# 1831 in the United Kingdom

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Events from the year 1831 in the United Kingdom.

## Incumbents

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

## Events

* 3 March – Tithe War breaks out in Ireland.
* 7 March – Royal Astronomical Society receives its Royal Charter.
* 12 April – Broughton Suspension Bridge over the River Irwell collapses under marching troops.
* 27 April – End of the First Anglo-Ashanti War (1823–1831).
* 28 April–1 June – General election results in a Whig victory and a mandate for electoral reform.
* May–June – Merthyr Rising in Merthyr Tydfil.
* 30 May – Census in the United Kingdom.
* 1 June – Royal Navy officer and explorer James Clark Ross leads the first expedition to reach the Magnetic North Pole.
* 8 June – Freeminers in the Forest of Dean, led by Warren James, break down enclosures in the Forest.
* 1 August – The new London Bridge is officially opened.
* 18 August – The paddle steamer Rothsay Castle is wrecked at the eastern end of the Menai Strait with the loss of 93 lives.
* 29 August – Michael Faraday demonstrates electromagnetic induction.
* 8 September – Coronation of King William IV.
* 22 September – The House of Commons passes the Great Reform Bill to expand the franchise, but this is later defeated in the Lords.
* 27 September – British Association for the Advancement of Science first meets, in York.
* October – King's College London opens.
* 9–11 October – Reform riots in Nottingham: Nottingham Castle and a silk mill at Beeston are gutted by fire.
* 15 October
** Special Constables Act regularises operation of the Special Constabulary.
** Truck Act prohibits payment of wages other than in cash.
* 26 October – Cholera epidemic begins in Sunderland.
* 28 October – Michael Faraday constructs the first dynamo.
* 29–31 October – 1831 Bristol riots ("Queen Square riots") in Bristol, in connection with the Great Reform Act controversy: 100 city centre properties are destroyed (including the Bishop's palace), at least 120 are estimated to have been killed, 31 of the rioters will be sentenced to death and a colonel facing court-martial for failure to control the riot commits suicide.
* December – First meeting in England of the Plymouth Brethren, organised primarily by George Wigram, Benjamin Wills Newton and John Nelson Darby.
* 27 December – Charles Darwin embarks on his historic voyage aboard HMS Beagle from Plymouth.

### Undated

* The house which will eventually contain Abbey Road Studios is built in the St John's Wood district of London.

## Publications

* January – Joseph Livesey begins publishing The Moral Reformer in Preston, Lancashire, the first publication of the temperance movement in England.
* Mrs Gore's novels Pin Money, Mothers and Daughters, and The Tuileries and her play The School for Coquettes.
* Thomas Hood's poem The Dream of Eugene Aram, the Murderer.
* Thomas Love Peacock's anonymous novel Crotchet Castle.
* Mary Prince's slave narrative The History of Mary Prince.

## Births

* 21 March – Dorothea Beale, proponent of women's education (died 1906)
* 7 May – Richard Norman Shaw, architect (died 1912)
* 16 May – David Edward Hughes, musician and professor of music (died 1900)
* 13 June – James Clerk Maxwell, physicist (died 1879)
* 14 October – Samuel Waite Johnson, railway locomotive engineer (died 1912)
* 15 October – Isabella Bird, explorer, writer, photographer and naturalist (died 1904)

## Deaths

* 14 February – Henry Maudslay, mechanical engineer (born 1771)
* 21 February – Robert Hall, Baptist minister (born 1764)
* 20 April – John Abernethy, surgeon (born 1764)
* 8 June – Sarah Siddons, actress (born 1755 in Wales)
* 17 August – Patrick Nasmyth, Scottish landscape painter (born 1787)