• Monarch – George IV
• Prime Minister – Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool (Tory) (until 9 April); George Canning (Coalition) (starting 10 April, until 8 August); F. J. Robinson, 1st Viscount Goderich (Coalition) (starting 31 August)
• Foreign Secretary – George Canning (until 30 April) John Ward, 1st Earl of Dudley (starting 30 April)
• Home Secretary – Robert Peel (until 10 April) William Sturges Bourne (30 April to 16 July) Lord Lansdowne (from 16 July)

• 17 January – The Duke of Wellington becomes Commander-in-Chief of the Forces.^[1]
• 1 March – St David's College, Lampeter, Wales, opens its doors to its first students.
• 7 March – Shrigley abduction: Ellen Turner, a wealthy 15-year-old heiress from Cheshire, is abducted by Edward Gibbon Wakefield. On 14 May Wakefield, his brother and a servant are sentenced to three years' imprisonment for the crime. Wakefield later becomes a colonial politician.
• 7 April – John Walker begins selling his invention, the "Lucifer" friction match.^[1]
• 10 April – George Canning succeeds Lord Liverpool as British Prime Minister following the latter's resignation due to ill health after almost fifteen years in office.^[2]
• 18 May – Red Barn Murder in Suffolk: Maria Marten is shot by her lover.
• 21 May – launch of the London Standard newspaper.
• 21 June – the first of Peel's Acts begin to consolidate the criminal law. Hue and cry and benefit of clergy are abolished^[3] and the setting of mantraps to catch poachers is made illegal.
• 6 July – Treaty of London between France, Britain and Russia to demand that the Turks agree to an armistice in Greece.
• 8 August – Prime Minister George Canning dies in office only 119 days after being appointed, making him the second shortest serving Prime Minister in British history.
• 31 August – Frederick John Robinson, 1st Viscount Goderich is appointed Prime Minister following the death of Canning, continuing the Canningite Government as the Goderich Ministry; he will serve for only 144 days.
• 20 October – Battle of Navarino (Greek War of Independence): British, French and Russian naval forces destroy the Turko-Egyptian fleet in Greece.^[1] This is the last naval action to be fought under sail alone.
• November – the term "socialist" is coined by Robert Owen in his London periodical, The Co-operative Magazine and Monthly Herald.^[4][5][6]

Ongoing events edit

• Anglo-Ashanti war (1823–1831)

Undated edit

• Physician Richard Bright first describes the renal condition which will become known as Bright's disease.^[7]
• Scottish botanist Robert Brown observes the phenomenon of Brownian motion.^[8]
• Yorkshire Philosophical Society begins excavation of St Mary's Abbey, York, prior to construction of the Yorkshire Museum on part of the site.

• John James Audubon's The Birds of America (printing of plates begins in the UK).
• Thomas De Quincey's essay On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts (in Blackwood's Magazine, February).
• Sir Walter Scott's stories Chronicles of the Canongate (published in Edinburgh 30 October anonymously, though Scott has publicly acknowledged his authorship of the Waverley Novels on 23 February).

• 7 January – Sandford Fleming, Scottish-born civil engineer, "father of time zones" (died 1915 in Canada)
• 14 January – Enderby Jackson, pioneer of the British brass band (died 1903)
• 24 February – Lydia Becker, suffragette (died 1890)^[9]
• 4 March – Henrietta Keddie ('Sarah Tytler'), Scottish-born novelist (died 1914)
• 7 March – John Hall Gladstone, chemist and physicist (died 1902)
• 14 March – George Frederick Bodley, architect (died 1907)
• 16 March – Edward Binyon, landscape painter (died 1876)^[10]
• 25 March – Edward Bradley ('Cuthbert Bede'), novelist (died 1889)
• 2 April – William Holman Hunt, Pre-Raphaelite painter (died 1910)
• 5 April – Joseph Lister, 1st Baron Lister, pioneer of antiseptic surgery (died 1912)
• 14 April – Augustus Pitt Rivers, né Lane-Fox, archaeologist (died 1900)
• 4 May – John Hanning Speke, explorer (died 1864)
• 16 July – William McEwan, Scottish-born brewer and politician (died 1913)
• 17 July – Sir Frederick Abel, chemist (died 1902)
• 16 August – Frances Buss, pioneer of women's education (died 1894)
• 19 September – J. P. Seddon, architect (died 1906)
• 24 October – George Robinson, 1st Marquess of Ripon, Liberal Party politician (died 1909)
• Henry Gray, anatomist (died 1861)
• Margaret Eleanor Parker, social reformer (died 1896)

• 2 January – John Mason Good, writer (born 1764)
• 5 January – Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, heir-presumptive to the throne (born 1763)
• 28 February – Thomas Holloway, portrait painter and engraver (born 1748)
• 21 April – Thomas Rowlandson, artist and caricaturist (born 1757)
• 26 June – Samuel Crompton, inventor (born 1753)
• 21 July – Archibald Constable, Scottish publisher (born 1774)
• 8 August – George Canning, statesman, Prime Minister from April (born 1770)
• 12 August – William Blake, poet, painter and printmaker (born 1757)