigate "Shannon"; his ship was captured by the British frigate.
(DTnet, 6/1/97)
1813 Jul 6, Granville Sharp
(b.1735), biblical scholar and English abolitionist, died.
(ON, 12/08,
p.9)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granville_Sharp)
1813 Aug 14, British warship
Pelican attacked and captured US war brigantine Argus.
(MC, 8/14/02)
1813 Sep 10, Oliver H. Perry
sent the message, "We have met the enemy, and they are ours," after
an American naval force defeated the British in the Battle of Lake
Erie in the War of 1812.
(AP, 9/10/97)
1813 Oct 5, The Battle of
Moraviantown was decisive in the War of 1812. Known as the Battle of
the Thames in the United States, the US victory over British and
Indian forces near Ontario at the village of Moraviantown on the
Thames River is know in Canada as the Battle of Moraviantown. Some
600 British regulars and 1,000 Indian allies under English General
and Shawnee leader Tecumseh were greatly outnumbered and quickly
defeated by US forces under the command of Maj. Gen. William Henry
Harrison. Tecumseh (45) was killed in this battle.
(HN, 10/5/98)(PC, 1992 ed, p.378)
1813 Dec 19, British forces
captured Fort Niagara during the War of 1812.
(AP, 12/19/06)
1813 Dec 30, The British burned
Buffalo, N.Y., during the War of 1812.
(AP, 12/30/06)
1813 The British government
removed the British East India Company’s monopoly of trade with
India.
(Econ, 12/17/11, p.111)
1813 William Charles Wells
presented a paper to the Royal Society in which he introduced the
idea of natural selection to explain why people might vary in skin
color in different climates.
(Econ, 2/7/09, p.73)
1813 Thomas De La Rue
(1793-1866) launched a newspaper in Guernsey. He moved to London in
1821 and established a printing firm. It grew to become the world’s
largest commercial banknote printer.
(http://lunaticg.blogspot.com/2010/03/who-is-thomas-de-la-rue.html)(Econ,
8/11/12, p.50)
1813-1843 Robert Southey was the poet laureate of
England over this period. He was the author of "The Three Bears."
(SFEC, 2/15/98, Z1 p.8)
1814 Jan 14, The Treaty of Kiel
or Peace of Kiel was concluded between the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland and the Kingdom of Sweden on one side and the
Kingdoms of Denmark and Norway on the other side in Kiel. It ended
the hostilities between the parties in the ongoing Napoleonic Wars,
where the United Kingdom and Sweden were part of the anti-French
camp (the Sixth Coalition) while Denmark-Norway was allied to
Napoleon Bonaparte.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Kiel)
1814 Feb, A man claiming to be
an aide-de-camp to the armies fighting Napoleon landed in Dover and
claimed that Cossacks had butchered Napoleon and that Paris had
fallen. Stock prices soared and conspirators sold shares at a 15%
profit before the fraud was unmasked.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R42)
1814 Mar 30, Britain and allies
marched into Paris after defeating Napoleon.
(MC, 3/30/02)
1814 May 5, The British
attacked Ft. Ontario, Oswego, New York.
(HN, 5/5/98)
1814 May 11, Americans defeated
the British at Battle of Plattsburgh.
(MC, 5/11/02)
1814 May 30, The First Treaty
of Paris was declared, after Napoleon's first abdication. It
returned France to its 1792 borders and secured for the British
definite possession of the Cape of Good Hope.
(HN, 5/30/98)(HN, 5/30/99)(EWH, 4th ed, p.884)
1814 Jul 5, US troops under
Gen. Jacob Brown and Gen. Winfield Scott defeated a superior British
force under Maj. Gen. Phineas Riall near the Niagara River at
Chippewa, Canada. British casualties exceeded 500 compared to some
300 Americans.
(AH, 10/07, p.53)
1814 Jul 18, The British
captured Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.
(MC, 7/18/02)
1814 Jul 19, British Royal Navy
explorer Captain Matthew Flinders (b.1774) died in London. He was
buried at St. James's burial ground, but the headstone was removed
in the 1840s, leaving the precise location of his grave a mystery.
He had led the first known circumnavigation of Australia. In 2019
his remains were found by archaeologists excavating the burial
ground burial ground where a railway station is planned.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Flinders)(AP, 1/25/19)
1814 Jul 22, Five Indian tribes
in Ohio made peace with the United States and declared war on
Britain.
(HN, 7/22/98)
1814 Jul 25, British and
American forces fought each other to a stand off at Lundy's Lane
(Niagara Falls), Canada, in some of the fiercest fighting in the War
of 1812.
(HN, 7/25/98)
1814 Aug 13, Treaty of
London-Netherland was signed to stop the transport of slaves. By
agreement Britain paid the Dutch £6 million in compensation for the
Cape of Good Hope. [see May 30]
(EWH, 4th ed, p.884)(MC, 8/13/02)
1814 Aug 24, 5,000 British
troops under the command of General Robert Ross marched into
Washington, D.C., after defeating an American force at Bladensburg,
Maryland. It was in retaliation for the American burning of the
parliament building in York (Toronto), the capital of Upper Canada.
Meeting no resistance from the disorganized American forces, the
British burned the White House, the Capitol and almost every public
building in the city before a downpour extinguished the fires.
President James Madison and his wife fled from the advancing enemy,
but not before Dolly Madison saved the famous Gilbert Stuart
portrait of George Washington. This wood engraving of Washington in
flames was printed in London weeks after the event to celebrate the
British victory.
(AP, 8/24/97)(HNPD,
8/24/98)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bladensburg)
1814 Aug 25, British forces
destroyed the Library of Congress, containing some 3,000 books.
(MC, 8/25/02)
1814 Sep 11, An American fleet
led by Thomas Macdonough scored a decisive victory over the British
in the Battle of Lake Champlain in the War of 1812.
(AP, 9/11/97)(HN, 9/11/98)
1814 Sep 12, The Battle of
North Point was fought near Baltimore during War of 1812. British
General Ross was killed by a sniper’s bullet in a skirmish just
prior to the main battle. The battle proved to be strategic American
victory, but since they left the field in the hands of the British,
tactically it was a defeat for the Americans.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_North_Point)
1814 Sep 14, In the dawn light
Francis Scott Key saw that the American flag still waved over Fort
McHenry in Maryland during the War of 1812. He looked on from the
deck of a boat on the Patasco River nine miles away and wrote “The
Star Spangled Banner.” The lyrics were alter adopted to the British
tune "To Anacreon in Heaven,” which had also served as Irish
drinking song and a number of other songs. "The Star-Spangled
Banner" was officially recognized as the national anthem in 1931.
The seldom sung third verse says: “No refuge could save the hireling
and slave from the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave.” The
40 feet long flag had been made by Baltimore widow Mary Young
Pickersgill and her 13-year-old daughter just a month before the
attack. In 1907 the flag was donated to the Smithsonian.
(https://www.youtube.com/embed/YaxGNQE5ZLA)(SFC,
7/4/97, p.A2)(AP, 9/14/97) (WSJ, 7/3/02, p.B1)(SFC, 9/15/17 p.A5)
1814 Sep, The Congress of
Vienna convened in late September and continued to June 8, 1815.
Friedrich von Gentz of Austria served as secretary to the Congress.
It was held after the banishment of Napoleon to Elba. The congress
aimed at territorial resettlement and restoration to power of the
crowned heads of Europe with Prince Metternich of Austria as the
dominant figure. Viscount Castlereagh and the Duke of Wellington
represented Britain. Alexander I stood for Russia. Talleyrand stood
for France. Prince von Hardenberg stood for Prussia. In 2007 Adam
Zamoyski authored “Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the
Congress of Vienna.” In 2008 David King authored “Vienna 1814: How
the Conquerors of Napoleon Made Love, War and Peace at the Congress
of Vienna.
(Econ, 4/14/07,
p.94)(www.bartleby.com/65/vi/Vienna-C.html)(SSFC, 4/6/08, Books p.4)
1814 Oct 17, Two giant porter
vats at the Horse Shoe Brewery on London’s Tottenham Court Road
burst when the securing hoops failed. The 25-foot-high vats were
owned by Sir Henry Meux and. Several lives were lost along with an
estimated 8,000-9,000 barrels of porter.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meux%27s_Brewery)(http://tinyurl.com/2v43jm)
1814 Oct 23, The 1st plastic
surgery was performed in England.
(MC, 10/23/01)
1814 Nov 7, Andrew Jackson
attacked and captured Pensacola, Florida, defeating the Spanish and
driving out a British force.
(HN, 11/7/98)
1814 Dec 24, The Treaty of
Ghent between the United States and Great Britain, terminating the
War of 1812, was signed at Ghent, Belgium. The news did not reach
the United States until two weeks later (after the decisive American
victory at New Orleans). The treaty, signed by John Quincy Adams for
the US, committed the US and Britain "to use their best endeavors"
to end the Atlantic slave trade.
(AP, 12/24/97)(WSJ, 12/31/97, p.A11)(HN,
12/24/98)(SFEC, 11/21/99, p.T10)
1814 Britain began overseeing
the Chagos Archipelago.
(Reuters, 11/16/16)
1814 British Royal Navy
explorer Captain Matthew Flinders was buried at St. James's burial
ground, but the headstone was removed in the 1840s, leaving the
precise location of his grave a mystery. He had led the first known
circumnavigation of Australia. In 2019 his remains were found by
archaeologists excavating the St. James's burial ground burial
ground where a railway station is planned.
(AP, 1/25/19)
1815 Jan 8, US forces led by
Gen. Andrew Jackson and French pirate Jean Lafitte led some 3,100
backwoodsmen to victory against 7,500 British veterans at Chalmette
in the Battle of New Orleans in the closing engagement of the War of
1812. A British army marched on New Orleans without knowing that the
War of 1812 had ended on Christmas Eve of 1814. A massacre ensued,
as 2,044 British troops, including three generals, fell dead,
wounded or missing before General Andrew Jackson's well-prepared
earthworks, compared with only 71 American casualties. Among the
British victims were Gen. Sir Edward Pakenham and the Highlanders of
the 93rd Regiment of Foot. In 2000 Robert V. Remini published "The
Battle of New Orleans."
(AP, 1/8/98)(HN, 1/8/99)(WSJ, 1/26/00, p.A20)(AH,
2/05, p.16)
1815 Mar 20, Napoleon Bonaparte
entered Paris, beginning his "Hundred Days" rule. He had escaped
from his imprisonment on the island of Elba off the coast of
Tuscany. He gathered his veterans and marched on Paris. At Waterloo,
Belgium, he met the Duke of Wellington, commander of the allied
anti-French forces and was resoundingly defeated. Napoleon was then
imprisoned on the island of St. Helena in the south Atlantic. In
1997 Gregor Dallas published: The Final Act: The Roads to Waterloo."
the book includes a good account of the Congress of Vienna.
(AP, 3/20/97)(V.D.-H.K.p.232)(SFEC,11/2/97, Par
p.10)
1815 Apr 6, At Dartmoor Prison
in southwest England 7 American prisoners were killed by British
soldiers under the command of Captain Thomas G. Shortland. Some
6,000 prisoners were awaiting return to the US. A farmer’s jury with
no victims or witnesses issued a verdict on April 8 of "justifiable
homicide."
(AH, 10/02, p.36)
1815 Apr 24, Anthony Trollope
(d.1882), British novelist, was born. His 47 novels included "The
American Senator." His 33rd novel was "The Way We Live Now." "Nobody
holds a good opinion of a man who has a low opinion of himself." An
essay by Cynthia Ozick on the novel is in her 1996 book "Fame and
Folly."
(WUD, 1994, p.1517)(WSJ, 5/22/96, p.A-18)(AP,
10/13/97)(WSJ, 6/9/00, p.W17)(HN, 4/24/01)
1815 Apr, British General
Arthur Wellesley, duke of Wellington, began assembling troops at
Brussels, Belgium. 73,000 British troops were joined by 33,000
German, Dutch and Belgian troops preparing to face Napoleon.
Prussian Gen. Gebhard Leberecht von Blucher gathered an army of
120,000 southeast of Brussels.
(ON, 4/06, p.1)
1815 Jun 1, James Gillray
(b.1757), British caricaturist and printmaker, died. He is famous
for his etched political and social satires, mainly published
between 1792 and 1810.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gillray)(Econ, 12/19/09, p.99)
1815 Jun 16, A French attack at
the crossroads called Quatre Bras badly mauled Anglo-Dutch army
under Wellington, but failed to rout it or to take the crossroads.
Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte had marched into Belgium to find himself
confronted by two allied armies, which he tried to split apart.
Although similarly battered at Ligny that day, the Prussian army
also retired intact. Both armies would face Napoleon again two days
later at Waterloo.
(HNPD, 6/16/99)(Econ, 5/23/15, p.71)
1815 Jun 18, British and
Prussian troops under the Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon
Bonaparte and his forces at the Battle of Waterloo in Belgium. The
French elite troops of the Imperial Guard wore bearskins to appear
more intimidating. Afterwards Britain established towering bear skin
hats for soldiers in ceremonial duties and to guard royal
residencies and the Tower of London. Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht
von Blucher made a short speech to his troops saying that he was
pregnant and about to give birth to an elephant. He was taken from
the front in protective custody and missed the battle. Napoleon lost
over 40,000 men at Waterloo; the British and Belgians lost 15,000;
the Prussians lost 7,000. The total losses in 3 days of fighting was
later estimated at 91,800. In 2002 Andrew Roberts authored "Napoleon
and Wellington." In 2005 Andrew Roberts authored “Waterloo:
Napoleon’s Last Gamble.”
(SFEC, 2/28/99, Z1p.10)(WSJ, 9/13/02,
p.W10)(Econ, 2/12/05, p.81)(ON, 4/06, p.5)
1815 Jul 15, Napoleon Bonaparte
was captured by the British Navy at Rochefort, France, while
attempting to escape to America.
(ON, 4/06,
p.5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon)
1815 Sep 26, Russia, Prussia
and Austria signed a Holy Alliance. "Justice, charity and peace"
were to be the precepts that guided the Holy Alliance as envisioned
by Czar Alexander I of Russia. The alliance of Russia, Austria and
Prussia was formed after the downfall of Napoleon and later all
European rulers signed the agreement except the prince regent of
Great Britain, the pope and the sultan of Turkey. With no specific
aims beyond mutual assistance, the provisions of the Holy Alliance
were so vague that it had little effect on European diplomacy.
Metternich quietly replaced the entire alliance by the purely
political alliance of 20 November, 1815, between Austria, Prussia,
Russia and England.
(www.newadvent.org/cathen/07398a.htm)(HNQ,
7/7/98)
1815 Oct 22, Ascension Island
was garrisoned by the British Admiralty. For administrative purposes
it was treated as a ship, the HMS Ascension. Some 20 million birds
are believed to have lived on the island. By 2000 the number of
birds was down to a few hundred thousand due to cats.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_Island)(Econ, 12/18/10,
p.160)(Econ, 9/14/13, SR p.9)
1815 Oct 31, Sir Humphrey Davy
of London patented miner's safety lamp after being hired by the
Society for Preventing Accidents in Coal Mines.
(MC, 10/31/01)(ON, 12/01, p.7)
1815 Nov 2, George Boole
(d.1864), English-Irish mathematician and logician (Boolean
algebra), was born.
(WUD, 1994, p.170)(SFC, 12/2/97, p.C3)(MC,
11/2/01)
1815 Nov 20, The treaties known
collectively as the 2nd Peace of Paris were concluded. Austria’s
Klemens von Metternich helped create a “Concert of Europe,” a system
by which 4-5 big powers kept miscreants in check and managed the
affairs of smaller states for over a decade.
(www.newadvent.org/cathen/07398a.htm)(http://tinyurl.com/2sqgp9)(Econ,
6/9/07, p.68)
1815 Dec 10, Ada Lovelace (d.
Nov 27, 1852), Lord Byron’s daughter and the inventor of computer
language, was born. In 1998 the sci-fi film, "Conceiving Ada," was
directed by Lynn Hershman-Leeson.
(SFC, 1/22/98, p.D7)(SFC, 4/30/98, p.E1)
1815 The novel "Emma," by
English writer Jane Austen (1774-1817), was published.
(ON, 12/09, p.8)
1815 William Smith (d.1839),
British geologist, made the 1st geological map of England and became
impoverished in the process. In 2001 Simon Winchester authored "The
Map That Changed the World."
(RTH, 8/28/99)(WSJ, 8/17/01, p.W6)(SSFC, 8/26/01,
DB p.86)
1815 Britain passed a law
severely restricting grain imports from European neighbors. Austria
retaliated with tariffs on wool and cotton. Sicily raised tariffs on
textiles, Sweden raised tariffs on silk, wool, cotton, iron steel
and copper. English manufacturers formed the anti-Corn-Law League to
lobby against the measure.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R50)
1815 Following the wars with
Napoleon John Barrow, 2nd secretary to the admiralty, directed the
British Navy to a campaign of exploration. In 2000 Fergus Fleming
authored "Barrow’s Boys," an account of the expeditions he
generated.
(WSJ, 4/18/00, p.A16)
1815 Britain took action
against pirate sheikhs protected by the Wahabis, later rulers of
Saudi Arabia, because ships of the East India Company were attacked
in int’l. waters. Britain allied with the ruler of Muscat and Oman
and Mohamed Ali of Egypt.
(WSJ, 10/9/01, p.A22)
1815 The British took over
Ceylon (Sri Lanka).
(Arch, 7/02, p.34)
1815 British debt reached 745
million pounds.
(Econ, 12/24/05, p.105)
1815 Nepalese soldiers, later
known as Gurkhas, began serving in the British military.
(Econ, 5/2/09, p.58)
1816 Apr 21, Charlotte Bronte
(d.1855), English novelist, writer of "Vilette" and "Jane Eyre," was
born in Thornton, England. "Better to be without logic than without
feeling." In 1999 Brian Wilks published "Charlotte in Love: The
Courtship and Marriage of Charlotte Bronte."
(WP, 1952, p.37)(AP, 9/13/99)(HN, 4/21/98)(WSJ,
7/28/99, p.A21)
1816 May 12, Lord Grimthorpe
was born. He was the designer of "Big Ben," the most recognized
structure in London.
(HN, 5/12/99)
1816 Aug 14, Great Britain
annexed Tristan da Cunha.
