1822 in the United Kingdom

1822 in the United Kingdom

Other years

1820 | 1821 | 1822 | 1823 | 1824

Sport

1822 English cricket season

Events from the year 1822 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch – George IV
• Prime Minister – Lord Liverpool (Tory)

Events

• 15 January – HM Treasury directs that the Preventive Water Guard, Revenue cruisers and Riding officers should all be placed under the authority of the Board of Customs as HM Coast Guard.^[1]
• 23 May – HMS Comet launched at Deptford Dockyard, the first steamboat commissioned by the Royal Navy.
• 3 July – Charles Babbage publishes a proposal for a "difference engine", a forerunner of the modern computer for calculating logarithms and trigonometric functions. Construction of an operational version will proceed under Government sponsorship 1823–32 but it will never be completed.^[2]
• 8 July – the Chippewa turn over a huge tract of land in Ontario to the British.^[3]
• 22 July – an Act to Prevent the Cruel and Improper Treatment of Cattle ("Martin's Act"), one of the first pieces of animal rights legislation,^[4] is passed to regulate treatment of cows, horses and sheep.
• 31 July – last public whipping in Edinburgh.
• 12 August – St David's College (now the University of Wales, Lampeter) is founded by Thomas Burgess, Bishop of St David's.
• 15–29 August – visit of King George IV to Scotland,^[5] first appearance of the monarch there since 1651.
• 22 August – The English ship Orion lands at Yerba Buena, now named San Francisco, under the command of William A. Richardson
• 16 September – George Canning appointed British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
• 21 September – HMS Confiance, a Royal Navy Cruizer class brig-sloop of 1813, is wrecked off Mizen Head in Ireland with the loss of all 100 aboard.^[6]
• 20 October – The New Observer newspaper becomes The Sunday Times.^[7]
• 23–24 October – the Caledonian Canal, engineered by Thomas Telford, is opened throughout, linking the east and west coasts of Scotland through the Great Glen.^[8]
• 27 November – outside Newgate Prison in London, William Reading becomes the last person to be hanged for shoplifting.^[9]

Unknown dates

• Hieroglyphs deciphered by Thomas Young and Jean-François Champollion using the Rosetta Stone.
• The Royal Academy of Music is established in London.
• First fossil to be recognised as that of a dinosaur, an Iguanodon tooth, is discovered by Gideon Mantell and his wife Mary in West Sussex.
• Construction of the Royal Pavilion in Brighton is completed.

Publications

• John C. Loudon's The Encyclopædia of Gardening.
• Sir Walter Scott's novels The Pirate and The Fortunes of Nigel.
• Alexander Jamieson's A Celestial Atlas.

Births

• 10 February – Eliza Lynn Linton, English novelist and journalist (died 1898)
• 13 February – James B. Beck, Scottish-born United States Senator from Kentucky from 1877 to 1890 (died 1890 in the United States)
• 16 February – Sir Francis Galton, English explorer and biologist (died 1911)
• 8 April – stillborn twin sons to the Duke of Clarence and Adelaide of Sax-Meiningen^[10]
• 18 July – Augusta of Cambridge, Hanoverian princess (died 1916)
• 1 November – Sydney Waterlow, English businessman, politician and philanthropist (died 1906)
• 24 December – Matthew Arnold, English poet (died 1888)

Deaths

• January – John Julius Angerstein, merchant and insurer (born 1735)
• 15 January – John Aikin, physician and writer (born 1747)
• 24 February – Thomas Coutts, banker (born 1735)
• 8 July – Percy Bysshe Shelley, poet (born 1792)
• 12 August – Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, Foreign Secretary (suicide) (born 1769)
• 25 August – William Herschel, German-born British astronomer (born 1738, Hanover)

References

See also