1877 in the United Kingdom

1877 in the United Kingdom:

Other years

1875 | 1876 | 1877 (1877) | 1878 | 1879

Individual countries of the United Kingdom

England | Ireland | Scotland | Wales

Sport

1877 English cricket season Football: England

Events from the year 1877 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch — Victoria
• Prime Minister — Benjamin Disraeli (Conservative)

Events

• 1 January — Queen Victoria proclaimed Empress of India by the Royal Titles Act 1876.

Manchester Town Hall

• March — The Nineteenth Century magazine is founded in London.
• 12 March — Britain annexes Walvis Bay in South Africa.
• 14 March — Former Argentine dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas dies in exile in Southampton.
• 15 March — The first Test cricket match takes place between England and Australia.
• 24 March — For the only time in history, the Boat Race between the Cambridge University and Oxford University Boat Clubs is declared a "dead heat" (i.e. a draw).
• 12 April — Britain annexes the South African Republic, violating the Sand River Convention of 1852 causing a new Xhosa War.
• 9–19 July — All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club stages its first lawn tennis tournament at Wimbledon. Spencer Gore becomes first gentlemen's singles champion (the final having been delayed by rain).
• 21 July — The Cabinet decides to declare war on Russia if it occupies Constantinople in the Russo-Turkish War.
• 10 August — The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge Act removes most restrictions limiting fellowships in colleges of the ancient universities to clergy of the Church of England and permits fellows to marry.
• 23 August — The Merchandise Marks Act obliges exporters to indicate the place of manufacture of their goods.
• 13 September — New Manchester Town Hall, designed by Alfred Waterhouse, officially opened.
• 3 October — W. S. Gilbert's farce Engaged, starring Marion Terry, opens at London's Haymarket Theatre.
• 22 October — Blantyre mining disaster kills 207, Scotland’s worst-ever mining accident.
• 24 November — Anna Sewell's novel Black Beauty published.

Undated

• Responsibility for provision of prisons is transferred from the counties to the Home Office.
• Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh, as the Freethought Publishing Company, publish for the first time in the UK Charles Knowlton's birth control manual Fruits of Philosophy, for which they are prosecuted (18 June) under the Obscene Publications Act 1857.
• Edward Lear's Laughable Lyrics is published.
• American suffragettes Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin come to England due to criticism of their behaviour.
• Jesse Boot takes over the family shop in Nottingham, the foundation of Boots the chemists.
• Six Scotch whisky distilleries combine to form Distillers Company.
• Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings established.

Births

• 7 February — G. H. Hardy, mathematician (died 1947)
• 16 May — Bernard Spilsbury, forensic pathologist (suicide 1947)
• 7 June — Charles Glover Barkla, physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1944)
• 19 July — Arthur Fielder, cricketer (died 1949)
• 1 August — Charlotte Hughes, longest-lived person ever documented in the United Kingdom (died 1993)
• 27 August — Charles Rolls, motorist and aeronaut, co-founder of Rolls-Royce (died 1910)
• 1 September — Francis William Aston, chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1945)
• 2 September — Frederick Soddy, chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1956)
• 4 October — Razor Smith, cricketer (died 1946)
• 10 October — William Morris, founder of Morris Motors and philanthropist (died 1963)
• 27 October — George Thompson, cricketer (died 1943)
• 29 October — Wilfred Rhodes, cricketer (died 1973)
• 15 November — William Hope Hodgson, author (died 1918)
• 25 November — Harley Granville-Barker, actor, playwright and critic (died 1946)

Deaths

• 2 January — Alexander Bain, inventor (born 1811)
• 24 March — Walter Bagehot, businessman, essayist and journalist (born 1826)
• 25 March — Caroline Chisholm, humanitarian (born 1808)
• 14 June — Mary Carpenter, educational and social reformer (born 1807)
• 15 June — Caroline Norton, campaigner for married women's rights (born 1808)
• 14 July — Richard Davies, Welsh poet (born 1833)
• 27 July — John Frost, Chartist leader (born 1784)
• 8 August — William Lovett, Chartist leader (born 1800)
• 17 September — William Fox Talbot, photographer (born 1800)
• 7 November — Calvert Jones, painter and pioneer photographer (born 1804)