(MC, 8/14/02)
1816 Aug 27, Admiral Sir Edward
Pellew, a noble from Devon, England, bombed Algiers, a refuge for
Barbary pirates. He flew the green, white and black flag of St.
Petroc. In 1836 the battle was pictured in a painting by George
Chambers, Senior. Pellew was subsequently named Lord Exmouth.
(http://tinyurl.com/gjooc)(Econ, 9/30/06, p.66)
1816 Dec, Henry “Orator” Hunt
made a speech in Spa fields in East London which was disrupted by a
group of revolutionaries who murdered a gunsmith and plundered his
shop. They then set off for London, but the insurrection was quickly
put down.
(Econ, 12/23/06, p.104)
1816 In London, England,
William Cobbett brought out twopenny version of his Weekly Political
Register on a single sheet of paper to avoid the stamp duty.
(Econ, 12/23/06,
p.103)(www.nndb.com/people/245/000049098/)
1816 Robert Stirling, British
clergyman, proposed a sealed heated air engine to compete with the
ubiquitous steam engine. His Stirling engine converted heat into
mechanical energy by compressing and expanding a fixed quantity of
gas.
(Econ, 8/14/04, p.72)(Econ, 6/6/09, p.24)
1816 Lord Elgin sold his
Parthenon sculptures to the British government for 35,000 pounds. A
request in 1811 for 62,400 pounds had been rejected. Elgin later
fled to France to avoid his creditors.
(ON, 11/99, p.4)
1816 Lord Byron (George
Gordon), English romantic poet, separated from his wife Annabella
(d.1860) following an incestuous relationship with his half-sister
Augusta Leigh (d.1851). In 2002 David Crane authored "The Kindness
of Sisters: Annabella Milbanke and the Destruction of the Byrons."
(SSFC, 10/27/02, p.M2)
1816 Two British naval ships
under Captain Basil Hall landed at Okinawa, in the Ryukyu
archipelago, which was then known as Loo-Choo. In 1818 Hall
published an account of his voyage: “Account of a Voyage of
Discovery to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo
Island.”
(Econ, 10/29/05,
p.44)(www.polybiblio.com/bibliotrek/BT000004..html)
1816 The British founded Banjul
(Gambia) as a trading post and base for suppressing the slave trade.
Captain Alexander Grant obtained the sandy bank of Banjul Island by
a treaty from the Chief of Kombo and built the planned city of
Bathurst, renamed Banjul in 1973. The British renamed Banjul Island
as St. Mary's Island and first named Bathurst after the 3rd Earl
Bathurst, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies at the time.
The name was changed to Banjul in 1973.
(www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/51887/Banjul#ref276710)
1817 Feb 2, John Glover,
English chemist (sulfuric acid), was born.
(MC, 2/2/02)
1817 Apr 19, David Ricardo
(1772-1823), British political economist, published "Principles of
Political Economy and Taxation." Here Ricardo argued for the labor
theory of value and explained why the best farmland often makes
money for the landlord, not the farmer.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R20)(Econ, 11/5/05, p.91)(Econ,
4/22/17, p.69)
1817 Jul 18, Jane Austen
(b.1775), English writer, died at age 41. In 1869 her nephew James
Edward Austen-Leigh published “A Memoir of Jane Austen.” Austen had
introduced a new narrative style which moved deftly between the
narrator’s voice and the character’s innermost thoughts.
(www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/janelife.html)(SFEC,11/9/97, BR p.3)(ON,
12/09, p.8)(Econ 7/15/17, p.71)
1817 Dec 7, William Bligh (63),
British naval officer of "Bounty" infamy, died.
(MC, 12/7/01)
1817 Dec 28, Benjamin Robert
Haydon (d.1846), British painter, threw a dinner party in London to
show his nearly completed painting "Christ’s Entry Into Jerusalem"
and to introduce poet John Keats to William Wordsworth. Other guests
included essayist Charles Lamb. In 2002 Penelope Hughes-Hallett
authored "The Immortal Dinner."
(WSJ, 9/13/02, p.W10)
1817 Dec, The book “Northanger
Abbey,” by English novelist Jane Austen (1775-1817), was published
following her death in July. It was written around 1798-1799 and
revised in 1803.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northanger_Abbey)
1817 Thomas Love Peacock, a
friend and neighbor of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, authored his comic
novel “Melincourt.” A character in the novel was based on Shelley.
(Econ, 12/23/06, p.94)
1817 Sir Thomas Stamford
Bingley Raffles (1781-1826), British statesman, wrote a book
entitled “History of Java.” He was heavily involved in the conquest
of the Indonesian island of Java from Dutch and French military
forces during the Napoleonic Wars and contributed to the expansion
of the British Empire.
(Econ, 11/10/12,
p.88)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamford_Raffles)
1817 Percy Bysshe Shelley (25),
English romantic poet, authored his sonnet “Ozymandias.” It was
first published in 1818.
(Econ, 12/21/13,
p.125)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias)
1817 Britain banned private
coins. They had been issued to address a major shortage of
government coinage. From 1787 to 1797 and again from 1811 to 1818,
the greater part of Great Britain's stock of coins came not from the
Royal Mint in London but from a score of private mints in
Birmingham.
(WSJ, 1/5/09, p.A11)(http://mises.org/story/3168)
1818 Jan 1, The novel
"Frankenstein" by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) was
published anonymously. It was an attack on industrialization. The
work stemmed from a contest in 1816 at Byron’s Villa Diodati in
Geneva, between Byron, Shelley and Mary to produce a ghost story. In
1998 Joan Kane Nichols published "Mary Shelley: Frankenstein’s
Creator." In 2006 Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler authored “The Monsters:
Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein.” In 2007 Susan Tyler
Hitchcock authored “Frankenstein: A Cultural History.”
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R14)(SSFC, 5/21/06, p.M6)(WSJ,
10/30/07, p.D6)(ON, 11/07, p.8)
1818 Jan 2, Lord Byron (George
Gordon) completed "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" (4th canto).
(MC, 1/2/02)
1818 Apr 16, U.S. Senate
ratified the Rush-Bagot amendment to form an unarmed U.S.-Canada
border. The Rush-Bagot Agreement between Great Britain and the U.S.
had to do with mutual disarmament on the Great Lakes. In the
exchange of notes between British minister to the U.S. Charles Bagot
and Richard Rush, Acting Secretary of State, the countries agreed to
limits on their inland naval forces. A sequel to the Treaty of
Ghent, the agreement was approved by the U.S. Senate on April 16,
1818.
(HN, 4/16/98)(HNQ, 6/7/00)
1818 Apr, Dr. John William
Polidori published “The Vampyre,” a novel based on an unpublished
story fragment by Lord Byron. Polidori was Byron’s personal
physician.
(ON, 11/07, p.8)
1818 Jun 2, The British army
defeated the Maratha alliance in Bombay, India.
(HN, 6/2/98)
1818 Jul 30, Emily Bronte
(d.1848), English author of "Wuthering Heights," was born. She was
the younger sister of Charlotte Bronte and died of tuberculosis.
(WP, 1952, p.38)(HN, 7/30/98)(WSJ, 7/28/99,
p.A21)
1818 Aug 22, Warren Hastings
(85), 1st governor-general of India (1773-84), died.
(MC, 8/22/02)
1818 Oct 8, 2 English boxers
were 1st to use padded gloves.
(MC, 10/8/01)
1818 Oct 20, The United States
and Britain established the 49th Parallel as the boundary between
Canada and the United States.
(HN, 10/20/98)
1818 Dec 24, James Prescott
Joule (d.1889), British physicist, was born. Joule studied the
nature of heat, and discovered its relationship to mechanical work.
This led to the law of conservation of energy, which led to the
development of the first law of thermodynamics.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Prescott_Joule)
1818 Copley Fielding painted a
landscape of Stonehenge.
(ON, 4/02, p.11)
1818 John Keats published his
poem "Endymion."
(WSJ, 1/15/98, p.A17)
1818 Dr. James Blundell
(1791-1878), a British obstetrician, performed the first successful
transfusion of human blood, for the treatment of postpartum
hemorrhage.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_transfusion)
1818 The first modern use for
rubber was discovered by British medical student James Syme. He used
it to waterproof cloth in order to make the first raincoats, a
process patented in 1823 by Charles Macintosh.
(http://www.madehow.com/Volume-3/Latex.html)
1818-1820 John Keats (d.1821), English poet, lived
in Hampstead and wrote "The Eve of St. Agnes," "Ode on a Grecian
Urn," and "Ode to a Nightingale."
(SFC, 12/24/96, p.E4)(WSJ, 1/15/98, p.A17)
1819 May 24, Queen Victoria
(d.1901) was born in London. Her reign (1836-1901) restored dignity
to the British crown. She had nine children. "Great events make me
quiet and calm; it is only trifles that irritate my nerves."
(AP, 5/24/97)(HN, 5/24/99)(AP, 2/24/99)
1819 May 26, The first
steam-propelled vessel to attempt a trans-Atlantic crossing, the
350-ton Savannah, departed from Savannah, Ga., May 26 and arrived in
Liverpool, England, Jun 20. [HNQ set May 24 for the departure]
(AP, 5/22/97)(HNQ, 3/18/02)
1819 Aug 16, English police
charged unemployed demonstrators at St. Peter's Field in the
Manchester Massacre. Marchers were demanding voting rights for the
working class. 18 people were killed in the Peterloo massacre. The
press responded with a volley of attacks that included “The
Political House that Jack Built” by William Hone and illustrator
George Cruikshank.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_Massacre)(Econ, 12/23/06,
p.104)
1819 Aug 26, Albert "Bertie"
von Saxon-Coburg-Gotha (d.1861), husband of queen Victoria, was born
at Schloss Rosenau, near Coburg, Bavaria.
(WUD, 1994,
p.34)(http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com)
1819 Nov 22, George Eliot
(d.1880), English writer, was born as Mary Ann Evans. Her books
included “Adam Bede,” “Silas Marner” and “Middlemarch.” She was
driven out of England with her companion, G.H. Lewes, for a while
for not being married. Her books tore away the curtain of Victorian
life and revealed its bitter small-mindedness for anyone to see.
"The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history."
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/gelliot.htm)(HN,
11/22/98)(SSFC, 2/9/14, p.F7)
1819 J.M.W. Turner (44),
English artist (1775-1851), visited Venice for the 1st time. He
returned in 1833 and 1840. His 1st oil painting with a Venetian
setting was done in 1833.
(WSJ, 3/17/04, p.D4)
1819 The British claimed
Malacca from the Dutch. They used St. Paul’s church as an ammunition
dump and put a lighthouse in front.
(Econ, 11/15/14, SR p.5)
1819 Singapore was declared a
free port after it was taken over by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles
(1781-1826), an officer of the British East India Co. Sultan Hussein
was enthroned by the British but he never ruled. Raffles laid out
the city into ethnic zones.
(WSJ, 11/12/96, p.A18)(WSJ, 7/22/99,
p.A23)(SFCM, 3/11/01, p.70)(SSFC, 2/07/04, p.C9)
1820 Jan 12, Royal Astronomical
Society was founded in England.
(MC, 1/12/02)
1820 Jan 20-1820 Jan 29, As
George IV was about to become King of England, his wife Caroline
(the German princess of Brunswick) returned to claim her rights. She
had been living on the continent and was rumored to have had as
lovers such men as: the politician George Canning, the admiral Sir
Sydney Smith, the painter Sir Thomas Lawrence. The House of Lords
introduced a Bill of Pains and Penalties, which sought to strip
Caroline of her title of Queen on the grounds of her scandalous
conduct. George had previously married Maria Anne Fitzherbert in
secret. A trial ensued, but witnesses refused to speak against the
queen and the bill had to be amended.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_of_Brunswick)(WSJ, 5/23/96,
p.A-10)(WSJ, 3/26/99, p.W10)
1820 Jan 29, Britain's King
George III (b.1760) died insane at Windsor Castle at age 81, ending
a reign that saw both the American and French revolutions. He
was succeeded by his son George IV (1762-1830), who as Prince of
Wales had been regent for 9 years during his father’s insanity. In
2005 scientists reported high levels of arsenic in the hair of King
George III and said the deadly poison may be to blame for the bouts
of apparent madness he suffered. In 2006 Stella Tillyard authored “A
Royal Affair: George III and His Troublesome Siblings” and Jeremy
Black authored “George III: America’s Last King.”
(http://tinyurl.com/gsbuj)(AP, 1/29/98)(WSJ,
12/26/06, p.D8)(Econ, 1/28/06, p.80)
1820 Jan 30, Edward Bransfield
discovered Antarctica and claimed it for the UK.
(MC, 1/30/02)
1820 Feb 28, John Tenniel
(d.1914), illustrator of "Alice in Wonderland," was born. He was an
English caricaturist.
(HN, 2/28/98)(WUD, 1994, p.1463)
1820 Feb, The Cato Street
Conspiracy, organized by revolutionary Arthur Thistlewood, was
the. assassination of the entire British Cabinet.
Earlier, in 1816, Thistlewood helped plan the Spa Fields Riots,
during which the Bank of England and Tower of London were to be
seized. In February, 1820, Thistlewood learned the entire British
Cabinet planned to dine at the Earl of Harrowby’s house in London’s
Grosvenor Square. His plot for murder was revealed to the police,
who apprehended Thistlewood and a number of accomplices as they
prepared to leave a room on Cato Street for Grosvenor Square.
Thistlewood was tried for high treason and hanged, along with four
others.
(HNQ, 6/28/99)
1820 Mar 30, Anna Sewell,
English novelist, was born. Her "Black Beauty" has become the
classic story about horses.
(HN, 3/30/99)
1820 Jun 19, Joseph Banks,
English natural historian (Cook, Australia), died.
(MC, 6/19/02)
1820
Aug 2, John Tyndall (d.1893), British physicist, was born. He was
the first scientist to show why the sky is blue. "It is as fatal as
it is cowardly to blink (at) facts because they are not to our
taste."
(AP, 9/25/99)(HN, 8/2/00)
1820 Aug 13, George Grove,
biblical scholar, musicographer (Grove's Dictionary), was born in
London, England.
(MC, 8/13/02)
1820 Sep 28, Friedrich Engels
(d.1895), socialist who collaborated with Karl Marx on The Communist
Manifesto and Das Kapital, was born in Prussia.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Engels)
1820 May 12, Florence
Nightingale (d.1910), Crimean War British nurse known as “Lady with
the Lamp,” was born in Florence, Italy. She is also known as the
founder of modern nursing.
(AP,
5/12/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nightingale)
1820 Anne Bronte (d.1849),
younger sister of Charlotte and Emily, was born. Her novels included
"Agnes Grey" and "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall."
(WSJ, 7/28/99, p.A21)
1820 Constable made his
painting of Salisbury Cathedral.
(WSJ, 12/6/01, p.A19)
1820 Scotsman Gregor MacGregor
(1791-1845), later known as His Serene Highness Gregor I, Prince of
Poyais, returned to London from Venezuela and began selling land in
the fictional kingdom of Poyais. He served 8 months in jail after
English and French expeditions revealed the hoax. In 1839 he
returned to Venezuela. In 2004 David Sinclair authored "The Land
That Never Was: Sir Gregor MacGregor and the Most Audacious Land
Fraud in History."
(SSFC, 1/18/04, p.M2)
c1820 In London Thomas Hancock
sliced up a rubber bottle from the Americas to create garters and
waistbands.
(SFC, 9/19/98, p.E3)
1820 Some 4,000 British
colonists, the Albany settlers, settled in the eastern coastal
region of the Cape of Good Hope.
(EWH, 4th ed, p.884)
1820-1827 Humphrey Davy served as president of the
Royal Society.
(ON, 12/01, p.7)
1820s Grain prices collapsed.
(WSJ, 12/11/98, p.W10)
1821 Feb 3, Elizabeth Blackwell
(d.1910), first woman to get an MD from a U.S. medical school, was
born in Bristol, England.
(http://womenshistory.about.com/od/blackwellelizabeth/a/eliz_blackwell.htm)
1821 Feb 23, John Keats,
English poet, died of tuberculosis at the age of 26. In 1998 the
biography "Keats" by Andrew Motion was published. Earlier
biographies included one by Walter Jackson Bate (1963), and a
novelistic psychological portrait by Aileen Ward (1963). The
standard work on Keats was written by Robert Gittings in 1968.
(WP, 1951, p.11)(WSJ, 1/15/98, p.A17)(SFEC,
3/29/98, BR p.6)
1821 Mar 19, Sir Richard Burton
(d.1890), English explorer, was born.
(HN, 3/19/01)
1821 Jul 19, The coronation of
George IV of England was held. His wife, Caroline, was refused
admittance. She died Aug 7.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_IV_of_the_United_Kingdom)
1821 Aug 7, Caroline of
Brunswick (b.1768), wife of England’s King George IV, died. In 2006
Jane Robins authored “The Trial of Queen Caroline: The Scandalous
Affair that Nearly Ended a Monarchy.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_IV_of_the_United_Kingdom)(Econ,
8/5/06, p.76)
1821 William Playfair, Scottish
engineer, political economist and scoundrel, published a visual
chart that displayed the “weekly wages of a good mechanic” along
with the price of a “quarter of wheat” with the reigns of monarchs
displayed along the top.
(Econ, 12/22/07, p.74)
1821 English economist David
Ricardo noted that the influence of machinery is frequently
detrimental to the interest of the working class.
(Econ, 6/25/16, SR p.3)
1822 Feb 16, Francis Galton
(d.1911), English scientist, was born. He was one of the first
moderns to present a carefully considered eugenics program.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton)(NH,
6/97, p.18)(SFC, 8/28/97, p.A12)
1822 May, Dr. Gideon Mantell
published his book “The Fossils of South Downs,” based on his
studies of huge teeth and bones found at the Tilgate Forest quarry.
(ON, 7/06, p.1)
1822 Jun 14, Charles Babbage
(1792-1871), a young Cambridge mathematician, announced the
invention of a machine capable of performing simple arithmetic
calculations in a paper to the Astronomical Society. His 1st
Difference Engine could perform up to 60 error-free calculation in 5
minutes. Babbage and engineer John Clement completed the calculator
portion of a new engine in 1832, but the project lost funding and
remained unfinished.
(I&I, Penzias, p.94)(ON, 5/05, p.5)
1822 Jul 8, Percy Bysshe
Shelley (b.1792), English poet, drowned while sailing in Italy at
age 29.
