1787 in Great Britain

Events from the year 1787 in Great Britain.

Incumbents

• Monarch – George III
• Prime Minister – William Pitt the Younger (Tory)

Events

• 1 January – George III writes his first letter to Arthur Young's Annals of Agriculture, under the name of Ralph Robinson of Windsor.
• 11 January – William Herschel discovers the Uranian moons Titania and Oberon.
• 19 February – William Herschel first uses the 40-foot telescope under construction for him at Slough.
• 13 May – Captain Arthur Phillip leaves Portsmouth with the eleven ships of the First Fleet carrying around 700 convicts and at least 300 crew and guards to establish a penal colony in Australia.
• 22 May – Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharp found the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade with support from John Wesley, Josiah Wedgwood and others.
• 31 May – the original Lord's Cricket Ground holds its first cricket match; Marylebone Cricket Club founded.
• July – Principal Triangulation of Great Britain begun under the direction of General William Roy from Hounslow Heath; in the autumn it is extended to France.
• Summer – Calton weavers' strike in the west of Scotland. On 3 September, six of the Calton weavers are killed by troops.
• 23 December – Captain William Bligh sets sail from Spithead for Tahiti on .

Publications

• Freed slave Ottobah Cugoano publishes Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species.
• The Scots Musical Museum begins publication.

Births

• 7 January – Patrick Nasmyth, Scottish landscape painter (died 1831)
• 10 February – William Bradley, Britain's tallest ever man (died 1820)
• 17 February – George Mogridge (Old Humphrey), miscellaneous writer and poet (died 1854)
• 10 March – William Etty, painter, especially of nudes (died 1849)
• 28 March – Claudius Rich, archaeologist and anthropologist (died 1821)
• 7 June – William Conybeare, geologist (died 1857)
• 28 June – Sir Harry Smith, military commander (died 1860)
• 24 July – William Ward, cricketer (died 1849)
• 10 September – Justina Jeffreys, Jamaican-born Welsh gentlewoman (died 1869)
• 13 September – John Adamson, antiquary and expert on Portuguese (died 1855)
• 13 October – William Brockedon, painter (died 1854)
• 4 November – Edmund Kean, actor (died 1833)
• 21 November – Bryan Procter (Barry Cornwall), poet (died 1874)
• 22 November – Copley Fielding, watercolour landscape painter (died 1855)
• 16 December – Mary Russell Mitford, novelist and dramatist (died 1855)
• Ignatius Bonomi, architect (died 1870)
• John Dobson, architect (died 1865)
• Harriet Gouldsmith, landscape painter and etcher (died 1863)
• Approximate date – Ikey Solomon, receiver of stolen goods (died 1850 in Australia)

Deaths

• 1 April – Floyer Sydenham, classical scholar (born 1710)
• 2 April – Thomas Gage, General (born 1719)
• 10 May – William Watson, physician and scientist (born 1715)
• 25 July – Arthur Devis, portrait painter (born 1712)
• 3 November – Robert Lowth, bishop and grammarian (born 1710)
• 18 December
• Francis William Drake, British admiral and Governor of Newfoundland (born 1724)
• Soame Jenyns, English writer (born 1704)

See also

• 1787 in Wales

References