1896 in the United Kingdom

1896 in the United Kingdom:

Other years

1894 | 1895 | 1896 (1896) | 1897 | 1898

Individual countries of the United Kingdom

England | Ireland | Scotland | Wales

Sport

1896 English cricket season Football: England | Scotland

Events from the year 1896 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch — Victoria
• Prime Minister — Robert Cecil, Marquess of Salisbury (Conservative)

Events

• January — Fourth Anglo-Ashanti War: British redcoats enter the Ashanti capital, Kumasi, and Asantehene Agyeman Prempeh I is deposed.
• 2 January — The Jameson Raid comes to an end, as Jameson surrenders to the Boers.
• 6 January — Cecil Rhodes resigns as Premier of Cape Colony over the Jameson Raid.
• 14 January — Birt Acres demonstrates his film projector, the Kineopticon, the first in Britain, to the Royal Photographic Society at the Queen's Hall in London. This is the first film show to an audience in the U.K.
• 28 January
  • In an underground explosion at Tylorstown Colliery, Rhondda, 57 miners are killed.
  • Walter Arnold of Kent receives the first speeding conviction for driving in excess of the contemporary speed limit of 2 mph.
• 20 February — In London:
  • Robert W. Paul demonstrates his film projector, the Theatrograph (later known as the Animatograph), at the Alhambra Theatre.
  • The Lumiere Brothers first project their films in Britain, at the Empire Theatre of Varieties, Leicester Square.
• 12 March — Salisbury orders a military campaign to combat increasing French influence in the Sudan.
• April — The National Trust acquires (for £10) its first building for preservation, and its first property in England, Alfriston Clergy House in East Sussex.
• 6 April–15 April — Great Britain and Ireland compete at the Olympics and win 2 gold, 3 silver and 2 bronze medals.
• 6 April — The Snowdon Mountain Railway commences public operation; however, a derailment leading to one fatality causes services to be suspended for a year.
• 4 May — Daily Mail newspaper founded.
• 8 May — Cricket: Yorkshire sets a still-standing County Championship record when they accumulate an innings total of 887 against Warwickshire.
• 18–20 May — Newlyn riots: protests by fishermen at Newlyn, Cornwall, against those from Lowestoft and elsewhere fishing on Sabbath, leading to military intervention.
• 7 June — Mahdist War: British and Egyptian victory at the Battle of Ferkeh.
• 12 June — Jack (J.T.) Hearne sets a record for the earliest date of taking 100 wickets. It is equalled by Charlie Parker in 1931.
• July — Law requiring a man to walk in front of moving cars waving a red flag is repealed.
• 26 July–1 August — International Socialist Workers and Trade Union Congress held in London.
• 17 August
  • Bridget Driscoll becomes the first person in the world to be killed in a car accident, in the grounds of The Crystal Palace.
  • Start of development of Trafford Park, Manchester, pioneering example of a planned industrial estate in England.

London to Brighton Veteran Car Run recreating the 1896 'Emancipation Run'

• 27 August
  • The shortest war in recorded history, the Anglo-Zanzibar War, starts at 9 in the morning and lasts for 45 minutes of shelling.
  • Britain establishes a Protectorate over Ashanti concluding the Fourth Anglo-Ashanti War.
• 15 September — Pope Leo XIII issues the papal bull Apostolicae curae, declaring all Anglican ordinations to be "absolutely null and utterly void".
• 22 September — Queen Victoria surpasses her grandfather King George III as the longest reigning monarch in British history.
• 23 September — Kitchener captures Dongola in the Sudan.
• 30 September–August 1897 — Lock-out of Welsh slate workers at Penrhyn Quarry.
• 14 November — The Locomotives on the Highway Act raises the speed limit for road vehicles from 4 to 14 mph and, to celebrate this, an 'Emancipation Run' of cars from London to Brighton (continued afterwards as the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run) is held.
• 11 December — William Preece introduces Guglielmo Marconi's work in wireless telegraphy to the general public at a lecture, "Telegraphy without Wires", at the Toynbee Hall in London.
• 14 December — Glasgow Subway, the third oldest metro system in the world (after the London Underground and the Budapest Metro), begins operations in Glasgow.

Undated

• First car factory in Britain begins production, in Coventry.
• Completion of the first flats in the London County Council's Boundary Estate in the East End of London, the country's earliest public housing scheme, replacing part of the notorious Old Nichol slum.
• Blackpool Pleasure Beach amusement park opens.
• The Arts and Crafts movement house Munstead Wood in Surrey is designed by architect Edwin Lutyens for garden designer Gertrude Jekyll, his first major commission and the start of an influential partnership.

Publications

• Hilaire Belloc's verse collection The Bad Child's Book Of Beasts.
• Joseph Conrad's novel An Outcast of the Islands.
• Marie Corelli's novels The Mighty Atom, The Murder of Delicia and Ziska.
• A. E. Housman's poetry collection A Shropshire Lad.
• W. W. Jacobs' short story collection Many Cargoes.
• William Morris's fantasy novel The Well at the World's End.
• Arthur Morrison's social realist novella A Child of the Jago.
• Robert Louis Stevenson's unfinished historical novel Weir of Hermiston (posthumous).
• H. G. Wells' science fiction novel The Island of Doctor Moreau.

Births

• 7 January — Arnold Ridley, actor and playwright (died 1984)
• 14 February — Edward Arthur Milne, astrophysicist and mathematician (died 1950)
• 3 May — Dodie Smith, novelist and playwright (died 1990)
• 6 June — Henry Allingham, became the oldest surviving British veteran of the First World War and briefly the world's oldest man (died 2009)
• 19 June — Wallis Warfield, later Duchess of Windsor, American wife of the Duke of Windsor (died in France 1986)
• 19 July — A. J. Cronin, Scottish novelist (died 1981)
• 14 August — Albert Ball, flying ace (killed in action 1917)
• 14 October — Bud Flanagan, comedian and singer (died 1968)
• 16 November — Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists (died 1980)
• 17 November — Sophie Catherine Theresa Mary Peirce-Evans, later Mary, Lady Heath, aviator and athlete (died 1939)

Deaths

• 14 February — George Selwyn Marryat, fly fisherman (born 1840)
• 10 June — Amelia Dyer, baby farm murderer (born 1837; hanged)
• 13 August — John Everett Millais, painter (born 1829)
• 3 October — William Morris, artist, writer and socialist (born 1834)
• 11 October — Edward White Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury (born 1829)
• 21 October — James Henry Greathead, engineer and inventor (born 1844 in South Africa)