1841 in the United Kingdom

Events from the year 1841 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

* Monarch – Victoria
* Prime Minister – William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne ( Whig) (until 30 August); Robert Peel (Conservative) (starting 30 August)
* Foreign Secretary – Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (until 2 September) George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen (starting 2 September)
* Parliament – 13th (until 23 June), 14th (starting 19 August)

Events

* 4 January – City of Dublin Steam Packet Company is wrecked on the Western Rocks, Isles of Scilly, with the loss of 61 of the 65 onboard; at least 20 other ships run aground round the British Isles today.
* 20 January – Convention of Chuenpi agreed between Charles Elliot and Qishan of the Qing dynasty.
* 26 January – the United Kingdom formally occupies Hong Kong.
* 27 January – the active volcano Mount Erebus in Antarctica is discovered and named by James Clark Ross.
* 28 January – Ross discovers the "Victoria Barrier", later known as the Ross Ice Shelf.
* February – H. Fox Talbot obtains a patent for the calotype process in photography.
* 10 February – Penny Red postage stamp replaces the Penny Black.
* 20 February – the ''Governor Fenner'', carrying emigrants to America, sinks off Holyhead with the loss of 123 lives.
* 1 March – opening throughout of the Manchester and Leeds Railway, the first to cross the Pennines.
* 4 March – first performance of Dion Boucicault's comedy ''London Assurance'', presented by Charles Mathews at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden.
* by April – Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew first opens to the public and William Hooker appointed director.
* 3 May
** New Zealand becomes a separate British colony, having previously been administered as part of the Colony of New South Wales.
** London Library opens in Pall Mall.
* 6 June (Sunday)
** United Kingdom Census held, the first to record names and approximate ages of every household member and to be administered nationally.
** Marian Hughes becomes the first woman to take religious vows in communion with the Anglican Province of Canterbury since the Reformation, making them privately to E. B. Pusey in Oxford.
* 7 June – Lord Melbourne loses a vote of no confidence against his government.
* 21 June – St. Chad's Cathedral, Birmingham, dedicated as a Roman Catholic church.
* 29 June–22 July – general election – Sir Robert Peel's Conservatives take control of the House of Commons.
* 30 June – Great Western Railway completed throughout between London and Bristol.
* 5 July – Thomas Cook arranges his first excursion, taking 570 temperance campaigners on the Midland Counties Railway from Leicester to a rally in Loughborough.
* 17 July – first edition of the humorous magazine ''Punch'' published.
* 26 July – the proprietors of The Skerries Lighthouse off Anglesey, the last privately owned light in the British Isles, are awarded £444,984 in compensation for its sale to Trinity House.
* 28 August – Melbourne resigns as Prime Minister; replaced by Robert Peel.
* 2 September – reconsecration of Leeds Parish Church after reconstruction.
* 21 September – the London and Brighton Railway is opened throughout.
* 24 September – United Kingdom annexes Sarawak from Brunei; James Brooke is appointed rajah.
* 10 October – First Opium War: Battle of Chinhai – British capture a Chinese garrison.
* 13 October – First Opium War: British occupy Ningbo.
* 27 October – Anglican clergyman Richard Sibthorp becomes the first Tractarian to be received into the Roman Catholic Church, by Nicholas Wiseman at St Mary's College, Oscott (he reconverts two years later).
* 30 October – a fire at the Tower of London destroys its Grand Armoury and causes a quarter of a million pounds worth of damage.
* 13 November – surgeon James Braid attends his first demonstration of '' animal magnetism'', which leads to his study of the subject he eventually calls '' hypnotism''.
* 23 December – First Anglo-Afghan War: at a meeting with the Afghan general Akbar Khan, the diplomat Sir William Hay Macnaghten is shot dead at close quarters.

Undated

* Antarctic explorer James Clark Ross additionally discovers the Ross Sea, Victoria Land and Mount Terror.
* Chemical Society of London founded by Thomas Graham.
* Ulster Canal completed.

Ongoing events

* First Opium War (1839–1842)
* First Anglo-Afghan War (1839–1842)

Publications

* W. Harrison Ainsworth's novel '' Old St. Paul's: A Tale of the Plague and the Fire'' (serialised in ''The Sunday Times'', 3 January – 26 December).
* Thomas Carlyle's lectures '' On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History''.
* Serialisation of Charles Dickens's novel '' Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty''.
* Mrs Gore's novel ''Cecil, or Adventures of a Coxcomb''.
* John Henry Newman's Tract 90 (''Remarks on Certain Passages in the Thirty-Nine Articles'', dated 25 January).
* Augustus Pugin's lectures ''The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture''.
* Samuel Warren's novel ''Ten Thousand a Year''.
* ''Vocal Melodies of Scotland'', containing the first publication of the song "The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond".
* ''The Gardeners' Chronicle'' launched.
* ''The Jewish Chronicle'' launched; the first Jewish newspaper in the UK, it will be the oldest continuously published in the world when it ceases publication in 2020 (12 November).

Births

* 25 January – Jackie Fisher, admiral (died 1920)
* 28 January – Henry Morton Stanley, explorer and journalist (died 1904)
* 9 November – Edward VII (died 1910)
* William George Aston, consular official (died 1911)

Deaths

* 2 February – Olinthus Gregory, mathematician (born 1774)
* 12 February – Astley Cooper, surgeon and anatomist (born 1768)
* 17 February – Joseph Chitty, lawyer and legal writer (born 1775)
* 22 April – Edward Draper, army officer and colonial administrator (born 1776)
* 20 May – Joseph Blanco White, theologian (born 1775)
* 1 June – Sir David Wilkie, Scottish painter (born 1785)
* 3 July – Rosemond Mountain, actress and singer (born 1780s?)
* 24 August – Theodore Hook, author (born 1788)
* 1 December – George Birkbeck, doctor, academic and philanthropist (born 1776)
* 23 December – Sir William Hay Macnaghten, Anglo-Indian diplomat (born 1793)

See also

* 1841 in Scotland

References

{{Year in Europe, 1841

Years of the 19th century in the United Kingdom