(HN, 7/8/01)
1822 Sep 6, John Constable,
English painter, painted his “Cloud Study, 6 September 1822.” He
painted some 100 studies of the sky between 1821-1822.
(MC, 3/31/02)(WSJ, 6/9/04, p.D8)
1822 Oct 20, The 1st edition of
the London Sunday Times was published.
(MC, 10/20/01)
1822 Dec 4, Frances Crabbe,
English feminist and founder of the Anti-Vivisection Society, was
born.
(MC, 12/4/01)
1822 Dec 14, John Christie,
English patron of music, was born. He founded the Glyndebourne
Festival Opera.
(HN, 12/14/99)
1822 London’s St. Matthew’s
Church was built to commemorate the victory at Waterloo.
(Econ, 12/22/12, p.100)
1822 A bronze Achilles cast
from cannons from the Napoleonic wars was unveiled at the residence
of the Duke of Wellington. A strategic fig leaf was soon added.
(SFEM, 3/21/99, p.24)
1822-1888 Matthew Arnold, English poet and critic.
His books included "Culture and Anarchy." His best known poem is
Dover Beach." In 1999 Ian Hamilton wrote "A Gift Imprisoned: The
Poetic Life of Matthew Arnold."
(WSJ, 3/25/99, p.A24)
1823 May 8, "Home Sweet Home"
was 1st sung in London.
(MC, 5/8/02)
1823 Lord Byron returned to
Greece to provide moral support to insurgents and draw attention to
Ottoman massacres of Greek civilians.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Byron)(SFC,
9/7/08, Books p.5)
1823 English poet Lord Byron
spent a summer on the Ionian island of Cephalonia.
(SFEC, 1/18/98, p.T3)
1823 Philip Cazenova founded a
British banking firm partnership. It incorporated in 2001.
(Econ, 11/13/04, p.82)
1823 British Major Dixon Denham
and Captain Hugh Clapperton entered Northern Nigeria from the north,
crossing the desert from Tripoli.
(Econ, 1/7/06,
p.74)(www.britishempire.co.uk/maproom/nigeria.htm)
1823-1871 Charles Buxton, English author: "You
will never 'find' time for anything. If you want time you must make
it."
(AP, 10/21/99)
1824 Jan 8, William Wilkie
Collins, English novelist (Woman in White), was born.
(www.qub.ac.uk/en/imperial/india/wilkie-background.htm)
1824 Jan 8, Tom Spring defeated
Jack Langan in a British championship boxing match that lasted 2½
hours.
(SFC, 2/1/06,
p.G6)(www.cyberboxingzone.com/boxing/spring-t.htm)
1824 Jan 22, A British force
was wiped out by an Asante army under Osei Bonsu on the African Gold
Coast. This was the first defeat for a colonial power.
(HN, 1/22/99)
1824 Apr 19, George Gordon,
(6th Baron Byron, b.1788) aka Lord Byron, English poet, died of
malaria in Greece at Missolonghi on the gulf of Patras preparing to
fight for Greek independence. In 1999 Benita Eisler published the
biography "Byron: Child of Passion, Fool of Fame." In 2002 Fiona
MacCarthy authored "Byron : Life and Legend." In 2009 Edna O’Brien
authored “Byron in Love.”
(SFC, 6/9/97, p.D3)(WSJ, 4/26/99, p.A16)(HN,
4/1901)(SSFC, 12/29/02, p.M2)(SSFC, 6/21/09, Books p.J5)
1824 Jun 16, The Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was formed at Old Slaughter’s
Coffee House in London under the direction of Arthur Broome.
(www.animallaw.info/historical/articles/arukrspcahist.htm)
1824 Jul 20, Marc Brunel (55)
was appointed as engineer for the Thames Tunnel Company. He hired
his son, Isambard Brunel, as his assistant. Brunel senior, a
royalist, had fled the French Revolution to become, briefly,
official engineer to the city of New York, and then, having settled
in London, a consultant engineer to the Royal Navy. Educated and
trained in both French and English schools and workshops, Brunel
junior served his practical apprenticeship assisting his father in
the building of the first tunnel under the Thames, which later
carried the Underground between Wapping and Rotherhithe.
(HN,
6/26/01)(www.bris.ac.uk/is/services/specialcollections/brunelchronology.html)
1824 Sep 23, Captain Richard
Charlton was appointed British Consul to Hawaii. He arrived in
Hawaii and assumed his post in April, 1825.
(Hawaii state archives)
1824 Oct 21, Joseph Aspdin
patented Portland cement in Yorkshire, England.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1824 John Hayter painted
portraits of Hawaii’s King Kamehameha II and Queen Kamamalu in
London shortly before they died there of measles.
(AH, 10/01, p.14)
1824 In England the first
animal welfare group was founded.
(SFEC, 1/10/99, p.A20)
1824 The Royal National
Lifeboat Institution was established in England.
(Econ, 5/14/05, p.87)
1824 Charles Henry Harrod (25)
established his first retail business. Until 1831 it was variously
listed as a draper, mercer and a haberdasher. In 1834 he established
a wholesale grocery in Stepney, at 4 Cable Street, London, with a
special interest in tea.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrods)
1824 Newfoundland became a
British colony. It became a province of Canada in 1949.
(SFEC, 6/25/00, BR p.6)
1824-1889 (William) Wilkie Collins, English
novelist. His work included the 1860 mystery: "The Woman in White."
It was later made into a TV version on both "Mystery" (1985) and
"Masterpiece Theater" (1998).
(WUD, 1994, p.290)(WSJ, 2/19/98, p.A20)
1825 Jan 1, Dr. Gideon Mantell
presented his paper “Notice on the Iguanodon” to members of
England’s Philosophical Society. His paper linked the large
hypothetical “Sussex lizard” to a modern species of reptile. This
work led to his induction to the Royal Society on Dec 25, 1825.
(ON, 7/06, p.3)
1825 Feb 22, Russia and Britain
established the Alaska/Canada boundary.
(HN, 2/22/98)
1825 May 4, Thomas Henry Huxley
(d.1895), British biologist, naturalist and author, was born. "God
give me strength to face a fact though it slay me." "My experience
of the world is that things left to themselves don't get right." His
work includes the collected Essays in nine volumes: 1. Method and
Results, 2. Darwiniana, 3. Science and Education, 4. Science and the
Hebrew Tradition, 5. Science and the Christian Tradition, 6. Hume,
with Helps to the Study of Berkeley, 7. Man’s Place in Nature, 8.
Discourses, Biological and Geological, 9. Evolution and Ethics and
Other Essays. In 1997 Adrian Desmond wrote the biography: "Huxley."
"God give me strength to face a fact though it slay me."
(OAPOC-TH, p.71)(WSJ, 10/10/97, p.A20)(AP,
11/1/97)(AP, 1/26/99)(HN, 5/4/01)
1825 Sep 27, The Stockton and
Darlington rail line opened in England. The first locomotive to haul
a passenger train was operated by George Stephenson in England. The
British engineers Richard Trevithick and George Stevenson were the
first innovators of the technology.
(AP,
9/27/97)(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RAstephensonG.htm)
1825 Dec 27, The 1st public
railroad using steam locomotive was completed in England.
(MC, 12/27/01)
1825 The Bank of England began
lending money aggressively and continued to 1826 to help stabilize a
financial crisis, despite lacking the legal authority to do so.
(Econ, 11/5/11, p.92)
1825 Clark Shoes began
operations in Britain.
(Econ, 6/18/05, Survey p.53)
1825 The British conquered the
Burmese state of Arakon (aka Rakhine), called Rohang by early
Muslims, and administered it as part of British India. Muslims are
believed to have arrived here in as long ago as the 8th century.
(Econ, 6/13/15, p.38)
1826 Feb 11, London University
was founded.
(MC, 2/11/02)
1826 Apr 12, Karl Maria von
Weber's opera "Oberon," premiered in London.
(MC, 4/12/02)
1826 Jul 5, Sir Thomas Stamford
Bingley Raffles (b.1781), British statesman, died in London. He is
best known for his founding of the city of Singapore (now the
city-state of the Republic of Singapore). He is often described as
the "Father of Singapore". He was also heavily involved in the
conquest of the Indonesian island of Java from Dutch and French
military forces during the Napoleonic Wars and contributed to the
expansion of the British Empire. He was also an amateur writer and
wrote a book entitled History of Java (1817). In 2012 Victoria
Glendinning authored “Raffles and the Golden Opportunity.”
(Econ, 11/10/12,
p.88)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamford_Raffles)
1826 Aug 7, Marc Brunel hired
his son, Isambard, to replace William Armstrong as chief engineer
for building the tunnel under England’s Thames River.
(ON, 4/06,
p.8)(www.bris.ac.uk/is/services/specialcollections/brunelchronology.html)
1826 Sir John Bernard
Burke published “Burke’s Landed Gentry,” a detailed listing of key
families or other influential figures in the United Kingdom.
(Econ, 12/3/11,
p.104)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burke%27s_Landed_Gentry)
1826 Pilkington, a British
glass producer, was founded in St. Helens, Lancashire. In 2006 it
was bought by Nippon Sheet Glass (NSG).
(Econ, 3/27/10,
p.78)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilkington)
1826 Englishmen scientist James
Smithson (1765-1829) drew up his will and named his nephew as
beneficiary. In the will he stated that should his nephew die
without heirs, the estate should go to the US of America to found at
Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institute, an
establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.
(SFEC, 8/25/96, p.T6)
1826 John James Audubon
(1785-1851), painter and ornithologist, arrived in Britain to
oversee the production of his "Birds of America." Although the 1st
engravings were done in Edinburgh the project was soon transferred
to London and completed over the next 12 years.
(WSJ, 3/26/04, p.W6)(AH, 10/04, p.75)
1826 The Zoological Society of
London was established by Sir Stamford Raffles and Sir Humphry Davy.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Zoo)
1826 The British Cape Colony
was extended northward to the Orange River.
(EWH, 4th ed, p.885)
1826-1852 The Duke of Wellington served as
Constable of the Tower of London.
(Hem, 9/04, p.71)
1826-1877 Walter Bagehot, English editor and
economist: "One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of
a new idea." "It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to
be without temptation."
(AP, 5/22/97)(AP, 9/2/98)
1827 Apr 2, William Holdman
Hunt, English painter (Light of the World), was born.
(MC, 4/2/02)
1827 Apr 5, Joseph Lister,
English physician, was born. He founded the idea of using
antiseptics during surgery.
(HN, 4/5/99)
1827 Apr 7, English chemist
John Walker invented wooden matches.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1827 May 4, John Hanning Speke,
English explorer, was born. He discovered Lake Victoria and the
source of the Nile.
(HN, 5/4/99)
1827 Aug 12, William Blake
(b.1757), English visionary engraver and poet, died. “He who kisses
the joy as it flies / Lives in eternity’s sunrise.” In 2001 G.E.
Bentley Jr. authored "The Stranger From Paradise: A Biography of
William Blake."
(SSFC, 5/27/01, DB
p.73)(http://tinyurl.com/nd7vhfv)
1827 Oct 15, Charles Darwin
reached Christ's Counsel, Cambridge.
(MC, 10/15/01)
1827 Oct 20, British, French
and Russian squadrons entered the harbor at Navarino, Greece, and
destroyed most of the Egyptian fleet there. The Ottomans demanded
reparations.
(EWH, 4th ed,
p.770)(www.ipta.demokritos.gr/erl/navarino.html)
1827 Joseph Niepce, French
inventor, met with English botanist Francis Bauer, who agreed to
present Niepce’s ground breaking photographic work to the Royal
Society, which rejected the bid. Before leaving London Niepce made a
gift of his 1826 pewter image to Bauer. The pewter image was
re-discovered in 1952 by photo historian Helmut Gernsheim.
(ON, 10/08, p.8)
1828 Apr 27, The London Zoo
opened to fellows of the Zoological Society of London. It was
originally intended to be used as a collection for scientific
study. As of 2017 it was the world's oldest scientific zoo and
housed 20,166 animals.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Zoo)(Reuters, 12/23/17)
1828 May 12, Dante Gabriel
Rossetti (d.1882), English poet and painter, was born.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Gabriel_Rossetti)
1828 May 16, Sir William
Congreve (b.1772), British artillerist and inventor, died. In 1805
he developed the Congreve Rocket.
(MC, 5/16/02)(WUD, 1994 p.310)
1928 Jun 14, British
suffragette Emily Pankhurst (b.1858) died.
(www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/pankhurst_emmeline.shtml)
1828 Aug, England’s Thames
Tunnel Company was forced to halt operations due to accidents and
loss of financial support. Work was halted for 7 years.
(ON, 4/06, p.9)
1828 Nov 8, Thomas Bewick
(b.1753), English engraver and ornithologist, died. In 2007 Jenny
Uglow authored “Nature’s Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick.”
(Econ, 5/26/07,
p.98)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bewick)
1828-1830 Arthur Wellesley (1769-1852), the duke
of Wellington, served as British prime minister. He blocked badly
needed political reform and was later considered one of England’s
worst prime ministers.
(WSJ, 1/6/95, A-10)(ON, 4/06, p.5)
1828-1896 Elizabeth Charles, British writer: "To
know how to say what others only know how to think is what makes men
poets or sages; and to dare to say what others only dare to think
makes men martyrs or reformers -- or both."
(AP, 12/13/98)
1828-1909 George Meredith, English poet: "Cynicism
is intellectual dandyism."
(AP, 10/20/98)
1829 Apr 13, English
Emancipation Act granted freedom of religion to Catholics.
(MC, 4/13/02)
1829 May 29, Humphrey Davy
(84), scientist, inventor (Miner's safety lamp), died at age 50. In
1963 Anne Treneer authored "The Mercurial Chemist: A Life of Sir
Humphrey Davy."
(ON, 12/01, p.7)(SC, 5/29/02)
1829 Jun 8, John Everett
Millais, painter (Order of Release), was born in England.
(MC, 6/8/02)
1829 Jun 27, James Smithson
(b.1765), Englishmen scientist, died. His 1926 will he stated that
should his nephew die without heirs, the estate should go to the US
of America to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian
Institute, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of
knowledge among men. In 2003 Nina Burleigh authored "The Stranger
and the Statesman: James Smithson, John Quincy Adams and the Making
of America's Greatest Museum, The Smithsonian." [see 1836]
(SFEC, 8/25/96, p.T6)(SC, 6/27/02)(SSFC,
12/21/03, p.M1)(SSFC, 12/21/03, p.A1)
1829 Sep 29, London’s
reorganized police force, "bobbies", which became known as Scotland
Yard, went on duty. In 1828 Sir Robert Peel set up a committee whose
findings paved the way for his police Bill, which led to the setting
up of an organized police service in London.
(http://www.met.police.uk/history/timeline1829-1849.htm)(AP,
9/29/97)
1829 Dec 4, Britain abolished
"suttee" in India. This was the practice of a widow burning herself
to death on her husband's funeral pyre.
(MC, 12/4/01)
1829 William Cobbett, British
writer, authored “The Emigrant’s Guide,” offering advice on settling
in the New World.
(WSJ, 12/22/08, p.A17)
1829 In England a ban on
Catholic voting was lifted.
(SFEC, 10/6/96, BR p.5)
1829 Robert Stephenson built
the Rocket, one of the world’s first steam locomotives, in
Newcastle, England.
(Econ, 6/6/15, p.46)
1929 Oxford and Cambridge held
their first boat race on the River Thames at Henley in Oxfordshire.
The second race occurred in 1836, with the venue moved to be from
Westminster to Putney.
(Econ, 3/28/09,
p.95)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boat_Race)
1830 Feb 3, Robert Cecil,
Marquess of Salisbury (C), British PM (1885-1902), was born.
(MC, 2/3/02)
1830 Mar 16, London reorganized
its police force, Scotland Yard.
(MC, 3/16/02)
1830 Apr 9, Edward Muybridge,
pioneered study of motion, photography, was born in England. In 2002
Rebecca Solnit authored "River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and
the Technological Wild West."
(MC, 4/9/02)(SSFC, 1/26/03, p.M1)
1830 May 18, Edwin Beard
Budding of England signed an agreement for the manufacture of his
invention, the lawn mower. He adopted the rotary blade in the cloth
industry to grass.
(SC, 5/18/02)(Econ, 12/20/03, p.118)
1830 Jun 26, Britain’s King
George IV (b.1762) died. George Augustus Frederick of Hanover,
Prince of Wales, was called Prinny by his friends. He was succeeded
by his brother, King William IV. In 2002 Steven Parissien authored
"George IV." The crown passed to George's brother who became William
IV.
(WSJ, 4/5/02,
p.W12)(www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/george_iv_king.shtml)(ON,
4/09, p.7)
1830 Jul-1830 Aug, In Britain
the June 26 death of Britain’s King George IV triggered elections.
Polling took place in July and August and the Tories won a majority
over the Whigs, but division among Tory MPs allowed Earl Grey to
form an effective government and take the question of electoral
reform to the country the following year.
(ON, 4/09,
p.7)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_1830)
1830 Aug, The Swing Riots, a
widespread uprising by English agricultural workers, began with the
destruction of threshing machines in the Elham Valley area of East
Kent in the summer. By early December the riots spread throughout
the whole of southern England and East Anglia.
(Econ, 6/30/12, SR
p.14)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_Riots)
1830 Sep 15, British MP William
Huskisson (b.1770) was killed under the wheels of the “Rocket” train
at the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. He was the
1st person to be run-over by a railroad train.
(SFEC,12/21/97, Z1
p.5)(www.wordiq.com/definition/William_Huskisson)
1830 Sep 18, William Hazlitt
(b.1778), in his time England’s finest essayist, died. "A nickname
is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man." In 2008
Duncan Wu authored “William Hazlitt: The First Modern Man.”
(AP, 11/10/99)(WSJ, 1/16/09,
p.W10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hazlitt)
1830 Nov 15, In Britain Lord
Grey used his majority in the House of commons to defeat the
government of Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington. Wellington
resigned the next day.
(ON, 4/09, p.8)
1830 Dec 5, Christina Rossetti
(d.1894), poet (Winter Rain, Passing Away), was born in London. She
wrote devotional verse, curious fairy tales and category defying
poems. Her brothers, William Michael and Dante Gabriel, helped found
the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, whose professed aim was to revive
the purity and vividness they admired in late medieval art. Her
story is told by Jan Marsh in "Christina Rossetti: A Writer’s Life."
