1822 in the United Kingdom

1822 in the United Kingdom:

Other years

1820 | 1821 | 1822 | 1823 | 1824

Events from the year 1822 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch - George IV
• Prime Minister - Lord Liverpool (Tory)

Events

• 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.
• 23 May - HMS Comet launched at Deptford Dockyard, the first steamboat commissioned by the Royal Navy.
• 3 July - Charles Babbage publishes a proposal for a "difference engine", a 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.
• 8 July - The Chippewa turn over a huge tract of land in Ontario to the British.
• 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, is passed to regulate treatment of cows, horses and sheep.
• 31 July - Last public whipping in Edinburgh.
• 12 August - St David's College (now the University of Wales, Lampeter) is founded by Thomas Burgess, Bishop of St David's.
• 15–29 August - Visit of King George IV to Scotland, first appearance of the monarch there since 1651.
• 22 August - The English ship Orion lands at Yerba Buena, now named San Francisco, under the command of William A. Richardson
• 16 September - George Canning appointed British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
• 21 September - HMS Confiance, a Royal Navy Cruizer class brig-sloop of 1813, is wrecked off Mizen Head in Ireland with the loss of all 100 aboard.
• 20 October - The New Observer newspaper becomes The Sunday Times.
• 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.
• 27 November - Outside Newgate Prison in London, William Reading becomes the last person to be hanged for shoplifting.

Unknown dates

• Hieroglyphs deciphered by Thomas Young and Jean-François Champollion using the Rosetta Stone.
• The Royal Academy of Music is established in London.
• First fossil to be recognised as that of a dinosaur, an Iguanodon tooth, is discovered by Gideon Mantell and his wife Mary in West Sussex.
• Construction of the Royal Pavilion in Brighton is completed.

Publications

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

Births

• 13 February - James B. Beck, United States Senator from Kentucky from 1877 till 1890 (died 1890)
• 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
• 18 July - Augusta of Cambridge, Hanoverian princess (died 1916)
• 24 December - Matthew Arnold, English poet (died 1888)

Deaths

• January - John Julius Angerstein, merchant and insurer (born 1735)
• 15 January - John Aikin, physician and writer (born 1747)
• 24 February - Thomas Coutts, banker (born 1735)
• 8 July - Percy Bysshe Shelley, poet (born 1792)
• 12 August - Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, Foreign Secretary (suicide) (born 1769)
• 25 August - William Herschel, German-born British astronomer (born 1738, Hanover)