1844 in the United Kingdom

Other years

* 1842
* 1843
* 1844 (1844)
* 1845
* 1846

Constituent countries of the United Kingdom
England | Ireland | Scotland | Wales
Sport
1844 English cricket season

Events from the year 1844 in the United Kingdom.

## Incumbents

[edit]

* Monarch – Victoria
* Prime Minister – Robert Peel (Conservative)
* Foreign Secretary – George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen

## Events

[edit]

Disembarkation of Louis-Phillipe at the Royal Clarence Yard, 8 October 1844, by J. M. W. Turner The Royal Exchange (London), opened by Queen Victoria on 28 October

* 28 February – the Grand National at Aintree is won by the 5/1 joint favourite Discount.
* 11 April – initiation of the Ragged Schools Union.[1]
* 14 April – The murder of Charlotte Dymond in Cornwall.[2]
* 11 May – major fire at Lyme Regis.[3]
* May – Henry Hardinge, 1st Viscount Hardinge, appointed as Governor-General of India.[4]
* 6 June – George Williams founds the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in London.[5]
* 15 June – Factory Act imposes a maximum 12-hour working day for women, and a maximum 6-hour day for children aged 6 to 13.[6]
* 19 July – Bank Charter Act restricts powers of British banks other than the Bank of England to issue banknotes of the pound sterling.[7][8]
* 21 & 27 August – consecration of two new major urban Roman Catholic churches, both designed by Augustus Pugin, which will in the 1850s be elevated to cathedral status: St Mary's Church, Newcastle upon Tyne and St Barnabas Church, Nottingham. (In October, Pugin occupies The Grange, Ramsgate, a house designed for himself which is influential in the development of domestic Gothic Revival architecture.)[9]
* 28 September – a blackdamp explosion at Haswell Colliery in the Durham Coalfield kills 95, with just four survivors.[10]
* 8 October – Louis-Phillipe, King of the French, arrives in Portsmouth on a visit to Britain.
* 20 October – Counties (Detached Parts) Act 1844 comes into effect, eliminating many outliers or exclaves of counties in England and Wales for civil purposes.
* 28 October – the Royal Exchange in London opened by Queen Victoria.[11]
* 11 December – Health of Towns Association formed to press for public health improvements.[12]
* 21 December – the Rochdale Pioneers, usually considered the first successful cooperative enterprise, open their store in Rochdale, forming the basis for the modern cooperative movement.[5]

### Undated

[edit]

* Winsford rock salt mine opens in Cheshire; by 2014 it will be Britain's oldest working mine.[13]
* Ring of bells installed at St John the Evangelist's Church, Kirkham (Lancashire), said to be the first peal rung in an English Roman Catholic church since the Reformation.[14][15]
* "Surplice riots" in Exeter and London break out in opposition to supposed Catholicisation of the Church of England.
* King Frederick Augustus II of Saxony makes an informal summer tour of Britain.

## Publications

[edit]

* Robert Chambers' anonymous Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, which paves the way for acceptance of Darwin's The Origin of Species.
* Charles Dickens' novel Martin Chuzzlewit (complete in book form) and his Christmas novella The Chimes.
* Benjamin Disraeli's novel Coningsby.
* Henry Fox Talbot's book The Pencil of Nature, the first illustrated with photographs from a camera (publication commences June).
* William Makepeace Thackeray's novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon (serialisation).

## Births

[edit]

* 26 February – Annie Swynnerton, née Robinson, ARA, painter (died 1933)
* 3 May – Richard D'Oyly Carte, theatrical impresario (died 1901)
* 22 July – William Archibald Spooner, scholar, Anglican priest and metathesist (died 1930)
* 28 July – Gerard Manley Hopkins, English poet (died 1889)
* 6 August – Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, second son of Queen Victoria (died 1900)[16]
* 29 August – Edward Carpenter, socialist poet (died 1929)
* 23 October – Robert Bridges, English poet (died 1930)
* 25 October – Arthur William à Beckett, journalist (died 1909)

## Deaths

[edit]

* 23 January – Sir Francis Burdett, politician (born 1770)
* 15 February – Henry Addington, 1st Viscount Sidmouth, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (born 1757)
* 6 March – George Meikle Kemp, architect (born 1795)
* 18 March – Paul Storr, silversmith (born 1770)
* 3 April – Edward Bigge, Archdeacon of Lindisfarne (born 1807)
* 27 July – John Dalton, chemist and physicist (born 1766)
* 23 November – Thomas Henderson, Scottish astronomer (born 1798)[17]
* 25 November – Sir Augustus Callcott, landscape painter (born 1779)

## References

[edit]

1. ^ Berry, George (1970). Discovering Schools. Tring: Shire Publications. ISBN 0-85263-091-3.
2. ^ Matthews, Chris (4 November 2018). "The death of Charlotte Dymond - Cornwall's most famous 'murder' tale". Cornwall Live. Retrieved 12 July 2025.
3. ^ The Illustrated London News 18 May 1844.
4. ^ Cates, William L. R. (1863). The Pocket Date Book. Chapman and Hall.
5. ^ a b Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006. ISBN 0-14-102715-0.
6. ^ Palmer, Alan; Palmer, Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. pp. 266–267\. ISBN 0-7126-5616-2.
7. ^ "The Bank Charter Act 1844" (PDF). OPSI. Retrieved 19 October 2010.
8. ^ Bank of England. "A brief history of banknotes". Retrieved 8 October 2007.
9. ^ Hill, Rosemary (2008). God's Architect: Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-140-28099-9.
10. ^ "Haswell – the 1844 Pit Disaster". A history of Haswell. Archived from the original on 15 August 2009. Retrieved 15 October 2010.
11. ^ "Royal Exchange History". Archived from the original on 14 August 2007. Retrieved 28 October 2007.
12. ^ Ashton, John; Ubido, Janet (1991). "The Healthy City and the Ecological Idea" (PDF). Journal of the Society for the Social History of Medicine. 4 (1): 173–181\. doi:10.1093/shm/4.1.173. PMID 11622856. Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 December 2013. Retrieved 8 July 2013.
13. ^ "Welcome to Winsford Rock Salt Mine". Salt Union Ltd. Retrieved 29 July 2012.
14. ^ "St John the Evangelist, Kirkham". Taking Stock. Archived from the original on 2 June 2014. Retrieved 2 June 2014.
15. ^ "History". Parish of the Holy Cross. 16 May 2012. Retrieved 2 June 2014.
16. ^ Panton, James (24 February 2011). Historical Dictionary of the British Monarchy. Scarecrow Press. p. 39\. ISBN 978-0-8108-7497-8.
17. ^ Trimble, Virginia; Williams, Thomas; Bracher, Katherine; Jarrell, Richard; Marché, Jordan D.; Ragep, F. Jamil (18 September 2007). Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 482\. ISBN 978-0-387-30400-7.

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1844 in Europe

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