1841 in the United Kingdom

1841 in the United Kingdom

Other years

1839 | 1840 | 1841 | 1842 | 1843

Sport

1841 English cricket season

Events from the year 1841 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria
• Prime Minister – William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne (Whig) (until 30 August); Robert Peel (Conservative) (starting 30 August)
• Parliament – 13th (until 23 June), 14th (starting 19 August)

Events

• 20 January – Convention of Chuenpi agreed between Charles Elliot and Qishan of the Qing dynasty.
• 26 January – the United Kingdom formally occupies Hong Kong.
• 27 January – the active volcano Mount Erebus in Antarctica is discovered and named by James Clark Ross.[1]
• 28 January – Ross discovers the "Victoria Barrier", later known as the Ross Ice Shelf.
• February – H. Fox Talbot obtains a patent for the calotype process in photography.[2]
• 10 February – Penny Red postage stamp replaces the Penny Black.[3]
• 20 February – the Governor Fenner, carrying emigrants to America, sinks off Holyhead with the loss of 123 lives.
• 1 March – opening throughout of the Manchester and Leeds Railway, the first to cross the Pennines.[4]
• 4 March – first performance of Dion Boucicault's comedy London Assurance, presented by Charles Mathews at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden.
• 3 May – New Zealand becomes a British colony.[5]
• 6 June (Sunday)
  • United Kingdom Census held, the first to record names and approximate ages of every household member and to be administered nationally.
  • Marian Hughes becomes the first woman to take religious vows in communion with the Anglican Province of Canterbury since the Reformation, making them privately to E. B. Pusey in Oxford.[6]
• 7 June – Lord Melbourne loses a vote of no confidence against his government.
• 21 June – St. Chad's Cathedral, Birmingham, dedicated as a Roman Catholic church.[7]
• 29 June – 22 July – general election – Sir Robert Peel's Conservatives take control of the House of Commons.
• 30 June – Great Western Railway completed throughout between London and Bristol.[8]
• 5 July – Thomas Cook arranges his first excursion, taking 570 temperance campaigners on the Midland Counties Railway from Leicester to a rally in Loughborough.[5][9]
• 17 July – first edition of the humorous magazine Punch published.[10]
• 26 July – the proprietors of The Skerries Lighthouse off Anglesey, the last privately owned light in the British Isles, are awarded £444,984 in compensation for its sale to Trinity House.[11]
• 28 August – Melbourne resigns as Prime Minister; replaced by Robert Peel.[12]
• 2 September – reconsecration of Leeds Parish Church after reconstruction.[13]
• 21 September – the London and Brighton Railway is opened throughout.[14]
• 24 September – United Kingdom annexes Sarawak from Brunei; James Brooke is appointed rajah.
• 10 October – First Opium War: Battle of Chinhai – British capture a Chinese garrison.
• 13 October – First Opium War: British occupy Ningbo.
• 27 October – Anglican clergyman Richard Sibthorp becomes the first Tractarian to be received into the Roman Catholic Church, by Nicholas Wiseman at St Mary's College, Oscott (he reconverts two years later).
• 30 October – a fire at the Tower of London destroys its Grand Armoury and causes a quarter of a million pounds worth of damage.[15]
• 13 November – surgeon James Braid attends his first demonstration of animal magnetism, which leads to his study of the subject he eventually calls hypnotism.
• 23 December – First Anglo-Afghan War: at a meeting with the Afghan general Akbar Khan, the diplomat Sir William Hay Macnaghten is shot dead at close quarters.

