A Chronology of the Other 19th Century

A bit of fun…

1804 – Death of Natty Bumppo (AKA ‘Hawkeye’) on the American frontier, aged eighty.

1805 – Omegarus, the spirit of the last man born in the far future before humanity becomes sterile, appears to Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grainvilleis in a cave in Syria with a vision of the end of the world.

1811 – Marriage of Edward Ferrars and Elinor Dashwood.

1813 – Marriage of Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy.

1814 – Marriage of Edmund Bertram and Fanny Price.

1815 – Marriage of Emma Woodhouse and George Knightley.

1817 – Miss Catherine Morland has a bit of a funny turn in Northanger Abbey.

1818 – Marriage of Anne Elliot and Captain Frederick Wentworth. Victor Frankenstein disappears in the Arctic.

1819 – Enigmatic aristocrat Lord Ruthven implicated in the death of a young woman on her wedding night.

1820 – Sebastian Melmoth, lately returned to his family, falls to his death in Ireland; his body is not recovered. Connecticut schoolmaster Ichabod Crane disappears from Sleepy Hollow in North Tarrytown. Becky Sharp retires to Bath.

1824 – The shocking memoirs of Robert Colwan, disgraced second son of the Laird of Dalcastle, are found when his grave is opened.

1828 – Legendary London rake ‘Corinthian Tom,’ companion of Bob Logic and Jerry Hawthorne, killed in a riding accident.

1834 – Tom Brown goes up to Rugby.

1837 – Samuel Pickwick sued by his landlady for breach of promise. Spring-heeled Jack terrorises London.

1838 – William Sykes and the notorious Saffron Hill Gang brought to justice for robbery, kidnapping and murder. Discovery of the MS. Papers of the late Rev. Francis Purcell of Drumcoolagh. Signora Psyche Zenobia decapitated by clock in Edinburgh.

1839 – Mysterious suicide of William Wilson. Deaths of Roderick and Madeline Usher. Wackford Squeers transported to Australia.

1841 – Le Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin solves the brutal murder of two women by an ape in the Rue Morgue, Paris.

1842 – Sweeney Todd, the ‘Demon Barber of Fleet Street’ exposed; cannibalised victims estimated to be in the hundreds. Harry Paget Flashman awarded Victoria Cross for his part in the Siege of Jalalabad.

1843 – London businessman Ebeneezer Scrooge visited by four spirits on Christmas Eve.

1844 – Notorious body snatcher Tony Tidkins, the ‘Resurrection Man,’ reported killed in explosion in Shoreditch. Monck Mason and W.H. Ainsworth cross the Atlanic in the balloon Victoria.

1845 – Ernest Valdemar mesmerised on the point of death in Paris. Monsieur Maillard pioneers the ‘system of soothing’ in France, a radical treatment for mental illness.

1847 – Death of Fernand Wagner, the first modern werewolf. Sir Francis Varney hurls himself into Mount Vesuvius. Ghosts are seen on the Yorkshire Moors near Wuthering Heights. Edward Fairfax Rochester injured in a fire at Thornfield Hall; marries governess.

1848 – Harry Carson assassinated by Chartists.

1849 – Harry Flashman complicates the Schleswig-Holstein Question.

1850 – Marriage of author David Copperfield to his childhood friend Agnes Wickfield. Arthur Pendennis enters Parliament.

1851 – Captain Ahab and the crew of the Pequod lost at sea.

1852 – Jack Vincent survives the wreck of the Birkenhead.

1853 – Death of Lady Honoria Dedlock of Chesney Wold.

1854 – Harry Flashman inadvertantly leads the Charge of the Light Brigade.

1859 – Death of Count Fosco. Harry Flashman seen with John Brown during the raid on Harpers Ferry.

1861 – Wealthy spinster Miss Havisham dies in a fire at Satis House.

1863 – Dr. Samuel Ferguson and party crosses the African continent by balloon. ‘Water-Babies’ Tom and Ellie return to human form, although their difference in social trank precludes the possibility of marriage.

1864 – Professor Otto Lidenbrock claims to have journeyed to the centre of the earth, its entrance in the heart of an extinct Icelandic volcano. Silas Ruthyn dies of an overdose of opium in his mansion at Bartram-Haug.

1865 – Alice Liddell discovers a surreal underground world after falling down a rabbit hole. Bradley Headstone and Rogue Riderhood drowned in the Thames. French and American astronauts Barbicane, Nicholl and Ardan orbit the Moon but are unable to land.

1866 – The Signalman at Mubgy Junction killed under mysterious circumstances.

1868 – The Moonstone is recovered.

1870 – Mysterious disappearance of Edwin Drood.

1871 – Lord Lytton claims to have encountered a civilisation of superior humans living deep beneath the earth in the lost world of Agharti, drawing their power from a source known only as ‘Vril.’ Alice at it again – this time ‘Wonderland’ is entered through a mirror. The Battle of Dorking.

1872 – Death of Countess Mircalla Karnstein in Styria.

1873 – Pirate known only as ‘Nemo’ believed to be responsible for the destruction of several of Her Majesty’s warships.

1875 – Captain Nemo believed to have perished on an uncharted island in the South Pacific. Phileas Fogg circumvents the globe in eighty days.

1876 – Harry Flashman survives the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

1878 – Mysterious disappearance of Captain Arthur Morstan.

1879 – Harry Flashman survives the Battle of Isandlwana.

1885 – Allan Quatermain successfully leads expedition to King Solomon’s mines in Africa.

1886 – Prominent Edinburgh surgeon, Dr. Henry Jekyll, killed in his home by one Edward Hyde; the murderer is not apprehended. Strange lights and sounds in the sky, including blaring trumpets, are reported across the world.

1887 – Jefferson Hope apprehended by Sherlock Holmes and the ‘Baker Street Irregulars.’ ‘Flame of life,’ said to grant immortality, discovered in Africa. The laying of the Canterville Ghost.

1888 – Redcoats Daniel Dravit and Peachy Carnahan set themselves up as kings in Afghanistan, but are exposed after Dravit claims to be a god. Dr. John Watson marries Mary Morstan.

1889 – Hank Morgan of Hartford, Connecticut, travels back in time to Camelot.

1890 – Youthful socialite Dorian Gray found dead, and greatly aged in appearance, next to his portrait at his London residence.

1893 – Sherlock Holmes reported killed at Reichenbach Falls, Switzerland. The wife of a struggling artist is found at home on Halloween night, clutching the finger of a marble statue and apparently scared to death.

1894 – Boy raised by wolves found in India.

1895 – Disappearance of the Richmond inventor known to his friends as the ‘Time Traveller.’ Death of the diva, La Svengali.

1896 – A rescued castaway, Edward Prendick, claims to have escaped from an island populated by animals genetically engineered to look and act like human beings.

1897 – Scientist Hawley Griffin killed by an angry mob. Count Dracula holidays at Whitby.

1898 – Martians invade England.

1899 – Death of Queen Ayesha in Africa.

1901 – Mysterious death of Sir Charles Baskerville. British astronauts land on the Moon.