1904 in the United Kingdom

1904 in the United Kingdom

Other years

1902 | 1903 | 1904 (1904) | 1905 | 1906

Constituent countries of the United Kingdom

England | Ireland | Scotland | Wales

Sport

1904 English cricket season Football: England | Scotland

Events from the year 1904 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch – Edward VII
• Prime Minister – Arthur Balfour (Coalition)
• Parliament – 27th

Events

• 1 January – number plates are introduced as cars are licensed for the first time. A speed limit of 20 miles per hour is introduced.[1]
• 25 January – Halford Mackinder's influential paper The Geographical Pivot of History is delivered to the Royal Geographical Society in London.
• 26 January
  • Daily Mirror re-launched as a daily morning pictorial newspaper using photographs.
  • Fraudulent financier Whitaker Wright commits suicide at the Royal Courts of Justice in London immediately following his conviction for fraud, age 57.
• 12 March – Britain's first surface electric trains begin running from Liverpool to Southport on the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway.[2]
• 26 March – 80,000 demonstrators gather in Hyde Park, London, to protest against the importation of Chinese labourers to South Africa by the British government.
• 8 April – Entente Cordiale signed between the United Kingdom and France.[2]
• 25 April – Herbert Beerbohm Tree establishes an Academy of Dramatic Art, which will become RADA, at His Majesty's Theatre in the Haymarket (London).[3]
• May – Royal Horticultural Society completes the move of its demonstration garden to RHS Garden, Wisley, Surrey from Chiswick.[4]
• 4 May – Charles Rolls and Henry Royce meet for the first time, at the new Midland Hotel, Manchester, to agree production of Rolls-Royce motor cars; the first produced under their joint names in Manchester are launched in December.
• 24 May – celebration of Empire Day introduced to the UK by Lord Meath.
• 9 June – the London Symphony Orchestra performs its first concert.[2]
• 28 June – the Danish liner SS Norge is wrecked on Helen's Reef off Rockall with the loss of 635 lives.[5]
• 1 July – 23 November – Great Britain and Ireland compete at the 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis, Missouri and win one gold and one silver medal.
• 21 July – official opening of Birmingham Corporation Water Department's scheme bringing water to the city from the Elan Valley Reservoirs in Wales via the Elan aqueduct.[6][7]
• 3 August – a British expedition under Colonel Francis Younghusband takes Lhasa in Tibet.
• September – start of 1904–1905 Welsh Christian revival.
• 1 September – Griffin Park football stadium opens to the public in London.
• c. October – Mrs H. Millicent McKenzie is appointed Associated Professor of Education at the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire in Cardiff, the first woman in Britain to hold a professorial title.[8]
• 11 October – Loftus Road football stadium opens in London.
• 21 October – the Dogger Bank incident; Russian fleet mistakes British fishing trawlers in the North Sea for Japanese torpedo boats, and opens fire, sinking one. War is narrowly averted.[1]
• Late October – the first members of what will become the Bloomsbury Group move to the Bloomsbury district of London.[9]
• c. November – Finchley fire brigade becomes the first to take delivery of a petrol-engined self-propelled motor fire pump.
• 9 November – Bahamian Dr. Allan Glaisyer Minns becomes Mayor of Thetford, the first black person to hold such an office in Britain.[10][11][12][13]
• 16 November – John Ambrose Fleming patents the first thermionic vacuum tube, the two-electrode diode ("oscillation valve" or Fleming valve).[14]
• 7 December – Royal Navy torpedo boat destroyer HMS Spiteful (1899) begins sea trials as the first capital warship to be powered solely using fuel oil.
• 10 December
  • John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh wins the Nobel Prize in Physics "for his investigations of the densities of the most important gases and for his discovery of argon in connection with these studies".[15]
  • William Ramsay wins the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "in recognition of his services in the discovery of the inert gaseous elements in air, and his determination of their place in the periodic system".[16]
• 24 December – the Coliseum Theatre in London opens.[2]
• 27 December – the stage play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up premières in London.[2]

Undated

• Victoria University dissolved, its remaining constituents, Victoria University of Manchester and the University of Leeds, becoming independent institutions.
• Licensing Act permits magistrates to refuse renewal of a pub licence if there are sufficient in the area (on payment of compensation).
• Hill House, Helensburgh, Scotland, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, completed.[17]

Publications

• G. K. Chesterton's novel The Napoleon of Notting Hill.
• Joseph Conrad's novel Nostromo.
• W. H. Hudson's novel Green Mansions: a romance of the tropical forest.
• Hermann Muthesius' study Das englische Haus begins publication in Berlin.
• Frederick Rolfe's novel Hadrian the Seventh.
• Saki's short story collection Reginald.

