1905 in the United Kingdom

Events from the year 1905 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch – Edward VII
• Prime Minister - Arthur Balfour (Coalition) (until 5 December), Henry Campbell-Bannerman (Liberal) (starting 5 December)

Events

• 1 January – East Coast gales: Great Yarmouth flooded and pier at Scarborough washed away.^[1]
• 5 January – The play The Scarlet Pimpernel opens at the New Theatre in London and begins a run of 122 performances and numerous revivals.
• 16 February – At Haulbowline Base in Ireland, two explosions on board submarine HMS A5, due to petrol fumes after refuelling, kill six of the eleven crew.
• 23 February – Beginning of Eliza Sheffield's unsuccessful breach of promise case against Lord Townshend.
• February –
  Sheffield United to Middlesbrough.^[2]
• 10 March
  • An underground explosion at Cambrian Colliery in Clydach Vale kills 33.^[3]
  • Chelsea Football Club founded.^[4]
• 14 March – 23 of the 26 crew of the barque Kyber die when the ship is wrecked at Gwennap Head in Cornwall.^[5]
• 20 March – The title Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is officially recognised by Edward VII by a royal warrant.^[6]
• 29 March – Carmaker Vauxhall opens a factory at Luton, Bedfordshire, as its main manufacturing base following expansion from London.^[7][8]
• 6 May – The Naval, Shipping and Fisheries Exhibition opens in Earl's Court to mark 100 years since the Battle of Trafalgar
• 12 May – First public protest by suffragettes, led by Emmeline Pankhurst, at Westminster.^[9]
• 23 May – First performance of George Bernard Shaw's 1903 play Man and Superman at the Royal Court Theatre, London.
• 29 May – The recently formed Chelsea F.C. are elected to the
  Football League for the 1905–06 football season; on 2 September they play their first match, at the new Stamford Bridge stadium (which the existing Fulham F.C. have declined to become tenants of).^[4]
• June – Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate bar first produced, in Bournville.
• 1 June –
  lorry the following day.^[1]
• 9 June – Charlton Athletic F.C. is founded.
• 15 June –
  Gustaf, Crown Prince of Sweden
  .
• 29 June –
  The Automobile Association inaugurated.^[10]
• July – British Red Cross Society formally inaugurated.
• 3 July – Release of
  short silent drama film Rescued by Rover presenting a significant advance in film techniques.^[11][12]
• 11 July – National Colliery disaster at Wattstown in the Rhondda: an underground explosion kills 120, with just one survivor.^[13]
• 11 August – Aliens Act 1905, the first modern legislation to control immigration into the U.K.^[14]
• 12 August – First running of the Shelsley Walsh Speed Hill Climb, the world's oldest motorsport event to have been staged continuously on its original course
• 25 August – '
  neo-druidic rituals at Stonehenge
  .
• 26 September – Newbury Racecourse first used.
• 3 October – HMS Dreadnought is laid down at Portsmouth, revolutionising battleship design and triggering an international naval arms race.
• 13 October – Annie Kenney and Christabel Pankhurst interrupt a Liberal Party rally at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester and choose imprisonment when convicted, the first militant action of the suffragette campaign.
• 18 October –
  Kingsway and redevelopment of Aldwych
  are opened.
• 21 October –
  Henry Wood first conducts a performance of his Fantasia on British Sea Songs at a Trafalgar Day
  concert in London.
• 26 October – Aspirin sold in the UK for the first time.^[10]
• 5 November –
  Highness
  .
• 19 November – 39 men die in a fire at a model lodging house in Watson Street, Glasgow.^[15]
• 28 November – Irish nationalist Arthur Griffith founds Sinn Féin in Dublin as a political party whose goal is independence for all of Ireland.
• 4 December – Internal splits within the Conservative Party over tariff reform lead to the resignation of Balfour as Prime Minister. Campbell-Bannerman takes over for the Liberal Party, pending a general election in the new year.^[9]
• 6 December – ”Jacky" Fisher promoted to Admiral of the Fleet.^[16]
• 1905
  • Suicide rate of 303 per million, all-time UK peak year.^[17]
  • Local authority expenditure reaches an all-time peak as a proportion of all government expenditure of 51%.^[18]

E.Nesbit wrote the well-known book, 'The Railway Children'.

