1865 in the United Kingdom

Events from the year 1865 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria
• Prime Minister – Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (Liberal) (until 18 October); John Russell, 1st Earl Russell (Liberal) (starting 29 October)

Events

• 4 April – official opening of
  London sewerage system designed by Joseph Bazalgette for the Metropolitan Board of Works.^[1]
• 28 May – the Mimosa sets sail, carrying Welsh emigrants to Patagonia.
• June–August – Francis Galton formulates eugenics.^[2]
• 4 June – the lyrics of the hymn "Onward, Christian Soldiers", written by Sabine Baring-Gould as "Hymn for Procession with Cross and Banners", are first sung by children processing to St Peter's Church, Horbury, in the West Riding of Yorkshire.^[3]
• 7 June – Rednal rail crash in Shropshire: 13 killed, 30 injured.
• 9 June – Staplehurst rail crash in Kent: 10 killed, 49 injured; Charles Dickens is amongst the survivors.
• 25 June –
  China Inland Mission at Brighton
  .
• 26 June – Jumbo, a young male African elephant, arrives at London Zoo and becomes a popular attraction.
• 29 June – new Poor Law Act improves conditions in workhouses.^[4]
• 2 July – the Christian Mission, later renamed The Salvation Army, is founded in Whitechapel, London by William and Catherine Booth.^[1][5]
• 4 July – Lewis Carroll's children's book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is published by Macmillan in London for Daresbury-born Oxford don Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Carroll),^[1][4] three years after it was first narrated to Alice Liddell and her sisters. He and his illustrator, John Tenniel, withdraw this edition from UK distribution^[6] and the first trade editions are published on 26 November and released in December (dated 1866).
• 5 July –
  Locomotives Act 1865 – becoming 2 mph in town and 4 mph in the country.^[5]
• 14 July – a party led by Edward Whymper makes the first ascent of the Matterhorn.^[1]
• 23 July – the SS Great Eastern departs on a voyage to lay a transatlantic telegraph cable.^[1]
• 11–24 July –
  Lord Palmerston.^[7]
• September – John Henry Walsh (writing as 'Stonehenge' in the magazine The Field) gives the first definition of a dog breed standard (for the pointer) based on physical form.^[8]
• 28 September – Elizabeth Garrett Anderson graduates as Britain's first woman doctor.^[5]
• 11 October – Morant Bay rebellion: An unsuccessful uprising against British rule at Morant Bay, Jamaica, is brutally suppressed with 400 rebels executed.^[4]
• 29 October – Lord John Russell becomes Prime Minister following the death of Lord Palmerston on 18 October.^[1]
• 6 November –
  commerce raider CSS Shenandoah
  .
• 11 November – Duar War with Bhutan ends with the Treaty of Sinchula, in which Bhutan cedes control of its southern passes to Britain in return for an annual subsidy.^[1]
• 16 December – Edward John Eyre, governor of Jamaica, dismissed and censured for his excessive actions during the suppression of the recent rebellion.^[4]

Undated

• Legal case of St Helen's Smelting Co v Tipping decided in the House of Lords: a landowner is entitled to recover damages for harm done to his trees by fumes from a copper smelter.^[9]
• James Clerk Maxwell publishes A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field.^[1]
• carbolic acid.^[1]
• Major outbreak of rinderpest in British cattle.
• Fisherman's Friend menthol remedy developed by pharmacist James Lofthouse of Fleetwood.
• Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation founded in Hong Kong by Thomas Sutherland.^[1]
• St Leger
  .

Publications

• Lewis Carroll's novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
• Charles Dickens' novel Our Mutual Friend (publication concludes).^[4]
• Robert Smith Surtees
  ' novel Mr. Facey Romford's Hounds (posthumous).
• narrative poem
  Atalanta in Calydon.
• Anthony Trollope's novel Can You Forgive Her? (publication concludes).

Births

• 23 January – Connie Gilchrist, Countess of Orkney, child actress and model (died 1946)
• 9 April – Violet Nicolson ('Laurence Hope'), poet (suicide 1904)
• 2 June – George Lohmann, cricketer (died 1901)
• 3 June – King George V (died 1936)
• 15 July – Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe, newspaper and publishing magnate (died 1922)
• 15 August – Louisa Aldrich-Blake, surgeon (died 1925)
• 26 August – Arthur James Arnot, Scottish-Australian electrical engineer, inventor (d. 1946)
• 12 October – Arthur Harden, chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1940)
• 20 October –
  Sir Rhys Rhys-Williams, 1st Baronet
  , judge (died 1955)
• 27 October – Tinsley Lindley, footballer (died 1940)
• 4 December – Edith Cavell, nurse (executed 1915)^[10]
• 30 December – Rudyard Kipling, writer, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1936)

Deaths

• 8 January – John Dobson, architect (born 1787)
• 6 February – Mrs Isabella Beeton, writer on household management and cookery (born 1836)
• 11 March –
  Freiburg
  )
• 2 April – John Cassell, publisher and entrepreneur (born 1817)
• 30 April – Robert FitzRoy, meteorologist and admiral (born 1805; suicide)
• 27 May – Charles Waterton, naturalist and explorer (born 1782)
• 8 June – Sir Joseph Paxton, gardener and architect (born 1803)
• 25 July – Dr James Barry, military surgeon, revealed on death to be a woman, probably Margaret Ann Bulkley (born 1789-1799)
• 28 July – William Henry Smith, businessman (born 1792)
• 12 August – Sir William Hooker, botanist (born 1785)
• 24 August – Charles Baillie-Hamilton, politician (born 1800)
• 8 September – William Henry Smyth, astronomer and admiral (born 1788)
• 18 October – Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, Prime Minister (born 1784)
• 19 October –
  William King
  , physician and philanthropist (born 1786)
• 1 November – John Lindley, botanist (born 1799)
• 8 November – Tom Sayers, boxer (born 1826)
• 12 November – Mrs Elizabeth Gaskell, novelist and biographer (born 1810)
• 16 November – Sir Horatio Thomas Austin, naval officer and explorer (born 1800)
• 24 December – Sir Charles Eastlake, painter (born 1793)

References