1822 in the United Kingdom explained

Events from the year 1822 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch – George IV
• Prime Minister – Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool (Tory)
• Foreign Secretary – Robert Stewart, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry (until 18 August) George Canning (from 13 September)
• Home Secretary – Lord Sidmouth (until 17 January) Robert Peel (from 17 January)

Events

• 3 January – Seaton Delaval Hall in Northumberland is gutted by fire.^[1]
• 15 January – HM Treasury directs that the Preventive Water Guard, Revenue cruisers and Riding officers should all be placed under the authority of the Board of Customs as HM Coast Guard.^[2]
• 23 May – HMS Comet launched at Deptford Dockyard, the first steamboat commissioned by the Royal Navy.
• 18 June – The Wellington Monument is inaugurated close to the Duke's London residence Apsley House on the seventh anniversary of his victory at Waterloo.
• 3 July – Charles Babbage publishes a proposal for a "difference engine", a mechanical forerunner of the modern computer for calculating logarithms and trigonometric functions. Construction of an operational version will proceed under Government sponsorship 1823 - 32 but it will never be completed.^[3]
• 8 July – the Chippewa turn over a huge tract of land in Ontario to the British.^[4]
• 19 July – Percy Jocelyn, Anglican Bishop of Clogher, is caught in a compromising position with a young Grenadier Guardsman at a public house in London. He breaks bail and flees England. In October, an ecclesiastical court deprives him of office.^[5]
• 22 July – an Act to Prevent the Cruel and Improper Treatment of Cattle ("Martin's Act"), one of the first pieces of animal rights legislation,^[6] is passed to regulate treatment of cows, horses and sheep.
• 31 July – last public whipping in Edinburgh.
• 12 August
  • The Foreign Secretary Lord Castlereagh cuts his own throat at his house in Kent.
  • St David's College (the modern-day University of Wales, Lampeter) is founded by Thomas Burgess, Bishop of St David's.
• 15 - 29 August – visit of King George IV to Scotland,^[7] first appearance of the monarch there since 1651.
• 22 August – English ship Orion lands at Yerba Buena, later named San Francisco, under the command of William A. Richardson
• 16 September – George Canning is appointed Foreign Secretary to replace Castlereagh.
• 21 September – HMS Confiance, a Royal Navy of 1813, is wrecked off Mizen Head in Ireland with the loss of all 100 aboard.^[8]
• 24 September – the Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, marries, as his second wife, Mary Chester, at Hampton Court.^[9]
• 20 October – The New Observer newspaper becomes The Sunday Times.^[10]
• 20 October – The Duke of Wellington represents Britain at the Congress of Verona.
• 23 - 24 October – the Caledonian Canal, engineered by Thomas Telford, is opened throughout, linking the east and west coasts of Scotland through the Great Glen.^[11]
• 27 November – outside Newgate Prison in London, William Reading becomes the last person to be hanged for shoplifting.^[12]

Unknown dates

• Egyptian hieroglyphs are deciphered by Thomas Young and Jean-François Champollion using the Rosetta Stone.
• A fossil Iguanodon tooth is discovered by Gideon Mantell and his wife Mary in West Sussex; in 1825 it will be the first fossil to be recognised as that of a dinosaur.^[13]
• The Royal Academy of Music is established in London.
• Construction of the Royal Pavilion in Brighton is completed.
• Stonemason John Mowlem establishes the contracting firm Mowlem.

Publications

• Alexander Jamieson's A Celestial Atlas.
• John C. Loudon's The Encyclopædia of Gardening.
• Sir Walter Scott's novels The Pirate and The Fortunes of Nigel.

Births

• 10 February – Eliza Lynn Linton, English novelist and journalist (died 1898)
• 13 February – James B. Beck, Scottish-born United States Senator from Kentucky from 1877 to 1890 (died 1890 in the United States)
• 16 February – Sir Francis Galton, English explorer and biologist (died 1911)
• 8 April – stillborn twin sons to the Duke of Clarence and Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen^[14]
• 19 April – Edward Oxford, English attempted assassin of Queen Victoria (died 1900)
• 18 July – Augusta of Cambridge, Hanoverian princess (died 1916)
• 1 November – Sir Sydney Waterlow, English businessman, politician and philanthropist (died 1906)
• 6 December – Mary Colton, Australian philanthropist and suffragist (died 1898)^[15]
• 24 December – Matthew Arnold, English poet (died 1888)

Deaths

• 15 January – John Aikin, physician and writer (born 1747)
• 24 February – Thomas Coutts, banker (born 1735)
• 8 March – Christopher Wyvill, cleric, landowner and political reformer (born 1740)
• 17 June – Marquess of Hertford, politician and courtier (born 1743)
• 8 July – Percy Bysshe Shelley, poet (born 1792)
• 23 July – Peter Durand, merchant (born 1766)
• 12 August – Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, Foreign Secretary (suicide) (born 1769)
• 25 August – William Herschel, astronomer (born 1738 in Hanover)

Notes and References

1. Web site: Historical twist as nesting birds hold up Seaton Delaval Hall work. Tony. Henderson. 2014-06-11. journallive. 2015-12-06. 2016-03-05. https://web.archive.org/web/20160305232214/http://www.thejournal.co.uk/news/historical-twist-nesting-birds-hold-7252439. dead.
2. Book: Lewis, Michael. The Navy in Transition, 1814–1864: a social history. London. Hodder & Stoughton. 1965. 89–90.
3. Book: Hyman, Anthony. R. Anthony Hyman. . Oxford University Press. 1982. 0-19-858170-X. 51ff.
4. Web site: Treaty Timeline. 13 January 2007 . https://web.archive.org/web/20061211132257/http://www.manitobachiefs.com/treaty/timeline.html#sectindividual#sectindividual. 11 December 2006. dead.
5. Web site: Geoghegan. Patrick M.. Jocelyn, Percy. Dictionary of Irish Biography. October 2009. Royal Irish Academy. Dublin. 2024-03-16.
6. Book: The Rights of Persons, according to the text of Blackstone: incorporating the alterations down to the present time. William Blackstone. William. Blackstone. James. Stewart. 1839. 79.
7. Book: Prebble, John. John Prebble. The King's Jaunt: George IV in Scotland, August 1822 'One and Twenty Daft Days'. London. Collins. 1988. 0-00-215404-8. registration.
8. Book: Gossett, William Patrick. 1986. The Lost Ships of the Royal Navy, 1793–1900. London. Mansell. 0-7201-1816-6. 100.
9. Bell's Weekly Messenger. 30 September 1822. p. 7.
10. Web site: Concise History of the British Newspaper in the Nineteenth Century . 2008-03-17 . https://web.archive.org/web/20080224071628/http://www.bl.uk/collections/brit19th.html . 24 February 2008 . dead .
11. Book: Lindsay, Jean. The Canals of Scotland. Newton Abbot. David & Charles. 1968. 0-7153-4240-1.
12. Web site: Timeline of capital punishment in Britain. 2011-02-02.
13. Book: Dean, Dennis R.. Gideon Mantell and the Discovery of Dinosaurs. Cambridge University Press. 1999. 0-521-42048-2.
14. Book: Ziegler, Philip. Philip Ziegler. 1971. King William IV. London. Collins. 0-00-211934-X. 126–7.
15. Web site: Jones. Helen. Colton, Mary (1822–1898). Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography at the Australian National University. 29 December 2019.