1833 in the United Kingdom

Events from the year 1833 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch – William IV
• Prime Minister – Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (Whig)
• Foreign Secretary – Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston

Events

• 3 January – reassertion of British sovereignty over the Falkland Islands by British forces in the South Atlantic.
• 18 April – over 300 delegates from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland travel to the office of the Prime Minister to call for the immediate abolition of slavery throughout the British Empire.^[1]
• 25 May – Royal Horticultural Society holds the first flower show in Britain.^[2]
• 14 July – John Keble preaches a sermon on "National Apostasy" (in part a protest against the Church Temporalities (Ireland) Act 1833), launching the Oxford Movement within the Church of England.^[3]
• August – Parliament begins annual grants for 50% of the cost of constructing new denominational schools.
• 28 August
  • The Slavery Abolition Act receives Royal Assent, abolishing slavery in most of the British Empire, coming into effect 1 August 1834. A £20 million fund is established to compensate slaveowners.
  • Quakers and Moravians Act allows Quakers and Moravians to substitute an affirmation for a legal oath in accordance with their religious beliefs. As a result, Joseph Pease becomes the first Quaker to take his seat in Parliament.
• 29 August – the Factory Act makes it illegal to employ children less than 9 years old in factories and limits child workers of 9 to 13 years of age to a maximum of 9 hours a day.^[4]
• 31 August – chartered ship Amphitrite sinks off Boulogne-sur-Mer while undertaking the penal transportation of 108 British female convicts and 12 children from Woolwich to New South Wales with the loss of 133 lives; only 3 crew survive.^[5]
• December – Edwin Chadwick introduces the Ten Hours Bill in Parliament.

Undated

• Bank Notes Act gives Bank of England notes over £5 in value the status of "legal tender" in England and Wales.^[6]
• Francis Goldsmid is the first Jew to become an English barrister.^[7]
• The Preston Temperance Society is founded by Joseph Livesey, pioneering the temperance movement and teetotalism.^[8]
• Laying out of Moor Park, Preston, by the local authority as a (partly) public park begins.

Publications

• First of the Bridgewater Treatises, examining science in relation to God.^[9]
• Serialisation of Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus in Fraser's Magazine.
• Charles Dickens' first published work of fiction, "A Dinner at Poplar Walk", first of what will become Sketches by Boz, appears unsigned in the Monthly Magazine (London, 1 December).
• Edward Bulwer's novel Godolphin.
• Mrs Favell Lee Mortimer's instructional text The Peep of Day, or, A series of the earliest religious instruction the infant mind is capable of receiving.
• Alfred Tennyson's collection Poems including "The Lady of Shalott".
• Publication of The Penny Cyclopædia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge edited by George Long begins.
• William Sandys' collection Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern.

Births

• 23 January – Sir Lewis Morris, Anglo-Welsh poet (died 1907)
• 28 January – Charles George Gordon, British army officer and administrator (died 1885)
• 27 July – Thomas George Bonney, geologist (d. 1923)
• 12 August – Aylmer Cameron, VC recipient (d. 1909)
• 26 August – Henry Fawcett, statesman, economist and Postmaster General (d. 1884)
• 28 August – Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Anglo-Welsh artist (d. 1898)
• 4 November – James James, harpist and composer of the Welsh national anthem (d. 1902)
• 11 December – Francis E. Anstie, physician and medical researcher (d. 1874)

Deaths

• 9 January – Sir Thomas Foley, admiral (b. 1757)
• 23 January – Edward Pellew, 1st Viscount Exmouth, admiral (b. 1757)
• 16 April – Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl of Carnarvon (b. 1772)
• 22 April – Richard Trevithick, Cornish-born inventor, mechanical engineer and builder of the first working railway steam locomotive (b. 1771)
• 15 May
  • Bewick Bridge, mathematician (b. 1767)
  • Edmund Kean, actor (b. 1787)
• 2 June – Simon Byrne, prizefighter (b. 1806)
• 10 July – George Agar-Ellis, 1st Baron Dover, politician and man of letters (b. 1797)
• 29 July – William Wilberforce, abolitionist (b. 1759)
• 27 September – Ram Mohan Roy, Bengali reformer (b. 1772)
• 11 November – James Grant, navigator (b. 1772)
• 3 December – Adam Buck, Irish-born neo-classical portraitist and miniature painter (b. 1759)

References