1844 in the United Kingdom

Events from the year 1844 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria
• Prime Minister – Robert Peel (Conservative)
• Foreign Secretary – George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen
• Home Secretary – Sir James Graham

Events

• 28 February – The Grand National at Aintree is won by the 5/1 joint favourite Discount.
• 11 April – Initiation of the Ragged Schools Union.
• 14 April – The murder of Charlotte Dymond in Cornwall.
• 11 May – Major fire at Lyme Regis.
• May – Henry Hardinge, 1st Viscount Hardinge, appointed as Governor-General of India.
• 6 June – George Williams founds the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in London.
• 15 June – Factory Act imposes a maximum 12-hour working day for women, and a maximum 6-hour day for children aged 6 to 13.
• 19 July – Bank Charter Act restricts powers of British banks other than the Bank of England to issue banknotes of the pound sterling.
• 21 & 27 August – Consecration of two new major urban Roman Catholic churches, both designed by Augustus Pugin, which will in the 1850s be elevated to cathedral status: St Mary's Church, Newcastle upon Tyne and St Barnabas Church, Nottingham. (In October, Pugin occupies The Grange, Ramsgate, a house designed for himself which is influential in the development of domestic Gothic Revival architecture.)
• 28 September – A blackdamp explosion at Haswell Colliery in the Durham Coalfield kills 95, with just four survivors.
• 8 October – Louis-Phillipe, King of the French, arrives in Portsmouth on a visit to Britain.
• 20 October – Counties (Detached Parts) Act 1844 comes into effect, eliminating many outliers or exclaves of counties in England and Wales for civil purposes.
• 28 October – The Royal Exchange in London opened by Queen Victoria.
• 11 December – Health of Towns Association formed to press for public health improvements.
• 21 December – The Rochdale Pioneers, usually considered the first successful cooperative enterprise, open their store in Rochdale, forming the basis for the modern cooperative movement.

Undated

• Winsford rock salt mine opens in Cheshire; by 2014 it will be Britain's oldest working mine.
• Ring of bells installed at St John the Evangelist's Church, Kirkham (Lancashire), said to be the first peal rung in an English Roman Catholic church since the Reformation.
• "Surplice riots" in Exeter and London break out in opposition to supposed Catholicisation of the Church of England.
• King Frederick Augustus II of Saxony makes an informal summer tour of Britain.

Publications

• Robert Chambers' anonymous Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, which paves the way for acceptance of Darwin's The Origin of Species.
• Charles Dickens' novel Martin Chuzzlewit (complete in book form) and his Christmas novella The Chimes.
• Benjamin Disraeli's novel Coningsby.
• Henry Fox Talbot's book The Pencil of Nature, the first illustrated with photographs from a camera (publication commences June).
• William Makepeace Thackeray's novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon (serialisation).

Births

• 26 February – Annie Swynnerton, née Robinson, ARA, painter (died 1933)
• 3 May – Richard D'Oyly Carte, theatrical impresario (died 1901)
• 22 July – William Archibald Spooner, scholar, Anglican priest and metathesist (died 1930)
• 28 July – Gerard Manley Hopkins, English poet (died 1889)
• 6 August – Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, second son of Queen Victoria (died 1900)
• 29 August – Edward Carpenter, socialist poet (died 1929)
• 23 October – Robert Bridges, English poet (died 1930)
• 25 October – Arthur William à Beckett, journalist (died 1909)

Deaths

• 23 January – Sir Francis Burdett, politician (born 1770)
• 15 February – Henry Addington, 1st Viscount Sidmouth, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (born 1757)
• 6 March – George Meikle Kemp, architect (born 1795)
• 18 March – Paul Storr, silversmith (born 1770)
• 3 April – Edward Bigge, Archdeacon of Lindisfarne (born 1807)
• 27 July – John Dalton, chemist and physicist (born 1766)
• 23 November – Thomas Henderson, Scottish astronomer (born 1798)
• 25 November – Sir Augustus Callcott, landscape painter (born 1779)

References