1849 in the United Kingdom

1849 in the United Kingdom:

Other years

1847 | 1848 | 1849 | 1850 | 1851

Sport

1849 English cricket season

Events from the year 1849 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch — Victoria
• Prime Minister — Lord John Russell (Liberal)

Events

• 13 January — Second Anglo-Sikh War: British forces retreat from the Battle of Chillianwala.
• 22 January — Second Anglo-Sikh War: The city of Multan falls to the British East India Company following the Siege of Multan.
• February–May — Shareholder enquiries into the conduct of railway financier George Hudson begin his downfall
• 1 February — Abolition of the Corn Laws by the Importation Act 1846 comes fully into effect.
• 21 February — Second Anglo-Sikh War: Battle of Gujrat — British East India Company forces defeat those of the Sikh Empire in Punjab.
• 1 March — Nathaniel Cook registers the design of the Staunton chess set, which is first marketed in September by Jaques of London with an endorsement by Howard Staunton.
• 3 March — The Arana-Southern Treaty with the Argentine Confederation ends British involvement in the Anglo-French blockade of the Río de la Plata.
• 30 March — The Second Anglo-Sikh War ends with the U.K. annexing the Punjab.
• 21 April — Great Famine (Ireland): 96 inmates of the overcrowded Ballinrobe Union Workhouse die over the course of the preceding week from illness and other famine-related conditions, a record high. This year's potato crop again fails and there are renewed outbreaks of cholera.^[1]
• May — First exhibition of paintings by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in London: John Everett Millais' Isabella and Holman Hunt's Rienzi at the Royal Academy summer exhibition, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Girlhood of Mary Virgin at the Free Exhibition on Hyde Park Corner.
• 19 May — Irishman William Hamilton arrested after shooting blank shots at Queen Victoria on Constitution Hill, London.^[2]
• 2–12 August — Visit of Queen Victoria to Cork, Dublin and Belfast.^[3]
• 9 August — "The Bermondsey Horror": Marie Manning and her husband, Frederick, murder Patrick O'Connor in London. On 13 November they are hanged together publicly by William Calcraft at Horsemonger Lane Gaol for the crime.^[4]
• 13 December — Foundation stone of Llandovery College is laid.
• 17 December — The customer, probably Edward Coke, collects the first bowler hat (devised by London hatmakers Thomas and William Bowler) from hatters Lock & Co. of St James's.^[5]

Undated

• Navigation Acts repealed.^[6]
• Two shilling coin (florin), depicting the Queen crowned, introduced, partly to test public opinion on possible decimalization of the currency.^[7]
• Bedford College (London) founded by Elizabeth Jesser Reid as the Ladies College in Bedford Square, a non-sectarian higher education institution to provide a liberal female education.
• The drapers' store of Arthur & Fraser, predecessor of the House of Fraser, is established in Glasgow by Hugh Fraser and James Arthur.^[8]

Ongoing

• Second cholera pandemic (1849–51) affects London (14,137 deaths), Liverpool (5,308), Hull (1,834), Wales and Scotland.

Publications

• Charlotte Brontë's novel Shirley (published as by Currer Bell).
• Thomas De Quincey's essay The English Mail-Coach (in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, October–December).
• Charles Dickens' novel David Copperfield begins serialisation (May).
• J. A. Froude’s controversial novel of religious doubt The Nemesis of Faith.^[9][10][11]
• John Ruskin's essay The Seven Lamps of Architecture (May).
• Notes and Queries first published (November).
• Who's Who first published.

Births

• 13 February — Lord Randolph Churchill, statesman (died 1895)
• 22 May — Aston Webb, architect (died 1930)
• 11 July — Francis Russell, son to the serving Prime Minister
• 24 November — Frances Hodgson Burnett, author (died 1924)
• 29 November — John Ambrose Fleming, electrical engineer and inventor (died 1945)

Deaths

• 19 February — Bernard Barton, poet (born 1784)
• 22 May — Maria Edgeworth, novelist (born 1767)
• 25 May — Benjamin d'Urban, general and colonial administrator (born 1777)
• 28 May — Anne Brontë, author (born 1820)
• 12 July — Horace Smith, author (born 1779)
• 6 September — Edward Stanley, Bishop of Norwich (born 1779)
• 2 December — Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, queen of William IV (born 1792)
• 12 December — Marc Isambard Brunel, engineer (born 1769, France)

References

1. Ross, David (2002). Ireland: History of a Nation (New ed.). New Lanark: Geddes & Grosset. p. 313. ISBN 1842051644.
2. Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006. ISBN 0-14-102715-0.
3. Connolly, Sean (2008). "Queen Victoria in Ireland, August 1849". Irish History Live. Queen's University Belfast. Retrieved 2012-08-05.
4. Borowitz, Albert (1981). The Woman Who Murdered Black Satin: The Bermondsey Horror. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. ISBN 0-8142-0320-5.
5. Bloxham, Andy (2010-10-05). "Bowler hat makes a comeback". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 2013-05-10.
6. Cates, William L. R. (1863). The Pocket Date Book. Chapman and Hall.
7. "The Story of the Florin or Two Shilling Piece". Blackpool: Chard. Retrieved 2012-04-06.
8. "House of Fraser archive project" (PDF).
9. Paul, Herbert (1906). The Life of Froude. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 47–48.
10. Willey, Basil (1956). "J. A. Froude". More Nineteenth Century Studies: a Group of Honest Doubters. London: Chatto & Windus. p. 131.
11. Ashton, Rosemary (1989). "Doubting Clerics: From James Anthony Froude to Robert Elsmere via George Eliot". In Jasper & Wright. The Critical Spirit and the Will to Believe. New York: St. Martins. p. 76.

See also