Births

• 14 January – Cecil Beaton, photographer (died 1980)
• 18 January – Cary Grant, actor (died 1986)
• 28 February – Anthony Havelock-Allan, film producer (died 2003)
• 30 March – Wilfred White, equestrian (died 1995)
• 8 April – John Hicks, economist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1989)
• 14 April – Sir John Gielgud, actor (died 2000)
• 26 April – Jimmy McGrory, footballer (died 1982)
• 27 April – Cecil Day-Lewis, poet (died 1972)
• 6 May – Max Mallowan, archaeologist (died 1978)
• 8 May – John Snagge, radio personality (died 1996)
• 20 May – Margery Allingham, writer (died 1966)
• 26 May – George Formby, entertainer (died 1961)
• 27 July – Anton Dolin, dancer and choreographer (died 1983)
• 6 June – Lesley Blanch, writer and fashion editor (died 2007)
• 8 June – Angus McBean, photographer (died 1990)
• 16 August – Mollie Maureen, actress (died 1987)
• 26 August – Christopher Isherwood, novelist (died 1986)
• 29 September – Greer Garson, actress (died 1996)
• 2 October – Graham Greene, author (died 1991)
• 20 October – Anna Neagle, actress (died 1986)
• 2 November – Hugh Patrick Lygon, aristocrat (died 1936)
• 11 November – J. H. C. Whitehead, mathematician (died 1960)
• 14 November
  • Harold Larwood, fast bowler (cricket) (died 1995)
  • Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury (died 1988)
• 16 November – Norman Feather, nuclear physicist (died 1978)
• 12 December – Edward Pilgrim, victim of bureaucracy (died 1954)

Deaths

• 17 January – Sir Henry Keppel, admiral (born 1809)
• 8 February – Alfred Ainger, biographer (born 1837)
• 22 February – Leslie Stephen, writer and critic (born 1832)
• 5 March – John Lowther du Plat Taylor, founder of the Army Post Office Corps (born 1829)
• 17 March – Prince George, Duke of Cambridge, grandson of King George III (born 1819)
• 5 April – Tom Allen, boxing champion (born 1840)
• 16 April – Samuel Smiles, author and reformer (born 1812)
• 8 May
  • Frederick York Powell, historian and scholar (born 1850)
  • Eadweard Muybridge, photographer and motion picture pioneer (born 1830)
• 10 May – Henry Morton Stanley, Welsh explorer and journalist (born 1841)
• 1 July – George Frederic Watts, symbolist painter and sculptor (born 1817)
• 12 August – William Renshaw, tennis player (born 1861)
• 22 September – Wilson Barrett, actor (born 1846)
• 4 October – Adela Florence Nicolson ("Laurence Hope"), poet (born 1865)
• 7 October – Isabella Bird, explorer, writer, photographer and naturalist (born 1831)

References

1. Palmer, Alan; Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. pp. 335–336. ISBN 0-7126-5616-2.
2. Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006. ISBN 0-14-102715-0.
3. "The Academy of Dramatic Art". St James's Gazette. London. 26 April 1904. p. 16.
4. "History of Wisley garden". RHS. Retrieved 21 July 2019.
5. Sebak, Per Kristian (2004). Titanic's Predecessor: the S/S Norge Disaster of 1904. Laksevaag: Seaward. ISBN 82-996779-0-4.
6. City of Birmingham Water Department (1926). A Short History of the Development of the Undertaking, with a Description of the Existing Sources of Supply.
7. Judge, Colin (1987). The Elan Valley Railway: the Railway of the Birmingham Corporation Waterworks. Oxford: Oakwood Press. ISBN 0-85361-353-2.
8. Cunningham, Vanessa; Goodwin, John (2001). Cardiff University: a celebration. Cardiff University. pp. 30–31. ISBN 0-9540884-0-9.
9. Nicolson, Nigel, ed. (1975). The Flight of the Mind: The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Vol. I: 1888–1912 (Virginia Stephen). London: Hogarth Press. ISBN 0701204036.
10. Pike, W. T. (1911). Norfolk & Suffolk in East Anglia: Contemporary Biographies.
11. Negro Year Book. 1914.
12. "Dr. Allan Glaisyer Minns (1858–1930), Britain's First Black Mayor". Norfolk Black History Month. 2011. Archived from the original on 12 October 2010. Retrieved 13 July 2012.
13. "Thetford". Eastern Daily Press. Norwich. 10 November 1904. p. 9.
14. The Hutchinson Factfinder. Helicon. 1999. ISBN 978-1-85986-343-5.
15. Lord Rayleigh The Nobel Prize in Physics 1904
16. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1904
17. Grewe, Armin (2001–2006). "C. R. Mackintosh: Hill House in Helensburgh". The Armin Grewe Homepage. Aldermaston. Archived from the original on 23 June 2010. Retrieved 7 July 2010.

See also