Undated

• Antarctic explorer James Clark Ross additionally discovers the Ross Sea, Victoria Land and Mount Terror.
• Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew first opens to the public[12] and William Hooker appointed director.
• Chemical Society of London founded by Thomas Graham.
• London Library founded in Pall Mall.[12]
• Ulster Canal completed.[16]

Ongoing events

• First Opium War (1839–1842)
• First Anglo-Afghan War (1839–1842)

Publications

• W. Harrison Ainsworth's novel Old St. Paul's: A Tale of the Plague and the Fire (serialised in The Sunday Times, 3 January – 26 December).
• Thomas Carlyle's lectures On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History.
• Serialisation of Charles Dickens's novel Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty.
• Mrs Gore's novel Cecil, or Adventures of a Coxcomb.
• John Henry Newman's Tract 90 (Remarks on Certain Passages in the Thirty-Nine Articles, dated 25 January).
• Augustus Pugin's lectures The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture.
• Samuel Warren's novel Ten Thousand a Year.[17]
• Vocal Melodies of Scotland, containing the first publication of the song "The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond".
• The Gardeners' Chronicle launched.
• The Jewish Chronicle launched; the first Jewish newspaper in the UK,[5] it will be the oldest continuously published in the world when it ceases publication in 2020 (12 November).[18]

Births

• 25 January – Jackie Fisher, admiral (died 1920)
• 28 January – Henry Morton Stanley, explorer and journalist (died 1904)
• 9 November – Edward VII (died 1910)
• William George Aston, consular official (died 1911)

Deaths

• 2 February – Olinthus Gregory, mathematician (born 1774)
• 12 February – Astley Cooper, surgeon and anatomist (born 1768)
• 17 February – Joseph Chitty, lawyer and legal writer (born 1775)
• 20 May – Joseph Blanco White, theologian (born 1775)
• 1 June – Sir David Wilkie, Scottish painter (born 1785)
• 3 July – Rosemond Mountain, actress and singer (born 1780s?)
• 24 August – Theodore Hook, author (born 1788)
• 1 December – George Birkbeck, doctor, academic and philanthropist (born 1776)
• 23 December – William Hay Macnaghten, Anglo-Indian diplomat (born 1793)

See also

• 1841 in Scotland

References

1. Ross, Voyage to the Southern Seas, 1, pp. 216–8.
2. The Hutchinson Factfinder. Helicon. 1999. ISBN 1-85986-000-1.
3. Blake, Richard. The Book of Postal Dates, 1635–1985. Caterham: Marden. p. 10.
4. Marshall, John (1969). The Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway, vol. 1. Newton Abbot: David & Charles. ISBN 0-7153-4352-1.
5. Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006. ISBN 0-14-102715-0.
6. Bonham, Valerie (2004). "Hughes, Marian Rebecca (1817–1912)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 26 November 2010.
7. Stanton, Phoebe. Pugin. pp. 557–66.
8. Body, Geoffrey (1985). Western Handbook – a digest of GWR and WR data. Weston-super-Mare: British Rail (Western). ISBN 0-905466-70-5.
9. Derby Railway History Research Group (1989). The Midland Counties Railway. Gwernymynydd: Railway and Canal Historical Society. ISBN 0-901461-11-3.
10. Spielmann, Marion Harry (1895). The History of "Punch". p. 27.
11. Thorpe, Trefor. "Between a rock and a wet place". Cadw. Archived from the original on 2 March 2005. Retrieved 23 February 2011.
12. Palmer, Alan; Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. pp. 264–266. ISBN 0-7126-5616-2.
13. "History". Leeds Parish Church. Archived from the original on 30 April 2011. Retrieved 4 May 2011.
14. Turner, J. T. Howard (1977). The London, Brighton and South Coast Railway: 1, Origins and Formation. London: Batsford. ISBN 0-7134-0275-X.
15. Weinreb, Ben; Hibbert, Christopher (1995). The London Encyclopaedia. Macmillan. p. 287. ISBN 0-333-57688-8.
16. Delany, Ruth (1986). A celebration of 250 years of Ireland's Inland Waterways. Belfast: Appletree Press. ISBN 0-86281-200-3.
17. Leavis, Q. D. (1965). Fiction and the Reading Public (2nd ed.). London: Chatto & Windus.
18. "The Jewish Chronicle and Anglo-Jewry, 1841–1991". Cambridge University Press.