"Better by far you should forget and smile, Than that you should
remember and be sad."
(WSJ, 7/25/95, p.A-10)(AP, 12/11/98)(MC, 12/5/01)
1830 William Cobbett
(1763-1835), English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist, authored
his 2-volume work “Rural Rides.” He wrote down what he saw from the
points of view both of a farmer and a social reformer. The result
documented the early nineteenth century countryside and its people
as well as giving free vent to Cobbett's opinions.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Cobbett)(Econ, 6/30/12, SR
p.15)
1830s Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859),
English essayist, historian and politician, served as a member of
the British Supreme Council in India.
(www.britannica.com)(Econ, 10/30/04, p.48)
1830-1859 Alfred King worked as a jeweler and
clockmaker in Chippenham, England, during this time. He signed his
work "A. King." His clocks fetch $2-3k.
(SFC, 7/9/97, Z1 p.3)
1830-1862 Britain’s economy doubled in size over
this period as increased productivity spread from cotton to other
industries.
(Econ, 9/24/11, SR p.5)
1831 Aug 1, London Bridge
opened to traffic.
(MC, 8/1/02)
1831 Aug 24, John Henslow asked
Charles Darwin to travel with him on HMS Beagle.
(MC, 8/24/02)
1831 Aug 29, Michael Faraday,
British physicist, demonstrated the 1st electric transformer.
Faraday had discovered that a changing magnetic field produces an
electric current in a wire, a phenomenon known as electromagnetic
induction.
(www.acmi.net.au/AIC/FARADAY_BIO.html)(WSJ,
9/17/01, p.R6)
1831 Nov 8, Edward R.L.
Bulwer-Lytton, English writer, was born.
(MC, 11/8/01)
1831 Dec 27, HMS Beagle
departed from Plymouth. Naturalist Charles Darwin set out on a
voyage to the Pacific aboard the HMS Beagle. (Darwin's
discoveries during the voyage helped formed the basis of his
theories on evolution.)
(HN, 12/27/98)(AP, 12/27/97)
1831 Dec 28, Samuel Sharp
(1801-1832) led a slave uprising that was put down at great cost by
the British. The Rebellion lasted for eight days and resulted in the
death of around 186 Africans and 14 white planters or overseers. The
white vengeance convicted over 750 rebel slaves, of which 138 were
sentenced to death.
(Econ, 2/24/07, p.73)(http://tinyurl.com/3cu2ds)
1831 In London a 9-bedroom
residence was built for a nobleman that in 1931 became the Abbey
Road recording studio.
(Sky, 9/97, p.53)
1831 The Garrick Club was
founded in London for actors, writers and politicians.
(SFEC, 8/16/98, p.A20)(NW, 4/24/03, p.55)
1831 The Game Act was enacted
under William IV. It extended hunting rights to anyone who obtained
a license.
(HNQ, 11/18/01)
1831 The lawn mower was
invented in England.
(SFC, 7/14/99, p.4)
1831 A cholera epidemic broke
out in London.
(ON, 5/05, p.8)
1831-1832 Animals from the Tower of London
menagerie created the core of the London Zoo.
(Hem, 9/04, p.71)
1832 Jan 27, Charles Lutwidge
Dodgson (d.1898), who wrote "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" under
the pen name Lewis Carroll, was born in Cheshire, England. He was
also know as a skilled photographer and did nude photography with an
"intense focus on his subjects' personalities." Dodgson lectured on
mathematics at Oxford from 1855 to 1881 and made up the stories
about Alice in Wonderland for his daughter Alice and her sisters. He
wrote "Through the Looking Glass" in 1872 and other children's
books. His most important mathematical work was the 1879 "Euclid and
His Modern Rivals." "If you limit your actions in life to things
that nobody can possibly find fault with, you will not do much." In
1995 Morton N. Cohen published an authoritative biography titled
"Lewis Carroll: A Biography."
(WSJ, 11/9/95, p.A-20)(AP, 1/14/98)(AP,
1/27/98)(HNQ, 6/12/98)
1832 Feb, A cholera epidemic
ended in Great Britain. Some 800 people died of the disease in
London. Dr. John Snow eventually traced the London epidemic to a
water pump on Broad Street. [see 1849] In 2006 Steven Johnson
authored “The Ghost Map,” a history of London’s cholera outbreak.
(www.mernick.co.uk/thhol/1832chol.html)(WSJ,
10/21/06, p.P8)
1832 Mar 24, The British Great
Reform Act passed the House of Commons under the Whig government. It
introduced the first changes to electoral franchise legislation in
almost one hundred and fifty years. On June 4 it passed the House of
Lords and on June 7 received Royal Assent.
(www.historyhome.co.uk/peel/refact/campaign.htm)(Econ, 6/30/07,
p.93)
1832 Apr 13, James Wimshurst,
British designer, inventor (electric static generator), was born.
(MC, 4/13/02)
1832 Jun 6, Jeremy Bentham
(b.1748), English social reformer, died. He had his body preserved
at the Univ. College, London. Bentham was later considered the
father of utilitarianism. He thought that enlightened policymakers
should seek the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people.
(WSJ, 4/15/99, p.A20)(www.britannica.com)(Econ,
11/27/10, p.84)
1832 Jun 7, The British Reform
Act received royal assent and became law. The act, pressed through
by PM Earl Grey, forestalled a revolution by increasing the number
of people who were eligible to vote. The bergamot-flavored Earl Grey
tea was later named after the PM.
(ON, 4/09, p.10)(AP, 2/1/13)
1832 Fanny Trollope (53)
published her first book "Domestic Manners of the Americans."
(WSJ, 12/11/98, p.W10)
1832 Britain passed the Anatomy
Act, which allowed hospitals and workhouses to hand over for
dissection bodies left unclaimed for two days.
(Econ, 11/15/08, p.99)
1833 Jan 3, Britain ousted
a small group of Argentine settlers and seized control of the
Malvina Islands (Falkland Islands) in the South Atlantic. In 1982
Argentina seized the islands, but Britain took them back after a
74-day war.
(AP, 1/3/98)(SFC, 4/3/02, p.A7)
1833 Jan 28, Charles George
"Chinese" Gordon, general (China, Khartoum), was born in London.
(MC, 1/28/02)
1833 Feb 17, Lt. George Back
(1796-1878) departed Liverpool, England, on the packet ship Hibernia
with 4 men to search for missing Arctic explorer Captain John Ross.
Ross had left England in 1829 to seek a Northwest Passage by way of
the Arctic Ocean.
(ON, 5/04,
p.10)(www.britannica.com/eb/article?tocId=9011650)
1833 Apr 22, Richard Trevithick
(b.1771), British engineer, died in Kent, England. In 1804 he built
the first steam locomotive.
(ON, 4/04, p.6)(WSJ, 4/11/09,
p.W8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Trevithick)
1833 May 15, Edmund Kean (46),
English actor (Shylock), died.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1833 Jul 29, William
Wilberforce (b.1759), English abolitionist, died. He was best known
for his efforts relating to the abolition of slavery in the British
Empire. A politician and philanthropist, Wilberforce was prominent
from 1787 in the struggle to abolish the slave trade and slavery
itself in British overseas possessions. He was an ardent and
eloquent sponsor of anti-slavery legislation in the House of Commons
until his retirement in 1825. Wilberforce University in Ohio, an
African Methodist Episcopal Church institution (f.1856), was named
for William Wilberforce. In 2008 William Hague authored “William
Wilberforce: The Life of the Great Anti-Slave Trade Campaigner.” In
2010 Stephen Tomkins authored “The Clapham Sect: How Wilberforce’s
Circle Transformed Britain.”
(www.nndb.com/people/824/000049677/)(WSJ,
7/25/08, p.A13)(Econ, 8/28/10, p.74)
1833 Aug 23, The British
Parliament ordered the abolition of slavery in its colonies by Aug
1, 1834. This would free some 700,000 slaves, including those in the
West Indies. The Imperial Emancipation Act also allowed blacks to
enjoy greater equality under the law in Canada as opposed to the US.
Some 46,000 people were paid a total of 20 million pounds in
compensation for freeing their slaves.1
(V.D.-H.K.p.276)(MT, 3/96, p.14)(PC, 1992,
p.412)(AH, 10/02, p.54)(SFC, 2/28/13, p.A2)
1833 Aug 28, Edward
Burne-Jones, British painter, was born.
(RTH, 8/28/99)
1833 Sep 8, Charles Darwin
departed to Buenos Aires.
(MC, 9/8/01)
1833 Oct, Capt. John Ross
(1877-1856), Arctic explorer, returned to England.
(www.collectionscanada.ca/explorers/h24-1810-e.html)
1833 J.M.W. Turner completed
his 1st oil painting "Bridge of Sighs and the Ducal Palace," his 1st
exhibited painting of Venice.
(WSJ, 3/17/04, p.D4)
1833 James Boardman
(1801-1855), English traveler and writer, authored “America and the
Americans.”
(http://tinyurl.com/2olhxh)
1833 The British government
removed the British East India Company’s monopoly of trade with
China and banned it from trading in India entirely.
(Econ, 12/17/11, p.111)
1833 England passed stronger
measures regulating child labor.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R28)
1833 The first clearing house
to exchange checks was built in London, England. Prior to this
checks were exchanged informally in coffee houses.
(AP, 12/16/09)
1834 Jan 10, Lord Acton [John
E.E. Dalberg], English historian and editor of The Rambler, a Roman
Catholic monthly, was born.
(HN, 1/10/99)
1834 Mar 24, William Morris,
English craftsman, poet, socialist, was born.
(HN, 3/24/98)
1834 Apr 18, William Lamb
became the prime minister of England.
(HN, 4/18/98)
1834 Apr, England’s Parliament
approved a loan of 270,000 pounds to continue the Thames tunnel
project under the direction of engineer Isambard Brunel.
(ON, 4/06, p.9)
1834 Jul 15, Lord Napier of
England arrived at Macao, China as the first chief superintendent of
trade.
(HN, 7/15/98)
1834 Jul 25, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge (b.1772), English poet, died. He and his friend William
Wordsworth were among the founders of the Romantic Movement in
England and later identified, along with Robert Southey, as the Lake
School of poets. Coleridge’s work included "The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner," "Frost at Midnight" and "Kubla Khan." In his later life he
authored the "Bibliographia Literaria," a work of literary theory.
In 1999 Richard Holmes published "Coleridge: Darker Reflections,
1804-1834," which focused on the poet's later life. His volume
"Coleridge: Early Visions" was published in 1989. In 2007 Adam
Sisman authored “The Friendship: Wordsworth & Coleridge.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Coleridge-Taylor)(WSJ, 4/15/99,
p.A20)(WSJ, 2/20/07, p.D8)
1834 Aug 1, The British
Emancipation Act went into effect abolishing slavery throughout the
British Empire. This ended slavery in Canada, in the West Indies and
in all Caribbean holdings. Some 35,000 slaves were freed in the Cape
Colony. The Minstrels Parada in Cape Town, SA, originated as a
spontaneous outpouring of marches, music and dancing to mark the
abolition of slavery.
(NH, 7/98, p.29)(HN, 8/1/98)(EWH, 4th ed,
p.885)(AP, 1/2/06)
1834 Sep 9, Parliament passed
the Municipal Corporations Act, reforming city and town governments
in England.
(HN, 9/9/98)
1834 Oct 16, In London the
Houses of Parliament caught fire and many historic documents were
burned. Artist J.M.W. Turner created two oil paintings of the
burning of the Houses of Parliament.
(www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/england/london/parliament/barry.html)(Econ,
9/29/07, p.90)
1834 Dec 10, Robert Peel
(1788-1850) became prime minister of Britain after launching the
first national election manifesto in British history.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Peel)
1834 Dec 23, Joseph Hansom of
London received a patent for Hansom cabs. Hansom put his Hansom cabs
onto the streets.
(SFEC, 5/31/98, Z1 p.8)(MC, 12/23/01)
1834 Dec 29, Thomas R. Malthus
(b.1766), English vicar, economist ("Essay On Population"), died.
(Internet)
1834 Britain’s Parliament
passed the Poor Law Amendment Act. It ensured that the poor were
housed in workhouses, clothed and fed. The law was inspired by the
thinking of Thomas Malthus blamed the plight of the poor on their
own flaws.
(www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/lesson08.htm)(Econ, 10/20/12,
p.54)(Econ, 7/27/13, p.63)
1834 After this time the
Tories, a political group in the British House of Commons, preferred
to use the term Conservative. The word Tories was originally used to
describe rural bandits in Ireland. In the 17th century it had become
a term applied to monarchists in the House of Commons. By the 18th
century the Tories were politicians who favored royal authority, the
established church and who sought to preserve the traditional
political structure and opposed parliamentary reform.
(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Ptories.htm)
1834 William Bentinck, India's
governor-general, wrote to his superiors in London that Indian
cloth-makers were suffering severe hardship due to the efficiency of
the English textile industry.
(WSJ, 3/29/04, p.A1)
1834 Lord Sandys, English
governor of Bengal, took a sample of an Indian sauce to an
apothecary in Worcester, 100 miles northwest of London, and asked
the pharmacists John Wheeley Lea and William Perrins to make a
similar batch. The new batch tasted awful until it was allowed to
age for a while. They then put together what became known worldwide
as Worcestershire Sauce. [2nd source gave an 1835 date]
(WSJ, 7/22/96, p.A1)(SFC, 4/12/97, p.E3)
1834-1894 Philip G. Hamerton, English artist and
essayist: "Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to
a wise passage when it is quoted than when we read it in the
original author?"
(AP, 5/2/99)
1834-1902 Lord Acton, English historian: "Liberty
is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest
political end."
(AP, 10/4/99)
1835 Mar 29, Elihu Thomson, the
English-born American inventor of electric welding and arc lighting,
was born.
(HN, 3/29/99)
1835 Apr 17, William Henry
Ireland (b.1775)), English forger of Shakespeare’s works, died. He
is less well-known as a poet, writer of gothic novels and histories.
(ON, 8/10,
p.5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Henry_Ireland)
1835 May 13, John Nash, British
town planner, architect (Regent's Park), died.
(MC, 5/13/02)
1835 Jun 18, William Cobbett
(b.1763), English journalist, pamphleteer, and farmer, died in
Surrey, England. “A full belly to the laborer is, in my opinion, the
foundation of public morals and the only source of real public
peace.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Cobbett)(http://tinyurl.com/k3qx4o9)
1835 Nov 16, Charles Darwin's
voyage account was published in Cambridge Philosophical Society.
(MC, 11/16/01)
1835 Nov 26, HMS Beagle left
Tahiti for NZ.
(MC, 11/26/01)
1835 Dec 7, The Adler, a steam
engine built in Newcastle by British father and son George and
Robert Stephenson, began running between Nuremberg and Furth,
marking the birth of the German railway system.
(Econ, 10/23/10, p.77)
1835 Madame Tussaud opened her
London Wax Museum.
(SFEC, 7/18/99, Par p.4)
1835 Alexander Forbes served as
the British vice-consul in Monterey, Ca.
(SFC, 12/5/03, p.D6)
1835-1902 Samuel Butler, English author: "There
are two great rules of life, the one general and the other
particular. The first is that everyone can, in the end, get what he
wants if he only tries. This is the general rule. The particular
rule is that every individual is more or less an exception to the
general rule." "A hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg."
"Life is one long process of getting tired."
(AP, 4/25/97)(SFEC, 3/1/98, Z1 p.8)(AP, 4/22/98)
1836 Feb 7, The essays
"Sketches by Boz" were published by Charles Dickens.
(MC, 2/7/02)
1836 Mar 31, The first monthly
installment of The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens was published
in London.
(HN, 3/31/01)
1836 Aug 14, Walter Besant
(d.1901), English writer, philanthropist (Rebel Queen), was born.
(MC, 8/14/02)
1836 Oct 2, Darwin returned to
England aboard HMS Beagle after 5 years abroad. He visited Brazil,
the Galapagos Islands, and New Zealand. His studies were important
to his theory of evolution, which he put forth in his groundbreaking
scientific work of 1859, "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural
Selection."
(MC, 10/2/01)
1836 Augustus Pugin
(1812-1852), English Gothic architect and designer, authored
“Contrasts,” the first ever architectural manifesto.
(WSJ, 3/20/09,
p.W14)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus_Pugin)
1836 The London-based Anti
Slavery International human rights group was founded.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R28)
1836 Britain’s Peninsula and
Oriental Steam Navigation (P&O Line) was founded to carry mail
among Portugal, Spain and England and later expanded to passenger
service. In 2005 Dubai’s DP World purchased the company for $5.7
billion.
(www.theshipslist.com/ships/lines/pando.html)(SFC, 11/30/05, p.C2)
1836 The US Congress voted to
accept the 100,000 gold sovereign donation of Englishman James
Smithson and establish the Smithsonian Institution for the increase
and diffusion of knowledge among men. The actual Institution was not
established until 1846. [see 1826 and 1846]
(SFEC, 8/25/96, p.T6)
1836 Nathan Rothschild,
financier and son of Mayer Amschel Rothschild, died in London. His
younger brother James took charge of the business.
(WSJ, 11/17/98, p.21)
1837 Feb 12, Thomas Moran
(d.1926), American painter, was born in Bolton, England. His
paintings of Yellowstone helped persuade Congress to designate it a
national park.
(WSJ, 5/11/95, p. A-14)(SFC,10/15/97, p.D3)
1837 Mar 31, John Constable
(60), English painter, water colors painter, died. His work included
some 100 studies of the sky done between 1821-1822. In 2009 Martin
Gayford authored “Constable in Love: Love, Landscape, Money and the
Making of a Great Painter.”
(WSJ, 6/9/04, p.D8)(Econ, 3/21/09,
p.92)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Constable)
1837 Apr 5, Algernon Charles
Swinburne (d.1909), English poet (Atalanta in Calydon), was born.
(MC, 4/5/02)
1837 May 31, Joseph Grimaldi
(b.1778), the greatest of clowns and most popular English
entertainer of the Regency era, died in Islington.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Grimaldi)(Econ, 9/3/16, p.78)
1837 Jun 20, Queen Victoria
(18) ascended the British throne following the death of her uncle,
King William IV (b.1765). She ruled for 63 years to 1901.
