1831 in the United Kingdom

Incumbents

• Monarch – William IV
• Prime Minister – Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey
• Parliament – 9th, 10th

  Events

• 3 March – Tithe War breaks out in Ireland.
• 7 March – Royal Astronomical Society receives its Royal Charter.
• 12 April – Broughton Suspension Bridge over the River Irwell collapses under marching troops.
• 27 April – Ending of the Anglo-Ashanti war.
• 28 April – 1 June – general election results in a Whig victory, and a mandate for electoral reform.
• May–June – Merthyr Rising in Merthyr Tydfil.
• 30 May – census in the United Kingdom.
• 1 June – Royal Navy officer and explorer James Clark Ross leads the first expedition to reach the Magnetic North Pole.
• 8 June – Freeminers in the Forest of Dean, led by Warren James, break down enclosures in the Forest.
• 1 August – the new London Bridge is officially opened.
• 17 August – the paddle steamer Rothsay Castle is wrecked at the eastern end of the Menai Strait with the loss of 93 lives.
• 29 August – Michael Faraday demonstrates electromagnetic induction.
• 8 September – coronation of King William IV.
• 22 September – the House of Commons passes the Reform Bill, but this is later defeated in the Lords.
• 27 September – British Association for the Advancement of Science first meets, in York.
• October – King's College London opens.
• 9–11 October – riots in Nottingham: Nottingham Castle and a silk mill at Beeston are gutted by fire.
• 15 October – Truck Act prohibits payment of wages other than in cash.
• 26 October – cholera epidemic begins in Sunderland.
• 28 October – Michael Faraday constructs the first dynamo.
• 29–31 October – Queen Square riots, Bristol: Rioters burn down 100 houses in Bristol ; intervention by the 14th Dragoons leads to death or injury of hundreds.
• December – first meeting in England of the Plymouth Brethren, organised primarily by George Wigram, Benjamin Wills Newton and John Nelson Darby.
• 27 December – Charles Darwin embarks on his historic voyage aboard from Plymouth.
• Undated – The house which will eventually contain Abbey Road Studios is built in the St John's Wood district of London.

  Publications

• January – Joseph Livesey begins publishing The Moral Reformer in Preston, Lancashire, the first publication of the temperance movement in England.
• Mrs Gore's novels Pin Money, Mothers and Daughters, The School for Coquettes and The Tuileries.
• Thomas Hood's poem The Dream of Eugene Aram, the Murderer.
• Thomas Love Peacock's anonymous novel Crotchet Castle.
• Mary Prince's slave narrative The History of Mary Prince.

  Births

• 21 March – Dorothea Beale, proponent of women's education
• 7 May – Richard Norman Shaw, architect
• 16 May – David E. Hughes, musician and professor of music
• 13 June – James Clerk Maxwell, physicist
• 14 October – Samuel W. Johnson, railway locomotive engineer
• 15 October – Isabella Bird, explorer, writer, photographer and naturalist

  Deaths

• 21 February – Robert Hall, Baptist minister
• 20 April – John Abernethy, surgeon
• 8 June – Sarah Siddons, actress
• December – Happy Jerry, mandrill