1829 in the United Kingdom

Incumbents

• Monarch – George IV
• Prime Minister – Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (Tory)
• Foreign Secretary – George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen
• Home Secretary – Robert Peel
• Secretary of War – George Murray

Events

• 8 January – Hanging of body-selling murderer William Burke in Edinburgh. His associate William Hare, who has testified against him, is released.
• 26 January – First performance of Douglas Jerrold's comic nautical melodrama Black-Eyed Susan; or, All in the Downs at the Surrey Theatre in Lambeth; it will run for a new record of well over 150 performances.
• 1–2 February – York Minster is extensively damaged in a fire started by Jonathan Martin (who is subsequently acquitted of arson on the grounds of insanity).
• March 5 – Jack Adams, last of the Bounty mutineers, dies on Pitcairn Island.
• 21 March – Wellington–Winchilsea duel. A duel is fought between the Prime Minister (the Duke of Wellington) and George Finch-Hatton, 10th Earl of Winchilsea, in Battersea Fields, provoked by the Duke's support for Catholic emancipation and foundation of the secular King's College London. Deliberately off-target shots are fired by both and honour is satisfied without injury.
• 27 March – Zoological Society of London receives its royal charter.
• April–September – The composer Felix Mendelssohn pays his first visit to Britain. This includes (June) the first London performance of his concert overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream and (August) his trip to Fingal's Cave.
• 13 April – Passage of the Roman Catholic Relief Act by Parliament of the United Kingdom granting Catholic emancipation.
• 5 June – Slave trade: captures the armed slave ship Voladora off the coast of Cuba.
• 10 June – The Oxford University Boat Club wins the first inter-university Boat Race, rowed at Henley-on-Thames.
• 19 June – Robert Peel's Metropolitan Police Act establishes the Metropolitan Police Service.
• 30 June – Henry Robinson Palmer files a patent application for corrugated iron for use in buildings.
• 4 July – George Shillibeer begins operating the first bus service in London.
• 2–3 August – The "Muckle Spate", a great flood of the River Findhorn which devastates much of Strathspey, Scotland, washing away many bridges.
• 14 August – King's College London founded by Royal Charter
• 29 September – The first police officers of the Metropolitan Police Service, known by the nicknames "bobbies" or "peelers", go on patrol in London.

• 8 October – Robert Stephenson's steam locomotive Rocket defeats John Ericsson's Novelty and other competitors and thus wins the Rainhill Trials held on the under-construction Liverpool and Manchester Railway.
• 4 December – In the face of fierce opposition, Lord William Bentinck carries a regulation declaring that all who abet suttee in India are guilty of culpable homicide.
• 31 December – Last British hanging for forgery, Thomas Maynard at Newgate Prison, London.

Ongoing

• Anglo-Ashanti war (1823–1831)

Publications

• Thomas Carlyle's essay Signs of the Times.
• Thomas Love Peacock's historical romance The Misfortunes of Elphin (as "by the author of Headlong Hall").
• Sir Walter Scott's historical novel Anne of Geierstein (as "by the author of Waverley").

Births

• 17 January – Catherine Booth, Mother of The Salvation Army (died 1890)
• 2 February – William Stanley, inventor (died 1909)
• 6 March – Arthur Blomfield, architect (died 1899)
• 10 April – William Booth, founder of The Salvation Army (died 1912)
• 4 June – Allan Octavian Hume, member of the Indian civil service and "the Father of Indian Ornithology" (died 1912)
• 5 June – George Stephen, 1st Baron Mount Stephen, Scottish-born businessman in Canada and philanthropist (died 1921)
• 8 June – John Everett Millais, Pre-Raphaelite painter (died 1896)
• 16 June – Bessie Rayner Parkes, journalist and feminist (died 1925)
• 14 July – Edward White Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury (died 1896)
• 25 July – Elizabeth Siddal, Pre-Raphaelite artists' model, painter and poet (died 1862)
• 25 September – William Michael Rossetti, critic (died 1919)
• 9 November – Sir Peter Lumsden, Scottish general in the Indian army (died 1918)
• John Lowther du Plat Taylor, founder of the Army Post Office Corps (died 1904)

Deaths

• 15 January – John Mastin, local historian, memoirist and clergyman (born 1747)
• 25 January – William Shield, composer, violinist and violist (born 1748)
• 28 January – William Burke, murderer and grave robber, executed (born 1792 in Ireland)
• 1 March – Thomas Earnshaw, watchmaker (born 1749)
• 8 May – Charles Abbot, 1st Baron Colchester, barrister, statesman, Speaker of the House of Commons (born 1759)
• 10 May – Thomas Young, physician and linguist (born 1773)
• 29 May – Sir Humphry Davy, chemist (born 1778)
• 27 June – James Smithson, mineralogist, chemist and sponsor of the Smithsonian Institution (born 1765)
• 7 August – John Reeves, conservative activist, public servant and legal historian (born 1752)
• 10 October – Maria Elizabetha Jacson, botanist (born 1755)
• 28 December – Bill Richmond, bare-knuckle welterweight boxer (born 1763 in British America)

References

References

1. Gillan, Don. (2007). "Longest Running Plays in London and New York".
2. Balston, Thomas. (1945). "The Life of Jonathan Martin".
3. Grove, George. (1 October 1904). "Mendelssohn's Scotch Symphony". [[The Musical Times]].
4. (2006). "Penguin Pocket On This Day". Penguin Reference Library.
5. "Foundations of The Boat Race". Theboatrace.org.
6. Thomson, Nick. (2011). "Corrugated Iron Buildings". Shire Publications.
7. "Icons, a portrait of England 1820–1840".
8. (2007). "The Muckle Spate of 1829: the physical and societal impact of a catastrophic flood on the River Findhorn, Scottish Highlands". Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers.
9. "Thomas Maynard". British Executions.