(AP, 6/20/97)(WSJ, 4/27/00, p.A24)(HN, 6/20/01)
1837 Aug 18, The Great Western,
a steamship designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, was towed out of
the Bristol shipyard and proceeded under sail to London to be fitted
with engines.
(ON, 8/07, p.6)
1837 Dec 2, Dr. Joseph Bell,
British physician, was born. He is believed to be the prototype of
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's detective 'Sherlock Holmes.'
(HN, 12/2/99)
1837 Tennyson (1809-1892) wrote
his poem “Locksley Hall.” It included a vision of a tranquil world
“lapt in universal law.” It was published as part of a collection in
1842. The poem embodied the pain of lost love and looked forward to
a time when the nations of the world would abandon war and form a
“parliament of man.”
(WSJ, 6/28/06,
p.D10)(www.firstscience.com/site/POEMS/tennyson4.asp)
1837 The Dickens novel "Great
Expectations" was set in this year. A 1998 version of the novel by
Australian writer Peter Carey was titled "Jack Maggs."
(WSJ, 2/4/98, p.A20)
1837 England and Wales
abolished the use of the pillory, used for punishment by public
humiliation and often further physical abuse. Stocks remained in
use, though extremely infrequently, until 1872.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillory)
1837 Moses Montefiore
(1784-1885), Italy-born British financier, was elected Sheriff of
London and served until 1838. He was also knighted this same
year by Queen Victoria and received a baronetcy in 1846 in
recognition of his services to humanitarian causes on behalf of the
Jewish people.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Montefiore)
1837 English plumber Thomas
Crapper came out with a flush model, valve controlled, water closet.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow installed one in his home in 1840 and
sparked public attention. Thomas Crapper, popularly credited with
inventing the water closet, held three patents, although he may
simply have bought the siphon discharge system patent from Albert
Giblin and marketed it himself. In 1969 Wallace Reyburn authored
“Flushed with Pride: The Story of Thomas Crapper.”
(HNQ, 11/25/00)(http://tinyurl.com/2ws5w)
1837 In London construction
began on the new Palace of Westminster. Architect Charles Barry and
his assistant A.W.N. Pugin had won the open competition for the
design.
(WSJ, 3/20/09, p.W14)
1837-1901 The reign of Queen Victoria in England.
(USAT, 2/14/97, p.8D)
1837-1901 The Victorian Era is covered by Peter
Gay in his 5-volume work: The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to
Freud." The 5th volume "Pleasure Wars" came out in 1998. Other
volumes were titled: Education of the Sense," "The Tender Passion,"
and "The Cultivation of Hatred."
(SFEC, 1/11/98, BR p.9)
1838 Mar 18, Randal Cremer,
British trade unionist, pacifist (Nobel 1903), was born.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1838 Apr 8, The British
steamship "Great Western" set out on its maiden voyage from
Bristol, England, to NYC.
(ON, 8/07, p.7)
1838 Apr 22, The English
steamship "Sirius" docked in NYC after a record Atlantic crossing.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Riband)
1838 Apr 23, The British
steamship "Great Western" arrived in NYC on its maiden voyage
from Bristol, England, just hours after the retrofitted steamship
Sirius, which had departed Cork on April 4. The Great Western
crossed the Atlantic in a record 15 days and 12 hours.
(ON, 8/07, p.7)
1838 Jul 1, Charles Darwin
presented a paper on his theory of evolution to the Linnaean Society
in London.
(HN, 7/1/01)
1838 Jun 28, Britain's Queen
Victoria was crowned in Westminster Abbey.
(AP, 6/28/98)(http://tinyurl.com/zezjg)
1838 Oct 1, Lord Auckland,
British governor general in India, issued the Simla Manifesto,
setting forth the necessary reasons for British intervention in
Afghanistan. This led to the 1st Anglo-Afghan War.
(Econ, 10/7/06,
p.18)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Anglo-Afghan_War)
1838 Dec, India’s British
governor general dispatched to Kabul the Army of the Indus to
protect British interests from growing Russian influence.
(SSFC, 10/28/01,
p.C8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Anglo-Afghan_War)
1838 Charlotte Bronte authored
her novella "Stancliffe’s Hotel." It was published for the 1st time
in 2003.
(SFC, 3/15/03, p.A2)
1838 Dr. Gideon Mantell
published his book “The Wonders of Geology” with a dramatic
illustration of “The Country of the Iguanadon,” depicting the
plant-eating reptile under attack by the carnivorous Megalosaurus.
(ON, 7/06, p.4)
1838 A raunchy tale of anarchy
on the high seas was recorded by a junior officer, James Bell,
aboard "The Planter" which sailed to Adelaide from Deptford in east
London. In 2010 Bell’s 225-page diary went up for sale at auction in
London after being bought in a market stall for a pittance.
(Reuters, 2/24/10)
1838 The Curzon Street Station,
the terminus of the London and Birmingham Railway, opened in
Birmingham, England. After 55 years the neoclassical building closed
to passengers.
(Econ, 11/10/12, p.58)
1838 The London Prize Ring
Rules were instituted with bare-knuckle rounds of unspecified
length. Rounds ended when a fighter touched ground with a knee. The
rules were based on those drafted by Britain's Jack Broughton in
1743, and governed the conduct of prizefighting/bare-knuckle boxing
for over 100 years. They were later superseded by the Marquess of
Queensberry rules (1865), the origins of the modern sport of Boxing.
(AH, 2/06,
p.32)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Prize_Ring_rules)
1838 The National Gallery
opened on Trafalgar Square. It was designed by William Wilkins. A
10-year renovation was completed in 1999.
(SFC, 9/22/99, p.E3)
1838 William Ridgway, Son &
Co. began using the "Humphrey clock" mark on its dishware.
(SFC, 3/11/98, Z1 p.5)
1839 Jan 24, Charles Darwin was
elected member of Royal Society.
(MC, 1/24/02)
1839 Jan 28, William Henry Fox
Talbot (1800-1877), English inventor, presented his discoveries and
methods of photography to the Royal Society of London. His
callotype, a negative to positive process, allowed multiple
reproductions of a single image for the 1st time. Talbot suggested a
daguerreotype camera with extra parts to hold mercury.
(ON, 4/00, p.10)(SFC, 6/12/96, Z1 p.5)(SFC,
12/26/02, p.E9)
1839 Jan 29, Charles Darwin
married Emma Wedgwood.
(MC, 1/29/02)
1839 May 25, John Eliot,
English meteorologist, was born.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1839 Jul 5, British naval
forces bombarded Dingai on Zhoushan Island in China and occupy it.
(HN, 7/5/98)
1839 Jul 27, Chartist riots
broke out in Birmingham, England.
(MC, 7/27/02)
1839 Aug 23, The British
captured Hong Kong from China.
(MC, 8/23/02)
1839 Aug 28, William Smith,
British geologist, died. He made the 1st geological map of England
and became impoverished in the process. In 2001 Simon Winchester
authored "The Map That Changed the World."
(RTH, 8/28/99)(WSJ, 8/17/01, p.W6)
1839 Oct 1, The British
government decided to send a punitive naval expedition to China.
(HN, 10/1/98)
1839 Nov 3, The first Opium War
between China and Britain broke out in and around Guangzhou and
continued to 1942. Lin Zexu, a Qing official, started the Opium War
when he ordered the dumping of 3 million pounds of Western-owned
opium into the sea. 2 British frigates engaged several Chinese
junks. In 2011 Julia Lovell authored “The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams,
and the Making of China.”
(SFC, 6/10/97, p.D4)(AP, 11/3/97)(SSFC, 8/30/09,
p.A21)(Econ, 10/29/11, p.99)
1839 Edward Bulwer-Lytton
(1803-1873), English novelist, authored his play “Richelieu.” It
included his line “The pen is mightier than the sword.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bulwer-Lytton,_1st_Baron_Lytton)
1839 Cyrus Redding (1785-1870),
English wine merchant and author, published “Every Man His Own
Butler.” This included the statement: “claret fro a bishop, port for
a rector, currant for a curate and gin for the clerk.”
(Econ, 12/19/09,
p.132)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_Redding)
1839 Construction began on
Highclere Castle in Hampshire, England. The country house in the
Jacobethan style was remodeled and largely rebuilt for the third
Earl by Sir Charles Barry and featured a park designed by Capability
Brown. In 2010 it became the main filming location for the British
television period drama Downton Abbey.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highclere_Castle)(SSFC, 1/27/13, p.N6)
1839 The British and Foreign
Anti-Slavery Society was founded.
(SFEM, 8/16/98, p.13)
1839 A British army marched to
Kabul and replaced Dost Mohammad, the Amir of Afghanistan, with a
more docile ruler. Britain had decided that Persian and Russian
intrigues posed a threat to their control of India.
(WSJ, 8/25/98, p.A14)
1839 The British & North
America Royal Mail Steam Packet Co. formed. It later became Cunard
and then a unit of Carnival Corp.
(WSJ, 10/2/03, p.B4)
1839 The Elder Pottery in
Cobridge, Staffordshire, began operating and continued to 1846. John
and George Alcock created platters there.
(SFC, 10/10/07, p.G3)
1839 Joseph Bourne began making
salt glazed pottery at Denby, England. A line called Danesbury Ware
was begun in the 1920s. It later became known as the Denby Pottery
Co.
(SFC, 10/29/08, p.G2)
1839-1842 First Anglo-Afghan War. After some
resistance, Amir Dost Mohammad Khan surrendered to the British and
was deported to India. In 1990 John H. Waller (1923-2004) authored
“Beyond the Khyber Pass: The Road to British Disaster in the First
Afghan War.”
(https://www.afghan-web.com/history/chronology/)(SSFC, 11/7/04,
p.A23)
1839-1842 Shah Shuja, a deposed king, was
installed as Afghan "puppet king" by the British. Shuja had been
living in exile in India for three decades. In 2013 William
Dalrymple authored “The Return of a King: The Battle for
Afghanistan, 1839-42.”
(https://www.afghan-web.com/history/chronology/)(Econ, 1/26/12,
p.73)
1839-1842 The Opium War between Britain and China
started when Beijing tried to stop Western imports of the narcotic.
The British won by steaming gunboats up the Yangtze River to the
Grand Canal an then cutting off grain and other supplies to Beijing.
(SFC, 6/10/97, p.D4)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R51)
1839-1846 Richard Cobden, 'the Apostle of free
trade,' led the Anti-Corn League to remove price controls and import
barriers for wheat.
(HN, 6/3/99)(Econ, 6/5/04, p.10)
1840 Feb 10, Britain's Queen
Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
(HN, 2/10/97)(AP, 2/10/97)
1840 Mar 30, "Beau" Brummell
(b.1778), English dandy and former favorite of the prince regent,
died of syphilis in a French lunatic asylum for paupers. In 2005 Ian
Kelly authored the biography “Beau Brummel: The Ultimate Dandy.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beau_Brummell)(WSJ,
5/7/06, p.P9)
1840 May 1, The 1st adhesive
postage stamps, the" Penny Blacks" from England, were issued.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1840 May 21, New Zealand was
declared a British colony. Treaty of Waitangi, signed by Maori
chiefs of New Zealand granted sovereignty over all New Zealand to
Queen Victoria, but only guaranteed the Maoris the land they wished
to retain.
(NG, Aug., 1974, C. McCarry, p.197)(AP, 5/21/97)
1840 Jun 2, Thomas Hardy
(d.1928), English novelist and poet, was born in Higher Bockhampton
and almost given up for dead until an observant midwife noticed he
was breathing. He was driven by a sense of somber doom by the
failure of his readers to wake up to the dreary fraud of their
beliefs, and he devoted the last half of his long life to writing
poems that expressed his haunted vision. When Hardy died (1928) his
heart was removed and buried in the churchyard of St. Michael’s in
Stinsford in the grave of his first wife, Emma, and his second wife,
Florence. His ashes were buried in the Poet’s Corner of Westminster
Abbey in London. His work included "Tess of D'Ubervilles" and "Jude
the Obscure."
(SFC, 12/4/94, p. T-4)(V.D.-H.K.p.279)(HN,
6/2/99)
1840 Jul 4, The Cunard Line
took just over 14 days to make its first Atlantic crossing with the
paddle steamer "Britannia", which embarked from Liverpool.
(IB, Internet, 12/7/98)
1840 Aug 17, Wilfrid Scawen,
writer (Irish Land League), was born in Blunt, England.
(SC, 8/17/02)
1840 Nov 5, Afghanistan
surrendered to the British.
(HN, 11/5/98)
1840 In London the World
Anti-Slavery Convention was held. Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady
Stanton were denied seats because of their sex.
(SFEM, 6/28/98, p.30)
1840 The world's first postage
stamp, "penny black," was issued with a picture of Queen Victoria.
Up to this time postage was collected from the recipient.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R49)
1840 William Hislop established
himself as a clockmaker in Biggar, England.
(SFC, 3/16/05, p.G4)
1840 Fanny Burney (b.1752),
English writer, died. Her books included "Evelina." In 1911 she
underwent a mastectomy without anesthesia. In 2001 Claire Harman
authored the biography: "Fanny Burney."
(SSFC, 12/23/01, p.M5)
1840s The Duchess of Bedford,
Anna, introduced the first afternoon snack break, the afternoon tea.
(SFC, 5/27/00, p.B3)
1840-1870 In 2005 Liza Picard authored “Victorian
London: The Life of a City 1840-1870.”
(Econ, 10/1/05, p.79)
1840-1911 Henry Broadhurst, English politician:
"Praise undeserved is satire in disguise."
(AP, 1/22/00)
1841 Jan 20, The Convention of
Chuenpi ceded the island of Hong Kong to Great Britain from China as
part of the concessions from the Opium War. It became a capitalist
bastion as opposed to the rest of China. The British won the first
Opium War and forced China to open markets to foreign trade. Britain
soon established a formal police force commanded mostly by British
officers. Hong Kong returned to Chinese control in July 1997.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_of_Chuenpee)(WSJ, 10/26/95,
p.A-1)(SFEC, 11/10/96, Par p.14)(SFC, 3/11/97, p.A12)(SFC, 7/1/97,
p.A8)(AP, 1/20/98)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R49)(WSJ, 2/2/04, p.A12)
1841 Jan 26, Britain formally
occupied Hong Kong, which the Chinese had ceded to the British.
(AP, 1/26/98)
1841 Feb 10, Upper Canada and
Lower Canada were proclaimed united under an Act of Union passed by
the British Parliament.
(AP, 2/10/07)
1841 Mar 4, Dion Boucicault's
"London Assurance" premiered in London.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1841 Jul 5, Thomas Cook
(1808-1892) opened the 1st travel agency as he arranged for the rail
company to charge one shilling per person for rail tickets and food
for a group of 540 temperance campaigners from Leicester Campbell
Street station to a rally in Loughborough.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Cook)
1841 Jul 17, The British humor
magazine Punch was first published.
(AP, 7/17/97)
1841 Aug 30, Robert Peel
(1788-1850) became PM of Britain for a 2nd time. This was the 1st
occasion in which Britain’s government was brought down by the votes
of the electorate.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Peel)
1841 Nov 2, Following
the British occupation of Kabul during the 1st Afghan War
(1839-1842), Afghans revolted and murdered British envoy, Lt. Col.
Sir Alexander Burnes (1805-1841) and some 23 others. By Jan 1842 the
British army decided to withdraw with its 4,500 Anglo-Indian troops
and 10,000 camp followers. The column was wiped out by Ghilzai
tribesmen with their long-barreled rifles called jezails.
(WSJ, 8/25/98, p.A14)(HN,
11/2/98)(www.indhistory.com/afghan-war-1.html)
1841 Nov 9, Edward VII, King of
England, was born. He succeeded his mother Victoria and served from
1901-1910.
(HN, 11/9/00)
1841 J.M.W. Turner painted his
watercolor “The Blue Rigi: Lake of Lucerne, Sunrise” following a
visit to Switzerland. In 1942 it sold for 1,500 guineas (about
$94,000 in 2006 money). In 2006 it sold at auction for $11 million.
(SFC, 6/6/06, p.D4)
1841 Charles Barry laid out
Trafalgar Square.
(WSJ, 4/27/00, p.A24)
1841 Britain’s Royal Mail set
up a postal service for Hong Kong.
(Econ, 10/24/15, p.42)
1842 cJan 2-12, Akbar Khan,
Afghan hero, was victorious against the British. Out of 4,500
(16,500) soldiers and 12,000 dependents only one survivor, of a
mixed British-Indian garrison, reached the fort in Jalalabad, on a
stumbling pony. The British retreated from Kabul to Jalalabad. The
incident is the backdrop for George MacDonald Fraser’s novel
"Flashman." [see Jan 13]
(WSJ, 4/10/95, A-16)(www.afghan, 5/25/98)(WSJ,
9/20/01, p.A12)
1842 Jan 13, Dr. William Brydon
(1811-1873), badly wounded, reached Jalalabad as the only survivor
of a 16,000 person retreat from Kabul. In the 1st British-Afghan War
British troops retreating from Kabul were ambushed and nearly all
slaughtered at the Khyber Pass, even though the Afghans had promised
them safe passage during their withdrawal from the Afghan capital
[see Jan 2-12].
(SSFC, 10/28/01,
p.C8)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Brydon)
1842 May 13, Composer Sir
Arthur Sullivan was born in London. He collaborated with Sir William
Gilbert in writing 14 comic operas that included "HMS Pinafore."
(AP, 5/13/99)(HN, 5/13/99)
1842 May 14, 1st edition of
London Illustrated News.
(MC, 5/14/02)
1842 Jun 12, Dr Thomas Arnold
(b.1795), British educator and historian, died. Arnold was an early
supporter of the Broad Church Anglican movement. He was headmaster
of Rugby School from 1828 to 1841, where he introduced a number of
reforms. In 2012 Mihir Bose authored “The Spirit of the Game: How
Sport Made the Modern World.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Arnold)(Econ, 3/3/12, p.95)
1842 Aug 29, Britain &
China signed the Treaty of Nanking ending the Opium war. This opened
the port of Shanghai to foreigners. The 1997 Chinese film "The Opium
War" was directed by Xie Jin. It was about the events leading up to
the Treaty of Nanking. The treaty of Nanking ceded Hong Kong Island
to Britain in perpetuity.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Nanjing)(SFC, 5/20/98, p.E3)
1842 Nov 17, Gaetano
Donizetti's Opera "Linda di Chamounix" was produced (London).
