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Catholic Emancipation Act is passed by Parliament
Catholic emancipation or Catholic relief was a process in Great Britain and Ireland in the late 18th century and early 19th century which involved reducing and removing many of the restrictions on Roman Catholics which had been introduced by the Act of Uniformity, the Test Acts and the penal laws. Requirements to abjure the temporal and spiritual authority of the Pope and transubstantiation placed major burdens on Roman Catholics. -
Great Reform Act (1st reform Act) is passed by British Parliament
The Representation of the People Act 1832 (commonly known as the Reform Act 1832 or sometimes as The Great Reform Act) was an Act of Parliament (2 & 3 Will. IV) that introduced wide-ranging changes to the electoral system of England and Wales. According to its preamble, the act was designed to "take effectual Measures for correcting divers Abuses that have long prevailed in the Choice of Members to serve in the Commons House of Parliament." -
Slavery is banned in all British colonies
The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 (citation 3 & 4 Will. IV c. 73) was an 1833 Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom abolishing slavery throughout the British Empire (with the exceptions "of the Territories in the Possession of the East India Company," the "Island of Ceylon," and "the Island of Saint Helena", which were later repealed). The Act was repealed in 1998 as part of a wider rationalisation of English statute law, but later anti-slavery legislation remains in force. -
Queen Victoria ascends to the throne
Victoria turned 18 on 24 May 1837. On 20 June 1837, she became Queen on the death of her uncle, King William IV who was childless. Her reign as the Queen lasted 63 years and 7 months, longer than that of any other British monarch before or since, and her reign is the longest of any female monarch in history. The Victorian era was a period of great industrial, political, scientific, and military progress within the United Kingdom. In 1840 Victoria married her cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg -
Irish Potato Famine begins
In Ireland, the Great Famine was a period of mass starvation, disease and emigration between 1845 and 1852. It is also known, mostly outside Ireland, as the Irish Potato Famine. In the Irish language it is called an Gorta Mór, meaning ("the Great Hunger") or an Drochshaol, meaning "the bad times").
During the famine approximately 1 million people died and a million more emigrated from Ireland, causing the island's population to fall. -
Second Reform Act is passed by British Parliament
The 1832 Reform Act proved that change was possible. The parliamentary elite felt that they had met the need for change but among the working classes there were demands for more. The growth and influence of the Chartist Movement from 1838 onwards was an indication that more parliamentary reform was desired. -
British Parliament ends all public hangings
Up to May 1868 all hangings were carried out in public and attracted large crowds who were at least supposed to be deterred by the spectacle, but who more probably went for the morbid excitement and the carnival atmosphere that usually surrounded such events. The modern expression Gala Day is derived from the Anglo-Saxon gallows day. After hangings retreated inside prisons, large crowds would still often gather outside the gates to see the posting of the death notice or to protest the execution -
Use of Secret Ballot in Great Britain passes
The secret ballot is a voting method in which a voter's choices in an election or a referendum are anonymous. The key aim is to ensure the voter records a sincere choice by forestalling attempts to influence the voter by intimidation or bribery. The system is one means of achieving the goal of political privacy.
Secret ballots are suitable for many different voting systems. The most basic form may be blank pieces of paper, upon which each voter writes only his or her choice. Without revealing th -
All women 30 and older gain the right to vote in Great Britain
Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom was a national movement that began in 1872. Women were not prohibited from voting in the United Kingdom until the 1832 Reform Act and the 1835 Municipal Corporations Act. Both before and after 1832, establishing women's suffrage on some level was a political topic, although it would not be until 1872 that it would become a national movement with the formation of the National Society for Women's Suffrage and later the more influential National Union of Women -
Queen Victoria dies
Queen Victoria died on 21 January 1901 at the age of 81. She had been the Queen of Great Britain for 63 years, presiding over the industrialization of Britain and the expansion of the British Empire overseas. But perhaps her most lasting influence was on the values of the time: the Victorian age became synonymous with prudish gentility and repression. When her husband Albert died in 1861, Victoria donned widow's mourning clothes and wore them for the rest of her life. This display had a profoun
