1868 in the United Kingdom

1868 in the United Kingdom

Other years

1866 | 1867 | 1868 | 1869 | 1870

Sport

1868 English cricket season

Events from the year 1868 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria
• Prime Minister – Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby (Conservative) (until 27 February); Benjamin Disraeli (Conservative) (starting 27 February, until 1 December); William Ewart Gladstone (Liberal) (starting 3 December)
• Parliament – 19th (until 11 November), 20th (starting 10 December)

Events

• 2 January – British Expedition to Abyssinia: Robert Napier leads an expedition to free captive British officials and missionaries.[1]
• 9 January – penal transportation from Britain to Australia ends with arrival of the convict ship Hougoumont in Western Australia after an 89-day voyage from England.
• 13 February – the War Office sanctions the formation of what will become the Army Post Office Corps.
• 27 February – Benjamin Disraeli succeeds the Earl of Derby as Prime Minister following Derby's resignation due to ill-health.
• 12 March – Britain annexes Basutoland[2] and it becomes a protectorate.
• 14 March – Eliza Lynn Linton's article "The Girl of the Period" is published in the Saturday Review.
• 2 April – last public hanging of a woman in Britain – Frances Kidder outside Maidstone Prison by William Calcraft for drowning her stepdaughter.[3]
• 9–13 April – expedition to Abyssinia: At the Battle of Magdala, Robert Napier decisively defeats the emperor Tewodros II.
• 25 April – HMS Repulse, the last wooden battleship constructed for the Royal Navy, is launched as an ironclad (with auxiliary steam propulsion) at Woolwich Dockyard.
• 10–11 May – "Murphy riots" against Irish people in Ashton-under-Lyne.[4]
• 26 May – last public hanging in Britain – Fenian bomber Michael Barrett outside Newgate Prison in London by William Calcraft for his part in the Clerkenwell explosion of 1867.[5]
• 29 May – Capital Punishment Amendment Act abolishes public hanging in Britain.
• 2 June – the first Trades Union Congress is held in Manchester.[1]
• 29 June – the Press Association founded in London.[1]
• July – the Summer assize for Berkshire is moved from Abingdon to Reading,[6] effectively making the latter the county town.
• 17 July – judicial decision of the House of Lords in Rylands v Fletcher, a leading case in English tort law, establishing a standard of strict liability in negligence actions.
• 13 August – first non-public hanging in Britain – Thomas Wells inside Maidstone Prison by William Calcraft.[5]
• 20 August – Abergele train disaster kills 32 passengers and a fireman.
• 20 October – astronomer Norman Lockyer observes and names the D₃ Fraunhofer line in the solar spectrum and concludes that it is caused by a hitherto unidentified chemical element which he later names helium.[7]
• 12 November – Archibald Tait is offered the post of Archbishop of Canterbury.
• 15–24 November – general election, the first under the extended franchise of the Reform Act 1867: Liberal Party victorious.[2]
• 24 November – the Smithfield Meat Market opens in London.[1]
• 3 December – William Ewart Gladstone becomes Prime Minister.
• 10 December
  • Whitaker's Almanack first published.[1]
  • The world's first traffic lights are installed in Parliament Square in London.[1]

Undated

• Church rate ceases to be compulsory.[8]
• Pharmacy Act 1868 regulates the profession of pharmacist and restricts sale of poisons and dangerous drugs.
• The Foreign & Colonial Investment Trust is founded by Philip Rose as The Foreign & Colonial Government Trust, the world's first collective investment scheme.[9]
• Thomas Henry Huxley discovers what he thinks is a primordial matter and names it bathybius haecklii (he admits his mistake in 1871).

Publications

• Wilkie Collins' novel The Moonstone.
• Queen Victoria's diary Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands, from 1848 to 1861.

Births

• 7 February – Aleen Cust, Irish veterinary surgeon (died 1937)
• 22 February – David Devant, stage magician (died 1941)
• 22 March – Alfred Fowler, astronomer (died 1940)
• 25 March – William Lockwood, cricketer (died 1932)
• 10 April – George Arliss, film actor (died 1946)
• 28 April – Lucy Booth, Salvationist, fifth daughter of William and Catherine Booth (died 1953)
• 6 June – Robert Falcon Scott, explorer (died 1912)
• 7 June – Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Scottish architect (died 1928)
• 6 July – Princess Victoria (died 1935)
• 14 July – Gertrude Bell, archaeologist, writer, spy and administrator (died 1926)
• 7 August – Granville Bantock, classical composer and conductor (died 1946)

Deaths

• 10 February – David Brewster, scientist, inventor and writer (born 1781)
• 25 February – James Parke, 1st Baron Wensleydale, judge (born 1782)
• 28 March – James Thomas Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan, military leader (born 1797)
• 2 May – James Wilson Carmichael, marine painter (born 1800)
• 7 May – Henry Peter Brougham, Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain (born 1778)
• 29 July – John Elliotson, doctor and author (born 1791)
• 17 August – Duncan Forbes, linguist (born 1798)
• 24 September – Henry Hart Milman, historian and ecclesiastic (born 1791)
• 27 October – Charles Thomas Longley, Archbishop of Canterbury (born 1794)

References

1. Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006. ISBN 0-14-102715-0.
2. Palmer, Alan; Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. pp. 289–290. ISBN 0-7126-5616-2.
3. Beadle, Jeremy; Harrison, Ian (2007). Firsts, Lasts & Onlys: Crime. London: Robson Books. ISBN 978-1-905798-04-9.
4. Moody, T. W.; et al., eds. (1989). A New History of Ireland. 8: A Chronology of Irish History. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-821744-2.
5. "Timeline of capital punishment in Britain". Retrieved 2 February 2011.
6. "Berkshire Quarter Sessions". Jackson's Oxford Journal. 4 July 1868.
7. Hampel, Clifford A. (1968). The Encyclopedia of the Chemical Elements. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. pp. 256–268. ISBN 0-442-15598-0.
8. Ellens, J. P. (1987). "Lord John Russell and the Church Rate Conflict: the Struggle for a Broad Church, 1834–1868". The Journal of British Studies. 2: 232–257.
9. Fixsen, Rachel (27 October 2000). "There's life in the old investment trust yet!". The Independent. London. Retrieved 4 November 2007.

External links

• 1868 in Scotland

See also