1879 in the United Kingdom

1879 in the United Kingdom

Other years

1877 | 1878 | 1879 (1879) | 1880 | 1881

Constituent countries of the United Kingdom

England | Ireland | Scotland | Wales

Sport

1879 English cricket season Football: England

Events from the year 1879 in the United Kingdom .

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria
• Prime Minister – Benjamin Disraeli (Conservative)

Events

• 1 January – Benjamin Henry Blackwell opens the first Blackwell's bookshop in Oxford. ^[1]
• 8 January – British army occupies Kandahar in Afghanistan. ^[2]
• 11 January – Anglo-Zulu War begins.
• 22 January – Zulu troops led by King Cetshwayo massacre British troops at the Battle of Isandlwana. At Rorke's Drift, outnumbered British soldiers drive the attackers away after hours of fighting. ^[3]
• 3 February – Mosley Street in Newcastle upon Tyne becomes the world's first public highway to be lit by the electric incandescent light bulb, invented by Joseph Swan. ^[4]
• March – the standard design of pillar box reverts to a cylindrical shape (the "anonymous" style cast by Andrew Handyside and Company). ^[5]
• 2 March – murder of Julia Martha Thomas at Richmond upon Thames.
• 12 March – Anglo-Zulu War: At the Battle of Intombe, a British force over one-hundred strong is ambushed and destroyed by Zulu forces.
• 13 March – marriage of The Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, third son of Queen Victoria, to Princess Louise Marguerite of Prussia.
• 28 March – Anglo-Zulu War: British forces suffer a defeat at the Battle of Hlobane. ^[3]
• 29 March – Anglo-Zulu War: Battle of Kambula – British forces defeat 20,000 Zulus.
• 3 April – Anglo-Zulu War: British forces successfully lift the two-month Siege of Eshowe.
• 12 May – John Henry Newman elevated to Cardinal.
• 26 May – Russia and the United Kingdom sign the Treaty of Gandamak establishing an Afghan state.
• June–August – the wettest summer in England and Wales since records began in 1766, and the equal seventh-coolest since the CET series begins in 1659. ^[6]
• 6 June – William Denny and Brothers launch the world's first ocean-going ship to be built of mild steel, the SS Rotomahana, at Dumbarton. ^[7]
• 14 June – Sidney Faithorn Green, an Anglican priest in the Church of England, is tried and convicted for using Ritualist practices.
• 4 July – the Anglo-Zulu War effectively ends with British victory at the Battle of Ulundi. ^[2]
• 16 August – Fulham F.C. founded in London as the Fulham St Andrew's Church Sunday School football club.
• 19 August – the foundation stone of the fourth Eddystone Lighthouse is laid by The Prince of Wales and The Duke of Edinburgh. ^[3]
• September – Doncaster Rovers F.C. formed by railway fitter Albert Jenkins.
• 18 September – Blackpool Illuminations lit for the first time. ^[3]
• 2 October – William Denny and Brothers launch the world's first transatlantic steamer to be built of mild steel, the SS Buenos Ayrean, at Dumbarton for Liverpool owners. On 1 December she makes her maiden voyage out of Glasgow for South America. ^[8]
• 13 October – first female students admitted to study for degrees at the University of Oxford, at the new Lady Margaret Hall and Somerville Hall and with the Society of Oxford Home-Students. ^[2]
• 17 October – Sunderland A.F.C. is formed as 'Sunderland and District Teachers A.F.C.' in the North East.
• 27 October – Liverpool Echo newspaper first published. ^[3]
• November–March 1880 – probably the longest ever fog in the city's history engulfs London. ^[9]
• December – the world's first Christmas grotto opens in Lewis's Liverpool department store as 'Christmas Fairyland'.
• 15–23 December – Second Anglo-Afghan War: British victory at the Siege of the Sherpur Cantonment.
• 28 December – the Tay Bridge Disaster: The central part of the Tay Rail Bridge in Dundee, Scotland collapses in a storm as a train passes over it, killing 78. ^[2]
• 30 December – the comic opera The Pirates of Penzance is first presented in Paignton, Devon ^[3] in a token performance for U.K. copyright reasons; the world première is given the following day in New York City, the only Gilbert and Sullivan work to have its official debut outside England.
• 1 January to 31 December – the combination of the severest winter since 1814, a late spring, an exceptionally cool summer and a cold dry autumn produces the third-coldest year in the CET series and the coldest since 1740, ^[10] with an annual mean of 7.44 °C or 45.39 °F.