(MC, 11/17/01)
1842 Joseph Mallord William
Turner (1775-1851), English painter and printmaker, created his
painting “Snow Storm.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._W._Turner)
1842 In England the Criminal
Investigation Department, consisting of eight plainclothes
detectives, was set up in London. It later became known as Scotland
Yard after its location in rooms on land around the Great Scotland
Yard.
(WSJ, 1/31/08, p.W8)
1842 The British forced their
way through the Khyber Pass. They recaptured Kabul and burned down
the Great Bazaar in retribution before marching back to India.
(WSJ, 8/25/98, p.A14)
1842-1924 Alfred Marshall, English economist. He
was the chief founder of the neoclassical school of economics. This
school studies both human behavior and wealth to understand human
choices. He introduced such concepts as consumer's surplus,
quasi-rent, elasticity of demand and the representative firm.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R20)
1843 Mar 21, Robert W. Southey
(b.1774), British poet laureate and historian, died. In 2006 W. A.
Speck authored the biography “Robert Southey.”
(WSJ, 8/12/06,
p.P8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Southey)
1843 Mar 25, England’s Thames
Tunnel opened 18 years after construction began. It was completed
under engineer Isambard Brunel, the son of Marc Brunel, who began
the project in 1824.
(www.bris.ac.uk/is/services/specialcollections/brunelchronology.html)(ON,
4/06, p.9)
1843 Mar 29, Captain Richard
Spratly (c.1806/1811-1866), master of the British whaler, the Cyrus,
sighted what later became known in English as Spratly Island and
Ladd Reef in the South China Sea.
(Econ, 9/13/14,
p.89)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Spratly)
1843 Apr 5, Queen Victoria
proclaimed Hong Kong a British crown colony.
(HN, 4/5/99)
1843 Apr 15, Henry James
(d.1916), US novelist, writer and critic, was born in England. His
older brother was William James, the psychologist and philosopher.
Henry James Sr. in the 1850s dragged his 4 sons and daughter across
Europe in search a “sensual education.” Henry’s first 40 years are
documented by Sheldon M. Novick in "Henry James: The Young Master."
There is also a 5-vol. biography by William Edel. His novels
included "The Princess Casamassima," a work about the folly of
radical politics. "It takes a great deal of history to produce a
little literature." In 2008 Paul Fisher authored “House of Wits: An
Intimate Portrait of the James Family.”
(WSJ, 10/17/96, p.A20)(WSJ, 2/24/97, p.A20)(HN,
4/15/98)(AP, 8/3/98)(WSJ, 6/17/08, p.A21)
1843 Jun 21, The Royal College
of Surgeons was founded from the original Barber-Surgeons Company.
(Camelot, 6/21/99)
1843 Sep, James Wilson
(1805-1860), a Scottish hat maker, founded “The Economist” in
London, England, a magazine devoted to free trade and laissez-faire
principles from its very beginning.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist)(WSJ,
6/6/95, p.A-14)(Econ, 6/28/03, p.13)
1843 Sep, The Liverpool Mercury
reported on a large free-trade rally in the city.
(Econ, 10/1/16, p.11)
1843 Nov 27, Balfe's opera
"Bohemian Girl" was produced in London.
(MC, 11/27/01)
1843 Dec 17, British author
Charles Dickens published “A Christmas Carol” at his own expense. It
was one of many public and private efforts by Dickens to bring about
social reform: prison visits, charity drives, promotion of the
so-called "Ragged Schools" for the poor, cash for a fired worker, or
a child's education.
(www.todayinliterature.com/stories.wk.asp?Event_Date=12/17/1847)
1843 In Britain Punch coined
the term “cartoon” to describe its satyrical sketches.
(Econ, 12/22/12, p.129)
1843 Nelson’s column and the
equestrian statue of George IV were erected in Trafalgar Square.
(WSJ, 4/27/00, p.A24)
1844 May 3, Richard D'Oyly
Carte, opera impresario (Gilbert & Sullivan operas, Ivanhoe),
was born in England.
(MC, 5/3/02)
1844 Jun 6, The Young Men's
Christian Association (YMCA) was founded in London by George
Williams.
(AP, 6/6/97)(www.ymca.int/index.php?id=15)
1844 Jul 22, William Archibald
Spooner, Anglican clergyman whose slips of the tongue caused words
and syllables to be transposed and gave rise to the term
"spoonerisms," was born in London.
(AP, 7/22/02)
1844 Jul 28, Gerard Manley
Hopkins, English poet and Jesuit priest, was born.
(HN, 7/28/01)
1844 Benjamin Disraeli
(1804-1881) authored his novel “Coningsby.” Disraeli used his young
friend George Smythe as the model for the novel’s scrupulously
upright hero.
(WSJ, 9/2/06,
p.P9)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coningsby_%28novel%29)
1844 Englishman Alexander
Kinglake (25) authored his travel book “Eothen.” The name was from
the Greek for “from the east.” It told of his adventures traveling
across the Ottoman Empire from Belgrade to Cairo.
(WSJ, 9/23/06, p.P8)(Econ, 9/14/13, p.90)
1844 William Makepeace
Thackeray (1811-1863), English novelist, authored “The Memoirs of
Barry Lyndon, Esq.”
(Econ, 6/13/15, p.81)
1844 The British co-operative
movement started with the Rochdale Pioneers' shop in the northern
English town of Rochdale. It was nominally owned by its customers
rather than its employees.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_co-operative_movement)(Econ,
11/9/13, p.72)
1844-1847 Britain experienced a “railway mania” as
Parliament during this period approved 9,500 miles of new railway
lines. About a third never materialized. By 1847 railways soaked up
investments of almost 7% of GDP.
(Econ, 12/20/08, p.116)
1845 Mar 17, The rubber band
was patented by Stephen Perry of London.
(MC, 3/17/02)
1845 May 19, The HMS Erebus and
Terror sailed from England under Sir John Franklin to navigate
through the Arctic and find the elusive Northwest passage. Sir John
Franklin and his 128-member crew all died on the journey and the
ships vanished. By 1847 the British Admiralty had received no
reports of Franklin. [see Franklin Jun 11, 1847]
(WSJ, 2/10/95,
p.A-7)(www.coolantarctica.com)(Reuters, 8/23/12)
1845 Jul 17, Earl Grey
(b.1764), former British prime minister (1830-1834), died. A member
of the Whig Party, he backed significant reform of the British
government and was among the primary architects of the Reform Act of
1832. In addition to his political achievements, Earl Grey famously
gives his name to an aromatic blend of tea.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Grey,_2nd_Earl_Grey)
1845 Oct 12, Elizabeth Fry
(b.1780), English Quaker prisoner reform advocate, died. In 1827 she
published a book called “Observations, on the visiting
superintendence and government of female prisoners.” Since 2002 she
has been depicted on the Bank of England £5 note.
(www.quakerinfo.com/fry.shtml)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Fry)
1845 Benjamin Disraeli, future
British prime minister, authored his novel “Sybil,” a look at class
through the lens of a romance between the daughter of a working
class activist and the aristocratic hero.
(WSJ, 1/10/08, p.W2)
1845 Friedrich Engels
(1820-1895), German social scientist, authored in German “The
Condition of the Working Class in England.” It was not published in
English until 1892.
(www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/)
1845 George Smythe (27) stood
as the most articulate of Disraeli’s “Young England” political
cabal, a group of Tories determined to forge an alliance between the
laboring classes and the aristocracy.
(WSJ, 9/2/06, p.P9)
1845 John Henry Newman
(1801-1890) gave up a brilliant academic career at Oxford University
and the pulpit of the university church to convert to Catholicism,
convinced that the truth that he had been searching for could no
longer be found in the Church of England. In 1847 he was ordained as
a Catholic priest.
(AP,
9/19/10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_Newman)
1845 Walter Potter, English
taxidermist, opened his stuffed animal museum in Bramble, south of
London. Admission was 2 cents.
(SFC, 11/29/02, pK8)
1845 The Economist Magazine
began tabulating a food price index.
(Econ, 12/8/07, p.11)
1845 The moat of the Tower of
London, built by Edward I, was drained and filled.
(Hem, 9/04, p.71)
1845 The SS Great Britain,
designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, crossed the Atlantic in a
record 14 days. Her protracted construction and high cost had left
her owners in a difficult financial position, and they were forced
out of business in 1846 after the ship was stranded by a
navigational error.
(Econ, 5/7/11,
p.88)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Great_Britain)
1845-1932 Albert Goodwin, a brilliant
watercolorist who traveled widely.
(Hem., 3/97, p.94)
1846 Jan 21, 1st edition of
Charles Dickens' "Daily News."
(MC, 1/21/02)
1846 Jan 25, The dreaded Corn
Laws, which taxed imported oats, wheat and barley, were repealed by
the British Parliament in response to the Irish potato famine of
1845.
(HN, 1/25/99)(WSJ, 3/29/04, p.A8)
1846 Feb 10, British General
Sir Hugh Gough decisively routed Tej Singh’s Sikhs in the Battle of
Sobraon.
(HN, 2/10/97)
1846 Jun 15, The United States
and Britain signed a treaty settling a boundary dispute between
Canada and the United States in the Pacific Northwest at the 49th
parallel. Great Britain and the U.S. agreed on a joint occupation of
Oregon Territory. President Polk agreed to a compromise border along
the 49th parallel. The debate over the northwestern border of the
United States. The campaign slogan "54-40 or fight" referred to the
debate over the northwestern border of the United States. The slogan
"54-40 or fight" refers to the north latitude degree and minute
where many Americans wanted to place the border between the U.S. and
then Great Britain in the Pacific Northwest.
(AP, 6/15/97)(HN, 6/15/98)(SFC, 1/25/99,
p.A3)(HNQ, 3/28/00)
1846 Aug 10, The US Congress
chartered the Smithsonian Institution, named after English scientist
James Smithson (1765-1836), whose bequest of $500,000 made it
possible. The Smithsonian Institute was born and Joseph Henry became
its first secretary.
(AP, 8/10/97)(SFEC, 8/25/96, p.T6)
1846 Sep 19, Elizabeth Barrett
and Robert Browning eloped.
(SFEC, 2/1/98, p.T8)(MC, 9/19/01)
1846 A British parliamentary
commission decided on a national railway standard with rails
separated by less than 5 feet. This was a cheaper option than the
7-foot spacing used by Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859) for the
Royal Albert railway bridge linking Cornwall and Devon.
(Econ, 6/20/09, p.60)
1846 Britain passed the “Public
Baths and Wash Houses Act,” which gave local authorities the power
to raise funds to keep the working classes clean and healthy.
(Econ, 4/7/07, p.55)
1846 British firms began
selling insurance policies in China.
(Econ, 7/23/11, p.69)
1846-1852 Lord John Russel was Prime Minister of
England from 1846 to 1852 in his first term.
(HN, 8/18/98)
1847 Jun 11, Dame Millicent
Garrett Fawcett, leader of English women's movement, was born.
(SC, 6/11/02)
1847 Jun 11, A written record
was found in 1859, indicating that Sir John Franklin died on this
day, and that Erebus and Terror were abandoned in April 1848. The
crews' deaths have been attributed to either scurvy or lead
poisoning originating from the solder on food tins. Both ships and
the remains of most of the 129 crewmen have never been found. After
commissioning three unsuccessful search expeditions, the British
Admiralty posted a reward for anyone who could ascertain the fate of
the crewmen of the HMS Erebus and Terror, who had sailed from
England in May 1845 to navigate through the Arctic and find the
elusive Northwest passage. Success was anticipated with Franklin
commanding well-equipped crews and ships, but by 1847, the British
Admiralty had received no reports of Franklin. Subsequent
expeditions found evidence of the Franklin Expedition. Three graves
dug into the permafrost were discovered in 1850 on Devon Island,
their headstones dated 1846. In 2010 Anthony Brandt authored “The
Man Who Ate His Boots: The Tragic History of the Search for the
Northwest Passage.” The book pivoted around explorer John Franklin
(1786-1847).
(HNQ, 6/11/98)(HN, 6/11/99)(ON, 11/03, p.12)(SFC,
4/9/10, p.F6)
1847 Oct 16, Charlotte Bronte's
book "Jane Eyre" was published by Smith, Elder & Co. under the
pen name Currer Bell. In 2017 John Pfordresher authored “The Secret
History of Jane Eyre: How Charlotte Bronte Wrote her Masterpiece.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Eyre)(http://tinyurl.com/84e3uwp)(Econ,
8/12/17, p.67)
1847 Anthony Trollope published
his first novel.
(WSJ, 12/11/98, p.W10)
1847 John Edwards began
operating a pottery in Longton and later Fenton, Staffordshire,
England. Operations continued to 1900.
(SFC, 12/5/07, p.G2)
1847 Britain passed a Vagrancy
Act to combat begging as famine swept Ireland.
(AP, 11/25/08)
1847 The London Zoo
opened to the public to aid funding.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Zoo)
1847 In Ireland a new British
Poor Law dumped the cost of relief on the already strapped Irish
landlords.
(WSJ, 1/26/98, p.A1)
1847 Mauritius, a British ruled
island nation, issued the two-pence “Post Office” Blue Mauritius
postage stamp along with a similar one penny orange stamp. They
became very rare and in 1904 Britain’s King George V acquired a Blue
Mauritius for £1,450.
(WSJ, 8/9/08, p.W9)
1848 Feb 26, Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels published "The Communist Manifesto".
(HN, 2/26/98)
1848 Feb 27, Charles Hubert H.
Parry, musicologist, composer (Jerusalem), was born in England.
(MC, 2/27/02)
1848 Apr, The British ships
Erebus and Terror of the Franklin Expedition to the Arctic were
abandoned [see Franklin expedition 1850]. Wreckage of one of the
vessels was found in 2014.
(HNQ, 6/11/98)(SFC, 9/9/14, p.A5)
1848 Jul 18, W.G. Grace
(d.1915), British cricket player, was born in Bristol. He has been
widely acknowledged as the greatest cricket player of all time.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._G._Grace)
1848 Jul 25, Arthur James
Balfour (d.1930), the First Earl of Balfour and prime Minister of
Great Britain (1902-1905), was born: "A religion that is small
enough for our understanding would not be large enough for our
needs."
(AP, 11/14/97)(HN, 7/25/98)
1848 Jul 29, An Irish rebellion
against British rule was put down in a cabbage patch in Tipperary,
Ireland. Irish Nationalists under William Smith O'Brien were
overcome and arrested.
(HN, 7/29/98)(MC, 7/29/02)
1848 Aug, Henry Walter Bates,
British naturalist, traveled the rain forest of the Amazon estuary.
(NH, 6/97, p.30)
1848 Sep 24, Branwell Bronte,
brother of the Bronte sisters and the model for Hindley Earnshaw in
Emily's novel "Wuthering Heights," died of tuberculosis.
(www.bronte.info/brontes/Patrick_Branwell_Bronte.asp)
c1848 Ellen Terry (d.1928), one
of the great English actresses of the 19th century, was born. Her
parents, Ben and Sarah Terry, lived on the edge of poverty, earning
meager wages as strolling theatrical players who traveled from town
to town. Ellen was their second child; six more children survived.
All the Terry children expected to follow their parents on to the
stage and by the age of nine, Ellen appeared on the London stage as
Mamillius, the son of King Leontes in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s
Tale.
(WUD, 1994 p.1466)(HNQ, 8/31/01)
1848 Anne Bronte wrote her
novel "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall."
(WSJ, 10/16/97, p.A20)
1848 Charles Dickens
(1812-1870, English author, published his novel “Dombey and Son.”
(Econ, 5/19/12, p.28)
1848 William Makepeace
Thackeray (1811-1863), English novelist, authored “Vanity Fair”.
(SFC, 12/19/18, p.E1)
1848 Britain adopted Section
three of the Treason Felony Act 1848. It was not used to prosecute
anyone after 1879. Britain's law lords concluded in 2001 that the
law was "a relic of a bygone age" that did not fit into the modern
legal system -- but officially it remained a crime.
(AFP, 12/13/13)
1848 England passed a Public
Health Act to improve the lot of the working classes.
(Econ, 5/1/04, p.59)
1848 Britain introduced khaki
uniforms for British colonial troops in India.
(WSJ, 5/28/02, p.B1)
1848 A new cholera epidemic
struck in London.
(ON, 5/05, p.8)
1848-1887 Richard Jefferies, English author: "The
very idea that there is another idea is something gained."
(AP, 9/21/98)
1849 Feb 13, Lord Randolph
Churchill, was born. He was an English politician, Winston
Churchill's father and member of Parliament.
(HN, 2/13/99)
1849 Feb 21, In the Second Sikh
War, Sir Hugh Gough’s well placed guns won a victory over a Sikh
force twice the size of his at Gujerat on the Chenab River, assuring
British control of the Punjab for years to come.
(HN, 2/21/98)
1849 May 28, Anne Bronte,
novelist, died.
(MC, 5/28/02)
1849 Dec 12, Marc Brunel
(b.1769), the initiating engineer of England’s Thames Tunnel, died.
(ON, 4/06,
p.9)(www.bris.ac.uk/is/services/specialcollections/brunelchronology.html)
1849 John Snow (1813-1858),
English obstetrician, authored his 39-page pamphlet “On the Mode of
Communication of Cholera.” He presented evidence that the disease
was spread through contaminated water.
(ON, 5/05,
p.8)(www.johnsnowsociety.org/johnsnow/facts.html)
1849 Water-borne cholera killed
some 14,000 people in London.
(Hem., 12/96, p.127)
1849 Punjabi Duleep Singh
(1838-1893), the son of Maharajah Ranjit Singh, allegedly gave the
186-carat Koh-i-Noor diamond to the British, who whittled it down to
106 carats and gave it to their queen. The Delhi Gazette of 1848
said the stone was kept under the security of British bayonets as a
trophy of military valor.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duleep_Singh)(Econ, 4/23/15, p.33)
1850 Jan 29, Ebenezer Howard,
pioneer of garden cities, was born in London.
(MC, 1/29/02)
1850 Mar 30, Charles Dickens
published the first issue of his magazine “Household Words.”
