1873 in the United Kingdom

1873 in the United Kingdom:

Other years

1871 | 1872 | 1873 | 1874 | 1875

Sport

1873 English cricket season

1872–73 in English football

Events from the year 1873 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch — Queen Victoria
• Prime Minister — William Ewart Gladstone, Liberal

Events

• 3 March — First performance of W. S. Gilbert and Gilbert Arthur à Beckett's play The Happy Land at the Royal Court Theatre, London. The play creates a scandal by breaking regulations against the portrayal of public characters, parodying William Ewart Gladstone, Robert Lowe, and Acton Smee Ayrton, respectively the Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and First Commissioner of Works.
• 13 March — Gladstone resigns as Prime Minister, but the Conservatives fail to form a government, and Gladstone returns to office two days later.
• 31 March — Supreme Court of Judicature Act reforms the judiciary, establishing the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal of England and Wales and abolishing the Court of Common Pleas as a separate institution and, with it, the office of attorney at law.
• April — Ashanti attack British forts in the Gold Coast.
• 1 April — The British steamer RMS Atlantic sinks off Nova Scotia killing 547.
• 2 April — The first sleeping car is introduced in Britain, on the Glasgow to London night express.
• 20 May — In Chipping Norton, rioters attempt to free the Ascott Martyrs — sixteen women sentenced to imprisonment for attempting to dissuade strikebreakers in an agricultural labour dispute.
• 9 June — Alexandra Palace in London destroyed by fire only a fortnight after its opening.
• October — Girton College opens as the first women's college in Cambridge.
• 26 November — British troops invade Ashanti territory.

Undated

• Third Anglo-Ashanti War: The United Kingdom declares war against Ghana's King Kofi KariKari, who was involved in the trading of slaves.
• Britain puts pressure on Sultan Sayyid Barghash who closes slave markets in Zanzibar.
• Elizabeth Garrett Anderson admitted to membership of the British Medical Association. As the Association votes against the admission of further women in 1878, she remains the only woman member for nineteen years.
• Chemical company Brunner Mond established by John Brunner and Ludwig Mond who begin to build Winnington Works in Northwich, Cheshire.
• Work begins on the Natural History Museum in London.
• Rangers Football Club officially established in Glasgow.

Publications

• Thomas Hardy's novel A Pair of Blue Eyes.
• James Clerk Maxwell's work A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism.
• Walter Pater's collected Studies in the History of the Renaissance.
• Serialisation of Anthony Trollope's novel Phineas Redux.

Births

• 7 February — Thomas Andrews, shipbuilder (died 1912)
• 19 April — Sydney Barnes, cricketer (died 1967)
• 8 May — Nevil Sidgwick, chemist (died 1952)
• 17 May — Dorothy Richardson, feminist writer (died 1957)
• 11 August — Bertram Mills, circus manager (died 1938)
• 22 November — Johnny Tyldesley, cricketer (died 1930)
• 17 December — Ford Madox Ford, writer (died 1939)
• 26 December — Thomas Wass, Nottinghamshire bowler (died 1953)

Deaths

• 18 January — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, writer (born 1803)
• 7 February — Sheridan Le Fanu, writer (born 1814)
• 27 April — William Charles Macready, actor (born 1793)
• 1 May — David Livingstone, explorer of Africa (born 1813)
• 8 May — John Stuart Mill, philosopher (born 1806)
• 20 July — Richard Bethell, 1st Baron Westbury, Lord Chancellor of Great Britain (born 1800)
• 17 September — Alexander Berry, adventurer and Australian pioneer (born 1781)
• 1 October — Edwin Landseer, painter (born 1802)