Factory Act

Act to Regulate the Labour of Children and Young Persons in the Mills and Factories of the United Kingdom passed on 29 August 1833. Image: the Royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Articles

Elsie B. Michie, "On the Sacramental Test Act, the Catholic Relief Act, the Slavery Abolition Act, and the Factory Act"

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Peter Capuano, “On Sir Charles Bell’s The Hand, 1833″

Opening of Liverpool & Manchester Railway

On 15 September 1830, the world’s first major passenger railway opened with a huge celebration—and an unforgettable tragedy. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway stages a grand public opening with dignitaries including then-prime-minster Duke of Wellington. But, before the inaugural trains reach their destination, a fatal accident occurs to MP William Huskisson and, in Manchester, the cheering crowds give way to angry political protests. Image: The Remains of Stephenson's 'Rocket', 1829. Used with permission. Copyright (c) National Railway Museum / Science & Society Picture Library.

Articles

Paul Fyfe, “On the Opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, 1830″

Peterloo massacre

On 16 August 1819, at St. Peter’s Field, Manchester, more than 60,000 workers gathered to demonstrate in favor of an expansion of suffrage in England. In an attempt to disperse the crowd and arrest the organizers of the demonstration, local cavalry and members of the 15th Hussars and 88th Foot attacked the crowd, killing a dozen protestors and injuring as many as 600. Though Wellington was not involved, the incident was dubbed “Peterloo” because of his persistent opposition to reform in the House of Lords. Image: Richard Carlisle, To Henry Hunt, Esq., as chairman of the emeeting assembled in St. Peter's Field, Manchester, sixteenth day of August, 1819, and to the female Reformers of Manchester and the adjacent towns who were exposed to and suffered from the wanton and fiendish attack made on them by that brutal armed force, the Manchester and Cheshire Yeomanry Cavalry, this plate is dedicated by their fellow labourer, Richard Carlile: a coloured engraving that depicts the Peterloo Massacre (1 October 1819), Manchester Library Services. This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

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James Chandler, “On Peterloo, 16 August 1819″

Sean Grass, “On the Death of the Duke of Wellington, 14 September 1852″

Treaty of Amiens

This Treaty was what stopped the Neopolenic war between France and Britian. During this time France regained most of their colonies. After this treaty took place the size of the militia in Britian shrank tremendously. Change in the malitia may have cheanged hwo the women an military men interacted and may have took some of the stresses of war off of Jane and her brothers. 

“French and British Armed Forces.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., https://www.britannica.com/event/Napoleonic-Wars/French-and-British-arme....

Napoleonic Wars

These are actually a set of individual wars that sometimes overlap, succeed, or run parallel to each other. Image: Jacques-Louis David, Napoleon Crossing the Alps (1800), Kunsthistorisches Museum. The work of art depicted in this image and the reproduction thereof are in the public domain worldwide. The reproduction is part of a collection of reproductions compiled by The Yorck Project (DVD-ROM, 2002). The compilation copyright is held by Zenodot Verlagsgesellschaft mbH and licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Historians do not agree on the exact beginning or end of the wars. November 9, 1799 is an early candidate since that is when Napoleon seized power in France. Hoping to ease the difficulty, historians date by isolated wars. They disarticulate the Napoleonic Wars in a linear series:

• War of the Second Coalition 1798-1802
• War of the Third Coalition 1805
• War of the Fourth Coalition 1806-7
• War of the Fifth Coalition 1809
• War of the Sixth Coalition 1812-14
• War of the Seventh Coalition 1815

The successive numerical coordinates for the Coalitions offer regularity, but that regularity is undercut by the shifting make-up of that Coalition (sometimes Prussia was in, sometimes not; sometimes Russia, sometimes not) and by the discontinuity and ambiguity of the dates.

Articles

Mary Favret, "The Napoleonic Wars"

Gagging Acts

Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool, by Thomas Lawrence, c. 1827

The Gagging Acts refer to two acts of Parliament passed in 1817 by Conservative Prime Minister Lord Liverpool. They were also known as the Grenville and Pitt Bills. The specific acts themselves were the Treason Act 1817 and the Seditious Meetings Act 1817. These acts were passed within a series of bills by the government in order to curb and suppress reformist demands by campaigners and corresponding societies, culminating in the Six Acts of 1819, after the Peterloo Massacre. 

Execution of King Louis XVI

On January 21, 1793, King Louis XVI of France was executed. Image: Isidore-Stanislas Helman, The Death of King Louis (1794), Bibliothèque nationale de France. This work is in the public domain in the United States.

1793 was a key juncture in the revolution, beginning with this execution on 21 January. The increasing violence prompted Britain to cut its ties to France, leading to declarations of war by the two countries. Violence peaked during the Reign of Terror (5 September 1793 – 27 July 1794), which resulted in the execution of the Queen (16 October) as well as of many suspects of treason and members of the Girondins, the more moderate faction that the radical Jacobins brought down on 2 June 1793

Articles

Diane Piccitto, "On 1793 and the Aftermath of the French Revolution"

Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade Founded

"Am I Not A Man And A Brother?" medallion created as part of anti-slavery campaign by Josiah Wedgwood, 1787.

The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, also known as the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, and sometimes referred to as the Abolition Society or Anti-Slavery Society, was a British abolitionist group formed on 22 May 1787. 

