1819 in the United Kingdom

Events from the year 1819 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

Events

6 February – Formal treaty between Sultan Hussein of Johor and the British Sir Stamford Raffles establishes a trading settlement in Singapore.
19 February – William Smith discovers the South Shetland Islands in the Antarctic.
20 March – Burlington Arcade opens in London.
13 April – The Mansfield and Pinxton Railway, a wagonway, opens for coal traffic.
14 April – The streets of Birmingham are lit by gas for the first time by the Birmingham Gas Light and Coke Company.
21 April–late May – John Keats writes "La Belle Dame sans Merci" and most of his major odes.
20 June – The, the first steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean, arrives at Liverpool from Savannah, Georgia, United States, although only a fraction of the trip is made under steam.
22 June – Act of Parliament to abolish private appeals following acquittals in criminal cases and to abolish trial by combat, in the aftermath of Ashford v Thornton.
2 July – Cotton Mills and Factories Act passed, a first attempt to regulate employment of young children in textile mills.
24 July – A cabinet meeting convened by Prime Minister Lord Liverpool discusses an investigative report of an adulterous affair involving Caroline of Brunswick and her servant Bartolomeo Pergami; the cabinet concludes that the trial of Caroline for adultery would be an embarrassment to the nation.
16 August – Peterloo Massacre in St. Peter's Field, Manchester: a cavalry charge into a crowd of radical protesters results in eleven deaths and over 400 injuries.
19 September – Keats writes his ode "To Autumn" at Winchester.
23 November–30 December – Six Acts passed by Parliament to suppress assemblies promoting radical reform.

Undated

Britannia Monument to Admiral Lord Nelson at Great Yarmouth is completed.
The Travellers Club is established in London.

Publications

The exiled Lord Byron's narrative poem Mazeppa and satirical epic poem Don Juan.
John William Polidori's short story The Vampyre.
Walter Scott's anonymous historical Waverley Novels Ivanhoe, The Bride of Lammermoor and A Legend of Montrose.

Births

1 January – Arthur Hugh Clough, poet
9 January – William Powell Frith, genre painter
8 February – John Ruskin, writer, artist and social critic
11 March – Sir Henry Tate, 1st Baronet, sugar merchant and philanthropist
28 March
* Joseph Bazalgette, civil engineer
* Roger Fenton, pioneer of photography, early war photographer
24 May – Queen Victoria
5 June – John Couch Adams, astronomer
12 June – Charles Kingsley, novelist
8 July – Leopold McClintock, Irish-born Arctic explorer and admiral
1 August – Richard Dadd, painter
13 August – George Stokes, Irish-born mathematician and physicist
26 August – Albert, Prince Consort to Queen Victoria
5 September – Stillborn child to the Duke of Clarence and Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen
26 September – Edward Watkin, railway manager and politician
22 November – George Eliot, born Mary Ann Evans, novelist
Undated – Baxter Langley, radical political activist

Deaths

14 January – John Wolcot, satirist and poet
17 February – Henry Constantine Jennings, collector and gambler
13 March – Charles Wyatt, politician and architect
2 May – Mary Moser, painter
8 June – George Barclay, politician
20 July – John Playfair, natural philosopher
25 August – James Watt, Scottish inventor
7 September – Lumpy Stevens, cricketer
1 October – William Speechly, horticulturalist
30 October – John Bowles, conservative writer and lawyer
22 November – John Stackhouse, botanist
17 December – Hon. Charles Finch, politician
19 December – Sir Thomas Fremantle, admiral and politician