1839 in Wales

This article is about the particular significance of the year 1839 to Wales and its people.

Incumbents

March – John Frost, former mayor of Newport, is deprived of his position as a magistrate because of his Chartist sympathies.
30 April – Chartists riot in Llanidloes and seize control of the town for five days.
7 May – Henry Vincent is arrested after addressing a Chartist meeting and taken to prison at Monmouth.
13 May – Beginning of the Rebecca Riots.
25 July – William Ewart Gladstone marries Catherine Glynne of Hawarden.
28 August – Mary Anne Lewis, widow of Cardiff MP Wyndham Lewis, marries Benjamin Disraeli.
5 October – Opening of West Bute Dock.
4 November – Newport Rising: between 5,000 and 10,000 Chartist sympathisers led by John Frost, many of them coal miners, march on the Westgate Hotel in Newport, Monmouthshire, to liberate Chartist prisoners; around 22 are killed when troops, directed by Thomas Phillips, the mayor, fire on the crowd. This is the last large-scale armed civil rebellion against authority in mainland Britain and sees the most deaths.
23 November – Zephaniah Williams, one of the leaders of the Chartist march on Newport, is arrested on board ship at Cardiff.
date unknown – Sir Thomas Frankland Lewis resigns as chairman of the Poor Law Commission, to be replaced by his son, George Cornewall Lewis.