1791 in Great Britain

Events from the year 1791 in the Kingdom of Great Britain.

Incumbents

1 January - Austrian composer Joseph Haydn arrives in England where his concerts are huge successes.^[1] On 8 July he is awarded an honorary doctorate of music at the University of Oxford.
April - William Wilberforce introduces a bill to Parliament to abolish the slave trade but it is defeated.^[1]
10 June - Parliament passes the Constitutional Act, splitting the old province of Quebec into Upper and Lower Canada.^[1]
14–17 June - The Priestley Riots in Birmingham, against Dissenters.^[2]
29 September - The King's son Prince Frederick, Duke of York, marries Princess Frederica Charlotte of Prussia at Charlottenburg.
4 December - The first issue of The Observer, the world's first Sunday newspaper, is published.^[1]

Roman Catholic Relief Act relieves Catholics of certain political, educational and economic disabilities.
Architect John Soane begins reconstruction of the Bank of England in London.
Theophilus Lindsey and John Disney set up the "first organized denominational Unitarian society", The Unitarian Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and the Practice of Virtue by the Distribution of Books ('Unitarian Book Society').^[3]
The School for the Indigent Blind, the oldest specialist school of its kind in Britain, is founded in Liverpool by blind ex-merchant seaman, writer and abolitionist Edward Rushton.^[4]
Amateur geologist William Gregor discovers an unknown metal in Cornwall later identified to be Titanium.^[1]

13 March - Thomas Paine's chief work Rights of Man (first part).^[5]
16 May - James Boswell's landmark biography Life of Samuel Johnson.^[2]
Thomas Sheraton's The Cabinet Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing-Book begins publication.
Sir John Sinclair's Statistical Account of Scotland begins publication, introducing the term Statistics into English.^[6]

11 January - William Williams Pantycelyn, hymnist (born 1717)
25 January - George Augustus Selwyn, Member of Parliament (born 1719)
2 March - John Wesley, English founder of Methodism (born 1703)
19 April - Richard Price, philosopher (born 1723)
5 June - Frederick Haldimand, Swiss-born British colonial governor (born 1718, Switzerland)
17 June - Selina Hastings, Methodist leader (born 1707)

↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Williams, Hywel (2005). Cassell's Chronology of World History. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. pp. 342–343. ISBN 0-304-35730-8.
↑ 2.0 2.1 Palmer, Alan; Palmer, Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. pp. 232–233. ISBN 0-7126-5616-2.
↑ Rowe, Mortimer (1959). "Chapter 3". The History of Essex Hall. London: Lindsey Press.
↑ "Special Schools - Part 1 - Royal School for the Blind in Liverpool". You and Yours. BBC Radio 4. 2012-04-04. Retrieved 2013-07-05.
↑ The Hutchinson Factfinder. Helicon. 1999. ISBN 1-85986-000-1.
↑ Ball, Philip (2004). Critical Mass. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. p. 53. ISBN 0-374-53041-6.