Publications

• E. Clerihew Bentley's first published collection of clerihews Biography for Beginners, illustrated by G. K. Chesterton
  .
• Angela Brazil's first novel A Terrible Tomboy.
• Arthur Conan Doyle's anthology The Return of Sherlock Holmes.
• E. M. Forster's novel Where Angels Fear to Tread.
• Robert Hichens' novel The Garden of Allah.^[19]
• W. J. Locke's novel The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne.^[19]
• H. E. Marshall's Our Island Story: A Child's History of England.
• Baroness Orczy's historical novel The Scarlet Pimpernel.^[19]
• H. A. Vachell's school story The Hill.^[19]
• H. G. Wells' novel Kipps.

Births

• 2 January – Michael Tippett, composer (died 1998)
• 6 January – Idris Davies, Anglo-Welsh poet (died 1953)
• 14 January – Jane Welsh, actress (died 2001)
• 1 February – Joan Morgan, actress (died 2004)
• 4 February – Hylda Baker, actress (died 1986)
• 10 February – Rachel Thomas, actress (died 1995)
• 16 February – Oliver Franks, public figure (died 1992)
• 18 February – Queenie Leonard, actress (died 2002)
• 21 February – Henry Mollison, actor (died 1985)
• 26 February
  • Robert Byron, travel writer (died 1941)^[20]
  • Arthur Brough, actor (died 1978)
  • Kathleen Guthrie, artist (died 1981)
• 18 March – Robert Donat, actor (died 1958)
• 26 March – Geoffrey Gorer, anthropologist and author (died 1985)
• 28 March – Audrey Withers, magazine editor (died 2001)
• 30 March – Albert Pierrepoint, hangman (died 1992)
• 3 May – Sebastian Shaw, actor (died 1994)
• 16 May – H. E. Bates, novelist (died 1974)
• 12 July – Prince John (died 1919)
• 17 July – Marjorie Reeves, historian and educationalist (died 2003)
• 25 July – Denys Watkins-Pitchford, writer (died 1990)
• 15 August – Lady Jean Rankin, courtier (died 2001)
• 23 August – Constant Lambert, composer (died 1951)
• 4 September – Mary Renault, novelist (died 1983)
• 22 September – Muriel Box, film director and screenwriter (died 1991)
• 29 September – Marie Hartley, writer (died 2006)
• 4 October – Leslie Mitchell, announcer (died 1985)
• 15 October – C. P. Snow, novelist and physicist (died 1980)
• 29 October
  • Henry Green, novelist (died 1973)
  • Berthold Wolpe, calligrapher, typographer and illustrator (died 1989)
• 31 October –
  Elizabeth Jenkins
  , novelist (died 2010)
• 4 November – Frank Owen, journalist and politician (died 1979)
• 25 November – Patrick Devlin, judge (died 1992)
• 26 November – Emlyn Williams, dramatist and actor (died 1987)
• 4 December – Guy Mountfort, advertising executive and ornithologist (died 2003)
• 5 December – Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford, peer, politician and reformer (died 2001)
• 21 December – Anthony Powell, novelist (died 2000)
• 22 December – Hugh Edward Richardson, diplomat and Tibetologist (died 2000)
• 25 December – Lewis Allen, film and television director (died 2000)
• 31 December – Jule Styne, songwriter (died 1994 in the United States)

Deaths

• 9 April – Frederic Thesiger, 2nd Baron Chelmsford, British general (born 1827)
• 5 May – Edwin Bibby, wrestler (born 1848)
• 3 June – Hudson Taylor, British missionary (born 1832)
• 25 July –
  Thomas Spencer, joint founder of retailer Marks & Spencer (born 1851)^[21]
• 14 August – Simeon Solomon, artist (born 1840)
• 18 September – George MacDonald, Scottish author and poet, Christian minister (born 1824)
• 19 September – Thomas John Barnardo, philanthropist (born 1845)
• 13 October – Sir Henry Irving, stage actor (born 1838)
• 14 October – John Thomas, Welsh photographer (born 1838)
• 6 November –
  George Williams, founder of the YMCA
  (born 1821)
• 10 November – Rowland Williams (Hwfa Môn), poet and archdruid (born 1823)
• 14 November – Robert Whitehead, marine engineer (born 1823)
• 5 December – Henry Eckford, British horticulturist (born 1823)
• 9 December – Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb, British scholar and politician (born 1841)
• 17 December – Robert Jones Derfel, poet and dramatist (born 1824)

See also

• List of British films before 1920

References