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 — Lord Melbourne (Whig) (until 30 August), Robert Peel (Conservative) (starting 30 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.
• 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]

Ongoing events

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

Publications

• Serialisation of W. Harrison Ainsworth's novel Old St. Paul's: A Tale of the Plague and the Fire 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.
• Samuel Warren's novel Ten Thousand a Year.^[16]
• 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 (12 November).^[17]

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)

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 2010-11-26.
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. Retrieved 2011-02-23.
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. Retrieved 2011-05-04.
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. Leavis, Q.D. (1965). Fiction and the Reading Public (2nd ed.). London: Chatto & Windus.
17. "The Jewish Chronicle and Anglo-Jewry, 1841–1991". Cambridge University Press.