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 Cecil, Marquess of Salisbury (Conservative)

Events

4 March: Forth Bridge is opened.

• 4 January — First edition of the Daily Graphic, the first British 'picture paper'.^[1]
• 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.^[2]
• 15 February — Kent Coalfield located.^[3]
• 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. ^[4]
• 27 March — Preston North End finish the second season of the Football League as title winners once again.^[5]
• 29 March — Blackburn Rovers win their fourth FA Cup with a 6-1 victory over Sheffield Wednesday in the final at Kennington Oval, London.^[6]
• 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.^[7]
• 1 July — Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty between the United Kingdom and Germany; Britain cedes Heligoland to Germany in return for Pemba and Zanzibar.^[1]
• 21 July — Battersea Bridge over the River Thames opens in London.^[4]
• 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.^[1]
• 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.^[4] 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.^[8]
• 18 December — British East Africa Company takes control of Uganda.^[1]

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.^[1]
• 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.^[9]
• 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).
• 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

• 30 January — Stewart Menzies, chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (died 1968)
• 14 February — Nina Hamnett, artist (died 1956)
• 17 February — Ronald Fisher, biologist (died 1962)
• 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, actor (died 1965)
• 15 September — Agatha Christie, writer (died 1976)
• 24 September — A. P. Herbert, politician and writer (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)
• 3 December — Walter H. Thompson, Winston Churchill's bodyguard (died 1978)
• 5 December — David Bomberg, painter (died 1957)
• 30 December — Lanoe Hawker, fighter pilot (died 1916)

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)

References

See also