|
|
Date
|
Event
|
Topics
|
| Details |
1694 |
Bank of England established. |
*Economics |
| Details |
1720 |
South Sea Bubble: a stock-market crash on Exchange Alley. |
*South Sea Bubble
*Economics |
| Details |
1722 |
Sir Robert Walpole rises to power (made Chancellor of the Exchequer and First Lord of the Treasury); Newcastle made Second Secretary of State: "through Newcastle, the appointment to every office in church and state, no matter how small, was made conditional on loyalty to Walpole"; this is a change from the previous practice of granting appointments to the greatest "Wits" of the age. |
*Economics |
| Details |
1723 |
The Workhouse Act or Test (to get relief, the poor person has to enter the Workhouse). The Waltham Black Act adds 50 capital offenses to the penal code: people could be sentenced to death for theft and poaching. This Act has been said to "signal the onset of the floodtide of eighteenth-century retributive justice" (Thompson 23). Excise tax levied for coffee, tea, and chocolate. |
*Poor Law
*Economics |
| Details |
1733 |
Excise crisis: Sir Robert Walpole wants to add excise tax to tobacco and wine. Pulteney and Bolingbroke oppose the excise tax. |
*Economics
*Colonialism |
| Details |
1742 |
England goes to war with Spain, incited by
William Pitt the Elder for the sake of trade. Sir Robert Walpole resigns. Continental War under Carteret: Pitt denounces Carteret's policy as "a
wild waste of England's resources for the despicable [Hanover] electorate." |
*Spain
*Economics
*House of Hanover |
| Details |
1756 |
The Seven Years War with France--Pitt's trade war--begins. |
*France
*Economics
*Colonialism |
| Details |
1760 |
The date conventionally marking the beginning of the Industrial Revolution (the so-called "First Industrial Revolution"). Jonas Hanway and D. Porter campaign against the exploitation of children as Chimney Sweeps. |
*Economics
*Industrial Revolution
*Child Labor |
| Details |
1763 |
Peace with France gives back everything Pitt fought to obtain (Newfoundland fishing rights, Guadaloupe and Martininque [sugar trade], Dakar [gum trade]). John Wilkes is imprisoned in the Tower for his North Briton article; the judge Lord Camden rules against the government, thereby outlawing "general warrants," instruments of arbitrary imprisonment. |
*France
*Colonialism
*Economics |
| Details |
1763 |
City merchants angry at George III: "the day of the bourgeois radical dawned." |
*Economics
*House of Hanover |
| Details |
1768 |
The Coal Heavers' Case: a group of seven coal-heavers in Shadwell lays seige, with guns, for many hours of the night to the house of a man responsible for reducing their wages. Those who survived the violent attack are sentenced to death under the authority of the Black Act. |
*Economics |
| Details |
Jan 30, 1793 |
Richard Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, publishes an "Appendix" to the reprint of a Sermon of 1785 which answers Paine; later in 1793, he publishes "The Wisdom and Goodness of God in Having Made Both Rich and Poor." |
*Economics |
| Details |
Feb 1797 |
Bank of England suspends cash payments. |
*Economics |
| Details |
1803 |
Sugar prices begin to rise again. |
*Colonialism
*Economics |
| Details |
1816 |
Economic Depression. |
*Industrial Revolution
*Economics |
| Details |
1825 |
Hobhouse makes amendments to Acts to protect Child Labor in cotton factories. |
*Economics
*Child Labor |
| Details |
1833 |
Harriet Martineau, Poor Laws and Paupers Illustrated. |
*Poor Law
*Economics |
| Details |
1834 |
New Poor Law argues that indiscriminate relief demoralizes beneficiaries, abolishes outdoor relief, and maintains workhouse inmates at salary level below lowest paid workers. |
*Poor Law
*Economics |
| Details |
1836 - 1842 |
Economic downturn. |
*Economics |
| Details |
1849 - 1850 |
Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor printed in the Morning Chronicle. |
*Economics |