1920 in the United Kingdom

1920 in the United Kingdom

Other years

1918 | 1919 | 1920 (1920) | 1921 | 1922

Constituent countries of the United Kingdom

England | Ireland | Scotland | Wales

Sport

1920 English cricket season Football: England | Scotland

Events from the year 1920 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch – George V
• Prime Minister – David Lloyd George (Coalition)
• Parliament – 31st

Events

• January–November – experimental radio broadcasts including speech and music are made from a studio at the Marconi Company factory in Chelmsford, Essex
• 9 January – the cargo steamer Treveal is wrecked in the English Channel; 35 people lose their lives.
• 11 February – the Council of the League of Nations meets for the first time in London.
• 23 February – War Secretary Winston Churchill announces that conscripts will be replaced by a volunteer army of 220,000 men.
• 10 March – the Ulster Unionist Council accepts the Government's plan for a Parliament of Northern Ireland.
• 17 March – Queen Alexandra unveils a monument to Nurse Edith Cavell in London.
• 27 March – Troytown wins the Grand National.
• 29 March – Sir William Robertson is promoted to Field Marshal, the first man to rise from private (enlisted 1877) to the highest rank in the British Army.[1]
• 31 March
  • In the Second reading debate in Parliament on the Government of Ireland Bill, Unionist leader Sir Edward Carson opposes the division of Ireland, seeing it as a betrayal of Unionists in the south and west.[2]
  • Disestablishment of the Church in Wales comes into effect, under terms of the Welsh Church Act 1914.[3]
• 5–30 April – 1920 blind march, a protest march of 250 blind men from across Britain to London.
• 10 April – West Bromwich Albion win the Football League title for the first time.[4]
• 20 April – 12 September – Great Britain and Ireland compete at the Olympics in Antwerp and win 15 gold, 15 silver and 13 bronze medals.
• 24 April – Aston Villa beat Huddersfield Town 1–0 in the first FA Cup Final since 1915.
• 29 April – Welwyn Garden City established by Ebenezer Howard. The first house is occupied just before Christmas.[5]
• 10 May – forty Irish republican prisoners on hunger strike at Wormwood Scrubs are released.
• 11 May – Oswald Mosley marries Cynthia Curzon, second daughter of ex-Viceroy of India, Earl Curzon of Kedleston, in the Chapel Royal of St James's Palace, London.
• 17 May – Sinn Féin supporters and Unionists engage in pitched street battles in Derry.
• 18 May – women lecturers are given equal status to their male colleagues at the University of Oxford.
• 21 May – the Government proposes a car tax of £1 per horsepower (13 p/kW).
• 30 May – at least twenty people drown in severe floods in Lincolnshire.
• 9 June – King George V opens the Imperial War Museum at The Crystal Palace.
• 15 June – Australian soprano Nellie Melba becomes history's first well-known performer to make a radio broadcast when she sings two arias as part of the series of Marconi broadcasts from Chelmsford.
• 20 June – five die in severe rioting in Ulster.
• 24 June – troops are sent to reinforce the Derry garrison.
• 3 July – the Scenic Railway (roller coaster) at Dreamland Margate amusement park opens, the first in the U.K.
• 5 July – a new airmail service starts from London to Amsterdam.
• 13 July – London County Council bans foreigners from almost all council jobs.
• 16 July – World War I is officially declared over with Austria.
• 21 July – Protestants expel Catholic workers from the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast.[6]
• 23 July – fourteen die and one hundred are injured in fierce rioting in Belfast.
• 24 July – Frank T. Courtney wins the Aerial Derby aircraft race from Hendon at an average speed of 153.5 mph (247.0 km/h).[7]
• 28 July – the first women jury members in England are empanelled at Bristol quarter sessions.[8]
• 30 July – 8 August – 1st World Scout Jamboree held at Olympia, London.[9]
• 31 July
  • Bishop Daniel Mannix is detained onboard ship off Queenstown and prevented from landing in Ireland or from speaking in the main Irish Catholic communities elsewhere in the UK.[10]
  • The Communist Party of Great Britain is founded in London.
• 1 August – the first Congress of the Communist Party of Great Britain opens.
• 3 August – there are Catholic riots in Belfast in protest at the continuing British Army presence.
• 9 August – the Labour Party says it will call for a general strike if the United Kingdom declares war on Russia.
• 13 August – the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act receives Royal Assent, providing for Irish Republican Army activists to be tried by court-martial rather than by jury in criminal courts.[11]
• 16 August
