1834 in the United Kingdom

Incumbents

• Monarch – William IV
• Prime Minister – Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey ; William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne ; Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington ; Robert Peel
• Parliament – 11th

  Events

• February – Robert Owen organises the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union.
• March – William Whewell first publishes the term scientist in the Quarterly Review.
• 18 March – the Tolpuddle Martyrs, six Dorset farm labourers, are sentenced to be transported to a penal colony for forming a trade union.
• 23 June – HMS Tartarus is launched at Pembroke Dock. It is the Royal Navy's first steam-powered man-of-war.
• 16 July – Lord Melbourne succeeds Earl Grey as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• 1 August – slavery abolished in most of the British Empire by the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.
• 14 August – Poor Law Amendment Act states the able-bodied cannot receive assistance unless they enter a workhouse.
• 15 August – Parliament approves the creation of the colony of South Australia.
• August – Foresters Friendly Society formed as the Ancient Order of Foresters in Rochdale.
• 7 October – Birmingham Town Hall, designed by Joseph Hansom and Edward Welch, is opened for the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival.
• 16 October – burning of Parliament: Much of the Palace of Westminster is destroyed by fire.
• 14 November – William IV dismisses the government of Melbourne, after proposals for Church reform are made. The Duke of Wellington forms a caretaker government. This will be the last time a British sovereign chooses a Prime Minister contrary to the will of Parliament.
• 10 December – Sir Robert Peel forms his first government.
• 17 December – the Dublin and Kingstown Railway, the first public railway in Ireland, opens between Dublin and Kingstown.
• 18 December
• * Tamworth Manifesto published: Peel outlines his guiding principles of government, regarded as the basis of the modern Conservative Party.
• * Tithe War in Ireland: "Rathcormac massacre": At Gortroe, County Cork, armed Constabulary reinforced by the regular British Army kill at least nine and wound thirty protesters against tithes.
• 23 December – architect and inventor Joseph Hansom patents the Hansom cab.
• 26 December – Ursulines of Jesus take up residence at St Margaret's Convent in the Whitehouse in Edinburgh, the first Roman Catholic convent established in Scotland since the Reformation; it will be another 5 years before the first such modern establishment in England.

  Undated

• The government begins to make grants of 50% towards the erection of new elementary schools in England and Wales.
• Hanging in chains upon a gibbet after execution is abolished in England.
• British East India Company monopoly on China trade ended.
• The Exchequer is abolished as a revenue collecting department of the British government.
• The Institute of British Architects in London, predecessor of the Royal Institute of British Architects, is formed.
• Harrods founded as a grocer in Stepney in the East End of London.
• Augustus Smith acquires the lease on the Isles of Scilly from the Duchy of Cornwall.
• History of computing hardware: Charles Babbage begins the conceptual design of an "analytical engine", a mechanical forerunner of the modern computer. It will not be built in his lifetime.
• A "Fancy Toy Dog Show" is held at Elephant and Castle in London.
• With an average Central England temperature of, this narrowly overtakes 1733 as the hottest calendar year in the CET record until equalled in 1921 and beaten in 1949.

  Publications

• W. Harrison Ainsworth's first novel Rookwood, an historical romance featuring the highwayman Dick Turpin.
• Edward Bulwer's novel The Last Days of Pompeii.
• Cuthbert Sharp's collection The Bishoprick Garland.

  Births

• 28 January – Sabine Baring-Gould, hagiographer, antiquarian, novelist and eclectic scholar
• 15 February – William Henry Preece, electrical engineer and inventor
• 19 February – Charles Davis Lucas, Irish Victoria Cross recipient
• 28 February – Charles Santley, baritone
• 6 March – George du Maurier, cartoonist and novelist
• 16 March – James Hector, geologist
• 24 March – William Morris, artist, writer, socialist and activist
• 30 April – John Lubbock, banker, archaeologist, Liberal politician, philanthropist and polymath
• 19 June – Charles Spurgeon, Baptist preacher
• 28 June – Samuel Pasco, United States Senator from Florida from 1887 to 1899
• 4 August – John Venn, mathematician
• 23 August – Hugh Owen Thomas, Welsh-born orthopaedic surgeon
• 9 September – Joseph Henry Shorthouse, novelist
• 23 November – James Thomson, Scottish-born poet
• 24 December – Augustus George Vernon Harcourt, chemist

  Deaths

• 12 January – William Wyndham Grenville, 1st Baron Grenville, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
• 11 April – John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, philanthropist and patron of the arts and sciences
• 12 July – David Douglas, botanist
• 25 July – Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet, critic, and philosopher
• 1 August – Robert Morrison, Protestant missionary to China
• 2 September – Thomas Telford, engineer
• 16 September – William Blackwood, writer
• 11 October – William John Napier, 9th Lord Napier, Navy officer, politician and diplomat
• 5 December – Thomas Pringle, poet
• 23 December – Thomas Malthus, demographer and economist
• 27 December – Charles Lamb, essayist