1857 in the United Kingdom

1857 in the United Kingdom:

Other years

1855 | 1856 | 1857 | 1858 | 1859

Sport

1857 English cricket season

Events from the year 1857 in the United Kingdom. This is a General Election year.

Incumbents

• Monarch — Victoria
• Prime Minister — The Viscount Palmerston (Liberal)

Events

• 7 January — London General Omnibus Company begins operating.
• 3 March — France and the United Kingdom formally declare war on China in the Second Opium War.
• 5 March — In London, barrister James Townsend Saward receives a sentence of penal transportation for forging cheques.
• 27 March–24 April — A General election secures Palmerston's Whigs a clear majority.
• 4 April — End of the Anglo-Persian War.
• 5 May–17 October — The Art Treasures of Great Britain exhibition is held in Manchester, one of the largest such displays of all time.
• 10 May — Indian Rebellion: In India, the Mutiny of XI Native Cavalry of the Bengal Army in Meerut, revolt against the British East India Company.
• 11 May — Indian combatants capture Delhi from the East India Company.
• 18 May — British Museum Reading Room opens.
• 22 June — The South Kensington Museum, predecessor of the Victoria and Albert Museum, is opened by Queen Victoria in London; it is the world’s first museum to incorporate a refreshment room.
• 25 June — Queen Victoria formally grants her husband Albert the title Prince Consort.
• 26 June — At a ceremony in Hyde Park, London, Queen Victoria awards the first sixty-six Victoria Crosses, for actions during the Crimean War. Commander Henry James Raby, RN, is the first to receive the medal from her hands.
• 12 July — In Belfast, confrontations between crowds of Catholics and Protestants turn into 10 days of rioting, exacerbated by the open-air preaching of Evangelical Presbyterian minister "Roaring" Hugh Hanna, with many of the police force joining the Protestant side. There are also riots in Derry, Portadown and Lurgan.
• 18 July — Prison hulk HMS Defence catches fire at her moorings off Woolwich, bringing an end to the use of hulks in home waters.
• 28 August — Matrimonial Causes Act makes divorce without parliamentary approval legally possible.
• September — Obscene Publications Act makes the sale of obscene material a statutory offence.
• 20 September — British forces recapture Delhi, compelling the surrender of Bahadur Shah II, the last Mughal emperor.
• 24 October — Sheffield F.C., the world's first football team, is founded in Sheffield.
• 31 December — Queen Victoria chooses Ottawa, Ontario, as the capital of Canada.

Undated

• Tom Gallaher sets up the Gallaher tobacco business in Ireland.

Publications

• R. M. Ballantyne's novel The Coral Island.
• George Borrow's novel The Romany Rye.
• Charlotte Brontë's novel The Professor (posthumously, as by 'Currer Bell').
• Charles Dickens's novel Little Dorrit (complete in book form).
• Elizabeth Gaskell's biography The Life of Charlotte Brontë.
• P. H. Gosse's creationist text Omphalos.
• Thomas Hughes' novel Tom Brown's Schooldays.
• George A. Lawrence's novel Guy Livingstone, or Thorough (anonymously).
• John Ruskin The Elements of drawing
• William Makepeace Thackeray's historical novel The Virginians (begins serialisation).
• Anthony Trollope's novel Barchester Towers.

Births

• 25 January — Hugh Lowther, 5th Earl of Lonsdale, sportsman after whom the brand Lonsdale is named (died 1944)
• 12 February — Bobby Peel, cricketer (died 1943)
• 22 February — Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Scouting movement (died 1941)
• 14 April — Princess Beatrice of the United Kingdom, member of the royal family (died 1944)
• 13 May — Ronald Ross, physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (died 1932)
• 15 May — Williamina Fleming, astronomer (died 1911)
• 28 May — Charles Voysey, Arts and Crafts designer and domestic architect (died 1941)
• 2 June — Edward Elgar, composer (died 1934)
• 5 November — Joseph Tabrar, songwriter (died 1931)
• 17 November — George Marchant, inventor, manufacturer, and philanthropist (died 1941)
• 22 November — George Gissing, novelist (died 1903)
• 27 November — Charles Scott Sherrington, physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1952)
• 30 November — Bobby Abel, cricketer (died 1936)

Deaths

• 1 January — John Britton, antiquary and topographer (born 1771)
• 2 January — Andrew Ure, doctor and writer (born 1778)
• 10 February — David Thompson, explorer (born 1770)
• 18 February — Francis Egerton, 1st Earl of Ellesmere, politician (born 1800)
• 13 March — William Amherst, 1st Earl Amherst, diplomat and peer (born 1773)
• 16 May — Sir William Lloyd, soldier and mountaineer (born 1782)
• 12 August — William Daniel Conybeare, dean of Llandaff (born 1787)
• 16 August — John Jones, Talysarn, leading non-conformist minister (born 1796)
• 29 November — Henry Havelock, general (born 1795)
• 15 December — Sir George Cayley, aviation pioneer (born 1773)
• 17 December — Francis Beaufort, naval officer and hydrographer (born 1774)