1879 in the United Kingdom

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1879 in the United Kingdom
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Sport

Events from the year 1879 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents[]

  • Monarch – Victoria
  • Prime Minister – Benjamin Disraeli (Conservative)
  • Parliament – 21st

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]
  • March – the standard design of pillar box reverts to a cylindrical shape (the "anonymous" style cast by Andrew Handyside and Company).[4]
  • 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.[5]
  • 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.[6]
  • 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.[7]
  • 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.[8]
  • 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,[9] 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.[10]
  • School meals provided for destitute and poorly nourished children in Manchester.

Publications[]

Births[]

  • 1 January
    • E. M. Forster, novelist (died 1970)
    • Ernest Jones, psychoanalyst (died 1958)
  • 8 January – Charles Bryant, actor and director (died 1948)
  • 13 January – William Reid Dick, sculptor (died 1961)
  • 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)
  • 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)
  • 27 December – Sydney Greenstreet, actor (died 1954)

Deaths[]

  • 18 February – Rayner Stephens, radical reformer and Methodist minister (born 1805)
  • 25 February – Charles Peace, criminal (executed) (born 1832)
  • 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)
  • 3 June – Frances Ridley Havergal, religious poet (born 1836)
  • 7 June – William Tilbury Fox, dermatologist (born 1836)
  • 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)
  • 23 September – Francis Kilvert, diarist (peritonitis) (born 1840)
  • 26 September – Sir William Rowan, field marshal (born 1789)
  • 5 November – James Clerk Maxwell, physicist (born 1831)
  • 6 December – John Bentinck, 5th Duke of Portland (born 1800)
  • 11 December – William Thomas (Gwilym Marles), minister and poet (born 1834)
  • 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. ^ a b c d Palmer, Alan; Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. pp. 303–304. ISBN 0-7126-5616-2.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006. ISBN 0-14-102715-0.
  4. ^ Farrugia, Jean Young (1969). The Letter Box: a history of Post Office pillar and wall boxes. Fontwell: Centaur Press. ISBN 0-900000-14-7.
  5. ^ Hadley Centre ranked Seasonal Central England temperature.
  6. ^ "SS Rotomahana". Clydebuilt. Archived from the original on 12 March 2005. Retrieved 14 April 2014.CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  7. ^ "S/S Buenos Ayrean, Allan Line". Norway Heritage. Retrieved 11 March 2016.
  8. ^ Weinreb, Ben; Hibbert, Christopher (1995). The London Encyclopaedia. Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-57688-8.
  9. ^ Met Office; Hadley Centre Ranked Central England Temperature.
  10. ^ Cumming, Valerie; Cunnington, C. W.; Cunnington, P. E. (2010). The Dictionary of Fashion History. Berg. p. 248. ISBN 978-1-84788-533-3.
  11. ^ Leavis, Q. D. (1965). Fiction and the Reading Public (2nd ed.). London: Chatto & Windus.

See also[]

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