1844 in the United Kingdom explained

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

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.^[1]
• 11 May – major fire at Lyme Regis.^[2]
• May – Henry Hardinge, 1st Viscount Hardinge, appointed as Governor-General of India.^[3]
• 6 June – George Williams founds the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in London.^[4]
• 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.^[5]
• 19 July – Bank Charter Act restricts powers of British banks other than the Bank of England to issue banknotes of the pound sterling.^{[6] [7]}
• 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.)^[8]
• 28 September – a blackdamp explosion at Haswell Colliery in the Durham Coalfield kills 95, with just four survivors.^[9]
• 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.^[10]
• 11 December – Health of Towns Association formed to press for public health improvements.^[11]
• 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.^[4]

Undated

• Winsford rock salt mine opens in Cheshire; by 2014 it will be Britain's oldest working mine.^[12]
• 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.^{[13] [14]}
• "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)^[15]
• 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)^[16]
• 25 November – Sir Augustus Callcott, landscape painter (born 1779)

Notes and References

1. Book: Berry, George. Discovering Schools. Tring. Shire Publications. 1970. 0-85263-091-3.
2. The Illustrated London News 18 May 1844.
3. Book: Cates, William L. R.. The Pocket Date Book. Chapman and Hall. William Leist Readwin Cates. 1863.
4. Book: Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 0-14-102715-0. 2006.
5. Book: Palmer. Alan. Palmer . Veronica. 1992. The Chronology of British History. Century Ltd. London. 266–267. 0-7126-5616-2.
6. Web site: OPSI. The Bank Charter Act 1844. 2010-10-19.
7. Web site: A brief history of banknotes. 2007-10-08. Bank of England.
8. Book: Hill, Rosemary. God's Architect: Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain. Penguin Books. London. 2008. 978-0-140-28099-9.
9. Web site: Haswell – the 1844 Pit Disaster. A history of Haswell. 2010-10-15. https://web.archive.org/web/20090815143053/http://www.haswell-history.co.uk/disaster.html. 15 August 2009. dead.
10. Web site: Royal Exchange History. 2007-10-28. https://web.archive.org/web/20070814012100/http://www.theroyalexchange.co.uk/about-us/history.asp. 2007-08-14. dead.
11. Ashton. John. Ubido. Janet. The Healthy City and the Ecological Idea. Journal of the Society for the Social History of Medicine. 1991. 4. 1. 173–181. 2013-07-08. 10.1093/shm/4.1.173. 11622856. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20131224102422/http://www.johnrashton.securemachines.co.uk/documentbank/the%20healthy%20city%20and%20the%20ecological%20idea.pdf. 2013-12-24.
12. Web site: Welcome to Winsford Rock Salt Mine. Salt Union Ltd. 2012-07-29.
13. Web site: St John the Evangelist, Kirkham. 2014-06-02. Taking Stock. https://web.archive.org/web/20140602195624/http://taking-stock.org.uk/Home/Dioceses/Diocese-of-Lancaster/St-John-the-Evangelist-Kirkham/%28language%29/eng-GB. 2 June 2014. dead.
14. Web site: History. 16 May 2012 . 2014-06-02. Parish of the Holy Cross.
15. Book: Panton . James . Historical Dictionary of the British Monarchy . 24 February 2011 . Scarecrow Press . 978-0-8108-7497-8 . 39 . en.
16. Book: Trimble . Virginia . Williams . Thomas . Bracher . Katherine . Jarrell . Richard . Marché . Jordan D. . Ragep . F. Jamil . Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers . 18 September 2007 . Springer Science & Business Media . 978-0-387-30400-7 . 482 . en.