(Econ, 9/10/11,
p.95)(www.victorianweb.org/periodicals/hw.html)
1850 Apr 16, Thomas Sidney
Gilchrist, British metallurgist and inventor, was born.
(HN, 4/16/01)
1850 Apr 23, William Wordsworth
(b.1770), English poet, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wordsworth)
1850 May, An American
expedition, organized by shipping magnate Henry Grinnell, departed
to the Canadian Arctic to search for Sir John Franklin and his 1845
Expedition. In late August it joined with British rescue ships. They
soon found 3 graves dug into the permafrost of Beechey Island with
headstones dated 1846. A written record was found in 1859,
indicating that Franklin died on June 11, 1847, and that Erebus and
Terror were abandoned in April 1848. The crews’ deaths have been
attributed to either scurvy or lead poisoning originating from the
solder on food tins. Both ships and the remains of most of the 129
crewmen have never been found.
(HNQ, 6/11/98)(ON, 6/09, p.3)
1850 Jul 2, Sir Robert Peel
(b.1788), former British prime minister (1834-35 and 1841-46), died.
He founded the Conservative Party and the London Police Force whose
officers were called "bobbies." In 2007 Douglas Hurd authored
“Robert Peel: A Biography.”
(HN, 2/5/99)(Econ, 6/30/07, p.93)
1850 Jun 4, A self deodorizing
fertilizer was patented in England.
(MC, 6/4/02)
1850 Jul 4, William Kirby
(b.1759), English entomologist, died. He was an original member of
the Linnean Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society, as well as a
country priest. He had studied how the ichneumon insect devours the
living body of the caterpillar upon which it preys.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kirby_%28entomologist%29)(SFC,
8/2/13, p.A10)
1850 Jul 26, The final design
for London’s Great Council Exhibition, the first-ever World’s Fair,
was officially approved. The structure of the glass and iron
building, designed by Joseph Paxton, was essentially completed
by Jan 1, 1851. The Exhibition opened May 1.
(WSJ, 1/26/98, p.A16)(ON, 7/04, p.12)
1850 Nov 16, George Wombell
(b.1777), famous English menagerie exhibitor, died. He had founded
"Wombwell's Travelling Menagerie."
(AP,
9/29/09)(www.wardsbookofdays.com/16november.htm)
1850 Nov 19, Lord Tennyson
became the British poet laureate.
(MC, 11/19/01)
1850 Charles Dickens published
“The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of
David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery” in book
format. It had been serialized a year earlier.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Copperfield)
1850 England established its
1st public libraries.
(Econ, 5/1/04, p.59)
1850 A mob in Athens burned
down the home of a British citizen. In response Viscount Palmerston,
Britain’s foreign secretary, called for a blockade of Greece.
(Econ, 7/15/06, p.56)
1850-1933 Augustine Birrell, English author and
statesman: "History is a pageant and not a philosopher."
(AP, 9/10/97)
1850s English inventor
Alexander Parkes is credited with being the first to make plastic in
the 1850s. Parkes' plastic was a cellulosic made by treating a
mixture of cotton and nitric acid with camphor. In the United
States, John and Isaiah Hyatt developed a similar plastic in 1869 as
a substitute for ivory in the manufacture of billiard balls, which
they called celluloid. The first completely synthetic plastic,
Bakelite, was produced in 1909 by Dr. Leo H. Bakeland.
(HNQ, 5/8/98)
1851 Feb 1, Mary Wollstonecraft
Shelley (53), novelist (Frankenstein), died.
(MC, 2/1/02)
1851 May 1, The Great Council
Exhibition, the first-ever World’s Fair, opened in London’s Hyde
Park. Some 6 million people came to see the new glass and iron
Crystal Palace, designed by Joseph Paxton (1823-1865). Paxton used
roof ventilators and underground air-cooling chambers to regulate
indoor temperature.
(WSJ, 1/26/98, p.A16)(ON, 7/04, p.12)(Econ,
12/4/04, TQ p.17)
1851 Jul 8, Sir Arthur John
Evans, English archaeologist who excavated Knossos, Crete, was born.
(MC, 7/8/02)
1851 Aug 22, The Schooner
America, designed by George Steers, outraced the Aurora in the
Solent, a stretch of sea separating the Isle of Wight from England
proper, to win the Queen’s cup, a trophy that renamed as the
America’s Cup. For 132 years the New York Yacht Club defeated all
challengers to retain the prestigious America’s Cup, the record for
the longest winning streak in sports history. The Liberty lost it to
the Australia II in 1983.
(AP, 8/22/97)(SFEC, 10/1/00, p.T4)(AH, 2/03,
p.29)(SSFC, 4/15/07, p.G4)
1851 Oct 10-1851 Oct 31, In
London, England, Richard Manks began his feat of walking 1,000 miles
in 1,000 hours at the Surrey cricket ground.
{Britain, World Record}
(ON, 12/05, p.6)
1851 Nov 13, The
London-to-Paris telegraph opened.
(HN, 11/13/98)
1851 Dec 19, Joseph Mallord
William Turner (b.1775), English painter and printmaker, died. In
2016 Franny Moyle authored “The Extraordinary Life and Momentous
Times of J.M.W. Turner.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._W._Turner)(SFC, 6/20/15, p.E3)
1851 John Everett Millais
(1829-1896) English painter and member of the a Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood, created his work "Mariana."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Everett_Millais)(SFC, 6/30/18,
p.E1)
1851 Matthew Coates Wyatt
created his dog sculpture of the Earl of Dudley’s Newfoundland
Bashaw. It was a star exhibit at the Great Exhibition.
(WSJ, 12/6/01, p.A19)
1851 Big Ben, the tower clock
of the House of Parliament in London, was designed by Edmund Beckett
Denison. He was assisted by clockmaker Edward John Dent and Sir
George Airy, the royal astronomer. Originally the name "Big Ben"
referred only to the clock’s huge bell.
(SFC, 9/30/98, Z1 p.3)
1851 Paul Julius Reuter
(1816-1899), a German-born immigrant, began transmitting
stock-market quotes between London and Paris over the new
Dover-Calais submarine telegraph cable.
(http://about.reuters.com/home/aboutus/history/informationandinnovation.aspx)
1852 Jan 17, At the Sand River
Convention, the British recognized the independence of the Transvaal
Board.
(HN, 1/17/99)
1852 Feb 11, The 1st British
public female toilet opened at Bedford Street in London.
(MC, 2/11/02)
1852 Feb 26, The British
frigate Birkenhead sank off South Africa and 458 died.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1852 Apr 29, The first edition
of Peter Mark Roget’s Thesaurus was published. Roget (1779-1869) was
a London physician of French-Swiss ancestry who began to collect and
organize English words to improve his public speaking.
(HN, 4/29/98)(WSJ, 9/3/98, p.B1)
1852 May 8, A war between
Denmark and Prussia lasted three years (1848–50) and ended only when
the Great Powers pressured Prussia into accepting the London
Protocol of 1852. This was the revision of an earlier protocol,
which had been ratified on August 2, 1850, by the major Germanic
powers of Austria and Prussia. The 1852 London Protocol confirmed
that the duchies of Schleswig-Holstein should remain undivided.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Protocol)(Econ, 6/23/12, p.20)
1852 Sep 14, Augustus Pugin
(b.1812), English Gothic architect and designer, died. He had just
this year helped oversee the completion of the new Palace of
Westminster and sketched a design for the clock tower shortly before
his death. In 2007 Rosemary Hill authored “God’s Architect: Pugin
and the Building of Romantic Britain.
(Econ, 8/11/07,
p.74)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus_Pugin)(WSJ, 3/20/09,
p.W14)
1852 Sep 14, Arthur Wellesley
(b.1769), General and Duke of Wellington, died at 83.
(http://en.wikipedia.org)
1852 Nov 10, Dr. Gideon Mantell
(b.1790), obstetrician and English fossil hunter, died from an
overdose of opium.
(ON, 7/06,
p.4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideon_Mantell)
1852 Nov 27, Ada Lovelace
(b.1815), Lord Byron’s daughter and the inventor of computer
language, was bled to death by physicians at age 36. She had helped
Charles Babbage develop his "Analytical Engine," that performed
mathematical calculations through the use of punched cards.
(SFC, 1/22/98, p.D7)(SFC, 4/30/98, p.E1)
1852 In England the Victoria
and Albert Museum was founded by Henry Cole as the South Kensington
Museum and later named after Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. It
was the first museum to collect and exhibit photography. Charles
Thurston Thompson was the first "superintendent of photography."
(WSJ, 11/4/97, p.A20)(WSJ, 3/24/98, p.A20)
1852 Lady Charlotte Guest took
over the helm of Dowlais Iron Co. after her husband died. [see 1759]
(SFC, 2/16/04, p.A1)
1852-1853 Charles Dickens (1812-1870) authored his
novel Bleak House in 20 monthly installments. It castigated the
insufferable delays of the legal process in Britain. In the novel he
describes a fictional court case, Jarndyce v Jarndyce, which
concerns the fate of a large inheritance. It has dragged on for many
generations prior to the action of the novel, so that, by the time
it is resolved late in the narrative, legal costs have devoured
nearly the entire estate. The case is thus a byword for an
interminable legal proceeding.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarndyce_and_Jarndyce)(WSJ, 2/24/07,
p.P10)
1853 Apr 7, Dr. John Snow
administered chloroform to Queen Victoria at the birth of her 8th
child, Prince Leopold.
(ON, 5/05, p.9)
1853 May, The first public
aquarium was opened in the London Zoo. It was the brainchild of
English naturalist Philip Henry Gosse (1810-1888). The "Fish House",
as it came to be known, was constructed much like a greenhouse.
(Econ, 9/12/09,
p.93)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_aquarium)
1853 Jul, Supported by Britain,
the Turks took a firm stand against the Russians, who occupied the
Danubian principalities (modern Romania) on the Russo-Turkish
border. The Crimean War got under way in October. It was fought
mainly on the Crimean Peninsula between the Russians and the
British, French, and Ottoman Turkish, with support, from January
1855, by the army of Sardinia-Piedmont. The war aligned Anglican
England and Roman Catholic France with Islam’s sultan-caliphs
against the tsars, who saw themselves as the world’s last truly
Christian emperors.
(www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/143040/Crimean-War)(Econ,
10/2/10, p.89)
1853 Oct 13, Lillie Langtry
(d.1929), British actress, was born. "The sentimentalist ages far
more quickly than the person who loves his work and enjoys new
challenges." She started the California Guenoc and Langtry Estate
wineries.
(AP, 7/27/98)(HN, 10/13/00)(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.C8)
1853 Oct, Henry Bessemer
(1813-1898), English mechanical engineer, invented a new type of
artillery shell. He presented it to the War Department for use in
the Crimean War, but they were not interested. He then offered it to
France’s Napoleon III, who agreed to test the shells. The larger
shells demanded a new type of cannon made of stronger metal, which
led to his experiments in making iron.
(ON, 9/06, p.4)
1853 Matthew Arnold wrote his
poem "Scholar Gypsy."
(SFEC, 8/20/00, p.T9)
1853 Victorian England enacted
a law criminalizing violence against women and children.
(Econ, 1/28/17, p.14)
1853 Sarah Losh (b.1785),
English architect, died. In 2012 Jenny Uglow authored “The Pinecone:
The Story of Sarah Losh, Forgotten Romantic Heroine – Antiquarian,
Architect and Visionary.”
(www.stmaryswreay.org/sara_losh.html)(Economist,
9/22/12, p.96)
1853 Hormuzd Rassam
(1826-1910), Mosul-born Assyrian, and Sir Austen Henry Layard
(1817-1894), British archeologist, uncovered ancient Assyrian
tablets at Nineveh (Iraq). Layard published his paper on
Assyrian-Egyptian Cross-Dating. By using seal-impressions of rulers
occurring on the same piece of clay, Layard was able to assign a
date to the Assyrian dynasty because the Egyptian ruler’s reign was
firmly dated.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormuzd_Rassam)(RFH-MDHP, 1969,
p.59)(ON, 11/07, p.4)
1853-1902 Cecil Rhodes, imperialist. He discovered
a vast lode of diamonds at Kimberley and founded the De Beers Mining
Co. He ran for Cape parliament in 1881 and was prime minister of the
Cape Colony from 1890-1896. He founded Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe) for
mineral speculation and endowed the Rhodes scholarships upon his
death with £3 million.
(WSJ, 1/11/98, p.R18)
1854 Feb 23, Great Britain
officially recognized the independence of the Orange Free State.
(HN, 2/23/99)
1854 Feb, The
Northcote-Trevelyan report was submitted to the British Parliament.
It led to the creation of a politically neutral civil service with
appointments made on merit.
(Econ, 3/19/11, SR p.18)
1854 Mar 1, The SS City of
Glasgow, a steamship of the Inman Line, left Liverpool harbor with
480 passengers and was never seen again.
(SC, 3/1/02)(WSJ, 7/1/03, p.D8)
1854 Mar 28, During the Crimean
War, Britain and France declared war on Russia.
(AP, 3/28/97)
1854 May 5, English pirate
Plumridge robbed along pro-English Finnish coast.
(MC, 5/5/02)
1854 May 24, Louis Mountbatten
(d.1921), British admiral (WW I), was born in Graz, Austria.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Louis_of_Battenberg)
1854 Jun 21, The first Victoria
Cross was awarded to Charles Lucas, an Irishman and mate aboard the
HMS Hecla for conspicuous gallantry at Bomarsrund in the Baltic. The
medal was made from metal from a cannon captured at Sebastopol.
(Camelot, 6/21/99)
1854 Sep 14, Allied armies,
including those of Britain & France, landed in Crimea.
(MC, 9/14/01)
1854 Oct 16, Oscar Wilde,
dramatist, poet, novelist and critic, was born. [see 1856-1900]
(HN, 10/16/98)
1854 Oct 25, During the Crimean
War, a brigade of British light infantry was destroyed by Russian
artillery as they charged down a narrow corridor in full view of the
Russians. The Crimean War is largely remembered for the Charge of
the Light Brigade, a hopeless but gallant British cavalry charge
against a heavily defended Russian force. The battle began when the
Russians attacked the British-French supply depot at Balaclava near
Chersonesos, some eight miles from Sevastopol, on the Black Sea
Crimean Peninsula. Taken by surprise, the British counterattacked
but failed to follow up. Through a staff error, Gen. Lord Cardigan's
Light Brigade of 673 horsemen was ordered to charge the Russian
position through a mile-long valley and prevent them from carrying
away some captured cannon. The Light Brigade advanced up the valley,
taking casualties all the way, and reached the guns. But once there,
they could not hold their position and were forced to retreat. Of
the 673 men who took part in the senseless charge, only 195 were
present at roll call that night. The Charge of the Light Brigade
ended the battle, but Balaclava remained in the hands of the
British-French Allies. The event was described in a poem by
Tennyson.
(SFC,12/190/97, p.F6)(AP, 10/25/97)(HNPD,
10/25/98)(HN, 10/25/98)
1854 Nov 5, The British and
French defeated the Russians at Inkerman, Crimea.
(HN, 11/5/98)
1854 Nov, A wooden boat called
Mystery set sail from Cornwall, bound for Australia with seven
Cornishmen hoping to escape their lives of poverty and dig for gold
Down Under, a trip that eventually took 116 days.
(AFP, 10/21/08)
1854 Dec 9, Alfred, Lord
Tennyson's poem, "The Charge of the Light Brigade," was published in
England.
(AP, 12/9/97)
1854 Charles Dickens authored
“Hard Times.” One of his reasons for writing it was that sales of
his weekly periodical, Household Words, were low, and it was hoped
the novel's publication in instalments would boost circulation – as
indeed proved to be the case.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Times)
1854 Britain’s national
meteorological office was founded. It began providing forecasts for
the BBC in 1922.
(Econ, 8/29/15, p.47)
1854 English naturalist Philip
Henry Gosse (1810-1888) published “The Aquarium” and set off a
mid-Victorian craze for household aquariums.
(Econ, 9/12/09,
p.93)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Henry_Gosse)
1854 Charles Wheatstone,
British cryptologist, invented cipher to be used by diplomats, but a
government official worried that it was too complicated. In 2006
Stephen Pincock authored “Codebreaker” a tale of codes and ciphers
as well as their creators and crackers.
(WSJ, 10/7/06, p.P12)
1854 Phillip Morris began
making cigarettes in London.
(SFC, 9/27/97, p.E3)
1854 Florence Nightingale
(1820-1910) nursed wounded soldiers at Scutari Hospital in Turkey
during the Crimean War.
(HNQ, 4/29/01)
1854 Cholera broke out in
London again. Dr. John Snow traced it to cesspool near a public
water pump on Broad Street.
(ON, 5/05, p.9)
1854 Robert Swinhoe
(1836-1877), English naturalist, became the British council in Amoy
(later Xiamen, China). Over the next 2 decades he collected and
counted some 650 Chinese species of birds. In 1860 He became the
first British representative on Formosa (later Taiwan).
(Econ, 12/20/08,
p.67)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Swinhoe)
1854 Lord Elgin negotiated a
reciprocity trade agreement with the British North American
colonies. In 1866 America abrogated the agreement.
(Econ, 11/26/16, p.18)
1855 Jan 25, Dorothy Wordsworth
(b.1771), English prose writer and the sister of poet William
Wordsworth (1770-1850), died. In 2009 Frances Wilson authored “The
Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth.”
(WSJ, 2/19/09,
p.A17)(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/dwordsw.htm)
1855 Feb 6, Britain’s home
secretary Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (70), became
prime minister and served until his death in 1865.
(http://tinyurl.com/zz6g5eq)(Econ, 7/9/16, p.46)
1855 Mar 31, Charlotte Bronte
(b.1816), English author (Jane Eyre), died. In 1994 Lyndall Gordon
authored “Charlotte Bronte: A Passionate Life.” In 2015 Clare Harmon
authored “Charlotte Bronte: A Life.”
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Bront%C3%AB)(Econ,
10/31/15, p.78)
1855 Jun 15, Stamp duty on
British newspapers was abolished.
(HT, 6/15/00)
1855 Jun 17, Heavy
French-British shelling of Sebastopol killed over 2000.
(MC, 6/17/02)
1855 Sep 9, Sevastopol, under
siege for nearly a year, fell to the Allies. France, England, the
Ottoman Empire and Sardinia (as Italy was then known) defeated the
Russians at Sevastopol in the decisive battle of the Crimean War.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_War)(SFC,
7/27/13, p.C2)
1855 Aug 4, John Bartlett, a
Cambridge bookseller, published the 1st edition of "Bartlett’s
Familiar Quotations."
