1824 in the United Kingdom

1824 in the United Kingdom:

Other years

1822 | 1823 | 1824 | 1825 | 1826

Events from the year 1824 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch - George IV
• Prime Minister - Earl of Liverpool (Tory)

Events

• 8 January - After much controversy, Michael Faraday is finally elected as a member of the Royal Society with only one vote against him.
• 22 January - Ashanti crush British forces in the Gold Coast (See also Wars between Britain and Ashanti in Ghana and Ashanti Confederacy).
• 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.
• 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.
• 7 April - The Mechanics' Institute, now 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 smallpox.
• 10 May - First Burmese War: The British take Rangoon.
• 16 June - Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals established.
• 21 June - The Vagrancy Act for the first time makes begging or sleeping in the street criminal offences in England.
• 13 September - With his crew and 29 convicts aboard the Amity, John Oxley arrives at and founds the Moreton Bay Penal Settlement at what is now Redcliffe in Queensland, Australia, after leaving Sydney.
• 10 October - Edinburgh Town Council makes a decision to found a municipal fire brigade under James Braidwood, the first in Britain.
• 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.

Undated

• The Rev. Professor William Buckland becomes the first person to describe a dinosaur in a scientific journal.
• Work commences on the reconstruction of Windsor Castle, Berkshire, to the design of Jeffry Wyattville.
• The Weights and Measures Act legally abolishes use of many traditional measures in favour of Imperial units.
• 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 Jeremy Bentham, The Westminster Review.
• James Hogg's novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (anonymously).
• Sir Walter Scott's novel Redgauntlet (anonymously).

Births

• 8 January - Wilkie Collins, novelist (died 1889)
• 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 - Richard Meux Benson, founder of the Society of St. John the Evangelist (died 1915)
• 10 December - George MacDonald, writer (died 1905)

Deaths

• 1 February - John Lemprière, classical scholar (born 1765, Jersey)
• 19 April - George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, poet (born 1788)
• 26 May - Capel Lofft, writer (born 1751)
• 25 July - William Sharp, engraver (born 1749)
• 30 October - Charles Robert Maturin, Irish writer (born 1773)