1879 in the United Kingdom

1879 in the United Kingdom:

Other years

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

Individual 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.
• 8 January — British army occupies Kandahar in Afghanistan.
• 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.
• March — The standard design of pillar box reverts to a cylindrical shape (the "anonymous" style cast by Andrew Handyside and Company).
• 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.
• 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 June — William Denny and Brothers launch the world's first ocean-going ship to be built of mild steel, the SS Rotomahana, at Dumbarton.
• 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.
• 16th August 1879 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.
• 18 September — Blackpool Illuminations lit for the first time.
• 13 October — First female students admitted to study for degrees of Oxford University, at the new Lady Margaret Hall and Somerville Hall and with the Society of Oxford Home-Students.
• 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.
• November–March 1880 — Probably the longest ever fog in the city's history engulfs London.
• 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.
• 30 December — The comic opera The Pirates of Penzance is first presented in Paignton, Devon 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, with an annual mean of 7.44 °C or 45.39 °F.

Undated

• Electric street lighting introduced in London, initially on the Thames Embankment and Waterloo Bridge.
• Gabardine is invented by Thomas Burberry, founder of the Burberry fashion house in Basingstoke.

Publications

• Kate Greenaway's first book, with her own colour illustrations, Under the Window: Pictures & Rhymes for Children.
• Silas Hocking's novel Her Benny.
• George Meredith's novel The Egoist.
• Serialisation of the Anthony Trollope novel The Duke's Children.
• The Boy's Own Paper first published (19 January).

Births

• 1 January
  • E. M. Forster, writer (died 1970)
  • Ernest Jones, psychoanalyst (died 1958)
• 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, cricketer (died 1917)
• 6 June — Patrick Abercrombie, town planner (died 1957)
• 15 July — Joseph Campbell, poet and lyricist (died 1944)
• 13 August — John Ireland, composer (died 1962)
• 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)
• 10 August — George Long, classical scholar (born 1800)
• 5 November — James Clerk Maxwell, physicist (born 1831)
• 6 December — William Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck, 5th Duke of Portland (born 1800)