1890 in the United Kingdom

1890 in the United Kingdom

Other years

1888 | 1889 | 1890 (1890) | 1891 | 1892

Individual countries of the United Kingdom

England | Ireland | Scotland | Wales

Sport

1890 English cricket season Football: England

Events from the year 1890 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria
• Prime Minister – Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (Conservative)
• Parliament – 24th

Events

4 March: Forth Bridge is opened.

• 4 January – first edition of the Daily Graphic, the first British 'picture paper'.
• 11 January – the British government delivers an ultimatum to Portugal forcing the retreat of Portuguese military forces from land between Portuguese colonies of Mozambique and Angola.
• 6 February – an underground explosion at Llanerch Colliery, Abersychan in Monmouthshire kills 176.
• 15 February – Kent Coalfield located.
• 4 March – the Forth Bridge in Scotland opens. It is 8,296 feet (2,529 m) in length with 2 cantilever spans of 1,710 feet (520 m) making it the longest bridge in Britain and the bridge with the greatest cantilever span in the world.
• 27 March – Preston North End finish the second season of the Football League as title winners once again.
• 29 March – Blackburn Rovers win their fourth FA Cup with a 6-1 victory over Sheffield Wednesday in the final at Kennington Oval, London.
• 12 May – the first official County Championship cricket match begins in Bristol. Yorkshire beat Gloucestershire by eight wickets.
• 15 May – new elected county councils in Scotland, created by the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1889, take up their powers. The County of Edinburgh formally adopts the title Midlothian; the formerly administratively separate counties of Ross and Cromarty are merged; and the Shetland county council formally adopts the spelling Zetland.
• 28 June – the Baseball Ground is opened in Derby to serve one of eight teams competing in a new national baseball league.
• 1 July – the Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty is signed between the United Kingdom and Germany: Britain cedes sovereignty of the Heligoland archipelago (in the German Bight) to Germany in return for protectorates over Wituland and the Sultanate of Zanzibar (the islands of Pemba and Unguja) in east Africa.
• 21 July – Battersea Bridge over the River Thames opens in London.
• 8 September – the future Edward VII becomes involved in the Royal Baccarat Scandal.
• September – Southampton Dock strike.
• 22 October – colony of Western Australia granted self-governing status.
• November – Scotland Yard, headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service, moves to a building on London's Victoria Embankment, as New Scotland Yard.
• 4 November – London's City & South London Railway, the first deep-level underground railway in the world, opens. It runs a distance of 5.1 km (3.2 mi) between the City of London and Stockwell.
• 17 November – Captain Willy O'Shea divorces his wife, Kitty, for adultery; Charles Stewart Parnell, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, is named as co-respondent.
• 21 November – Edward King, Anglican bishop of Lincoln, is convicted of using ritualistic practices.
• 18 December – British East Africa Company takes control of Uganda.

Undated

• Financial panic of 1890 precipitated by the need to guarantee Barings Bank's risky debts in Argentina.
• Construction of the first large-scale electrical power station, at Deptford.
• Blackwall Buildings, Whitechapel, noted philanthropic housing, is built in the East End of London.
• Construction begins of Britain's first council housing at Arnold Cross, Shoreditch in the East End of London.
• The Rhymers' Club, a group of poets gathered around W. B. Yeats and Ernest Rhys, begins to meet informally at the Cheshire Cheese in Fleet Street, London.

Publications

• Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes novel The Sign of Four (originally published as The Sign of the Four in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine dated February).
• Volume 1 of James George Frazer's study in religion, The Golden Bough.
• Rudyard Kipling's novel The Light that Failed (in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine dated January 1891).
• Arthur Machen's novella The Great God Pan (in the magazine The Whirlwind).
• Alfred Marshall's textbook Principles of Economics.
• William Morris's utopian socialist novel News from Nowhere (serialised in Commonweal).
• Oscar Wilde's only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine dated July).

Births

• 14 January – Arthur Holmes, geologist (died 1965)
• 30 January – Stewart Menzies, chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (died 1968)
• 14 February – Nina Hamnett, painter (died 1956)
• 17 February – Ronald Fisher, statistician and geneticist (died 1962 in Australia)
• 25 February – Myra Hess, pianist (died 1965)
• 20 March – Owen Williams, civil engineer (died 1969)
• 31 March – William Lawrence Bragg, physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1971)
• 16 April – Fred Root, cricketer (died 1954)
• 23 May – Herbert Marshall, actor (died 1966)
• 16 June – Stan Laurel, comic film actor (died 1965 in the United States)
• 15 September – Agatha Christie, detective fiction writer (died 1976)
• 24 September – A. P. Herbert, comic writer and independent politician (died 1971)
• 1 October – Stanley Holloway, actor, comedian, singer and poet (died 1982)
• 17 October – Roy Kilner, cricketer (died 1928)
• 15 November – Richmal Crompton, writer (died 1969)
• 24 November – Ernest Bader, businessman and philanthropist (died 1982)
• 3 December – Walter H. Thompson, Winston Churchill's bodyguard (died 1978)
• 5 December – David Bomberg, painter (died 1957)
• 30 December – Lanoe Hawker, fighter pilot (killed in action 1916 over France)

Deaths

• 11 April – Joseph Merrick (the "Elephant Man"), pathological curiosity (born 1862)
• 20 July – Sir Richard Wallace, 1st Baronet, art collector (born 1818)
• 11 August – John Henry Newman, Roman Catholic Cardinal (born 1801)
• 4 October – Catherine Booth, the Mother of The Salvation Army (born 1829)
• 20 October – Richard Francis Burton, explorer (born 1821)

See also

• List of British films before 1920