1803 in the United Kingdom
1803 in the United Kingdom |
Other years |
1801 | 1802 | 1803 | 1804 | 1805 |
Constituent countries of the United Kingdom |
England | Ireland | Scotland | Wales |
Sport |
1803 English cricket season |
Events from the year 1803 in the United Kingdom.
Incumbents
- Monarch – George III
- Henry Addington (Tory)
- Foreign Secretary – Lord Hawkesbury
Events
- 4 January – William Symington demonstrates his Charlotte Dundas, the "first practical steamboat".
- 21 February – Colonel hanged, drawn and quartered in England, although prior to execution the sentence has been commuted to simple hanging and beheading, which is carried out on the gatehouse roof at Horsemonger Lane Gaol in London before a crowd of at least 20,000, one of the largest public gatherings ever up to this date.[1][2]
- 2 April – Easton Massacre: British sailors shoot and kill three men, and fatally injure a woman, at Easton, Dorset, during an unlawful attempt to press men of the village into service.
- 18 May – Napoleonic Wars: The U.K. redeclares war on France after France refuses to withdraw from Dutch territory.[3]
- 25 May – House of Commons.[4]
- June – Britain captures Tobago and Saint Lucia from France.[5]
- 9 June – Matthew Flinders completes the first known circumnavigation of Australia.[6]
- 24 June –
- 23 July – Emmet's insurrection in Ireland: United Irishman Robert Emmet stages a rising in Dublin which is quelled by the military, with approximately fifty rebels and twenty soldiers dead. The Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, Lord Kilwarden, is hacked to death.[3]
- 26 July – The Surrey Iron Railway, a wagonway between Wandsworth and Croydon, is opened, being the first public railway line in England.
- 27 July – Caledonian Canal authorized by Act of Parliament and construction begins;[3] Thomas Telford also begins work on improving roads in Scotland.[5]
- 3 August – British begin Sindhia of Gwalior
- 6 September – atomic theory, the first to do so.
- 20 September – Irish rebel Robert Emmet is hanged for high treason in Dublin.[5]
- 23 September – The Maratha forces.[5]
- 21 October –
- 31 December – "Sitting on the very sheepfold, dear William (
Ongoing
- Anglo-Spanish War, 1796–1808
Undated
- Smithson Tennant discovers the chemical elements iridium and osmium.
- William Hyde Wollaston discovers the chemical element rhodium.
- ploughshare in Ipswich.
- Frederick Albert Winsor gives a demonstration of gas lighting at the old Lyceum Theatre, London.[11]
- The British Army adopts the anti-personnel shell invented by Henry Shrapnel.[3]
- Pantaloons sanctioned for wear on military campaigns.[12]
- Martello towers planned to protect the coasts of south east England against the threat of French invasion.[5]
- Joseph Lancaster publishes Improvements in Education as it Respects the Industrious Classes.
- Humphry Repton publishes Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening.
- Jane Porter's historical novel Thaddeus of Warsaw is published, immediately going through several editions.[13]
- Jane Austen's novel Northanger Abbey, a satire on Gothic fiction, is advertised by a London publisher but is not in fact published until 1817, after her death.[14]
Births
- 20 May – Ann Walker, landowner, philanthropist (died 1854)
- 25 May – Edward Bulwer-Lytton, novelist and playwright (died 1873)
- 24 June – George James Webb, English-born composer (died 1887)
- 3 August – Joseph Paxton, gardener and architect (died 1865)
- 16 October – Robert Stephenson, engineer (died 1859)
- 6 December – Susanna Moodie, writer (died 1885)
- 21 December – Joseph Whitworth, engineer and entrepreneur (died 1887)
- Undated – George Myers, master builder (died 1875)
Deaths
- 23 January – Arthur Guinness, Irish brewer (born 1725)
- 2 April – Sir James Montgomery, 1st Baronet, politician and judge (born 1721)
- 6 April – William Hamilton, diplomat (born 1730)
- 19 April – Thomas Jones, landscape painter (born 1742)
- 8 May – John Joseph Merlin, clock- and musical-instrument-maker and inventor (born 1735 in Liège)
- 3 June – Lord George Murray, Bishop of St David's and developer of the UK's first optical telegraph (born 1761))
- 8 July – Frederick Hervey, 4th Earl of Bristol, Anglican Bishop of Derry, art collector and philanthropist (born 1730)
- 26 October – Granville Leveson-Gower, 1st Marquess of Stafford, politician (born 1721)
References
- ^ Conner, Clifford D. (2000). Colonel Despard: The Life and Times of an Anglo-Irish Rebel. Combined Publishing.
- ISBN 0593051955.
- ^ ISBN 0-304-35730-8.
- ^ ""200 years of hacks in the House", BBC News". 22 May 2003. Retrieved 27 March 2008.
- ^ ISBN 0-7126-5616-2.
- ^ "British History Timeline, BBC History". Retrieved 17 February 2008.
- ^ "Lord Ellenborough's Act". Retrieved 17 February 2008.
- ^ Dalton, John (1805). "On the Absorption of Gases by Water and Other Liquids". Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester. 2nd Series. 1: 271–87. Archived from the original on 11 June 2011. Retrieved 27 April 2011.
- ^ "John Dalton, the man and his legacy: the bicentenary of his Atomic Theory". Retrieved 17 February 2008.
- ^ William Wordsworth: A Biography. The Later Years, 1803-1850. Oxford: The Clarendon Press. 1965.
- ^ "Theatres Compete in Race to Install Gas Illumination – 1817" (PDF). Over The Footlights. Retrieved 20 May 2014.
- ISBN 978-0-7478-0767-4.
- ^ Leavis, Q. D. (1965). Fiction and the Reading Public (rev. ed.). London: Chatto & Windus.
- ISBN 0-679-44628-1.