Samiksha Jaiswal (Editor)

1857 in the United Kingdom

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Events from the year 1857 in the United Kingdom. This is a General Election year.

Contents

Incumbents

  • Monarch — Queen Victoria
  • Prime Minister — The Viscount Palmerston (Liberal)

    • Events

  • 7 January — London General Omnibus Company begins operating.
  • 3 March — France and the United Kingdom formally declare war on China in the Second Opium War.
  • 5 March — In London, barrister James Townsend Saward receives a sentence of penal transportation for forging cheques.
  • 27 March–24 April — A General election secures Palmerston's Whigs a clear majority.
  • 4 April — End of the Anglo-Persian War.
  • 5 May–17 October — The Art Treasures of Great Britain exhibition is held in Manchester, one of the largest such displays of all time.
  • 10 May — Indian Rebellion: In India, the Mutiny of XI Native Cavalry of the Bengal Army in Meerut, revolt against the British East India Company.
  • 11 May — Indian combatants capture Delhi from the East India Company.
  • 18 May — British Museum Reading Room opens.
  • 22 June — The South Kensington Museum, predecessor of the Victoria and Albert Museum, is opened by Queen Victoria in London; it is the world’s first museum to incorporate a refreshment room.
  • 25 June — Queen Victoria formally grants her husband Albert the title Prince Consort.
  • 26 June — At a ceremony in Hyde Park, London, Queen Victoria awards the first sixty-six Victoria Crosses, for actions during the Crimean War. Commander Henry James Raby, RN, is the first to receive the medal from her hands.
  • 12 July — In Belfast, confrontations between crowds of Catholics and Protestants turn into 10 days of rioting, exacerbated by the open-air preaching of Evangelical Presbyterian minister "Roaring" Hugh Hanna, with many of the police force joining the Protestant side. There are also riots in Derry, Portadown and Lurgan.
  • 18 July — Prison hulk HMS Defence catches fire at her moorings off Woolwich, bringing an end to the use of hulks in home waters.
  • 28 August — Matrimonial Causes Act makes divorce without parliamentary approval legally possible.
  • September — Obscene Publications Act makes the sale of obscene material a statutory offence.
  • 20 September — British forces recapture Delhi, compelling the surrender of Bahadur Shah II, the last Mughal emperor.
  • 24 October — Sheffield F.C., the world's first football team, is founded in Sheffield.
  • 29 November — Orsini affair: Piedmontese revolutionary Felice Orsini leaves exile in London to make an assassination attempt on Emperor Napoleon III of France in Paris.
  • 31 December — Queen Victoria chooses Ottawa, Ontario, as the capital of Canada.

    • Undated

  • Tom Gallaher sets up the Gallaher tobacco business in Ireland.

    • Publications

  • R. M. Ballantyne's novel The Coral Island.
  • George Borrow's novel The Romany Rye.
  • Charlotte Brontë's novel The Professor (posthumously, as by 'Currer Bell').
  • Charles Dickens's novel Little Dorrit (complete in book form).
  • Elizabeth Gaskell's biography The Life of Charlotte Brontë.
  • P. H. Gosse's creationist text Omphalos.
  • Thomas Hughes' novel Tom Brown's Schooldays.
  • George A. Lawrence's novel Guy Livingstone, or Thorough (anonymously).
  • John Ruskin The Elements of drawing
  • William Makepeace Thackeray's historical novel The Virginians (begins serialisation).
  • Anthony Trollope's novel Barchester Towers.
  • 22 February — Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Scouting movement (died 1941)
  • 8 April — Lucy, Lady Houston, born Fanny Lucy Radmall, political activist, suffragette, philanthropist and promoter of aviation (died 1936)
  • 14 April — Princess Beatrice of the United Kingdom, member of the royal family (died 1944)
  • 13 May — Ronald Ross, physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (died 1932)
  • 15 May — Williamina Fleming, astronomer (died 1911)
  • 28 May — Charles Voysey, Arts and Crafts designer and domestic architect (died 1941)
  • 2 June — Edward Elgar, composer (died 1934)
  • 5 November — Joseph Tabrar, songwriter (died 1931)
  • 17 November — George Marchant, inventor, manufacturer, and philanthropist (died 1941)
  • 22 November — George Gissing, novelist (died 1903)
  • 27 November — Charles Scott Sherrington, physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1952)
  • 30 November — Bobby Abel, cricketer (died 1936)

    • Deaths

  • 1 January — John Britton, antiquary and topographer (born 1771)
  • 2 January — Andrew Ure, doctor and writer (born 1778)
  • 10 February — David Thompson, explorer (born 1770)
  • 18 February — Francis Egerton, 1st Earl of Ellesmere, politician (born 1800)
  • 13 March — William Amherst, 1st Earl Amherst, diplomat and peer (born 1773)
  • 16 May — Sir William Lloyd, soldier and mountaineer (born 1782)
  • 12 August — William Daniel Conybeare, dean of Llandaff (born 1787)
  • 16 August — John Jones, Talysarn, leading non-conformist minister (born 1796)
  • 29 November — Henry Havelock, general (born 1795)
  • 15 December — Sir George Cayley, aviation pioneer (born 1773)
  • 17 December — Francis Beaufort, naval officer and hydrographer (born 1774)

    • References

    1857 in the United Kingdom Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA