1817 in the United Kingdom

Events from the year 1817 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch – George III
• Regent – George, Prince Regent
• Prime Minister – Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool (Tory)
• Foreign Secretary – Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh
• Home Secretary – Lord Sidmouth
• Secretary of War – Lord Bathurst

Events

Waterloo Bridge opens June 1817. Waterloo Bridge and the Lambeth Waterfront from Westminster Stairs by Charles Deane

• January – The Black Dwarf is first published in London as a satirical radical unstamped newspaper by journalist Thomas Jonathan Wooler.
• 20 January – HMS Jasper is wrecked in the vicinity of Plymouth Sound by hurricane-force winds with the loss of 65 lives. ^[1]
• 25 January – The Scotsman is first published in Edinburgh as a liberal weekly newspaper by lawyer William Ritchie and customs official Charles Maclaren. ^[2]
• February – Last major Luddite attack, against lace-making machines in Loughborough. ^[3]
• 4 March – Habeas corpus suspended amidst fears of insurrection (to January 1818). ^[3]
• 10 March – The Blanketeers set out to march from Manchester to London; on 11 March, 160 are arrested at Stockport. ^[4]
• 1 April – Blackwood's Magazine is launched as the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine, a Tory publication. In October the publisher, William Blackwood, relaunches it as Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine.
• 3 April – 'Princess Caraboo' appears in Almondsbury in Gloucestershire.
• 9–10 June – Pentrich Rising: Army prevents protesting labourers from Derbyshire, roused by an agent provocateur, marching on Nottingham. ^[3]
• 18 June – Waterloo Bridge opens in London. ^[5]
• 5 July – The Sovereign coin is reintroduced. ^[5]
• December – Publication together of Jane Austen's first and last completed novels, respectively Northanger Abbey and Persuasion , by John Murray in London (dated 1818), five months after the author's death at Winchester. Her brother Henry Austen contributes a biographical note which for the first time publicly identifies her as the author of all her (previously anonymous) novels.
• 18–20 December – William Hone successfully defends himself in a London court on charges arising from his publication of political satires.

Undated

• Dulwich Picture Gallery in London, designed by John Soane as Britain's first purpose-built public art gallery, is completed and opened to the general public.
• Elgin Marbles displayed in British Museum.
• John Kidd extracts naphthalene from coal tar.
• A typhus epidemic occurs in Edinburgh and Glasgow.
• John Constable paints Flatford Mill . ^[3]
• Gas lighting is introduced on stage in London's West End theatres: on 6 August by The English Opera House (extended to the auditorium on 8 September) and on 6 September at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane (where it is already installed in the auditorium and foyer) and Theatre Royal, Covent Garden (as a demonstration). ^{[3] [6]}
• Approximate date – Britain's longest tramroad tunnel is opened at Blaenavon, more than a mile (2400m) in length. ^[7]

Publications

• Jane Austen's novels Northanger Abbey and Persuasion .
• Lord Byron's dramatic poem Manfred .
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Biographia Literaria .
• Thomas Moore's poem Lalla Rookh: an oriental romance . ^[8]
• Thomas Love Peacock's novel Melincourt .
• David Ricardo's treatise On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation .
• Thomas Rickman's An Attempt to discriminate the Styles of English Architecture from the Conquest to the Reformation, the first systematic treatise on Gothic architecture.
• Walter Scott's anonymous novel Rob Roy .
• Percy Bysshe Shelley's travelogue History of a Six Weeks' Tour (largely the work of Mary Shelley) and poem Hymn to Intellectual Beauty .

Births

• 6 January – James Joseph McCarthy, architect (died 1882)
• 8 January – Sir Theophilus Shepstone, British-born South African statesman (died 1893)
• 23 January – John Cassell, publisher and entrepreneur (died 1865)
• 29 January – John Callcott Horsley, painter (died 1903)
• 23 February – George Frederic Watts, painter and sculptor (died 1904)
• 13 April – George Holyoake, secularist and promoter of the cooperative movement (died 1906)
• 1 June – David Lyall, botanist (died 1895)
• 30 June – Joseph Dalton Hooker, botanist (died 1911)
• 5 July – John Loughborough Pearson, Gothic architect (died 1897)
• 15 July – John Fowler, civil engineer (died 1898)
• 1 August – Richard Dadd, painter (died insane 1886)
• 13 December – Arthur Hill Hassall, physician, microbiologist and chemical analyst (died 1894)

Deaths

• 8 February – Francis Horner, Scottish politician, economist (born 1778)
• 18 July – Jane Austen, novelist (born 1775)
• 31 July – Benjamin Hall, Welsh ironmaster and politician (born 1778)
• 13 October – Julius Caesar Ibbetson, landscape painter (born 1759)
• 6 November – Princess Charlotte, daughter of the Prince and Princess of Wales and second in line to the throne (born 1796)
• 7 December – William Bligh, admiral (born 1754)
• 27 December – Sir Richard Onslow, 1st Baronet, naval commander (born 1741)
• 28 December – Charles Burney, classical scholar and book collector (born 1757)

References

1. Lettens, Jan. "HMS Jasper (+1817)". wrecksite. Retrieved 13 May 2021.
2. "The Scotsman". Edinburgh: The Scotsman Digital Archive. 25 January 1817. Retrieved 6 November 2012.
3. Palmer, Alan; Palmer, Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. pp. 249–250. ISBN   0-7126-5616-2.
4. "Timeline History of Manchester". Welcome to Manchester. visitoruk.com. Retrieved 4 November 2016.
5. Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006. ISBN   0-14-102715-0.
6. "Theatres Compete in Race to Install Gas Illumination – 1817" (PDF). Over The Footlights. Retrieved 20 May 2014.
7. van Laun, John (2001). Early Limestone Railways. London: Newcomen Society. p. 50. ISBN   0-904685-09-8.
8. Cox, Michael, ed. (2004). The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature . Oxford University Press. ISBN   0-19-860634-6.