1884 in the United Kingdom

1884 in the United Kingdom:

Other years

1882 | 1883 | 1884 (1884) | 1885 | 1886

Individual countries of the United Kingdom

England | Ireland | Scotland | Wales

Sport

1884 English cricket season Football: England

Events from the year 1884 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

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

Events

• 4 January — The Fabian Society was founded in London.
• 5 January — Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera Princess Ida has its première at the Savoy Theatre, London.
• 18 January — Dr William Price attempts to cremate his dead baby son, Iesu Grist, at Llantrisant. Later tried at Cardiff Assizes and acquitted on the grounds that cremation is not contrary to law, he is thus able to carry out the ceremony (the first in the U.K. in modern times) on 14 March.
• 26 January–29 March — The first British Home Championship is held between the football teams of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
• 1 February — First fascicle of what will become the Oxford English Dictionary is published.
• 5 February — Derby County Football Club is founded in England.
• 15 February — Emma Keyse is murdered and John 'Babbacombe' Lee is suspected.
• 13 March — The Siege of Khartoum begins in the Mahdist War: General Charles Gordon is besieged in the Sudan.
• 22 April — Colchester earthquake: four die in the UK's most destructive earthquake.
• 8 July — The NSPCC is founded as the London Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
• 28 September — The Marks & Spencer department store chain starts life as Michael Marks’ market stall in Leeds Kirkgate Market, Yorkshire.
• 13 October — International Meridian Conference in Washington, D.C. fixes the Greenwich meridian as the world's prime meridian.
• 18 October — University College of North Wales, Bangor founded.
• 2 November — The "Home Office Baby" is delivered to the Home Office.
• 4 December — Tom Dudley and Edwin Stephens are convicted of murder in the survival cannibalism case of R v. Dudley and Stephens.
• 6 December — Representation of the People Act ("Third Reform Act") extends the franchise uniformly across the U.K. to all male tenants paying a £10 rental or occupying land to that value, and restricts multiple voting.
• 9 December — Dudley and Stephens receive the mandatory death penalty with a recommendation for clemency. On 13 December they are told that their death penalties have been commuted to six months' imprisonment.
• Undated — Leicester City F.C. is formed as Leicester Fosse Football Club.

Publications

• A New English Dictionary on historical principles, part 1, edited by James A. H. Murray.
• Arthur Conan Doyle's (anonymous) story based on the disappearance of the Mary Celeste, "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" (Cornhill Magazine, January).
• Arnold Toynbee's lectures (collected posthumously) Lectures on the Industrial Revolution in England.

Births

• 18 January — Arthur Ransome, author and journalist (died 1967)
• 13 March — Sir Hugh Walpole, novelist (died 1941)
• 10 May — Olga Petrova, English-born actress (died 1977)
• 19 December — Stanley Unwin, publisher (died 1968)

Deaths

• 1 March — Isaac Todhunter, mathematician (born 1820)
• 28 March — Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, member of the royal family (born 1853)
• 5 April — John Wisden, cricketer and creator of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (born 1826)
• 10 September — George Bentham, botanist (born 1800)
• 6 November — Henry Fawcett, statesman, economist and Postmaster General (born 1833)