26 January – eleven ships of First Fleet from Botany Bay led by Arthur Phillip land in what would become Sydney, Australia. Britain establishes the prison colony of New South Wales, the first permanent European settlement on the continent.
31 January – Henry Benedict Stuart, Cardinal-Bishop of Frascati, becomes the new titular Stuart claimant to the throne of Great Britain as King Henry IX and the figurehead of Jacobitism.
25 June – Margaret Sullivan, a counterfeiter, becomes the penultimate woman in Britain to suffer a sentence of death by burning, in London (although she is in practice strangled before being burnt).[5]
Late October – a period of a mental instability for the King, George III, begins the Regency Crisis of 1788 only averted by his sudden recovery the following February.[4]
A record dry December with only 8.9 millimetres (0.4 in) England and Wales Precipitation produces the driest calendar year since records began in 1766,[11] with only 612.0 millimetres (24.09 in) of precipitation.[a]
Undated – annual British iron production reaches 68,000 tons.
a Three non-overlapping twelve-month periods have been drier over England and Wales than calendar year 1788 – August 1784 to July 1785, September 1975 to August 1976 and February 1854 to January 1855.
^The Times (London) 24 June 1788 p. 2. "There is something so inhuman in burning a woman, for what only subjects a man to hanging, that human nature shudders at the idea... The savage barbarity of the punishment — and the smallness of the offence in the eye of God are contrasts that should meet the consideration of Government."
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