1842 in the United Kingdom:

Other years

1840 | 1841 | 1842 | 1843 | 1844

Sport

1842 English cricket season

Events from the year 1842 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch - Victoria of the United Kingdom
• Prime Minister - Robert Peel, Conservative

Events

• 6 January–13 January: First Anglo-Afghan War
  • Massacre of Elphinstone's army by Afghan forces.
  • Battle of Gandamak ends in victory for the Afghans.
• 31 March - Middleton Junction and Oldham Branch Railway line opened up to Werneth.
• 13 April - First Anglo-Afghan War: British victory at the Battle of Jellalabad.
• 11 May - Income Tax Act 1842 establishes the first peacetime income tax in Britain; 7 pence on the pound, for incomes over 150 pounds.^[1]
• 4 June - In South Africa, hunter Dick King rides into British military base in Grahamstown to warn that Boers have besieged Durban. He had left 11 days earlier. British army dispatches a relief force.
• 19 June - Army suppresses Rebecca Rioters in Carmathen, protesting against turnpike tolls.^[1]
• August-October - First Anglo-Afghan War: British victory at the Battle of Kabul.
• August - Mines Act 1842 prohibits women and children under ten from working in mines.^[1]
• 7 August to 27 August - Riots in and around Lancashire, protesting against Corn Laws, and in favour of Chartists.^[1]
• 9 August - The United Kingdom and United States sign the Webster-Ashburton Treaty agreeing the border between the United States and Canada.^[2]
• 29 August - Britain and China sign the Treaty of Nanking ending the First Opium War.^[3] Hong Kong is ceded to Britain.

Undated

• Massacre of Elphinstone's British army on the road from Kabul to Jalalabad, Afghanistan, by Akbar Khan, son of Dost Mohammed Khan
• Pentonville Prison built.
• Edwin Chadwick produces a report exposing the low living standards of the urban poor.^[3]
• Antarctic explorer James Clark Ross charts the eastern side of James Ross Island.

Births

• 13 May - Arthur Sullivan, composer (died 1900)
• 23 August - Osborne Reynolds, engineer and physicist (died 1912)
• 20 September - James Dewar, chemist and physicist (died 1923)
• 12 November - John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1919)
• 2 December - C. W. Alcock, footballer and football official (died 1907)

Deaths

• 13 March - Henry Shrapnel, soldier and inventor (born 1761)
• 5 June - Thomas Henry Lister, novelist (born 1800)
• 12 June - Thomas Arnold, historian and schoolmaster (born 1795)

References

See also