1829 in the United Kingdom

Events from the year 1829 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch – George IV
• Prime Minister – Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (Tory)
• Foreign Secretary – George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen
• Home Secretary – Robert Peel

Events

• 8 January – hanging of body-selling murderer William Burke in Edinburgh. His associate William Hare, who has testified against him, is released.
• 26 January – first performance of Douglas Jerrold's comic nautical melodrama Black-Eyed Susan; or, All in the Downs at the Surrey Theatre in Lambeth; it will run for a new record of well over 150 performances.^[1]
• 1–2 February – York Minster is extensively damaged in a fire started by Jonathan Martin (who is subsequently acquitted of arson on the grounds of insanity).^[2]
• March 5 – Jack Adams, last of the Bounty mutineers, dies on Pitcairn Island.
• 21 March – a duel is fought between the Prime Minister (the Duke of Wellington) and George Finch-Hatton, 10th Earl of Winchilsea, in Battersea Fields, provoked by the Duke's support for Catholic emancipation and foundation of the secular King's College London. Deliberately off-target shots are fired by both and honour is satisfied without injury.
• 27 March – Zoological Society of London receives its royal charter.
• April–September – the composer Felix Mendelssohn pays his first visit to Britain. This includes (June) the first London performance of his concert overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream and (August) his trip to Fingal's Cave.^[3]
• 13 April – passage of the Roman Catholic Relief Act by Parliament of the United Kingdom granting Catholic Emancipation.^[4]
• 5 June – slave trade: HMS Pickle captures the armed slave ship Voladora off the coast of Cuba.
• 10 June – the Oxford University Boat Club wins the first inter-university Boat Race,^[4] rowed at Henley-on-Thames.^[5]
• 19 June – Robert Peel's Metropolitan Police Act establishes the Metropolitan Police Service.^[4]
• 30 June – Henry Robinson Palmer files a patent application for corrugated iron for use in buildings.^[6]
• 4 July – George Shillibeer begins operating the first bus service in London.^[7]
• 2–3 August – the "Muckle Spate", a great flood of the River Findhorn which devastates much of Strathspey, Scotland, washing away many bridges.^[8]
• 14 August – King's College London founded by Royal Charter
• 29 September – the first police officers of the Metropolitan Police Service, known by the nicknames "bobbies" or "peelers", go on patrol in London.^[4]

• 8 October – Robert Stephenson's steam locomotive Rocket defeats John Ericsson's Novelty and other competitors and thus wins the Rainhill Trials held on the under-construction Liverpool and Manchester Railway.^[7]
• 4 December – in the face of fierce opposition, British Lord William Bentinck carries a regulation declaring that all who abet suttee in India are guilty of culpable homicide.
• 31 December – last British hanging for forgery – Thomas Maynard at Newgate Prison, London.^[9]

Ongoing events

• Anglo-Ashanti war (1823–1831)

Publications

• Thomas Carlyle's essay Signs of the Times.
• Thomas Love Peacock's historical romance The Misfortunes of Elphin (as "by the author of Headlong Hall").
• Sir Walter Scott's historical novel Anne of Geierstein (as "by the author of Waverley").

Births

• 17 January – Catherine Booth, Mother of The Salvation Army (died 1890)
• 2 February – William Stanley, inventor (died 1909)
• 6 March – Arthur Blomfield, architect (died 1899)
• 10 April – William Booth, founder of The Salvation Army (died 1912)
• 4 June – Allan Octavian Hume, member of the Indian civil service and "the Father of Indian Ornithology" (died 1912)
• 5 June – George Stephen, 1st Baron Mount Stephen, Scottish-born businessman in Canada and philanthropist (died 1921)
• 8 June – John Everett Millais, Pre-Raphaelite painter (died 1896)
• 16 June – Bessie Rayner Parkes, journalist and feminist (died 1925)
• 14 July – Edward White Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury (died 1896)
• 25 July – Elizabeth Siddal, Pre-Raphaelite artists' model, painter and poet (died 1862)
• 25 September – William Michael Rossetti, critic (died 1919)
• 9 November – Sir Peter Lumsden, Scottish general in the Indian army (died 1918)
• John Lowther du Plat Taylor, founder of the Army Post Office Corps (died 1904)

Deaths

• 15 January – John Mastin, local historian, memoirist and clergyman (born 1747)
• 25 January – William Shield, composer, violinist and violist (born 1748)
• 28 January – William Burke, murderer and grave robber, executed (born 1792 in Ireland)
• 1 March – Thomas Earnshaw, watchmaker (born 1749)
• 8 May – Charles Abbot, 1st Baron Colchester, barrister, statesman, Speaker of the House of Commons (born 1759)
• 10 May – Thomas Young, physician and linguist (born 1773)
• 29 May – Sir Humphry Davy, chemist (born 1778)
• 27 June – James Smithson, mineralogist, chemist and sponsor of the Smithsonian Institution (born 1765)
• 7 August – John Reeves, conservative activist, public servant and legal historian (born 1752)
• 10 October – Maria Elizabetha Jacson, botanist (born 1755)
• 28 December – Bill Richmond, bare-knuckle welterweight boxer (born 1763 in British America)

References