(WSJ, 10/18/02, p.W17)(MC, 8/4/02)
1855 The English Commons voted
for an inquiry into the conduct of the Crimean campaign.
(Econ, 11/4/06, p.67)
1855 In England Edward Agar led
the Great Bullion Robbery of a mail train with a railroad guard as
an accomplice. In 1998 Donald Thomas published "The Victorian
Underworld," on the emergence of the urban criminal class in
Britain.
(SFEC, 1/3/99, BR p.8)
1855 Sir Moses Montefiore, an
Italian-born British Jew and financier, became the first European to
be allowed by the Ottomans to visit Jerusalem.
(Econ, 3/19/11,
p.93)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Montefiore)
1855 London’s Smithfield
livestock market closed and moved to Islington.
(Econ, 1/26/13, p.16)
1856 Feb 14, Frank Harris,
journalist, writer (My Life & Loves), was born in England.
(MC, 2/14/02)
1856 Mar 5, Covent Garden Opera
House was destroyed in a fire.
(MC, 3/5/02)
1856 Apr 29, A peace treaty
between England and Russia was signed.
(HN, 4/29/98)
1856 Jun 8, The British
resettled 194 people from Pitcairn Island onto Norfolk Island.
(SFEM, 3/12/00, p.66)
1856 Jul 26, George Bernard
Shaw (d.1950), Irish-born, English dramatist, critic and social
reformer (Pygmalion-Nobel 1925), was born in Dublin. "The worst sin
toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be
indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity."
(V.D.-H.K.p.237)(HN, 7/26/98)(AP, 3/15/00)
1856 Aug, Henry Bessemer,
English mechanical engineer, presented a paper titled “The
Manufacture of Iron Without Fuel.” In 1860 he established the
Bessemer Steel Works in Sheffield. His Bessemer conversion process
revolutionized the steel industry.
(ON, 9/06, p.6)
1856 Sep 3, The Royal British
Bank announced a suspension of business. In 1858 eight directors of
the bank were put on trial for conspiracy to defraud the public. A
jury found each of the defendants guilty of the charges. They were
given sentences ranging from a nominal fine of one shilling to
imprisonment for up to one year.
(http://tinyurl.com/mefkksp)(http://tinyurl.com/m78b3q3)(Econ,
6/22/13, p.60)
1856 Oct 8, Chinese police
boarded the British vessel Arrow, arrested 12 Chinese crewmen on
suspicion of piracy and lowered the British flag. This began the 2nd
Anglo-Chinese War.
(EWH, 4th ed, p.911)(MC, 10/8/01)
1856 Dec 18, Joseph John
Thomson, English physicist, was born. He discovered the electron and
won a Nobel Prize in 1906.
(MC, 12/18/01)
1856 British
paleontologist Richard Owen was appointed Superintendent of the
natural history departments of the British Museum.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_History_Museum,_London)
1856 General limited liability
was introduced in Britain.
(Econ, 12/20/08, p.117)
1856 The British Board of
Ordnance (BO) mark was replaced by the War Department (WD) mark.
(SSFM, 4/1/01, p.44)
1856 The Victoria Cross was
created to honor soldiers of the British Empire during the Crimean
War who showed particular gallantry in the face of enemy attack. All
the crosses were made from the bronze of Russian cannons captured in
the Crimea.
(AP, 4/27/05)
1856 Thomas Burberry founded a
clothing firm to sell raincoats.
(Economist, 9/22/12, p.76)
1856 William Thomson, later
Lord Kelvin, discovered the property of magneto-resistance. The
change in some materials of electrical resistance under a magnetic
field was later used in data storage systems.
(Econ, 3/31/07, p.89)
1856 In northeast India the
East India Company first moved its troops to the border of the Awadh
(Oudh) kingdom and then annexed the state (later part of Uttar
Pradesh state). In 1857 rebels took control of Awadh, and it took
the British 18 months to reconquer the region, a period which
included the famous Siege of Lucknow. Oudh was placed back under a
chief commissioner, and was governed as a British province. The
descendants of the ruler, the Nawab, remained in the city as
powerful landlords, living off the family's riches.
(AP,
12/11/10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awadh)
1856-1900 Oscar Wilde, English [Irish] writer,
poet and dramatist, a rebel of every kind, ended up playing the part
of a mocking fool. He despaired of his countrymen ever waking up,
but they did, for they became enraged by his mockery and jailed him,
ruining his life. He wrote the play "The Importance of Being
Ernest." He was found guilty of violating the Criminal Law Amendment
Act which prohibited indecent relations between consenting adult
males. He served 2 years in prison where he read the whole of Dante
and wrote the letter "De Profundis," and the poem "The Ballad of
Reading Gaol." "At every single moment of one's life one is what one
is going to be no less than what one has been." [see 1854]
(V.D.-H.K.p.279)(HT, 3/97, p.71)(AP, 10/10/99)
1857 Feb 22, Lord Robert
Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scout Movement, was born in London.
(AP, 2/22/07)
1857 Mar 3, Under pretexts,
Britain and France declared war on China.
(HN, 3/3/99)
1857 Apr, The Royal Society
held their first meeting in Burlington House in London after moving
over from Somerset House. They were soon joined by the Linnean
Society and the Royal Society of Chemistry.
(Econ, 9/15/07,
p.104)(www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=41482)
1857 May 10, The Seepoys of
India revolted against the British Army. The Bengal Army, Indian
soldiers in the British army, staged a revolt in what is viewed as
the first attempt at independence.
(SFEC, 8/3/97, p.A15)(HN, 5/10/98)
1857 May 11, Indian mutineers
against the British seized Delhi.
(HN, 5/11/98)
1857 Jun 2, Edward Elgar
Broadheath, English composer (Pomp & Circumstance), was born in
Worcester, England.
(AP, 6/2/07)
1857 Jun 30, Charles Dickens
read from "A Christmas Carol" at St. Martin's Hall in London--his
first public reading. [see 1843]
(HN, 6/30/01)
1857 Jul 15, British women and
children were murdered in the second Cawnpore Massacre during the
Indian Mutiny.
(HN, 7/15/98)
1857 Jul 29, James Holman
(1786), former British lieutenant in the Royal Navy, died in London.
An illness in 1810 left him blind. In 1822 he set off on a journey
to travel around the world. In 2006 Jason Roberts authored “A Sense
of the World: How a Blind Man Became History’s Greatest Traveler.”
(SSFC, 6/4/06, p.M1)
1857 Aug 24, The New York
branch of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Co. failed, sparking the
Panic of 1857. The sharp but short 1857-58 financial crash in the US
was touched off by the failure of the New York branch of the Ohio
Life Insurance and Trust Company. Over speculation in real estate
and railroad securities fed the panic. Financial crashes spread to
Liverpool, Glasgow, Paris, Hamburg, Copenhagen and Vienna.
(AP, 8/24/07)(WSJ, 9/28/95c, p.A-18)(Econ,
4/12/14, p.51)
1857 Sep 5, Charles Darwin
first outlined his theory of evolution in a letter to American
botanist Asa Gray dated September 5, 1857. The leading botanist of
his time, Gray was one of the founders of the National Academy of
Science.
(HNQ, 3/14/99)
1857 Nov 7, Dennistoun, Cross
and Co., an American bank with branches in Liverpool, Glasgow, New
York and New Orleans, collapsed taking with it the Western Bank of
Scotland with 98 branches. In the last three months of this year
there were 135 bankruptcies.
(Econ, 4/12/14, p.52)
1857 Nov 23, George Smythe
(b.1818), 7th Viscount Strangford, died. In 2006 Mary S. Millar
authored “Disraeli’s Disciple: The Scandalous Life of George
Smythe.”
(http://tinyurl.com/mhqn3)(WSJ, 9/2/06, p.P9)
1857 Dec 31, Britain's Queen
Victoria decided to make Ottawa the capital of Canada.
(AP, 12/31/97)
1857 Charles Dickens
(1812-1870), English novelist, published his serial novel “Little
Dorrit” in book form. It had been serialized in 1855-1857.
(WSJ, 7/19/08,
p.W6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Dorrit)
1857 Thomas Hughes authored
"Tom Brown’s School Days."
(WSJ, 7/111/00, p.A26)
1857 Anthony Trollope
(1815-1882), British novelist, authored his novel “Barchester
Towers," which explored the mixed motives of various characters. The
book established his fame.
(WSJ, 12/11/98, p.W10)(WSJ, 9/1/07, p.P9)
1857 The Reading Room of the
British National Library opened. It was designed by Sydney Smirke.
His brother, Sir Robert Smirke, had designed the British Museum 7
years earlier. The design met the wishes of Sir Anthony Panazzi, the
Italian librarian. Its copper dome, supported by 20 cast iron
ribs, measured 140 feet.
(SFC,10/23/97, p.A17)(WSJ, 2/9/00, p.A24)
1857 The British Matrimonial
Causes Act proclaimed that a husband’s legal responsibilities went
on after a marriage ended.
(SFC, 4/12/97, p.E3)
1857 Dean Richard Trench
lectured on the need for a complete English dictionary at the London
Library and the project was soon undertaken by The Philological
Society.
(WSJ, 9/14/98, p.A30)
1857 Alexander Herzen
(1812-1870), Russia’s first socialist, and Nikolai Ogaryov
(1813-1877) began publishing the newspaper Kolokol (Bell) in London,
which was then smuggled back into Russia.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolokol_%28newspaper%29)(Econ,
2/13/15, p.52)
1858 Jan 25, Britain's Princess
Victoria (the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert),
married Crown Prince Frederick William (the future German Emperor
and King of Prussia) at St. James's Palace. The ceremony's
tradition-setting music, personally selected by the Princess Royal,
included the "Bridal Chorus" from Richard Wagner's "Lohengrin" and
the "Wedding March" by Felix Mendelssohn.
(AP, 1/25/08)
1858 Feb, British explorers Sir
Richard Burton and John Speke (1827-1864) explored Lake Tanganyika,
Africa.
(www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/speke_john_hanning.shtml)
1858 Mar 21, British forces in
India lifted the siege of Lucknow, ending the Indian Mutiny.
(HN, 3/21/99)
1858 Apr 10, London’s Big Ben
bell, weighing over 13 tons, was cast at the Whitechapel Foundry in
East London. It was placed into St. Stephen’s Tower at the Houses of
Parliament.
(SFC, 4/11/08, p.A16)(Econ, 12/24/16, p.122)
1858 May 28, Dion Boucicault's
"Foul Play," premiered in London.
(MC, 5/28/02)
1858 Jun 16, Dr. John Snow
(b.1813), English obstetrician, died of a stroke. He is considered
the father of epidemiology for his efforts in documenting the spread
of cholera in London epidemics.
(ON, 5/05, p.10)
1858 Jul 1, The Darwin-Wallace
theory of evolution was 1st read at a meeting of the Linnaean
Society of London.
(NH, 2/02, p.75)
1858 Jul 14, Emmeline
Pankhurst, British suffragist and founder of the Women's Social and
Political Union, was born in Manchester, England.
(HN, 7/14/98)(AP, 7/14/08)
1858 Jul 23, Jewish
Disabilities Removal Act was passed by British Parliament.
(MC, 7/23/02)
1858 Jul 26, Baron Lionel de
Rothschild became the 1st Jew elected to British Parliament.
(MC, 7/26/02)
1858 Jul-1858 Aug, The summer
Great Stink, aka The Big Stink, took place when the smell of
untreated sewage almost overwhelmed people in central London,
England. This persuaded the government to commission Sir Joseph
Bazalgette to lay down a new network of sewers.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stink)(WSJ,
10/21/06, p.P8)
1858 Aug 16, A telegraphed
message from Britain’s Queen Victoria to President Buchanan was
transmitted over the recently laid trans-Atlantic cable. The cable
linked Ireland and Canada and failed after a few weeks.
(AP,
8/16/97)(www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/cable/peopleevents/e_inquiry.html)
1858 In 2017 Rosemary Ashton
authored “One Hot Summer: Dickens, Darwin, Disraeli and the Great
Stink of 1858.
(Econ 7/22/17, p.67)
1858 Henry Gray (1827-1861),
English anatomist and surgeon, authored the textbook “Gray’s
Anatomy.” It defined the genre and dissected the body along thematic
lines. The illustrations were by Henry Vandyke (1831-1897) In 2008
Ruth Richardson authored “The Making of Mr Gray’s Anatomy: Bodies,
Books, Fortune, Fame.”
(http://streetanatomy.com/blog/?p=48)(Econ,
11/15/08, p.99)(WSJ, 3/27/09, p.W6)
1858 John Henry Newman, English
Catholic cardinal, authored “The Idea of a University.”
(Econ, 6/28/14, p.22)
1858 Florence Nightingale
published her “Notes on matters affecting the health, efficiency and
hospital administration of the British army,” in which she presented
a new form of data display later known as “Nightingale’s Rose” or
Nightingale’s coxcomb.” This year she also became the first female
fellow of the Statistical Society of London.
(Econ, 12/22/07, p.74)
1858 In England the Covent
Garden Royal Opera House was constructed in London. In 1997 it was
scheduled for a $361 million refurbishment and slated to reopen in
Dec, 1999.
(SFC, 7/14/97, p.E3)
1858 The British colonized the
Andaman Islands home to 10 tribes of the Great Andamanese comprising
some 5,000 people. Most were killed or died of diseases brought by
the colonizers. In 2010 the last speaker of Bo, one of the ten
dialects used by the tribes, died.
(Reuters, 2/6/10)
1858 The East India Company was
abolished and the British government assumed the administration of
India.
(SFEC, 8/3/97, p.A15)
1858 John Hanning Speke
(1827-1864), British explorer, became the first European to visit
Lake Victoria, Africa’s largest lake. Its shoreline touched Kenya,
Tanzania and Uganda.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hanning_Speke)
1858-1943 Beatrice Potter Webb, English
sociologist: "Religion is love; in no case is it logic."
(AP, 11/8/98)
1859 Mar 26, A.E. Houseman
(d.1936), critic, classics scholar and poet, was born. He is
best known for his work "A Shropshire Lad." A 1997 fictionalized
portrait of Houseman, "The Invention of Love: Memory Play," was
written by Tom Stoppard.
(SFEC, 3/29/98, p.T9)(SFC, 1/15/00, p.B1)(HN,
3/26/01)
1859 Apr 14, Charles Dickens'
"A Tale Of Two Cities" was published.
(MC, 4/14/02)
1859 May 22, Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle (d.1930), author of the Sherlock Holmes series, was born in
Edinburgh, Scotland. He wrote 4 novels featuring Sherlock Holmes.
"Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly
recognizes genius." In 1999 Daniel Stashower published the
biography: "Teller of Tales."
(AP, 6/17/97)(HN, 5/22/98)(WSJ, 4/12/99, p.A21)
1859 Aug 28, Leigh Hunt
(b.1784), English poet and essayist, died. He is remembered for his
immortal couplet: “The Two divinist things this world has got: / A
lovely women in a rural spot. In 2005 Nicholas Roe authored “Fiery
Heart: The first Life of Leigh Hunt.” Anthony Holden authored “The
Wit in the Dungeon: The Life of Leigh Hunt.”
(RTH, 8/28/99)(Econ, 1/29/05, p.80)(WSJ, 12/6/05,
p.D8)
1859 Sep 1, British astronomers
Richard C. Carrington (33) and R. Hodgson (1804-1872) independently
made the 1st observation of a solar flare, aka coronal mass
ejection. A day later auroras lit up all of the British Isles.
Telegraph communication was disrupted in every technically advanced
nation.
(ON, 4/12, p.5)(Econ, 2/25/17, p.67)
1859 Sep 9, The SS Great
Eastern's first voyage was cut short by a boiler explosion. The
22,500-ton (displacement) iron steamship, designed by Isambard
Kingdom Brunel, was built on the Thames River, England. It had been
christened Leviathan during an initial launching attempt in early
November 1857. Thereafter it was always known as the Great Eastern.
(http://tinyurl.com/2u23gy3)
1859 Sep 15, Isambard Brunel
(b.1806), engineer of England’s Thames Tunnel, died. He was the son
of Marc Brunel, the engineer who initiated the project. Isambard is
best known for the creation of the Great Western Railway, a series
of famous steamships, including the first with a propeller, and
numerous important bridges and tunnels. In 2002 R. Angus
Buchanan authored “Brunel: The Life and Times of Isambard Kingdom
Brunel.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isambard_Kingdom_Brunel)(ON, 8/07,
p.7)
1859 Nov 24, British naturalist
Charles Darwin published "On the Origin of Species," which explained
his theory of evolution.
(V.D.-H.K.p.280)(WSJ, 2/24/97, p.A20)(AP,
11/24/97)
1859 Dec 8, Thomas De Quincey
(b.1785), English essayist, died. In 2006 his essays on murder were
collected and published under the title “On Murder.” He is best know
for his famous “Confessions of an Opium Eater” (1821).
(WSJ, 6/9/07,
p.P8)(www.britannica.com/eb/article-9029613/Thomas-De-Quincey)
1859 Dec 28, Thomas Babington
Macaulay (b.1800), English essayist, historian and politician, died.
He was one of the first to advocate Indian independence, albeit on
the grounds of English commercial self interest. In 2012 Zareer
Masani authored “Macaulay: Pioneer of India’s Modernization.
(www.britannica.com)(Econ, 10/30/04, p.48)(Econ,
11/10/12, p.86)
1859 The London Fish
House unveiled 4 seahorses, long believed to mythical creatures.
Seahorses are the only species in which the males become pregnant,
providing the young with food and oxygen before giving birth to up
to 1,000 babies, each the size of a flea.
(Econ, 9/12/09, p.93)
1859 There was a rain of tiny
fish over England.
(SFC, 5/30/98, p.E4)
1859 James Whistler
(1834-1903), American painter, moved to London.
(Econ, 5/10/14, p.83)
1859 The British took
Baluchistan, and Afghanistan became completely landlocked.
(https://www.afghan-web.com/history/chronology/)
1859-1927 Jerome K. Jerome, English author and
humorist: "It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one
has plenty of work to do."
(AP, 5/30/97)
Go to GB 1860