1823 in the United Kingdom:

Other years

1821 | 1822 | 1823 | 1824 | 1825

Events from the year 1823 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch - King George IV
• Prime Minister - Lord Liverpool, Tory

Events

• January - In Paviland Cave on the Gower Peninsula, William Buckland discovers the "Red Lady of Paviland", the first identification of a prehistoric (male) human burial.^[1]
• 20 February - Explorer James Weddell's expedition to Antarctica reaches latitude 74 15' S and longitude 34 16'45" W: the southernmost position any ship had reached before, a record that will hold for more than 80 years.
• March - Royal Academy of Music opens.^[2]
• 17 June - Charles Macintosh patents the waterproof material later used to make Mackintosh coats.^[3]
• July - Robert Peel ensures the passage of five Acts of Parliament, effectively abolishing the death penalty for over one hundred offences;^[2] in particular, the Judgement of Death Act allows judges to commute sentences for capital offences other than murder or treason to imprisonment or transportation.^[4]
• 4 July - Transportation Act allows convicts transported to the colonies to be employed on public works.^[2]
• 10 July - Gaols Act passed by Parliament, based on the prison reform campaign of Elizabeth Fry.^[2]
• 23 September - First Burmese War: Burmese attack the British on Shapura, an island close to Chittagong.
• 25 November - Opening of The Royal Suspension Chain Pier at Brighton, designed by Captain Samuel Brown, RN, the first pleasure pier on the mainland of England.^[5]
• November - According to tradition, William Webb Ellis invents rugby.^[2]

Undated

• The King's Library presented to the British Museum.
• Beginning of the first Anglo-Ashanti war.

Publications

• Thomas Campbell's poem The Last Man.
• Thomas De Quincey's critical essay On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth (in The London Magazine, October).
• Walter Scott's novel Quentin Durward.
• Thomas Wakley's medical journal The Lancet (first published 5 October).

Births

• 8 January - Alfred Russel Wallace, naturalist and biologist (died 1913)
• 13 August - Goldwin Smith, historian (died 1910)

Deaths

• 26 January - Edward Jenner, physician and medical researcher (born 1749)
• 27 January - Charles Hutton, mathematician (born 1737)
• 7 February - Mrs Radcliffe, writer (born 1764)
• 26 February - John Philip Kemble, actor (born 1757)
• 14 March - John Jervis, 1st Earl of St Vincent, Royal Navy admiral (born 1735)
• 23 April - Joseph Nollekens, sculptor (born 1737)
• 11 September - David Ricardo, economist (born 1772)
• 23 September - Matthew Baillie, physician and pathologist (born 1761)
• 30 October - Edmund Cartwright, clergyman and inventor of the power loom (born 1743)

References

See also