1807 in the United Kingdom

Events from the year 1807 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• George III
• Prime Minister – William Grenville, 1st Baron Grenville (Coalition) (until 31 March); William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland (Tory) (starting 31 March)
• Foreign Secretary – Charles Grey, Viscount Howick (until 25 March) George Canning (from 25 March)
• Lord Liverpool
  (from 25 March)

Events

• 1 January – The island of Curaçao is captured by Admiral Charles Brisbane.^[1]
• 7 January – The United Kingdom issues an Order in Council prohibiting British ships from trading with France or its allies.^[2]
• 28 January – Pall Mall, London becomes the first street with gas lighting^[3] in a demonstration by Frederick Albert Winsor.
• 3 February – Napoleonic Wars and Anglo-Spanish War – Battle of Montevideo: the British Army captures Montevideo from the Spanish Empire as part of the British invasions of the River Plate.
• 18 February – The
  Manby Mortar.^[4]
• 23 February
  • Around forty people are killed in a crush attending a public hanging in London.^[5]
  • The Slave Trade Act is passed in the House of Commons by an overwhelming majority.^[6]
• 25 March
  • The Slave Trade Act becomes law, abolishing the slave trade throughout the British Empire^[7] with effect from 1 May (slavery itself is abolished in British colonies in 1833).
  • The
    railway
    in the world.
• 31 March –
  Ministry of all the Talents
  .
• 18 April – Harwich ferry disaster: 60 to 90 soldiers and their families drown when a boat capsizes off Landguard Fort.
• 4 May–9 June – The Duke of Portland wins the general election.
• 31 May –
  North Staffordshire.^[8]
• June – First Ascot Gold Cup held.^[9]
• 22 June – Chesapeake–Leopard affair: Royal Navy warship HMS Leopard attacks and boards the United States Navy frigate USS Chesapeake off Norfolk, Virginia, seeking deserters.
• 5 July – Disastrous attack on Buenos Aires.
• 7–9 July –
  Peace of Tilsit between France, Prussia and Russia. Napoleon and Emperor Alexander I of Russia
  ally together against the British.
• 13 July – With the death at Frascati of Cardinal Henry Benedict Stuart, the last Stuart claimant to the throne, the movement of Jacobitism comes to an effective end.
• 27 July – Kitty's Amelia sails from Liverpool on the last legal slaving voyage for a British vessel.^[7]
• 2–7 September –
  Dano-Norwegian navy from surrendering to Napoleon
  . One third of the city is destroyed and two thousand citizens killed.
• 2 September – Anglo-Russian War (1807–1812): Russia declares war on the United Kingdom.
• 13 November – Geological Society founded in London.
• 20 November –
  packet ship) sink in a storm in Dublin Bay with around 400 drowned.^[10]
• 5–11 December – Napoleonic Wars:
  Griessie on Java in the Dutch East Indies, eliminating the last Dutch naval force in the Pacific and concluding the Java campaign of 1806–1807.^[11]
• 22 December – The
  Embargo Act in response to the Orders in Council
  .
• 29 December – The Royal Navy ship of the line HMS Anson runs aground on Loe Bar, Cornwall, with around sixty people drowned, inspiring Henry Trengrouse to invent a rocket apparatus for saving life from shipwrecks.^[12]
• Undated – Potassium and sodium isolated by Sir Humphry Davy.

Ongoing

• Anglo-Spanish War, 1796–1808
• Napoleonic Wars, 1803–1815

Publications

• Charles and Mary Lamb's children's book Tales from Shakespeare.^[13]
• Benjamin Tabart's version of the fairy tale The History of Jack and the Bean-Stalk.
• Poems in Two Volumes, including "Resolution and Independence", "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud", "Ode: Intimations of Immortality" and "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
  ".

• 8 February – Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, sculptor and natural history artist (died 1894)
• 3 April
  • Mary Carpenter, educational and social reformer (died 1877)
  • Jane Digby, aristocratic adventuress (died 1881 in Syria)
• 31 August – Thomas Miller, "ploughboy poet" and novelist (died 1874)
• 8 October – Harriet Taylor Mill, philosophical writer (died 1858)
• 19 October – Edward Bigge, Archdeacon of Lindisfarne (died 1844)
• 30 October – Christopher Wordsworth, Anglican bishop and Biblical commentator (died 1885)
• 30 November – William Farr, epidemiologist (died 1883)

Deaths

• 5 January – Isaac Reed, Shakespearean editor (born 1742)
• 15 April – Durham Ox, shorthorn bull (born 1796)
• 18 May –
  John Douglas
  , Anglican bishop (born 1721)
• 13 July – Henry Benedict Stuart, claimant to the throne of the United Kingdom (born 1725)
• 18 July – Thomas Jones, mathematician (born 1756)
• 14 September – George Townshend, 1st Marquess Townshend, field marshal (born 1724)
• 21 December – John Newton, cleric and hymnist (born 1725)

References