  • Blind Persons Act 1920 passed, the world's first disability-specific legislation, providing a pension allowance for blind persons aged between 50 and 70, directing local authorities to make provision for the welfare of blind people and regulating charities in the sector.
  • First Firearms Act passed.
• 18 August – the first night bus services are introduced in London.
• 28 August – the first games in the new Football League Third Division are played by the 22 clubs who were elected to the new division from the Southern League. Among the members of the new division are Southampton, Crystal Palace, Millwall, Norwich City, Queen's Park Rangers and Luton Town.[12] A northern section is planned for next season.[13]
• 29 August – eleven die and forty are injured in street battles in Belfast.
• September
  • First Bentley cars delivered to customers.[14]
  • City of Birmingham Orchestra formed, the UK's first municipally-supported orchestra.
• 22 September – the Metropolitan Police forms the Flying Squad, following an announcement on 17 February that their horses will be replaced by cars.
• 7 October – the first one hundred women are admitted to study for full degrees at the University of Oxford.
• 10 October – it is announced that compulsory hand signals are to be introduced for all drivers.
• 14 October – the first women receive degrees at the University of Oxford, these being awarded retrospectively. Dorothy L. Sayers is among them.[15]
• 16 October – miners go on strike.
• 20 October – suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst is charged with sedition after calling upon workers to loot the London Docks.
• 25 October
  • The Emergency Powers Bill to counter the miners' strike has its second reading in the House of Commons.
  • Terence MacSwiney, jailed Lord Mayor of Cork, dies in Brixton Prison after a 78-day hunger strike.
• 28 October – Sylvia Pankhurst is jailed for six months.
• 3 November – the miners' strike ends after only a small majority vote to continue.
• 8 November – Rupert Bear first appears in a cartoon strip in the Daily Express.[16]
• 10 November – the body of The Unknown Warrior arrives from France aboard HMS Verdun for burial in Westminster Abbey.
• 11 November – King George V unveils the Cenotaph; The Unknown Warrior is buried.[16]
• 15 November – first complete public performance of Gustav Holst's suite The Planets given in London by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Albert Coates.
• 21 November – Bloody Sunday: the Irish Republican Army, on the instructions of Michael Collins, shoot dead the Cairo gang, fourteen British undercover agents in Dublin, most in their homes. Later this day in retaliation the Auxiliary Division of the Royal Irish Constabulary open fire on a crowd at a Gaelic Athletic Association Football match in Croke Park, killing thirteen spectators and one player and wounding 60.[11][17] Three men are shot this night in Dublin Castle "while trying to escape".
• 28 November – Kilmichael Ambush: the flying column of the 3rd Cork Brigade IRA, led by Tom Barry, ambushes two lorries carrying Auxiliaries at Kilmichael, County Cork, killing seventeen (with three of its men also dying), which leads to official reprisals.[11]
• 29 November – rationing imposed during World War I ends when the restriction on availability of sugar is lifted by the government.[18]
• 5 December – the Scots vote against prohibition.
• 11 December – Irish War of Independence: the Burning of Cork: British forces set fire to 5 acres (20,000 m²) of the centre of the city of Cork, including the City Hall, in reprisal attacks after a British auxiliary is killed in a guerilla ambush.
• 23 December
  • Government of Ireland Act 1920, passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, receives Royal Assent from George V providing for the partition of Ireland into Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland with separate parliaments, granting a measure of home rule.[11][17]
  • Jewish leaders in London launch a £25 million appeal for Palestine.
• 26 December – Dick, Kerr's Ladies F.C. draw the largest-ever crowd to attend a women's association football match, 53,000 spectators at Goodison Park, Liverpool, for a game against St. Helen's Ladies.[19]

Undated

• This year sees the all-time highest annual number of live births in the country, over 1.1 million.[20]
• Meccano Ltd of Liverpool produce the first Hornby toy train, a clockwork 0 gauge model.
• Prince Albert (later George VI), having become Duke of York earlier in the year, meets Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, who will become his wife in 1923 (and later Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother).[21]
• The British Empire, the largest empire ever in history, reaches its peak of 33 million square miles and a population of 423 million people.

