Events

George III
(1760 - 1820)

Watt's Separate Condenser 1765
Captain Cook's voyage 1768 - 1769
"The Wealth of Nations" 1776
Power-loom 1785
75% of country’s children never went to school 1800
Battle of Trafalgar 1805
Slave trade abolished (not in the Empire) 1807
Corn Laws introduced 1815
Repeal of wartime income tax 1816
Children under 9 years of age forbidden to work in cotton factories 1819

Stockton and Darlington Railway 1825
Metropolitan Police Force 1829
Stephenson's Rocket 1830
Slave trade abolished in the Empire 1833
Child employment under 9 years of age banned in textile mills 1833

First Reform Act 1832

Victoria
(1837 - 1901)

Bicycle 1839/40
Penny Post 1840
Queen Victoria marries her cousin Albert 1840
Estimated 33% of men and 49% of women illiterate 1841
Child employment under 10 years old & women banned in coal mines 1842
Irish potato famine 1845/1847
Corn Law Repeal 1846
Average 60 hour working week 1850
Refrigerator 1850
Britain by far the richest county in the world 1850s
Civil divorce without the necessity of a private Act of Parliament 1857
Last public hanging of a murderer 1866 (Abolished 1868)
Margarine 1869
Ballot Act (secret voting) 1872
First Public Health Act 1872
Average 56.5 hour working week 1874
Estimated 16% of men and 22% of women illiterate 1876
Compulsory elementary education 1876 (not free)
Telephone (Bell and Edison) 1876 - 1880
Gramophone 1878
Electric lamp 1879
Cheap refrigerated meat from New Zealand 1880
Electric flat iron 1882
1 in 7 adults have the right to vote 1885
Internal combustion petrol engine 1887
30% of inhabitants of London (richest city in the world) live in poverty 1889
Free compulsory elementary education 1891
Cinema 1895
End of an era 1901: longest reigning British monarch dies