Events
- 28 February – the Grand National at Aintree is won by the 5/1 joint favourite Discount.
- 11 April – initiation of the Ragged Schools Union.[1]
- 11 May – major fire at Lyme Regis.[2]
- May – Henry Hardinge, 1st Viscount Hardinge, appointed as Governor-General of India.[3]
- 6 June – George Williams founds the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in London.[4]
- 15 June – Factory Act imposes a maximum 12-hour working day for women, and a maximum 6-hour day for children aged 6 to 13.[5]
- 19 July – Bank Charter Act restricts powers of British banks other than the Bank of England to issue banknotes of the pound sterling.[6][7]
- 21 & 27 August – consecration of two new major urban Roman Catholic churches, both designed by Augustus Pugin, which will in the 1850s be elevated to cathedral status: St Mary's Church, Newcastle upon Tyne and St Barnabas Church, Nottingham. (In October, Pugin occupies The Grange, Ramsgate, a house designed for himself which is influential in the development of domestic Gothic Revival architecture.)[8]
- 28 September – a blackdamp explosion at Haswell Colliery in the Durham Coalfield kills 95, with just four survivors.[9]
- 8 October – Louis-Phillipe, King of the French, arrives in Portsmouth on a visit to Britain.
- 20 October – Counties (Detached Parts) Act 1844 comes into effect, eliminating many outliers or exclaves of counties in England and Wales for civil purposes.
- 28 October – the Royal Exchange in London opened by Queen Victoria.[10]
- 11 December – Health of Towns Association formed to press for public health improvements.[11]
- 21 December – the Rochdale Pioneers, usually considered the first successful cooperative enterprise, open their store in Rochdale, forming the basis for the modern cooperative movement.[4]
Undated
- Winsford rock salt mine opens in Cheshire; by 2014 it will be Britain's oldest working mine.[12]
- Ring of bells installed at St John the Evangelist's Church, Kirkham (Lancashire), said to be the first peal rung in an English Roman Catholic church since the Reformation.[13][14]
- "Surplice riots" in Exeter and London break out in opposition to supposed Catholicisation of the Church of England.
- King Frederick Augustus II of Saxony makes an informal summer tour of Britain.