# 1841 in the United Kingdom

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Events from the year 1841 in the United Kingdom.

## Incumbents

* Monarch – Victoria
* Prime Minister – William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne (Whig) (until 30 August); Robert Peel (Conservative) (starting 30 August)
* Foreign Secretary – Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (until 2 September) George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen (starting 2 September)

## Events

* 4 January – City of Dublin Steam Packet Company SS Thames is wrecked on the Western Rocks, Isles of Scilly, with the loss of 61 of the 65 on board; at least 20 other ships run aground round the British Isles today.
* 20 January – Convention of Chuenpi agreed between Charles Elliot and Qishan of the Qing dynasty.
* 26 January – The United Kingdom formally occupies Hong Kong.
* 27 January – The active volcano Mount Erebus in Antarctica is discovered and named by James Clark Ross.
* 28 January – Ross discovers the "Victoria Barrier", later known as the Ross Ice Shelf.
* February – H. Fox Talbot obtains a patent for the calotype process in photography.
* 10 February – Penny Red postage stamp replaces the Penny Black.
* 20 February – The Governor Fenner, carrying emigrants to America, sinks off Holyhead with the loss of 123 lives.
* March – Richard Beard opens England's first commercial photographic studio in London, producing daguerreotype portraits.
* 1 March – Opening throughout of the Manchester and Leeds Railway, the first to cross the Pennines.
* 4 March – First performance of Dion Boucicault's comedy London Assurance, presented by Charles Mathews at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden.
* April – Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew first opens to the public and William Hooker appointed director.
* 3 May
** New Zealand becomes a separate British colony, having previously been administered as part of the Colony of New South Wales.
** London Library opens in Pall Mall.
* 6 June
** United Kingdom Census held, the first to record names and approximate ages of every household member and to be administered nationally.
** Marian Hughes becomes the first woman to take religious vows in communion with the Anglican Province of Canterbury since the Reformation, making them privately to E. B. Pusey in Oxford.
* 7 June – Lord Melbourne loses a vote of no confidence against his government.
* 21 June – St. Chad's Cathedral, Birmingham is dedicated as a Roman Catholic church.
* 29 June–22 July – General election, Sir Robert Peel's Conservatives take control of the House of Commons.
* 30 June – Great Western Railway completed throughout between London and Bristol.
* 5 July – Thomas Cook arranges his first excursion, taking 570 temperance campaigners on the Midland Counties Railway from Leicester to a rally in Loughborough.
* 17 July – The first edition of the humorous magazine Punch is published.
* 26 July – The proprietors of The Skerries Lighthouse off Anglesey, the last privately owned light in the British Isles, are awarded £444,984 in compensation for its sale to Trinity House.
* 28 August – Melbourne resigns as Prime Minister; replaced by Robert Peel.
* 2 September – Reconsecration of Leeds Parish Church after reconstruction.
* 21 September – The London and Brighton Railway is opened throughout.
* 24 September – The United Kingdom annexes Sarawak from Brunei; James Brooke is appointed rajah.
* 10 October – First Opium War: Battle of Chinhai – British capture a Chinese garrison.
* 13 October – First Opium War: British occupy Ningbo.
* 27 October – Anglican clergyman Richard Sibthorp becomes the first Tractarian to be received into the Roman Catholic Church, by Nicholas Wiseman at St Mary's College, Oscott (he reconverts two years later).
* 30 October – A fire at the Tower of London destroys its Grand Armoury and causes a quarter of a million pounds worth of damage.
* 13 November – Surgeon James Braid attends his first demonstration of animal magnetism, which leads to his study of the subject he eventually calls hypnotism.
* 23 December – First Anglo-Afghan War: at a meeting with the Afghan general Akbar Khan, the diplomat Sir William Hay Macnaghten is shot dead at close quarters.

### Undated

* Antarctic explorer James Clark Ross additionally discovers the Ross Sea, Victoria Land and Mount Terror.
* Chemical Society of London founded by Thomas Graham.
* Ulster Canal completed.

### Ongoing

* First Opium War (1839–1842)
* First Anglo-Afghan War (1839–1842)

## Publications

* W. Harrison Ainsworth's novel Old St. Paul's: A Tale of the Plague and the Fire (serialised in The Sunday Times, 3 January – 26 December).
* Thomas Carlyle's lectures On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History.
* Serialisation of Charles Dickens's novel Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty.
* Mrs Gore's novel Cecil, or Adventures of a Coxcomb.
* John Henry Newman's Tract 90 (Remarks on Certain Passages in the Thirty-Nine Articles, dated 25 January).
* Augustus Pugin's lectures The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture.
* Samuel Warren's novel Ten Thousand a Year.
* Vocal Melodies of Scotland, containing the first publication of the song "The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond".
* The Gardeners' Chronicle launched.
* The Jewish Chronicle launched; the first Jewish newspaper in the UK, it will be the oldest continuously published in the world when it ceases publication in 2020 (12 November).

## Births

* 25 January – Jackie Fisher, admiral (died 1920)
* 28 January – Henry Morton Stanley, explorer and journalist (died 1904)
* 9 November – King Edward VII (died 1910)
* William George Aston, consular official (died 1911)

## Deaths

* 2 February – Olinthus Gregory, mathematician (born 1774)
* 12 February – Astley Cooper, surgeon and anatomist (born 1768)
* 17 February – Joseph Chitty, lawyer and legal writer (born 1775)
* 22 April – Edward Draper, army officer and colonial administrator (born 1776)
* 20 May – Joseph Blanco White, theologian (born 1775)
* 1 June – Sir David Wilkie, Scottish painter (born 1785)
* 3 July – Rosemond Mountain, actress and singer (born 1780s?)
* 24 August – Theodore Hook, author (born 1788)
* 1 December – George Birkbeck, doctor, academic and philanthropist (born 1776)
* 23 December – Sir William Hay Macnaghten, Anglo-Indian diplomat (born 1793)