Undated

• Gabardine is invented by Thomas Burberry, founder of the Burberry fashion house in Basingstoke. ^[11]
• School meals provided for destitute and poorly nourished children in Manchester.

Publications

• Kate Greenaway's first book, with her own colour illustrations, Under the Window: Pictures & Rhymes for Children .
• Silas Hocking's novel Her Benny. ^[12]
• George Meredith's novel The Egoist .
• Anthony Trollope's last Palliser novel The Duke's Children (serialised in All the Year Round ).
• The Boy's Own Paper first published (19 January).

Births

• 1 January
  • E. M. Forster, novelist (died 1970)
  • Ernest Jones, psychoanalyst (died 1958)
• 8 January – Charles Bryant, actor and director (died 1948)
• 10 January – Bobby Walker, Scottish footballer (died 1930)
• 13 January – William Reid Dick, sculptor (died 1961)
• 28 January – Una Duval, née Dugdale, suffragette (died 1975)
• 26 February – Frank Bridge, composer (died 1941)
• 5 March – William Beveridge, economist and social reformer (died 1963)
• 20 April – Robert Wilson Lynd, essayist and writer (died 1949)
• 26 April – Owen Willans Richardson, physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1959)
• 29 April – Thomas Beecham, conductor (died 1961)
• 19 May – Viscount Waldorf Astor, businessman and politician (died 1952)
• 25 May – Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook, Canadian-British business tycoon, politician and writer (died 1964)
• 30 May –
  • Colin Blythe, bowler (cricket) (killed on active service 1917)
  • Vanessa Bell, painter (died 1961)
• 4 June – Mabel Lucie Attwell, illustrator (died 1964)
• 6 June – Patrick Abercrombie, town planner (died 1957)
• 13 July – Alan Wace, archaeologist (died 1957)
• 15 July – Joseph Campbell, poet and lyricist (died 1944)
• 1 August – William Percival Crozier, editor of The Manchester Guardian (died 1944)
• 7 August – James Peters, black rugby union international (died 1954)
• 13 August – John Ireland, composer (died 1962)
• 27 September – Cyril Scott, composer and writer (died 1970)
• 10 December – E. H. Shepard, artist and book illustrator (died 1976)
• 23 December – Louise Hampton, English actress (died 1954) ^[13]
• 27 December – Sydney Greenstreet, actor (died 1954)

