1816 in the United Kingdom

Events from the year 1816 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• George III
• George, Prince Regent
• Prime Minister – Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool (Tory)
• Foreign Secretary – Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh
• Home Secretary – Lord Sidmouth

Events

• 9 January – Sir Humphry Davy's Davy lamp is first tested underground as a coal mining safety lamp at Hebburn Colliery in the Durham Coalfield.^[1]
• 30 January – wrecking of the Sea Horse, Boadicea and Lord Melville (military transport ships) off the coast of Ireland in a gale with the loss of around 570.
• 20 February – Preston becomes the first English town outside London with gas lighting publicly available, promoted by the Jesuit priest Joseph Dunn.^[2]
• 18 March – income tax abolished.^[3]
• 24 April – Lord Byron flees Britain to escape a growing scandal, his failed marriage and his growing debts.
• 2 May –
  Charlotte Augusta
  , daughter of the Prince Regent, but she dies the following year.
• 16 May – Beau Brummell flees England by way of the port of Dover, sailing to France in order to escape his gambling debts.
• 22 May –
  Littleport and Ely riots break out as a result of economic distress in East Anglia.^[4]
• 14 June –
  Society for the Promotion of Permanent and Universal Peace
  established in London.
• 26 June – first prisoners admitted to the National Penitentiary, Millbank Prison, in London.
• 28 June – Luddites destroy the bobbinet lace machines in John Heathcoat's Loughborough factory.
• 13 August – an earthquake in Aberdeen is the strongest ever in Scotland.^[5]
• 27 August – Britain and the
  Barbary states
  .
• 23–27 October – completion of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal.^[6]
• 10 November – troop transport Harpooner, returning from Quebec to Britain, is wrecked at Cape Pine on Newfoundland (island) with the loss of 208 of the 385 people on board.^[7]
• 2 December – Spa Fields riots: a mass meeting of conspirators dispersed by the police.^[8]

Unknown dates

• The
  guinea valued at 21 shillings to the slightly lighter sovereign worth 20 shillings and defining the value of the pound sterling relative to gold.^[9]
• By the Pillory Abolition Act, use of the pillory is limited to punishment for perjury.
• The British found
  Banjul, The Gambia
  .
• A British expedition explores up from the mouth of the Congo River.
• The Elgin Marbles are purchased by the nation from Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, for the British Museum.
• The Nelson Monument, Edinburgh, on Calton Hill, is completed.
• Year Without a Summer.

Publications

• The Prisoner of Chillon, and other poems, by Lord Byron.
• Kubla Khan, poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.^[8]
• "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer", sonnet by John Keats.^[8]
• Glenarvon, novel by Lady Caroline Lamb.
• The Antiquary, The Black Dwarf and Old Mortality, novels by Walter Scott.

Births

• 3 February – Frederick William Robertson, Anglican preacher (died 1853)
• 22 February – Thomas Gambier Parry, fresco painter and art collector (died 1888)
• 17 April - Thomas Hazlehurst, chemical manufacturer and Methodist chapel builder (died 1876)
• 21 April – Charlotte Brontë, English novelist and poet (died 1855)^[10]
• 29 April – (Charles William) Shirley Brooks, journalist (died 1874)
• 30 June – Richard Lindon, developer of the rugby ball (died 1887)
• 16 August –
  University of Wales, Cardiff
  (died 1897)

Deaths

• 5 January –
  George Prévost
  , general, colonial administrator (born 1767 in British North America)
• 27 January – Viscount Hood, admiral (born 1724)
• 22 February – Adam Ferguson, Scottish Enlightenment philosopher and historian (born 1723)
• 5 July – Dorothea Jordan, actress, mistress of King William IV, died in France (born 1761 in Ireland)
• 7 July – Richard Brinsley Sheridan, playwright (born 1751 in Ireland)
• 22 September – Sir Robert Gunning, 1st Baronet, diplomat (born 1731)
• 27 September – Edward Charles Howard, chemical engineer (born 1774)
• 15 December – Charles Stanhope, 3rd Earl Stanhope, statesman and scientist (born 1753)

References