1923 in the United Kingdom

	1923 in the United Kingdom
	Other years
	1921 \| 1922 \| 1923 \| 1924 \| 1925
	Constituent countries of the United Kingdom
	England \| Northern Ireland \| Scotland \| Wales
	Sport
	1923 English cricket season; Football: England \| Scotland;

Events from the year 1923 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

Monarch – George V
Prime Minister
- Bonar Law (Conservative) (until 22 May)
- Stanley Baldwin (Conservative) (starting 23 May)
Parliament – 32nd

Events

1 January – grouping of virtually all British railway companies into four larger companies.
8 January – first outside broadcast by the British Broadcasting Company, a British National Opera Company production of The Magic Flute from the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
18 January – the Postmaster General grants the BBC a licence to broadcast.
13 February – first BBC broadcast from Cardiff (station 5WA).
16 February – archaeologist Howard Carter unseals the burial chamber of Tutankhamun, a Pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt.[1]
6 March – first BBC broadcast from Glasgow (station 5SC).
21 April – the first of a series of innovative modern dress productions of Shakespeare plays, Cymbeline, directed by H. K. Ayliff, opens at Barry Jackson's Birmingham Repertory Theatre.[2]
26 April – wedding of The Prince Albert, Duke of York (later George VI) and Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (later Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother) in Westminster Abbey.[1]
28 April – the Empire Stadium, Wembley, is opened to the public for the first time and holds the FA Cup Final between Bolton Wanderers and West Ham United football clubs. Crowds are cleared from the pitch by mounted police, including one on a white horse.[3]
22 May – Bonar Law resigns as Prime Minister due to ill health.
23 May – Stanley Baldwin succeeds Bonar Law as Prime Minister.
18 July – Matrimonial Causes Act establishes equal rights in divorce for men and women, making it possible for wives to divorce husbands for adultery.[4]
31 July – Liquor Act makes it illegal to sell alcoholic beverages to under-eighteens.[4]
18 August – 1923 WAAA Championships, the first British national championships for women in track and field, are held in London.
25 August – Maine Road football stadium, one of the largest sports stadiums in Britain, opens in Moss Side, Manchester, as the new home of Manchester City F.C. who win 2–1 against Sheffield United in their first game there, on the opening day of the 1923–24 Football League First Division campaign.[5]
28 September – first publication of the Radio Times listings magazine.[1]
10 October – first BBC broadcast from Aberdeen (station 2BD).
17 October – first BBC broadcast from Bournemouth (station 6BM).
12 November – Her Highness Princess Maud of Fife marries Captain Charles Alexander Carnegie in Wellington Barracks, London.
16 November – first BBC broadcast from Sheffield (station 2FL).
6 December – the 1923 United Kingdom general election, is won by the Conservative Party led by Stanley Baldwin but without enough seats to form a majority.[3] Among the new members of parliament is 26-year-old Anthony Eden, the Conservative MP for Warwick and Leamington.[6]
10 December – John James Richard Macleod wins the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with Frederick Banting "for the discovery of insulin".[7]
31 December – the BBC broadcasts the chimes of Big Ben for the first time.[1]

Undated

Littlewoods Pools is formed by 27-year-old Liverpool businessman John Moores.[8]
State registration of nurses under the Nurses Registration Act 1919 begins; campaigner Ethel Gordon Fenwick is first on the register.
Dorothy Davis becomes the first woman to qualify as an actuary in the UK.[9][10]

Publications

Barbara Cartland's first novel Jigsaw.
Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot novel The Murder on the Links.
Philip Gibbs' novel The Middle of the Road.[11]
Aldous Huxley's novel Antic Hay.
H. J. Massingham's book Untrodden Ways: Adventures of English Coasts, Heaths and Marshes and also Among the Works of Hudson, Crabbe and Other Country Writers.
Dorothy L. Sayers' first Lord Peter Wimsey novel Whose Body?
P. G. Wodehouse's short story collection The Inimitable Jeeves.

