1883 in the United Kingdom

Events from the year 1883 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

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

Events

• 1 January – Augustus Pitt Rivers takes office as Britain's first Inspector of Ancient Monuments.^[1]
• 5 March – Gloucester City A.F.C. is formed.
• 15 March – Fenian dynamite campaign: An explosion at the Local Government Board, Charles Street, Mayfair (Westminster) causes over £4,000 worth of damage and some minor injuries to people nearby. A second bomb at The Times newspaper offices in Queen Victoria Street, London does not explode.^[2]
• 29 March –
  Edward Benson enthroned as Archbishop of Canterbury
  .
• 31 March –
  FA Cup Final at The Oval, the Etonians being the last amateur team to reach the final^[3]
  and Olympic being the first northern working-class team to do so.
• 7 May – Royal College of Music opens in London with George Grove as first Director.^[4]
• 11 May –
  Strawberry Thief
  printed textile design.
• 16 June –
  asphyxiated in a concert hall in Sunderland.^[5]
• 3 July – SS Daphne sinks on launch in Glasgow, leaving 124 dead.^[6]
• 1 August – GPO introduces the Parcels Post service.^[7]
• 4 August – first electric
  railway opens, the Volk's Railway at Brighton.^[4]
• 13 August – Coventry City F.C. are formed as "Singers F.C."
• 25 August – Trial of Lunatics Act permits a criminal on trial to be found guilty but insane.
• 29 August – Dunfermline Carnegie Library, the first Carnegie library is opened in Andrew Carnegie's hometown, Dunfermline.
• 11 September – Major
  Consul-General of Egypt under British rule
  .
• September – Bristol Rovers F.C. is founded as "Black Arabs F.C."
• October
  • GPO officially replaces the title "letter carrier" by "postman".^[7]
  • Dunstable Town F.C. formed.
• October–November – Primrose League established in support of the Conservative Party.
• 4 October – the Boys' Brigade is founded in Glasgow. It is the first uniformed youth organisation in existence.^[8]
• 24 October – Cardiff University opens under the name of University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire.^[9]
• 30 October – two
  William Vernon Harcourt drafts 300 policemen to guard the Underground and introduces the Explosives Bill
  .
• 3 November–5 November –
  Battle of El Obeid in Sudan.^[10]
• Undated
  • Home and Colonial Stores established as grocers, in London.
  • Potter Thomas Twyford invents his 'Unitas' single-piece ceramic pedestal (free-standing) flush toilet.^[11]

Publications

• G. A. Henty's novels Friends Though Divided: a tale of the Civil War, Jack Archer: a tale of the Crimea and Under Drake's Flag: a tale of the Spanish Main.
• William Robinson's gardening book The English Flower Garden.
• J. R. Seeley's study of the growth of the British Empire The Expansion of England
  .
• The Black Arrow
  (in serial form).

• England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales take part in the inaugural Home Nations Championship.^[12]

Births

• 1 January – Mary Forbes, actress (died 1974)
• 3 January – Clement Attlee, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (died 1967)
• 16 January – Oswald Short, aviation pioneer and aircraft builder, youngest of the Short Brothers (died 1969)
• 17 January – Compton Mackenzie, novelist and Scottish nationalist (died 1972)
• 20 January – Bertram Ramsay, admiral (died 1945)
• 15 February – Sax Rohmer, author (died 1959)
• 16 February – Elizabeth Craig, cookery writer (died 1980)
• 25 February – Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, member of the royal family (died 1981)
• 19 March –
  Walter Haworth, chemist, Nobel Prize
  laureate (died 1950)
• 28 March – William Henry Harris, organist, choral trainer and composer (died 1973)
• 19 May – George Cholmondeley, 5th Marquess of Cholmondeley, Lord Great Chamberlain (died 1968)
• 5 June – John Maynard Keynes, economist (died 1946)
• 1 July – Arthur Borton, soldier, Victoria Cross recipient (died 1933)
• 23 July – Stuart Paton, screenwriter and film director (died 1944)
• 29 July – Fred Pentland, footballer and coach (died 1962)
• 23 August – Jesse Pennington, footballer (died 1970)
• 8 November – Arnold Bax, composer (died 1953)
• 25 November – Percy Marmont, actor (died 1977)

Deaths

• 9 March – Arnold Toynbee, economic historian (born 1852)
• 14 March – Karl Marx, political philosopher and economist (born 1818 in Germany)
• 14 April – William Farr, epidemiologist (born 1807)
• 18 April – Elizabeth Ferard, Anglican deaconess (born 1825)
• 28 April –
  Jack Russell
  , dog breeder (born 1795)
• 13 May – James Young, Scottish chemist (born 1811)
• 20 May – William Chambers of Glenormiston, Scottish publisher and politician (born 1800)
• 11 June – Caroline Leigh Gascoigne, poet and novelist (born 1813)
• 14 June – Edward FitzGerald, poet (born 1809)
• 23 June – Sir William Knollys, general (born 1797)
• 23 July – Rose Massey, actress (died of consumption in the United States) (born c. 1845)
• 24 July – Matthew Webb, first recorded person to swim the English Channel unaided (died in swim at Niagara Falls) (born 1848)
• 26 July –
  Sir William Fenwick Williams
  , general (born 1800)
• 6 October – William Beresford, politician (born 1797)
• 14 October – Sir Arthur Elton, 7th Baronet, writer and Liberal politician (born 1818)
• 20 October – George Chichester, 3rd Marquess of Donegall, Anglo-Irish landowner, courtier and politician (born 1797)
• 19 November – Sir Charles William Siemens, electrical engineer (born 1823 in Germany)
• 26 December – Thomas Holloway, pharmacist and philanthropist (born 1800)
• Margaret Agnes Bunn, actress (born 1799)

References