1823 in the United Kingdom
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 1823 in the United Kingdom: |
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Events from the year 1823 in the United Kingdom.
Incumbents
- Monarch - George IV
- Prime Minister - Lord Liverpool (Tory)
Events
- January - The King's Library, George III's personal library of 65,000 volumes, 19,000 pamphlets, maps, charts and topographical drawings, is offered to the British Museum.
- 23 January - In Paviland Cave on the Gower Peninsula, William Buckland inspects the "Red Lady of Paviland", the first identification of a prehistoric (male) human burial.[1]
- 20 February - Explorer James Weddell's expedition to Antarctica reaches latitude 74°15' S and longitude 34°16'45" W: the southernmost position any ship had reached before, a record that will hold for more than 80 years.
- March - Royal Academy of Music opens.[2]
- 17 June - Charles Macintosh patents the waterproof material later used to make Mackintosh coats.[3]
- July - Robert Peel ensures the passage of five Acts of Parliament, effectively abolishing the death penalty for over one hundred offences;[2] in particular, the Judgement of Death Act allows judges to commute sentences for capital offences other than murder or treason to imprisonment or transportation.[4]
- 4 July - Transportation Act allows convicts transported to the colonies to be employed on public works.[2]
- 10 July - Gaols Act passed by Parliament, based on the prison reform campaign of Elizabeth Fry.[2]
- 23 September - First Burmese War: Burmese attack the British on Shapura, an island close to Chittagong.
- 25 November - Opening of The Royal Suspension Chain Pier at Brighton, designed by Captain Samuel Brown, RN, the first pleasure pier on the mainland of England.[5]
- November - According to tradition, William Webb Ellis invents rugby.[2]
Undated
- Beginning of the first Anglo-Ashanti war.
- Excise Act reduces duties on the distillation of whisky, encouraging its commercial production.
Publications
- Thomas Campbell's poem The Last Man.
- Thomas De Quincey's critical essay On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth (in The London Magazine, October).
- Mrs Markham's children's A History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans to the End of the Reign of George III
- Sir Walter Scott's novels Peveril of the Peak, Quentin Durward and St. Ronan's Well.
- Thomas Wakley's medical journal The Lancet (first published 5 October ).
Births
- 8 January - Alfred Russel Wallace, naturalist and biologist (died 1913)
- 13 August - Goldwin Smith, historian (died 1910)
Deaths
- 26 January - Edward Jenner, physician and pioneer of vaccination (born 1749)
- 27 January - Charles Hutton, mathematician (born 1737)
- 7 February - Mrs Radcliffe, writer (born 1764)
- 26 February - John Philip Kemble, actor (born 1757)
- 14 March - John Jervis, 1st Earl of St Vincent, Royal Navy admiral (born 1735)
- 23 April - Joseph Nollekens, sculptor (born 1737)
- 19 June - William Combe, writer, poet and adventurer (born 1742)
- 8 July - Sir Henry Raeburn, Scottish portrait painter (born 1756)
- 11 September - David Ricardo, economist (born 1772)
- 23 September - Matthew Baillie, Scottish-born physician and pathologist (born 1761)
- 30 October - Edmund Cartwright, clergyman and inventor of the power loom (born 1743)
References
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