Births

3 January – Graham Chadwick, bishop (died 2007)
8 January – Johnny Wardle, cricketer (died 1985)
12 January – Vic Allen, sociologist, economist, and historian (died 2014)
15 January – Ivor Cutler, Scottish poet, songwriter and humorist (died 2006)
16 January – M. J. Seaton, astronomer (died 2007)
27 January – Robert Burchfield, New Zealand-born lexicographer (died 2004)
22 February
- Norman Smith, record producer (died 2008)
- Bleddyn Williams, Welsh rugby player and sportscaster (died 2009)
23 February – David Wood, Army officer (died 2009)
1 March – Ted Briggs, World War II sailor (died 2008)
4 March – Patrick Moore, astronomer and broadcaster (died 2012)
11 March – Terence Alexander, actor (died 2009)
15 March – Colin Eaborn, molecular biologist (died 2004)
2 April – G. Spencer-Brown, mathematician (died 2016)
3 April – John Smith, banker, politician and philanthropist (died 2007)
4 April
- John D. Lawson, physicist (died 2008)
- Peter Vaughan, character actor (died 2016)
21 April
- Ronald Cass, screenwriter and composer (died 2006)
- John Mortimer, lawyer and author (died 2009)
22 April – Geoffrey Hattersley-Smith, geologist and glaciologist (died 2012)
26 April – Oliver Millar, art historian (died 2007)
3 May – Norman Thelwell, cartoonist (died 2004)
4 May – Eric Sykes, comedic writer and actor (died 2012)
5 May – Richard Wollheim, philosopher (died 2003)
8 May – T. G. H. James, Egyptologist (died 2009)
9 May – Barbara New, actress (died 2010)
14 May – Trevor Wilkinson, sports car manufacturer (died 2008)
15 May
- Peter Avery, scholar (died 2008)
- John Lanchbery, composer (died 2003)
1 June – Barry Till, priest, author, and academic (died 2013)
2 June
- Ralph Henstock, mathematician (died 2007)
- Barbara Smoker, humanist (died 2020)
5 June – Marjorie Thomas, opera singer (died 2008)
6 June – Alice Coleman, geographer and academic
14 June – Judith Kerr, German-born writer and illustrator (died 2019)
15 June – David Morley, paediatrician (died 2009)
25 June – Nicholas Mosley, novelist and biographer (died 2017)
27 June – Beth Chatto, born Betty Little, plantswoman (died 2018)
29 June – Ronnie Ronalde, born Ronald Waldron, yodeller and siffleur (died 2015)
13 July – Derek Brewer, mediaevalist (died 2008)
14 July – Raymond Harold Sawkins, novelist (died 2006)
20 July – James Bree, actor (died 2008)
23 July – Hughie Kelly, footballer (Blackpool) (died 2009)
29 July – Stella Moray, actress (died 2006)
2 August – Wayland Young, 2nd Baron Kennet, writer and politician (died 2009)
21 August – Larry Grayson, comedian and game show host (died 1995)
29 August
- Richard Attenborough, actor and director (died 2014)
- Marmaduke Hussey, Chairman of the BBC (died 2006)
3 September – Alan Bristow, businessman (died 2009)
7 September – Madeleine Dring, composer and actress (died 1977)
22 September – Dannie Abse, poet (died 2014)
28 September – John Scott, 9th Duke of Buccleuch, peer and politician (died 2007)
30 September – Donald Swann, composer (died 1994)
5 October – Glynis Johns, actress
9 October – Donald Sinden, actor (died 2014)
10 October – Nicholas Parsons, actor and presenter (died 2020)
20 October – Patrick Jordan, actor (died 2020)
23 October – Robin Day, political broadcaster (died 2000)
24 October – Denise Levertov, English-born American poet (died 1997)
25 October – Belita (Jepson-Turner), Olympic skater and film actress (died 2005)
27 October
- Peter Bryant, actor and television producer (died 2006)
- Peter Graham Scott, film producer (died 2007)
3 November – Tomás Ó Fiaich, cardinal (died 1990)
6 November – Donald Houston, actor (died 1991)
9 November – Jack Scott, weather forecaster (died 2008)
12 November – Ian Graham, archaeologist and explorer (died 2017)
20 November – Ernest Ambler, physicist (died 2017)
26 November – Pat Phoenix, actress (died 1986)
7 December – Abraham Goldberg, doctor (died 2007)
10 December – Michael Gill, television producer (died 2005)
15 December – Freeman Dyson, physicist (died 2020)
18 December – Edwin Bramall, field marshal (died 2019)
19 December – Gordon Jackson, actor (died 1990)
20 December – James Leasor, author (died 2007)
22 December – Peregrine Worsthorne, journalist and newspaper editor

Deaths

9 January
- Katherine Mansfield, novelist (born 1888 in New Zealand; died in France)
- Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters, couple convicted of murder (Thompson born 1893, Bywaters born 1902; hanged)
14 January – Frederic Harrison, English historian (born 1831)
16 March – George Bean, cricketer (born 1864)
27 March – Sir James Dewar, chemist (born 1842)
4 April – John Venn, mathematician (born 1834)
5 April – George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, English financier of Egyptian excavations (born 1866)
21 May – Charles Kent, actor (born 1852)
9 June – Princess Helena of the United Kingdom (born 1846)
12 June – Kate Bishop, actress (born 1848)
10 July – Albert Chevalier, music hall comedian (born 1861)
15 July – Janey Sevilla Callander, producer (born 1846)
30 July – Sir Charles Hawtrey, actor (born 1858)
23 August – Ernest Francis Bashford, oncologist (born 1873)
23 September – John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn, politician, editor (born 1838)
30 October – Bonar Law, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (born 1858)
5 December – Herbert Standing, actor (born 1846)
8 December – John William Brodie-Innes, member of Golden Dawn (born 1848)
9 December – Meggie Albanesi, actress (born 1899)
10 December – Thomas George Bonney, geologist (born 1833)

gollark: Those are not mutually exclusive.

gollark: So obviously instead of accepting that you are *not* conscious, you just rationalized it by *imagining* being conscious.

gollark: Anyway, if the human mind is good at one thing it's rationalizing.

gollark: It's funny, though.

gollark: <:acidic:826234302692982794> in other words.

References

Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006. ISBN 0-14-102715-0.
Morris, Sylvia (13 January 2012). "Innovating in Birmingham: Barry Jackson and modern dress Shakespeare". The Shakespeare blog. Retrieved 21 March 2012.
Williams, Hywel (2005). Cassell's Chronology of World History. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. pp. 493–495. ISBN 0-304-35730-8.
Palmer, Alan; Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. pp. 365–366. ISBN 0-7126-5616-2.
"Retro Football Shirts". Archived from the original on 7 May 2011. Retrieved 1 August 2011.
"Anthony Eden (1897–1977)". History. BBC. Retrieved 21 March 2012.
"The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1923". Retrieved 2 February 2008.
"Jobs to go as Index stores close". BBC News. 19 April 2005. Retrieved 1 August 2011.
Hartley, Cathy (2013). A Historical Dictionary of British Women. Routledge. p. 833. ISBN 978-1-135-35534-0.
"Calculating women". The Actuary. Retrieved 14 October 2019.
Leavis, Q.D. (1965). Fiction and the Reading Public (rev. ed.). London: Chatto & Windus.