1839 in Wales

This article is about the particular significance of the year 1839 to Wales and its people.

← 1838 1837 1836 1835 1834 1839 in Wales → 1840 1841 1842 1843 1844
Centuries:	17th 18th 19th 20th 21st
Decades:	1810s 1820s 1830s 1840s 1850s
See also:	List of years in Wales 1839 in The United Kingdom Ireland Scotland

Incumbents

• Prince of Wales – vacant
• Princess of Wales – vacant

Events

• March – John Frost, former mayor of Newport, is deprived of his position as a magistrate because of his Chartist sympathies.
• 30 April – Chartists riot in Llanidloes and seize control of the town for five days.
• 7 May – Henry Vincent is arrested after addressing a Chartist meeting and taken to prison at Monmouth.[1]
• 13 May – Beginning of the Rebecca Riots.
• 25 July – William Ewart Gladstone marries Catherine Glynne of Hawarden.
• 28 August – Mary Anne Lewis, widow of Cardiff MP Wyndham Lewis, marries Benjamin Disraeli.[2]
• 5 October – Opening of West Bute Dock.
• 4 November – Newport Rising: between 5,000 and 10,000 Chartist sympathisers led by John Frost, many of them coal miners, march on the Westgate Hotel in Newport, Monmouthshire, to liberate Chartist prisoners; around 22 are killed when troops, directed by Thomas Phillips, the mayor, fire on the crowd.[3] This is the last large-scale armed civil rebellion against authority in mainland Britain and sees the most deaths.
• 23 November – Zephaniah Williams, one of the leaders of the Chartist march on Newport, is arrested on board ship at Cardiff.[4]
• date unknown – Sir Thomas Frankland Lewis resigns as chairman of the Poor Law Commission, to be replaced by his son, George Cornewall Lewis.

Arts and literature

New books

• William Bingley – Excursions in North Wales
• Maria James – Wales and other Poems
• William Williams (Caledfryn) – Drych Barddonol

Music

• John Roberts (Ieuan Gwyllt) – Hafilah (hymn tune)

Births

• 9 January – Sarah Jane Rees (Cranogwen), writer (d. 1916)
• 13 February – Robert Bird, politician (d. 1909)
• 7 March – Ludwig Mond, German-born industrialist (d. 1909)
• 31 March – Thomas Henry Thomas (Arlunydd Penygarn) later known as T. H. Thomas, artist (d. 1915)
• 24 September – John Neale Dalton, royal chaplain and tutor (d. 1931)

Deaths

• 11 May – "Doctor" John Harries, Cwrt-y-cadno, physician, 54
• 16 May – Edward Clive, 1st Earl of Powis, 84
• 20 May – Rice Rees, historian, 35
• 29 December – Hopkin Bevan, minister and author, 74

References

1. A Gwent Anthology. Christopher Davies. 1988. p. 134. ISBN 978-0-7154-0655-7.
2. Paul Smith (12 September 1996). Disraeli: A Brief Life. Cambridge University Press. pp. 37. ISBN 978-0-521-38150-5.
3. "John Lovell and the People's Charter". The struggle for democracy. Kew: The National Archives. 2003. Archived from the original on 26 September 2007. Retrieved 11 May 2019.
4. David Egan (1 January 1987). People, Protest, and Politics: Case Studies in Nineteenth Century Wales. Gomer Press. p. 85. ISBN 978-0-86383-350-2.