1881 in the United Kingdom

Events from the year 1881 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria
• Prime Minister – William Ewart Gladstone (Liberal)

Events

• 1 January – postal orders issued for the first time in Britain.^[1]
• 14 January –
  Salford, Lancashire;^[2] a young boy is killed.^[3]
• 17–18 January – blizzard over southern parts of Britain.^[4]
• 18 January – First Boer War: British forces defeated at the Battle of Laing's Nek.^[5]
• 8 February – First Boer War: British forces defeated at the Battle of Schuinshoogte.
• 27 February – First Boer War: British forces defeated at the Battle of Majuba Hill.^[5]
• 1 March – the
  transatlantic liner, is launched at Clydebank.^[5]
• 12 March – Andrew Watson of Glasgow's Queen's Park F.C. (from a mixed Scottish/British Guianese background) captains the Scotland national football team in a 6–1 victory against England, becoming the world's first mixed race international Association football player.
• 27 March – in
  licensed trade becomes so great that the Riot Act is read and troops are called in to restore order.^[6]
• 31 March – Edward Rudolf founds the 'Church of England Central Society for Providing Homes for Waifs and Strays' (later The Children's Society).^[7]
• 3 April – census in the United Kingdom. Two-thirds of the population are urbanised; one-seventh live in London.
• 5 April – the Treaty of Pretoria gives the Boers self-government in the Transvaal under a theoretical British oversight.^[5]
• 9 April – Old Carthusians F.C. beat Old Etonians 3–0 in the FA Cup Final at The Oval, the last time it will be played between two amateur sides.^[8]
• 18 April – the Natural History Museum is opened in London.^[9]
• 19 April – Robert Cecil, Marquess of Salisbury, becomes the Conservative leader in the House of Lords following the death of Benjamin Disraeli.^[5]
• 23 April – first performance of the Gilbert and Sullivan opera Patience, a satire on aestheticism, at the Opera Comique in London.^[5]
• 27 April – British troops leave Afghanistan.^[1]
• 1 May – Childers Reforms of the British Army begin to reorganise the infantry into multi-battalion regiments, coming into effect on 1 July with the issue of General Order 70.^[10]
• 7 June – the Democratic Federation, predecessor of the Social Democratic Federation, established as Britain's first organised socialist political party by Henry Hyndman, holds its first meeting.
• 14–20 July – International Anarchist Congress held in London.
• 26 July – first publication of the London
  Evening News.^[5]
• 16 August – a tribunal is set up under the Land Law (Ireland) Act 1881 to examine excessive rents.^[5]
• 27 August – the
  act of Parliament of the United Kingdom, Great Britain or England since the 1542 Act of Union between England and Wales whose application is restricted to Wales.^[11]
• 26 September – Godalming becomes the first town to have its streets illuminated by electric light (hydroelectrically generated).^[12]
• 10 October – Richard D'Oyly Carte's Savoy Theatre opens in London, the world's first public building to be fully lit by electricity, using Joseph Swan's incandescent light bulbs.^[5][13][14] The run of Patience transfers from the Opera Comique. The stage is first lit electrically on 28 December.^[15]
• 13 October – Charles Stewart Parnell imprisoned for to his part in land agitation in Ireland.^[5]
• 14 October – great gale across the country; in the Eyemouth disaster ("Black Friday"), a severe storm strikes the Berwickshire coast of Scotland and 189 fishermen die.^[16]
• 16 October –
  The People Sunday newspaper founded.^[17]
• 22 October – Tit-Bits weekly digest magazine founded by George Newnes.^[18]

Publications

• Henry James' novel The Portrait of a Lady.
• The Boy's Own Paper
  .
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Ballads and Sonnets.^[19]
• Joseph Henry Shorthouse's novel John Inglesant.^[20]
• Robert Louis Stevenson's children's adventure novel Treasure Island begins serialization in Young Folks (1 October) as by "Captain George North".^[21]
• New Testament in the Revised Version of The Bible.^[22]

In fiction

• Dr John H. Watson first meet at Bart's Hospital, London, prior to the events narrated in Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet
  (1887) commencing on 4 March.

• 9 January – Lascelles Abercrombie, poet and critic (died 1938)
• 28 January – Ruby M. Ayres, romance novelist (died 1955)
• 13 February – Eleanor Farjeon, author of children's literature (died 1965)^[23]
• 21 February – Kenneth J. Alford, soldier and composer (died 1945)
• 9 March – Ernest Bevin, labour leader, politician and statesman (died 1951)
• 10 March – Thomas Quinlan, operatic impresario (died 1951)
• 25 March – Mary Webb, novelist (died 1927)
• 25 June – Robert Vansittart, diplomat (died 1957)
• 1 August – Rose Macaulay, novelist (died 1958)
• 2 August – Ethel M. Dell, romantic fiction writer (died 1939)
• 6 August – Alexander Fleming, bacteriological researcher, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (died 1955)
• 19 August – Kingsley Wood, politician (died 1943)
• 20 August –
  Edgar Guest
  , poet (died 1959)
• 5 September – Victor Grayson, socialist politician (disappeared 1920)
• 12 September –
  phonetician
  (died 1967)
• 16 September – Clive Bell, art critic (died 1964)
• 17 September – Alfred Carpenter, naval officer, recipient of the Victoria Cross (died 1955)
• 11 October – Lewis Fry Richardson, mathematical physicist (died 1953)
• 15 October
  • William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury
    (died 1944)
  • P. G. Wodehouse, comic writer (died 1975)

Deaths

• 24 January
  • Frances Stackhouse Acton, antiquarian and botanist (born 1794)
  • James Collinson, Pre-Raphaelite painter (born 1825)
• 5 February – Thomas Carlyle, writer and historian (born 1795)
• 19 April – Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (born 1804) (subsequently commemorated as Primrose Day)
• 24 May – Samuel Palmer, watercolour landscape painter (born 1805)
• 30 July – George Meads, cricketer (born 1797)
• 11 August – Jane Digby, adventurer (born 1807)
• 14 December – Decimus Burton, architect and garden designer (born 1800)
• 18 December – George Edmund Street, architect (born 1824)

References