1843 in the United Kingdom

Events from the year 1843 in the United Kingdom .

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria
• Prime Minister – Robert Peel (Conservative)
• Foreign Secretary – George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen

Events

• January – Quaker magazine The Friend begins publication.^{[ citation needed ]}
• 6 January – Antarctic explorer James Clark Ross discovers Snow Hill Island.^{[ citation needed ]}
• 20 January – Daniel M'Naghten shoots and kills the Prime Minister's private secretary, Edward Drummond, in Whitehall. ^[1]
• 4 March – M'Naghten is found not guilty of murder "by reason of insanity", giving rise to the M'Naghten Rules on criminal responsibility, and subsequently committed to Bethlem Hospital. ^[1]
• 24 March – Battle of Hyderabad: The Bombay Army led by Major General Sir Charles Napier defeats the Talpur Mirs, securing Sindh province for the British Raj.^{[ citation needed ]}
• 25 March – Marc Isambard Brunel's Thames Tunnel, the first tunnel under the River Thames, is opened to pedestrians. ^[2]
• 27 March – decision in Foss v Harbottle , a leading precedent in English corporate law, declares that in any action in which a wrong is alleged to have been done to a company, the proper claimant is the company itself and not individual shareholders. ^[3]
• 4 April – William Wordsworth accepts the office of Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom following the death of Robert Southey on 21 March. ^[4]
• April – Protestant Martyrs' Memorial erected in Oxford. ^[5]
• 4 May – Natal proclaimed British colony. ^[6]
• 18 May – the Disruption of the Church of Scotland takes place in Edinburgh.
• ? May – Blackgang Chine on the Isle of Wight opens as an amusement park.
• 19 July – Isambard Kingdom Brunel's SS Great Britain is launched from Bristol. ^[7]
• 5 August – Sarah Dazley, the last woman to be executed in public in England, is hanged for mariticide outside Bedford Prison.
• 22 August – Theatres Act ends the virtual monopoly on theatrical performances held by the patent theatres, encouraging the development of popular entertainment. ^[6]
• September – Ada Lovelace translates and expands Menabrea's notes on Charles Babbage's analytical engine, including an algorithm for calculating a sequence of Bernoulli numbers, regarded as the world's first computer program. ^[8]
• 2 September – The Economist newspaper first published (preliminary issue dated August).
• 1 October – News of the World newspaper first published. ^[2] It will survive until 2011.
• 3–4 November – the statue of Nelson is placed atop Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square, London. ^[2]
• 13 December – Basutoland becomes a British protectorate. ^[6]
• 17 December – publication of Charles Dickens' novella A Christmas Carol by Chapman & Hall in London at his expense. It introduces the character Ebenezer Scrooge. Released on 19 December, the first printing sells out by Christmas Eve ^[9] and inspires charitable giving. ^[10]
• December – the world's first Christmas cards, commissioned by Sir Henry Cole in London from the artist John Callcott Horsley, are sent. ^[11]
• Undated
  • The Albert helmet, devised in 1842 by the Prince Consort, is adopted by the Household Cavalry. ^[12]
  • Liverpool Victoria Friendly Society founded as a burial society.
  • Marlborough College founded in Wiltshire for the education of the sons of Church of England clergy.
  • Alfred Bird produces baking powder for the first time, in Birmingham. ^[13]

Publications

• Charles Dickens's novel Martin Chuzzlewit (begins serialisation January) and novella A Christmas Carol .
• John Stuart Mill's book A System of Logic .
• John Ruskin's book Modern Painters , vol. 1.
• Robert Smith Surtees' comic novel Handley Cross.

Births

• 25 April – Princess Alice, member of the royal family (died 1878)
• 30 June – Ernest Mason Satow, diplomat and scholar (died 1929)
• 5 July – Mandell Creighton, historian and Bishop of London (died 1901)
• 4 September – Jabez Balfour, businessman, politician and fraudster (died 1916)

Deaths

• 9 January – William Hedley, inventor and locomotive engineer (born 1779)
• 20 February – Mary Hays, writer and feminist (born 1759)
• 21 March – Robert Southey, poet (born 1774)
• 25 March – Robert Murray M'Cheyne, clergyman (born 1813)
• 21 April – Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex (born 1773)
• 1 June – William Abbot, actor (born 1798)
• 25 July – Charles Macintosh, Scottish chemist (born 1766) ^[14]
• 16 August – Henry Acton, Unitarian minister (born 1797)
• 18 December – Thomas Graham, Lord Lynedoch, Governor-General of India (born 1748)

References

1. Moran, Richard (2004). "McNaughtan, Daniel (1802/3–1865)" . Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/39433 . Retrieved 2 February 2011.(Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.)
2. Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006. ISBN   0-14-102715-0.
3. Slapper, Gary (19 June 2008). "The cases that changed Britain: 1785-1869". The Times . Retrieved 16 June 2011.^{[ dead link ]}
4. Pinion, F. B. (1988). A Wordsworth Chronology. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press. p. 201. ISBN   0-333-38860-7.
5. Lewis, Darcy (2006). "Timeline: Oxford". TimeTravel-Britain.com. Retrieved 18 October 2010.
6. Palmer, Alan; Palmer, Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. pp. 266–267. ISBN   0-7126-5616-2.
7. "Royal Visit". The Bristol Mirror. 20 July 1843. pp. 1–2.
8. Fuegi, John; Francis, Jo (October–December 2003). "Lovelace & Babbage and the creation of the 1843 'notes'". IEEE Annals of the History of Computing . 25 (4): 16–26. doi:10.1109/MAHC.2003.1253887.
9. Dickens, Charles (2006). Douglas-Fairhurst, Robert (ed.). A Christmas Carol and other Christmas Books. Oxford world's classics. Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0-19-280694-9.
10. The Man Who Invented Christmas (Film). 2017.
11. Buday, György (1992). "The history of the Christmas card". Omnigraphics: 8.
12. Hoare, Nell; et al. (1990). Exploring Museums: The Home Counties. H.M.S.O. p. 104. ISBN   978-0-11-290471-7.
13. Cannon, Matthew (3 November 2014). "Alfred Bird: Egg-free custard inventor and chemist". Birmingham Mail. Retrieved 25 February 2018.
14. Day, Lance; McNeil, Ian (11 September 2002). Biographical Dictionary of the History of Technology. Routledge. p. 786. ISBN   978-1-134-65019-4.