1789 in Great Britain explained

Events from the year 1789 in Great Britain.

Incumbents

• Monarch – George III
• Prime Minister – William Pitt the Younger (Tory)^[1]

Events

• 3 February – Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger introduces a Regency Bill to Parliament so that the Prince of Wales may act as regent for his father George III during a period of mental illness, but the King recovers before the Bill becomes law.^[2]
• March – first version of a graphic description of a slave ship (the Brookes) issued on behalf of the English Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade.^{[3] [4]}
• 18 March – Catherine Murphy, a counterfeiter, becomes the last woman in Britain to suffer a sentence of death by burning, at Newgate Prison in London (although she is in practice strangled before being burnt).^[5]
• April – Privy Council report on the slave trade published.
• 20 April – first boat passes through the Thames and Severn Canal's Sapperton Tunnel near Cirencester in Gloucestershire. At 3817yd it is the longest tunnel of any kind in England at this date.^[6]
• 28 April – Fletcher Christian leads a mutiny on HMS Bounty against Captain William Bligh in Polynesia.^[7]
• 12 May – William Wilberforce makes his first major speech in the House of Commons on the abolition of the slave trade.^[8]
• 14 June – Mutiny on the Bounty survivors including Captain William Bligh and 18 others reach Timor after a nearly 4,000-mile journey in an open boat.^[7]
• 28 August – William Herschel discovers Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons.^[9]
• 17 September – William Herschel discovers Mimas, another of Saturn's moons.^[9]
• 4 November – Richard Price preaches a sermon in London, A Discourse on the Love of Our Country, igniting the Revolution Controversy.
• 19 November – Thames and Severn Canal opened throughout, giving through navigation between the Thames and Severn.^[10]

Undated

• Charles Dibdin introduces the nautical song Tom Bowling in his London entertainment The Oddities.
• The song The Lass of Richmond Hill, with music by James Hook to words by Leonard McNally, is first performed publicly by Charles Incledon at Vauxhall Gardens in London.
• Rev. Dr. Edmund Cartwright patents his first practical power loom and designs a wool combing machine.
• Andrew Pears introduces Pears soap in London.^[2]

Publications

• William Blake's book of poetry Songs of Innocence and of Experience^[2] and his first published prophetic book The Book of Thel.
• Erasmus Darwin's poem The Loves of the Plants, a popular rendering of Linnaeus' works.
• Former slave Olaudah Equiano's autobiography The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, one of the earliest published works by a black writer.^[11]

Births

• 5 January – Thomas Pringle, poet (died 1834)
• 14 July – Timothy Yeats Brown, consul to Genoa (died 1858)
• 19 July – John Martin, painter (died 1854)
• 28 September – Richard Bright, physician, "Father of Nephrology" (died 1858)
• 25 December – Elizabeth Jesser Reid, social reformer (died 1866)
• James Morrison, millionaire retail draper and politician (died 1857)

Deaths

• 1 January – Fletcher Norton, 1st Baron Grantley, politician (born 1716)
• 8 January – Jack Broughton, English boxer (born 1703)
• 23 January – Frances Brooke, writer (born 1724)
• 23 January – John Cleland, novelist (born 1709)
• 26 February – Eclipse, racehorse (born 1764)
• 20 July – David Nelson, botanist on (birth date unknown)
• 26 November – John Elwes, miser and politician (born 1714)

See also

• 1789 in Wales

Notes and References

1. Web site: History of William Pitt 'The Younger' - GOV.UK . www.gov.uk . 1 July 2023 . en.
2. Book: Williams, Hywel. Cassell's Chronology of World History. registration. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 2005. 0-304-35730-8. 340–341.
3. Web site: 219 years ago – Description of a Slave Ship . 2008 . Rare Book Collections @ Princeton . Princeton University Library . 19 March 2013 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20140204005129/http://blogs.princeton.edu/rarebooks/2008/05/ship_brooks.html . 4 February 2014 .
4. Web site: The Brookes – visualising the transatlantic slave trade. 1807 Commemorated. 2007. University of York Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past. 19 March 2013.
5. Book: Baring-Gould, S.. Sabine Baring-Gould. Bladys of the Stewponey.
6. Web site: Cotswold Canals Trust. Cotswold Canals Trust. 4 December 2010. https://web.archive.org/web/20110419110443/http://www.cotswoldcanals.com/pages/technical-stuff/sapperton-tunnel.php. 19 April 2011. dead.
7. Book: Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 0-14-102715-0. 2006.
8. Book: Hochschild, Adam. Adam Hochschild. Bury the Chains: The British Struggle to Abolish Slavery. 2005. London. Macmillan. 978-0-330-48581-4. 60458010.
9. William. Herschel. Account of the Discovery of a Sixth and Seventh Satellite of the Planet Saturn; with Remarks on the Construction of its Ring, its Atmosphere, its Rotation on an Axis, and its spheroidical Figure. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. London. 80. 1–20. 1 January 1790. 10.1098/rstl.1790.0001. free.
10. Book: Palmer, Alan. Palmer . Veronica. 1992. The Chronology of British History. Century Ltd. London. 230–231. 0-7126-5616-2.
11. Web site: BBC History British History Timeline. 3 September 2007. https://web.archive.org/web/20070909012414/http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/launch_tl_british.shtml. 9 September 2007 .