Events from the year 1853 in Ireland.

• 15 February – City of Dublin Steam Packet Company PS Queen Victoria (1838), inward bound from Liverpool, sinks in a snowstorm at night below Baily Lighthouse on Howth Head with the loss of more than 80 lives.
• 12 May–31 October – Great Industrial Exhibition held in Dublin,^[1] promoted by William Dargan. Queen Victoria, accompanied by the Prince Consort and the Prince of Wales, pays an official visit on 29 August. John Hutton & Son of Dublin exhibit the Irish State Coach.

• 30 January – Leland Hone, cricketer (died 1896).
• 6 February – Robert John McConnell, businessman, baronet and Lord Mayor of Belfast (died 1927).
• 7 February – Egerton Bushe Coghill, painter (died 1921).
• 30 March – Frank O'Meara, artist (died 1888).
• March – John Doogan, soldier, recipient of the Victoria Cross for gallantry in 1881 at Laing's Nek, South Africa (died 1940).
• 10 April – Owen Hall, theatre writer and critic (died 1907).
• 3 July – Aloysius O'Kelly, painter (d. c1941).
• July – Thomas Brennan, a founder and joint first secretary of the Irish National Land League (died 1912).

• 20 March – Robert James Graves, physician (born 1796).
• 14 April – Robert Baldwin Sullivan, lawyer, judge, and politician in Canada, second Mayor of Toronto (born 1802).
• 21 September – Timothy Burns, Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin from 1851 to 1853 (born 1820).
• 28 October – Valentine Lawless, 2nd Baron Cloncurry, politician (born 1773).^[2]

• 1853 in Scotland
• 1853 in Wales