Publications

• Edmund Blunden's The Waggoner and Other Poems.
• John Galsworthy's novels In Chancery and Awakening, part of The Forsyte Saga.
• Dean William Inge's Romanes Lecture The Idea of Progress.
• Wilfred Owen's collected Poems (posthumous).
• Charles à Court Repington's The First World War, 1914–1918.
• The anthology Valour and Vision: Poems of the War, 1914–1918.

Births

January – March

• 2 January – Andrew Cavendish, 11th Duke of Devonshire, peer (died 2004)
• 3 January – Hugh McCartney, Labour MP (died 2006)
• 6 January – John Maynard Smith, biologist and geneticist (died 2004)
• 9 January – Clive Dunn, comic actor (died 2012)
• 12 January – Janet Elizabeth Macgregor, physician and cytologist (died 2005)
• 20 January – John Maynard Smith, theoretical evolutionary biologist and geneticist (died 2004)
• 22 January
  • Philippa Pearce, children's author (died 2006)
  • Alf Ramsey, footballer and manager (died 1999)
• 24 January – Keith Douglas, poet (killed in action 1944)
• 26 January – Derek Bond, actor (died 2006)
• 27 January – John Box, film production designer (died 2005)
• 28 January – James A. Whyte, priest and theologian (died 2005)
• 30 January
  • Michael Anderson, film director (died 2018)
  • Patrick Heron, painter, writer and designer (died 1999)
• 5 February – Frank Muir, actor, comedy writer and raconteur (died 1998)
• 6 February – Maurice Beresford, historian and archaeologist (died 2005)
• 19 February – George Rose, actor (died 1988)
• 26 February
  • Derek Goodwin, ornithologist (died 2008)
  • Kenneth Hubbard, RAF pilot (died 2004)
• 2 March – George Cowling, weatherman (died 2009)
• 3 March – Ronald Searle, cartoonist (died 2011)
• 5 March – Rachel Gurney, actress (died 2001)
• 6 March – Lewis Gilbert, film director (died 2018)
• 11 March – D. J. Enright, academic, poet, novelist and critic (died 2002)
• 14 March – Dorothy Tyler-Odam, high jumper (died 2014)
• 19 March – Jack Odell, inventor of Matchbox Toys (died 2007)
• 20 March
  • Pamela Harriman, née Digby, socialite, dipliomat and political activist in the United States (died 1997 in France)
  • Edwin Hunt, waterman, Queen's Bargemaster
  • Dudley Savage, theatre organist (died 2008)
  • Rosemary Timperley, fiction writer (died 1988)
• 22 March – Fanny Waterman, pianist and musical educator
• 23 March – Barbara Low, biochemist (died 2019 in the United States)
• 25 March
  • Paul Scott, novelist, playwright and poet (died 1978)
  • Patrick Troughton, actor (died 1987)
• 27 March – Robin Jacques, illustrator (died 1995)
• March – Walter Smith, land surveyor (died 2018)

April – June

• 9 April – Alex Moulton, mechanical engineer and inventor (died 2012)
• 11 April – Peter O'Donnell, fiction and comic strip writer (died 2010)
• 14 April – Ivor Forbes Guest, historian of dance (died 2018)
• 16 April – Alan Pegler, English businessman (died 2012)
• 21 April – Ronald Magill, actor (died 2007)
• 23 April – Eric Yarrow, businessman (died 2018)
• 27 April – Edwin Morgan, Scottish poet and translator (died 2010)
• 30 April – Tom Moore, World War II soldier and NHS fundraiser
• 4 May – Ronald Chesney, harmonica player and comedy scriptwriter (died 2018)
• 5 May – Glanmor Williams, geographer (died 2005)
• 9 May
  • Richard Adams, novelist (died 2016)
  • Michael Dauncey, brigadier (died 2017)
• 13 May – Gareth Morris, flautist (died 2007)
• 21 May
  • John Chadwick, cryptanalyst and classical scholar (died 1998)
  • Anthony Steel, actor (died 2001)
• 28 May – Jim Russell, racing driver (died 2019)
• 2 June – Johnny Speight, television comedy scriptwriter (died 1998)
• 9 June – Sheila Keith, actress (died 2004)
• 17 June
  • Patrick Duffy, Labour politician and economist
  • John Waddy, colonel
• 19 June – Geoffrey Lewis, professor (died 2008)
• 22 June – Marea Hartman, athletics administrator (died 1994)
• 23 June – Henry Chadwick, theologian (died 2008)
• 28 June
  • Reginald Coates, civil engineer (died 2004)
  • Clarissa Eden, born Anne Spencer-Churchill, wife of Prime Minister Anthony Eden

