1872 in the United Kingdom

Events from the year 1872 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria
• Prime Minister – William Ewart Gladstone (Liberal)

Events

• 1 January – C. P. Scott becomes editor of The Manchester Guardian, a position he will hold until 1929.
• January – opening of trial of Christiana Edmunds, the Brighton "Chocolate Cream Killer", for poisoning, at which she is found guilty.
• 2 February – British government buys a number of forts on the Gold Coast from the Netherlands.
• 5 March – Tichborne case decided against the impostor Arthur Orton.
• 11 March – work begins setting up Seven Sisters Colliery in South Wales, located on one of the richest coal sources in Britain.
• 16 March – in the first ever final of the FA Cup, the world's oldest football competition, Wanderers F.C. defeat Royal Engineers A.F.C. 1–0 at The Oval in Kennington, London.
• 1 April – at Lincoln Castle, uxoricide William Frederick Horry becomes the first person to be hanged by William Marwood and the first using Marwood's technique of the long drop.
• May – Rangers F.C. play their first ever game on the public pitches of Glasgow Green.
• June – American-born painter James McNeill Whistler exhibits Arrangement in Grey and Black: The Artist's Mother, painted the previous year in London, at the Royal Academy summer exhibition.
• 3 July – Queen Victoria opens the Albert Memorial in memory of her husband Prince Albert.
• 18 July
• Ballot Act introduces secret ballots in United Kingdom elections, abolishing public hustings.
• Philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts, 1st Baroness Burdett-Coutts, becomes the first woman to be made an Honorary Freeman of the City of London.
• 5 August – Hastings Pier opened. Designed by Eugenius Birch, it is the first in Britain with an entertainment pavilion incorporated from new.
• 10 August – Portland Breakwater completed.
• 15 August – 1872 Pontefract by-election, a ministerial by-election which is the first UK Parliamentary election held by secret ballot following the Ballot Act. The incumbent Hugh Childers retains his seat.
• 18 August – Licensing Act establishes licences for public houses and limits drinking hours.
• 1 September – a group of Icaiche Maya under Marcos Canul attack Orange Walk Town in British Honduras as part of the Caste War of Yucatán. British troops are sent against them.
• 7 October – an underground explosion at Morley Main Colliery, Morley, West Yorkshire, kills 34.
• 9 October – University College Wales opens at Aberystwyth.
• 16 November – London Metropolitan Police strike.
• 21 November – Wigan F.C. founded, the first Association football team in Wigan.
• 25 November – loss of the iron sailing ship Royal Adelaide on Chesil Beach: 60 saved, 7 drowned.
• 30 November – Scotland v England, the first FIFA-recognized international Association football match, takes place at Hamilton Crescent in Scotland. The result is a goalless draw.
• 6 December – Springwell Pit disaster at Dawley in Shropshire: eight coal miners fall to their death when a winding chain snaps.
• 12 December – a meteorite strikes Earth near Banbury.
• 21 December – the Challenger expedition sails from Portsmouth on the four year scientific expedition that will lay the foundation for the science of oceanography.

Undated

• Last recorded uses of the stocks for judicial punishment, at Newbury, Berkshire (11 June) and Adpar, Newcastle Emlyn, west Wales.
• Exceptionally consistent rain brings the wettest calendar year on record over England and Wales with beating previous record from 1768 by . The nearest approach since has been 2012 with and 2000 with .

Publications

• First edition of Chambers's English Dictionary.
• Samuel Butler's anonymous satirical novel Erewhon.
• Charles Darwin's study The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.
• George Eliot's novel Middlemarch (serialisation completed).
• Thomas Hardy's anonymous romantic novel Under the Greenwood Tree.
• Samuel Plimsoll's campaigning work Our Seamen.

Births

• 16 January – Edward Gordon Craig, theatrical designer (died 1966)
• 11 February – Hannah Mitchell, socialist, suffragette (died 1956)
• 12 February – Alexander Gibb, Scottish-born civil engineer (died 1958)
• 11 March – K. C. Groom, fiction writer (died 1954)
• 25 April – C. B. Fry, cricketer (died 1956)
• 5 May – Norman Smith, Scottish philosopher (died 1958)
• 12 May – Eleanor Rathbone, social campaigner and politician (died 1946)
• 18 May – Bertrand Russell, philosopher and mathematician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature (died 1970)
• 31 May – Heath Robinson, cartoonist and illustrator (died 1944)
• 13 June – Chrystal Macmillan, Scottish mathematician, suffragist, politician, barrister and pacifist (died 1937)
• 2 July – Horace Short, aircraft designer (died 1917)
• 4 July – Harry Tate, born Ronald Macdonald Hutchison, music hall comedian (died 1940)
• 23 July – Edward Wilson, explorer, physician, naturalist and ornithologist (died 1912 in Antarctica)
• 25 July – Herbert Stanley, Governor of Northern Rhodesia, Ceylon and Southern Rhodesia (died 1955)
• 21 August – Aubrey Beardsley, artist (died 1898)
• 4 October – Roger Keyes, admiral (died 1945)
• 8 October – John Cowper Powys, writer and philosopher (died 1963)
• 12 October – Ralph Vaughan Williams, composer (died 1958)
• 30 October – Louisa Martindale, physician, writer, magistrate and prison commissioner (died 1966)
• 20 November – Alfred Mylne, yacht designer (died 1951)
• 11 December – René Bull, illustrator, photographer (died 1942)
• 26 December – Norman Angell, politician, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (died 1967)
• Edith Garrud, née Williams, pioneer martial artist and suffragist (died 1971)

Deaths

• 14 January – Greyfriars Bobby, faithful Scottish terrier (born 1855)
• 6 February – Sir Thomas Phillipps, book collector (born 1792)
• 16 February – Henry Chorley, critic (born 1808)
• 27 February – John McLeod Campbell, Scottish theologian (born 1800)
• 8 March – Priscilla Susan Bury, botanist (born 1799)
• 11 March – Emily Taylor, writer for children (born 1795)
• 1 April – Frederick Denison Maurice, theologian (born 1805)
• 23 May – Henry Bulwer, 1st Baron Dalling and Bulwer, politician, diplomat and writer (born 1801)
• 20 August – William Miller, Scottish children's poet (born 1810)
• 18 September – Herbert Haines, clergyman, archaeologist and schoolteacher (born 1826)
• 23 November – Sir John Bowring, colonial administrator, 4th Governor of Hong Kong (born 1792)
• 28 November – Mary Somerville, mathematician (born 1780)
• 10 December – Edwin Norris, philologist, linguist and orientalist (born 1795)
• 15 December – Mary Anne Disraeli, wife of Benjamin Disraeli (born 1792)
• 24 December – Macquorn Rankine, Scottish pioneer of thermodynamics (born 1820)

References