1875 in the United Kingdom

Events from the year 1875 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

Monarch – Victoria
Prime Minister – Benjamin Disraeli

Events

1 January – the Midland Railway abolishes Second Class, leaving First Class and Third Class, the latter having passenger facilities upgraded to the former Second Class level. Other British railway companies follow this lead during the year and later.
21 January – Preston North End F.C. move into their new stadium at Deepdale.
25 March – Trial by Jury, the first surviving Gilbert and Sullivan opera, premières.
1 April – The Times publishes the first daily weather map.
16 April – Martha Merington becomes the first woman member of a Board of guardians under the Poor Law, in the London Borough of Kensington.
7 May – German liner is wrecked on rocks off the Isles of Scilly with the loss of 311 lives.
27 May – Standard for the modern British Bulldog breed published.
29 May – British Arctic Expedition: George Nares sets sail on an expedition to attempt to reach the North Pole via Smith Sound.
29 June – Artisans' and Labourers' Dwellings Improvement Act 1875 is passed to permit slum clearance.
6 July – opening of first passenger funicular in the UK, the South Cliff Lift at Scarborough, North Yorkshire.
31 July – Public Health Act 1875 establishes a code of practice for sanitation across the country.
6 August – Scottish football team Hibernian F.C. is founded by Irishmen in Edinburgh.
11 August
* Food and Drugs Act makes adulteration of food or drugs an offence.
* Offences against the Person Act effectively raises the age of consent in England, Wales and Ireland from twelve to thirteen.
25 August – Captain Matthew Webb becomes the first person to swim the English Channel.
27 September – American merchant sailing ship Ellen Southard is wrecked off Liverpool; 12 crew and life-boatmen are lost.
September
* Joseph Bazalgette completes the 30-year construction of London's sewer system.
* Association football team Birmingham City F.C. is founded as Small Heath Alliance in Birmingham by a group of cricketers from Holy Trinity Church, Bordesley, playing its first match in November.
5 November – Blackburn Rovers F.C. is founded by two old-boys of Shrewsbury School following a meeting at the Leger Hotel, Blackburn.
26 November – The Times newspaper reveals that Isma'il Pasha has sold Egypt's 44% share in the Suez Canal to Britain in a deal secured by Benjamin Disraeli without the prior sanction of the British Parliament.
6 December
* German emigrant ship SS Deutschland runs aground on Kentish Knock resulting in the death of 157 passengers and crew and inspiring Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem The Wreck of the Deutschland.
* A firedamp explosion at Swaithe Main Colliery in the South Yorkshire Coalfield results in the death of 143 miners.
At Wimbledon, Henry Cavendish Jones convinces the All England Croquet Club to replace a croquet court with a lawn tennis court.
William Morris's Acanthus wallpaper design is produced.

Publications

Helen Mathers' novel Comin' thro' the Rye.
Anthony Trollope's novel The Way We Live Now.

Births

4 January – William Williams, Welsh poet and Archdruid
6 February – Cyril Garbett, Anglican prelate, Archbishop of York
1 April – Edgar Wallace, born Richard Horatio Edgar, writer
12 May – Charles Holden, architect
31 May – Rosa May Billinghurst, women's suffrage activist
9 June – Henry Hallett Dale, pharmacologist and physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate
15 August – Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, composer
26 August – John Buchan, Scottish-born novelist and politician
10 September – John Evans, Welsh politician
18 September – Arthur Henry Knighton-Hammond, watercolourist
26 September – Eric Geddes, transport manager and politician
12 October – Aleister Crowley, occultist
26 October – Sir Lewis Casson, actor and theatre director
29 October – Princess Marie Alexandra Victoria of Edinburgh, queen consort of Romania
3 December – Clara Rackham, women's suffrage activist
6 December – Evelyn Underhill, writer on Christian mysticism
9 December – Grace Hadow, activist for women's advancement
20 December – T. F. Powys, Anglo-Welsh writer

Deaths

23 January – Charles Kingsley, novelist
25 January – George Myers, master builder
22 February – Sir Charles Lyell, Scottish geologist
7 March
* Sir James Hope Grant, military leader
* John Edward Gray, zoologist
22 March – Alexander Thomson, architect in the Greek Revival style
3 April – William Gibbs, businessman, richest commoner
1 May – Alfred Stevens, sculptor
22 May – John Sinclair, Archdeacon of Middlesex
29 June – Henry Doubleday, entomologist and ornithologist
27 July – Connop Thirlwall, bishop
19 August – Robert Ellis (Cynddelw), Welsh language poet, biographer, lexicographer and Baptist minister
9 September – Sir Charles Elliot, admiral, diplomat and colonial administrator
19 October – Sir Charles Wheatstone, physicist
29 October – John Gardner Wilkinson, traveller, writer and Egyptologist
27 November – Richard Christopher Carrington, astronomer
23 December – Charles Frederick, admiral, Third Sea Lord
25 December – Young Tom Morris, Scottish golfer