July – September

• 4 July – Anthony Barber, Conservative politician (died 2005)
• 10 July – Leslie Porter, businessman (died 2005)
• 12 July – Randolph Quirk, linguist (died 2017)
• 13 July – Bill Towers, footballer (died 2000)
• 14 July – Tom Neil, RAF pilot (died 2018)
• 19 July – George Dawkes, cricketer (died 2006)
• 20 July – Jasper Blackall, racing yachtsman
• 24 July – Tamar Eshel, Israeli diplomat and politician
• 25 July – Rosalind Franklin, crystallographer (died 1958)
• 31 July – Peter Thomas, politician (died 2008)
• 2 August – Hugh Hickling, lawyer, colonial civil servant (died 2007)
• 3 August
  • Norman Dewis, test driver and development engineer (died 2019)
  • P. D. James, writer of crime fiction (died 2014)
• 10 August – Tony Tenser, film producer (died 2007)
• 17 August – Emrys Jones, geographer (died 2006)
• 18 August – David Lacy-Scott, amateur cricketer (died 2020)
• 19 August – Hugh Manning, actor (died 2004)
• 21 August – Christopher Robin Milne, author and bookseller (died 1996)
• 23 August – W. I. B. Crealock, yacht designer (died 2009)
• 27 August
  • Michael Giddings, air marshal (died 2009)
  • James Molyneaux, Ulster Unionist Party leader (died 2015)
  • Peter Vansittart, writer (died 2008)
• 3 September – Les Medley, footballer (died 2001)
• 7 September – Brian Pippard, physicist (died 2008)
• 9 September – Michael Aldridge, actor (died 1994)
• 21 September – Kenneth McAlpine, English racing driver
• 22 September – Nathaniel Fiennes, 21st Baron Saye and Sele, peer and businessman
• 29 September – Peter D. Mitchell, chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1992)

October – December

• 3 October – Philippa Foot, née Bosanquet, philosopher (died 2010)
• 5 October – Ronald Leigh-Hunt, actor (died 2005)
• 9 October – Michael Shaw, Conservative politician
• 13 October – Donald Russell, classicist (died 2020)
• 15 October – Daniel Everett, RAF pilot (killed in action 1945)
• 19 October – Harry Alan Towers, film producer and screenwriter (died 2009)
• 25 October – J. Denis Summers-Smith, ornithologist and tribologist (died 2020)
• 31 October – Dick Francis, steeplechase jockey and crime novelist (died 2010)
• 11 November – Roy Jenkins, politician (died 2003)
• 15 November – Colin Collindridge, footballer (died 2019)
• 16 November – Laurence Stark, World War II air ace (died 2004)
• 22 November – Anne Crawford, film actress, in Mandatory Palestine (died 1956)
• 25 November – Bernard Weatherill, politician and Speaker of the House of Commons (died 2007)
• 27 November – Buster Merryfield, character actor (died 1999)
• 28 November
  • Cecilia Colledge, Olympic figure skater (died 2008)
  • Patrick Rodger, Scottish-born Anglican bishop (died 2002)
• 6 December – George Porter, chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2002)
• 10 December – Alfred Goldie, mathematician (died 2005)
• 12 December – Dick James, singer and record producer (died 1986)
• 18 December
  • Ian Edward Fraser, World War II sailor (died 2008)
  • Merlyn Rees, Labour politician, Home Secretary (died 2006)
• 23 December – Tim Elkington, RAF pilot (died 2019)
• 24 December – John Barron, actor (died 2004)