Deaths

• 22 January – John Vivian, Liberal MP, member of the Vivian family, 60 ^[14]
• 18 February – Rayner Stephens, radical reformer and Methodist minister (born 1805)
• 25 February – Charles Peace, criminal (executed) (born 1832) ^[15]
• 3 March
  • William Kingdon Clifford, geometer and philosopher (born 1845)
  • William Howitt, historical writer and poet (born 1792)
  • Annie Keary, novelist, poet and children's writer (born 1825)
• 22 March – Sir John Woodford, general and archaeologist (born 1785)
• 23 March – Sir Walter Trevelyan, naturalist and geologist (born 1797)
• 8 April – Sir Anthony Panizzi, librarian (born 1797 in Italy)
• 21 April – George Hadfield, radical politician (born 1787)
• 25 April – Charles Tennyson Turner, poet (born 1808)
• 4 May – William Froude, hydrodynamicist (born 1810)
• 8 May – Henry Collen, royal miniature portrait painter (born 1797)
• 10 May – Robert Thompson Crawshay, ironmaster (born 1817) ^[16]
• 3 June – Frances Ridley Havergal, religious poet (born 1836) ^[17]
• 7 June – William Tilbury Fox, dermatologist (born 1836) ^[18]
• 3 August – Joseph Severn, painter (born 1793)
• 10 August – George Long, classical scholar (born 1800)
• 20 August – Sir John Shaw-Lebevre, barrister, Whig politician and civil servant (born 1797)
• 19 September – Clara Rousby, actress (born 1848) ^[19]
• 23 September – Francis Kilvert, diarist (peritonitis) (born 1840) ^[20]
• 26 September – Sir William Rowan, field marshal (born 1789)
• 5 November – James Clerk Maxwell, physicist (born 1831) ^[21]
• 6 December – John Bentinck, 5th Duke of Portland (born 1800)
• 11 December – William Thomas (Gwilym Marles), minister and poet (born 1834) ^[22]
• 13 December – William Calcraft, hangman (born 1800)

References

1. "Nos. 48–51: Blackwell's Bookshop". Broad Street, Oxford. 2008. Archived from the original on 2 July 2011. Retrieved 14 August 2011.
2. Palmer, Alan; Palmer, Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. pp. 303–304. ISBN   0-7126-5616-2.
3. Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006. ISBN   0-14-102715-0.
4. "1879". Co-Curate. Retrieved 21 March 2022.
5. Farrugia, Jean Young (1969). The Letter Box: a history of Post Office pillar and wall boxes. Fontwell: Centaur Press. ISBN   0-900000-14-7.
6. Hadley Centre ranked Seasonal Central England temperature.
7. "SS Rotomahana". Clydebuilt. Archived from the original on 12 March 2005. Retrieved 14 April 2014.
8. "S/S Buenos Ayrean, Allan Line". Norway Heritage. Retrieved 11 March 2016.
9. Weinreb, Ben; Hibbert, Christopher (1995). The London Encyclopaedia. Macmillan. ISBN   0-333-57688-8.
10. Met Office; Hadley Centre Ranked Central England Temperature.
11. Cumming, Valerie; Cunnington, C. W.; Cunnington, P. E. (2010). The Dictionary of Fashion History. Berg. p. 248. ISBN   978-1-84788-533-3.
12. Leavis, Q. D. (1965). Fiction and the Reading Public (2nd ed.). London: Chatto & Windus.
13. "Louise Hampton". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 6 July 2024.
14. "In Memoriam". The Cornishman. No. 48. 12 June 1879. p. 4.
15. "Feature". The Historian. Historical Association: 14–16. 1998.
16. Price, Watkin William (1959). "Crawshay family". Dictionary of Welsh Biography . National Library of Wales . Retrieved 3 November 2021.
17. Humphreys, Maggie (1997). Dictionary of composers for the Church in Great Britain and Ireland. London Herndon, VA: Mansell. p. 152. ISBN   9780720123302.
18. "Obituary — Tilbury Fox, M.D". BMJ . 1 (963). BMJ Group: 915–916. 14 June 1879. doi:10.1136/bmj.1.963.915-b. S2CID   220233024.
19. "Rousby, Clara Marion Jessie"  . Dictionary of National Biography . London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
20. Robert Thomas Jenkins (1959). "Kilvert, Robert Francis (1840-1879), cleric and diarist". Dictionary of Welsh Biography . National Library of Wales . Retrieved 28 February 2022.
21. Harman, Peter M. (2004). "Maxwell, James". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/5624.(Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
22. David Jacob Davies. "THOMAS, WILLIAM (Gwilym Marles; 1834–1879), Unitarian minister, social reformer, writer, and schoolmaster". Dictionary of Welsh Biography . National Library of Wales. Retrieved 6 March 2019.