Margaret Linley
Summer 2000, English 803

19th Century Timeline

Related Links
Romantic Chronology (to 1851; eds. Laura Mandell and Alan Lui)
English History Timeline (from the Victoria Web; compiled by Glenn Everett)


1765 James Watt perfects steam engine

1789 French Revolution

1793 King Louis XVI executed

1800 Iron hand-press

1807 Mechanization of paper making

1811 Regency begins (Prince of Wales acts for George III)

1814 First use of steam in printing

1815 Battle of Waterloo; End of Napoleonic War; Corn Law Passed

1819 Peterloo Massacre

1822 Rudolph Ackermann publishes the Forget-Me-Not, the first English Annual

1826 Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge

1828 Test and Corporation Acts Repealed; First publication of the Keepsake

1829 Catholic Emancipation Act

1830 First steam powered railway-Liverpool to Manchester

1832 First Reform Bill

1833 Abolition of Slavery in the British Empire

1837 Queen Victoria's ascension to the throne

1838 People's Charter published. Anti-Corn League founded. First regular Atlantic steamship

1839 Photography: Louis Daguerre and William Henry Fox Talbot

1841 Tract 90 (end of Tracts for the Times)

1842 Ashley's Act. Chadwick Report on Sanitary Condition of Labouring Population.  Mudie's Circulating Library founded; Copyright extended to 42 yrs or 7 yrs after dead

1844 Factory Act (women and children)

1846 Repeal of Corn Laws. Commercial telegraph service begins (patented 1837)

1845 Irish famine

1847 Ten Hours Act. First operation using chloroform

1848 Chartist Crisis. Irish Uprising. Revolutions through western Europe. Public Health Act. Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood founded. Christian Socialist Movement begins. Gov't temporarily takes over telegraph system; WH Smith sets up bookstalls in railway stations

1849 Bedford College for Women founded

1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition

1854 London Working Men's College founded. Crimean War (1854-56, extensive use of  telegraph and photography)

1855 Abolition of Newspaper Tax; Daily Telegraph, first mass circulation daily

1857 Indian Mutiny. Matrimonial Causes Act. Obscene Publications Bill; final publication of the Keepsake

1861 Removal of duty on paper. American Civil War (1861-65)

1865 Transatlantic cable opened. Antiseptic Surgery

1866 Hyde Park Riots

1867 Second Reform Bill. Fenian Revolt. British North America Act

1868 Abolition of compulsory church rates

1869 Girton College (first woman's college at Cambridge)

1870 Franco-Prussian war (emergence of Germany as industrial world power). Education Act London linked to Bombay

1872 Secret ballot adopted for elections

1876 Victoria proclaimed Empress of India; telephone

1879 incandescent lamp (Thomas Edison and Joseph Swann); British Museum lights up 1880

1884 Third Reform Bill. Fabian Society founded. National Socialist League founded

1883 Society of Authors

1885 Radio

1886 Remington Typewriter Company establishes dealership in Britain

1887 Golden Jubilee. "Bloody Sunday" (Socialist demonstration at Trafalgar Square)

1892 Internal combustion engine patented (Rudolf Diesel)

1895 X-ray

1897 Diamond Jubilee

1899 Boer War; Net Book Agreement

1901 Queen Victoria dies

1903 First powered flight (Wright brothers)

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