Deaths

• 6 January – Walter Cunliffe, 1st Baron Cunliffe, banker (born 1856)
• 11 January – Pryce Pryce-Jones, Welsh entrepreneur (born 1834)
• 18 January – John McClure, admiral in the Imperial Chinese Navy (born 1837)
• 24 January – William Plunket, 5th Baron Plunket, diplomat and administrator (born 1864)
• 7 February – Dollie Radford, poet (born 1858)
• 19 February – Ernest Hartley Coleridge, literary scholar and poet (born 1846)
• 13 March – Charles Lapworth, geologist (born 1842)
• 15 March – Edith Holden, nature artist, drowned (born 1871)
• 21 March – Evelina Haverfield, suffragette (born 1867)
• 26 March – Mary Augusta Ward (Mrs. Humphry Ward), novelist (born 1851 in Tasmania)
• 14 April – John George Bartholomew, cartographer (born 1860)
• 17 April – Alex Higgins, Scottish international footballer (born 1863)
• 20 April – Briton Rivière, painter (born 1840)
• 7 May – Hugh Thomson, illustrator (born 1860)
• 14 May – Ronald Montagu Burrows, archaeologist (born 1867)
• 18 May – Frank Matcham, theatrical architect and designer (born 1854)
• 28 May – Hardwicke Rawnsley, clergyman, hymnodist and conservationist (born 1851)
• 5 June – Rhoda Broughton, novelist (born 1840)
• 10 July – John ("Jackie") Fisher, admiral (born 1841)
• 17 July – Sir Edmund Elton, 8th Baronet, studio potter (born 1846)
• 2 August – George W. Anson, actor (died 1920)
• 10 August – Erskine Beveridge, textile manufacturer and antiquarian (born 1851)
• 16 August – Sir Norman Lockyer, astronomer and science editor (born 1836)
• 5 October – William Heinemann, publisher (born 1863)
• 17 October – Reginald Farrer, botanist, in China (born 1880)
• 23 November – George Callaghan, admiral (born 1852)
• 3 December – William de Wiveleslie Abney, astronomer and photographer (born 1843)
• 20 December – Linton Hope, Olympic yachtsman and yacht and aircraft designer (born 1863)

External links

• List of British films of 1920

See also

References

1. Woodward, David R. (September 2004). "Robertson, Sir William Robert, first baronet (1860–1933)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/35786. Retrieved 7 December 2007. (subscription or UK public library membership required)
2. Hansard debate 31 Mar 1920
3. Price, D.T.W. (1990). A History of the Church in Wales in the Twentieth Century. Penarth: Church in Wales Publications. ISBN 0-85326-026-5.
5. Review of C. B. Purdom, The Building of Satellite Towns, J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1925.
6. "21st July 1920: Expulsions from Harland & Wolff". Decade of Centenaries: Ulster 1885-1925. Retrieved 29 November 2018.
7. Results of Fifth Aerial Derby at Hendon Flight: 29 July 1920, p.833.
8. Robertson, Patrick (1974). The Shell Book of Firsts. London: Ebury Press. p. 203. ISBN 0-7181-1279-2.
9. "1st World Jamboree". The Pine Tree Web. 1998. Archived from the original on 14 May 2011. Retrieved 23 February 2011.
10. O'Farrell, Patrick (2004). "Mannix, Daniel (1864–1963)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/55446. Retrieved 11 November 2011. (subscription or UK public library membership required)
11. Cottrell, Peter (2009). The War for Ireland, 1913–1923. Oxford: Osprey Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84603-9966.
12. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 5 October 2015. Retrieved 23 April 2011.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
13. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 20 June 2013. Retrieved 23 April 2011.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
14. Georgano, N. (2000). Beaulieu Encyclopedia of the Automobile. London: HMSO. ISBN 1-57958-293-1.
15. Hibbert, Christopher (1988). The Encyclopædia of Oxford. London: Macmillan. p. 427. ISBN 0-333-39917-X.
16. Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006. ISBN 0-14-102715-0.
17. Williams, Hywel (2005). Cassell's Chronology of World History. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. pp. 488–490. ISBN 0-304-35730-8.
18. Cooper, Charlie (24 June 2014). "Britons are forced to tighten their belts". The Independent. London. p. 17. Retrieved 24 June 2014.
19. "Trail-blazers who pioneered women's football". BBC News. 3 June 2005. Retrieved 19 February 2010.
20. Blastland, Michael (2 February 2012). "Go Figure: When was the real baby boom?". BBC News Magazine. Retrieved 5 February 2012.
21. Walker, Andrew (29 January 2003). "Profile: King George VI". BBC News.