The society was established by twelve men; including prominent campaigners Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharp, who, as Anglicans, were able to be more influential in Parliament than the more numerous Quaker founding members. The society worked to educate the public about the abuses of the slave trade, and achieved abolition of the international slave trade when the British Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act 1807, at which time the society ceased its activities. 

American Revolution

American colonies rebel against British rule

Seven Years' War

British raid on French settlement of Miramichi (later called Burnt Church, New Brunswick), 1758.

The Seven Years' War was a global conflict that involved most of the European Great Powers, and was fought primarily in Europe, the Americas, and Asia-Pacific. Other concurrent conflicts include the French and Indian War (1754–1763), the Carnatic Wars and the Anglo-Spanish War (1762–1763). The opposing alliances were led by Great Britain and France respectively, both seeking to establish global pre-eminence at the expense of the other. Along with Spain, France fought Britain both in Europe and overseas with land-based armies and naval forces, while Britain's ally Prussia sought territorial expansion in Europe and consolidation of its power. Long-standing colonial rivalries pitting Britain against France and Spain in North America and the West Indies were fought on a grand scale with consequential results. Prussia sought greater influence in the German states, while Austria wanted to regain Silesia, captured by Prussia in the previous war, and to contain Prussian influence.

Licensing Act

The Front Page of the Licencing Act

The Licensing Act is a defunct Act of Parliament. Its purpose was to control and censor what was being said about the British government through theatre. The Lord Chamberlain was the official censor and the office of Examiner of Plays was created under the Act. The Examiner assisted the Lord Chamberlain in the task of censoring all plays from 1737 to 1968. The Examiner read all plays which were to be publicly performed, produced a synopsis and recommended them for licence, consulting the Lord Chamberlain in cases of doubt.

Robert Walpole became the Prime Minister

Robert Walpole, by Jean-Baptiste van Loo, c. 1740.

The Whig representative Robert Walpole was the first prime minister of Britain, who installed dependents in government offices and controlled the House of Commons by financially rewarding its members. 

The Statute of Anne

The Front Page of the Statute of Anne.

The Statute of Anne, also known as the Copyright Act 1710, was the first statute to provide for copyright regulated by the government and courts, rather than by private parties. It was formally put as "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by Vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or Purchasers of Copies, during the Times therein mentioned."

Prior to the statute's enactment in 1710, copying restrictions were authorized by the Licensing of the Press Act 1662. These restrictions were enforced by the Stationers' Company, a guild of printers given the exclusive power to print—and the responsibility to censor—literary works. The censorship administered under the Licensing Act led to public protest; as the act had to be renewed at two-year intervals, authors and others sought to prevent its reauthorisation. In 1694, Parliament refused to renew the Licensing Act, ending the Stationers' monopoly and press restrictions.

The Statute of Anne prescribed a copyright term of 14 years, with a provision for renewal for a similar term, during which only the author and the printers to whom they chose to license their works could publish the author's creations. Following this, the work's copyright would expire, with the material falling into the public domain. Despite a period of instability known as the Battle of the Booksellers when the initial copyright terms under the Statute began to expire, the Statute of Anne remained in force until the Copyright Act 1842 replaced it. 

Succession of Queen Anne

Queen Anne, by Michael Dahl, 1705.

Anne was born in the reign of Charles II. On Charles's instructions, Anne and her elder sister Mary were raised as Anglicans. After Mary's death in 1694, William reigned alone until his own death in 1702, when Anne succeeded him. 

James II took the throne

James II, by Sir Peter Lely.

James II, Charles II's brother, a Catholic, took the throne when Charles died. James claimed the rights to make his own laws, suspended the Test Act, and began to fill the goverment and army with Catholics. 

The Test Act

The Test act required all holders of civil and military offices to take the sacrament in an Anglican church and to deny belief in transsubstantiation. Protestant Dissenters and Roman Catholics were larged excluded from public life. Samuel Butler's Hudibras (1663) illustrates the religious exclusion and zealot. (Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century pp 4)

Great Plague of London

Scenes of London during the Great Plague (Wiki)

Great Plague of London ravaged London from 1664 to 1666. City records indicate that some 68,596 people died during the epidemic, though the actual number of deaths is suspected to have exceeded 100,000 out of a total population estimated at 460,000. The outbreak was caused by Yersinia pestis, the bacterium associated with other plague outbreaks before and since the Great Plague of London.

The Great Plague was not an isolated event—40,000 Londoners had died of the plague in 1625—but it was the last and worst of the epidemics. It began in London’s suburb of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, and the greatest devastation remained in the city’s outskirts, at Stepney, Shoreditch, Clerkenwell, Cripplegate, and Westminster, quarters where the poor were densely crowded. An outbreak was suspected in the winter of 1664, but it did not spread intensely until the spring of 1665. King Charles II and his court fled from London in the early summer and did not return until the following February; Parliament kept a short session at Oxford.

In December 1665 the mortality rate fell suddenly and continued down through the winter and into early 1666, with relatively few deaths recorded that year. From London the disease spread widely over the country, but from 1667 on there was no epidemic of plague in any part of England, though sporadic cases appeared in bills of mortality up to 1679. The disappearance of plague from London has been attributed to the Great Fire of London in September 1666, but it also subsided in other cities without such cause. The decline has also been ascribed to quarantine, but effective quarantine was actually not established until 1720. Scholars generally agree that the cessation of plague in England was spontaneous.