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 – At Paviland Cave on the Gower Peninsula, William Buckland inspects the "Red Lady of Paviland", the first identification of a prehistoric (male) human burial (although Buckland dates it as Roman). [1]
- 20 February – Explorer James Weddell's expedition to Antarctica reaches latitude 74°15' S and longitude 34°16'45" W, further south than any ship has reached previously.
- March – Royal Academy of Music opens in London. [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, starting to reverse the Bloody Code; [2] in particular, the 4 July 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, begins the process of prison reform based on the campaign of Elizabeth Fry. [2]
- 18 July – Excise Act reduces duties on the distillation of whisky, encouraging its commercial production.
- 28 July – The first theatrical adaptation of the Frankenstein story, Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein , opens at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in London. On August 29, Mary Shelley attends a performance, the only version of her novel she will ever see. [5]
- 18 August – Demerara rebellion of 1823: In the British colony of Demerara-Essequibo (modern-day Guyana in South America), an insurrection of 10,000 black slaves begins; it is suppressed after three days, but hundreds of suspects are executed in the reprisals that follow. [6]
- 23 September – First Burmese War: Burmese attack the British on Shapura, an island close to Chittagong.
- November – According to tradition, William Webb Ellis invents rugby. [2]
- 3 November – An explosion at the Rainton Colliery Company's Plain Pit mine at Chilton Moor in County Durham kills at least 57 coal miners, six years after an accident at the same pit killed 27. [7]
- 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. [8]
- 10 December – Mary Anning finds the first complete Plesiosaurus skeleton, on the Jurassic Coast. [9]
Undated
- Beginning of the first Anglo-Ashanti war.
- Oxford Union established by University of Oxford students as the Oxford United Debating Society.