Events from the year 1817 in the United Kingdom. Incumbents Monarch – George III Regent – George, Prince Regent Prime Minister – Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool (Tory) Foreign Secretary – Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh Parliament – 5th Events January – The Black Dwarf is first published in London as a satirical radical unstamped newspaper by journalist Thomas Jonathan Wooler. 20 January – HMS Jasper is wrecked in the vicinity of Plymouth Sound by hurricane-force winds with the loss of 65 lives. 25 January – The Scotsman is first published in Edinburgh as a liberal weekly newspaper by lawyer William Ritchie and customs official Charles Maclaren. February – last major Luddite attack, against lace-making machines in Loughborough. 4 March – habeas corpus suspended amidst fears of insurrection (to January 1818). 10 March – the Blanketeers set out to march from Manchester to London; on 11 March 160 are arrested at Stockport. 1 April – Blackwood's Magazine is launched as the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine, a Tory publication. In October the publisher, William Blackwood, relaunches it as Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. 3 April – 'Princess Caraboo' appears in Almondsbury in Gloucestershire. 9–10 June – Pentrich Rising: Army prevents protesting labourers from Derbyshire, roused by an agent provocateur, marching on Nottingham. 18 June – Waterloo Bridge opens in London. 5 July – the Sovereign coin reintroduced. 18–20 December – William Hone successfully defends himself in a London court on charges arising from his publication of political satires. December – publication together of Jane Austen's first and last completed novels, respectively Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, by John Murray in London (dated 1818), six months after the author's death at Winchester. Her brother Henry Austen contributes a biographical note which for the first time publicly identifies her as the author of all her (previously anonymous) novels. Undated Dulwich Picture Gallery in London, designed by John Soane as Britain's first purpose-built public art gallery, is completed and opened. Elgin Marbles displayed in British Museum. John Kidd extracts naphthalene from coal tar. A typhus epidemic occurs in Edinburgh and Glasgow. John Constable paints Flatford Mill. Gas lighting is introduced on stage in London's West End theatres: on 6 August by The English Opera House (extended to the auditorium on 8 September) and on 6 September at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane (where it is already installed in the auditorium and foyer) and Theatre Royal, Covent Garden (as