1824 in the United Kingdom

Events from the year 1824 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch – George IV
• Prime Minister – Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool (Tory)
• Home Secretary – Robert Peel
• Foreign Secretary – George Canning

Events

• 8 January – after much controversy, Michael Faraday is finally elected as a member of the Royal Society with only two votes against him.
• 22 January –
  First Anglo-Ashanti War: Battle of Nsamankow – forces of the Ashanti Empire crush British forces in the Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana), killing the British governor Sir Charles MacCarthy
  .
• 4 March – Sir William Hillary founds the National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck, after 1854 known as the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.^[1]
• 5 March – First Anglo-Burmese War begins.
• 17 March – Anglo-Dutch Treaty signed in London.
• 2 April – the British government buys John Julius Angerstein's art collection for £60,000 for the purpose of establishing a National Gallery in London which opens to the public in his former townhouse on 10 May.^[2]
• 7 April – the Mechanics' Institute, predecessor of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, is founded.
• May–July – King Kamehameha II of Hawaii and his Queen Consort Kamāmalu make a state visit to London, where they both die of measles before they can meet George IV.
• 10 May –
  First Burmese War: the British take Rangoon
  .
• 16 June –
  Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals established.^[3][4]
• 17 June – the
  Weights and Measures Act^[5] legally abolishes use of many traditional measures in favour of Imperial units
  .
• 21 June – the Vagrancy Act for the first time makes begging or sleeping in the street criminal offences in England.^[6]
• 7 August –
  First Anglo-Ashanti War ends when forces of the Ashanti Empire flee the field.^[7]
• 13 September – with his crew and 29
  Redcliffe City, Queensland in Australia, after leaving Sydney
  .
• 10 October –
  James Braidwood, the first in Britain.^[8]
• 15–21 November –
  Great Fire of Edinburgh, starting in Old Assembly Close, kills 11 residents and 2 firemen, and destroys 24 tenements, leaving 400 families homeless, and other properties, including the spire of Tron Kirk
  .
• 23 November – Great storm in the English Channel; The Cobb (Lyme Regis) and Chesil Beach are breached.^[9]

Undated

• The Rev. Professor William Buckland becomes the first person to describe a dinosaur in a scientific journal.^[10]
• The Norfolk and Norwich Festival is established as a triennial event.
• Work commences on the reconstruction of
  Jeffry Wyattville
  .
• Speyside Scotch whisky distilleries established in Scotland: Balmenach, Glenlivet and Macallan.

Ongoing events

• Anglo-Ashanti war (1823–1831)
• First Burmese War
  (1823–1826)

Publications

• 24 January – first issue of the radical quarterly founded by
  Westminster Review
  .
• James Hogg's novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (anonymously).
• Thomas Moore's Memoirs of Captain Rock
• James Justinian Morier's The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan
• Sir Walter Scott's novel Redgauntlet (anonymously).

Births

• 8 January – Wilkie Collins, novelist (died 1889)
• 15 January – Anna Mary Howitt, writer, painter and feminist (died 1884)
• 7 February – William Huggins, astronomer (died 1910)
• 10 February – Samuel Plimsoll, politician and social reformer (died 1898)
• 19 March – William Allingham, author (died 1889)
• 20 June – George Edmund Street, architect (died 1881)
• 26 June –
  William Thomson, afterwards Lord Kelvin
  , physicist and engineer (died 1907)
• 6 July –
  Society of St. John the Evangelist
  (died 1915)
• 27 October – Edward Maitland, humanitarian writer and occultist (died 1897)
• 10 December – George MacDonald, Scottish-born author, poet and Christian minister (died 1905)

Deaths

• 1 February – John Lemprière, classical scholar (born c. 1765 in Jersey)
• 30 March – Thomas Maurice, poet and scholar (born 1754)
• 13 April – Jane Taylor, poet and novelist (born 1783)
• 19 April – Lord Byron, poet (born 1788)
• 26 May – Capel Lofft, writer (born 1751)
• 25 July – William Sharp, engraver (born 1749)
• 23 September – John Cartwright, political reformer (born 1740)
• 10 October – Thomas Thorne, fictitious poet
• 17 October – Elizabeth Cobbold, poet (born 1767)
• 30 October – Charles Robert Maturin, Irish writer (born 1773)
• 30 November – Henry Fauntleroy (born 1784), forger executed for fraud
• 21 December – James Parkinson, surgeon (born 1755)

Undated

• William Howgill, organist and composer (born 1768/9)

References