Events from the year 1821 in the United Kingdom. This is a census year. Incumbents Monarch – George IV Prime Minister – Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool (Tory) Foreign Secretary – Robert Stewart, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry Parliament – 7th Events 16 January – the Tories under Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool win the general election which had begun in 1820. 2 February – Cinderloo Uprising: Shropshire Yeomanry fire on a crowd of miners striking over a pay cut in the Coalbrookdale Coalfield, killing three. 18 February – launch of the New Observer newspaper, later to become The Sunday Times. April/May – John Constable completes his painting The Hay Wain. 5 May – The Guardian newspaper founded as The Manchester Guardian. 7 May – Bank of England returns to the gold standard. 28 May – the national census is the first to measure age distribution and reveals that almost half of the population is under twenty years old. Over the preceding decade in England and Wales the population has increased by 18%. 4 July – redesigned Haymarket Theatre opens in London. 19 July – George IV is crowned king of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. His estranged wife, Caroline of Brunswick, is turned away from the coronation ceremony. This is the last coronation at which the full ceremony of the King's Champion is carried out, and at which dillegrout is served. 31 July – opening of the Eau Brink Cut, improving the outfall of the River Great Ouse at King's Lynn in Norfolk. Engineers working on the project included John Rennie the Elder, Thomas Telford and Thomas Hyde Page. undated – Elizabeth Fry and others establish the British Ladies' Society for Promoting the Reformation of Female Prisoners, an early example of a national women's organisation. Publications Thomas De Quincey's autobiographical Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (anonymously in The London Magazine). Robert Owen's treatise Report to the County of Lanark, of a plan for relieving public distress and removing discontent. Walter Scott's novel Kenilworth. Percy Bysshe Shelley's elegy Adonais. Births 2 January – Catherine Huggins, actor, singer, director and manager (died 1887) 3 February – Elizabeth Blackwell, physician, abolitionist and women's rights activist (died 1910) 17 February – Lola Montez, born Eliza Rosanna Gilbert, Irish-born "Spanish dancer" and mistress of Ludwig I of Bavaria (died 1861 in the United States) 8 March – James Sheridan Muspratt,