1878 in the United Kingdom

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria
• Prime Minister – Benjamin Disraeli

Events

• 14 January – Alexander Graham Bell demonstrates the telephone to Queen Victoria.
• 23 January – [Benjamin Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield|Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield|Disraeli] orders British fleet to the Dardanelles.
• 8 February – the British fleet enters Turkish waters and anchors off Constantinople. Russia threatens to occupy Constantinople but does not act.
• 11 February – first weekly weather report published in the UK.
• 24 February – anti-Russian demonstrations in Hyde Park, London.
• 12 March – Britain annexes Walvis Bay.
• 15 March – restoration of the Scottish hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, carried out on the instructions of Pope Leo XIII.
• 24 March – the Royal Navy frigate capsizes off the Isle of Wight, killing all but two of the 319 crew.
• 25 March – Russia rejects a British proposal to lay the Treaty of San Stefano before a European congress.
• 27 March – in anticipation of war with Russia, Disraeli mobilizes the reserves and calls Indian troops to Malta.
• 28 March – Stoke City F.C. move into their new stadium at the Victoria Ground, beating Talke Rangers 1–0 in a friendly in their first game there.
• 25 May – opening of Gilbert and Sullivan's opera HMS Pinafore, at the Opera Comique on the Strand, London with a first run of 571 performances.
• 29 May – Foreign Office clerk Charles Thomas Marvin leaks the text of the following day's secret convention with Russia to the newspapers; he is arrested, but it is discovered that he has committed no offence in English Law at this time.
• 31 May – the Imperial German Navy ironclad turret ship is accidentally rammed and sunk by on manoeuvres off Folkestone with the loss of more than 275 crew.
• 1 June – the North British Railway's first Tay Bridge across the Firth of Tay at Dundee in Scotland is opened to public rail services; it is the world's longest bridge at this date.
• 4 June – Cyprus Convention: the Ottoman Empire cedes Cyprus to the United Kingdom but retains nominal title.
• 7 June – an underground explosion at Wood Pit, Haydock, kills at least 189.
• 10 June – Konrad Korzeniowski, the future novelist Joseph Conrad, sets foot on English soil for the first time, at Lowestoft from the SS Mavis.
• 4 July – Public Health Act obliges parishes to provide a supply of "wholesome water" within reasonable distance of every home.
• 7 August – the Christian Mission, co-founded by General William and Catherine Booth in London in 1865, has its name changed to The Salvation Army.
• 3 September – over 640 die when the crowded pleasure boat collides with the Bywell Castle in the River Thames.
• 11 September – an underground explosion at Abercarn in Monmouthshire kills 268 coal miners.
• 12 September – Cleopatra's Needle erected on the Victoria Embankment in London, having arrived in England on 21 January.
• October – the University of London becomes the first in the UK to admit women on equal terms with men.
• 14 October – the world's first recorded floodlit football fixture is played at Bramall Lane in Sheffield.
• 28 October – the first floodlit rugby match is played in Salford.
• 21 November – Syria–Lebanon campaign commences when the British attack Ali Masjid in the Khyber Pass.
• 26 November – James McNeill Whistler's libel case against critic John Ruskin over a review of the painting of the Thames Nocturne in Black and Gold – The Falling Rocket is decided in the High Court of Justice in London. Whistler wins a farthing in nominal damages and only half of the substantial costs.
• 13 December – Electric street lighting introduced in London, initially on the Thames Embankment, followed by Waterloo Bridge.
• 18 December – Joseph Swan of Newcastle announces his invention of an incandescent light bulb.
• 30 December – Henry Irving's production of Hamlet, with himself in the title rôle playing opposite Ellen Terry as Ophelia, opens at the Lyceum Theatre, London.

Undated

• Dentists Act 1878 limits the title of "dentist" and "dental surgeon" to qualified and registered practitioners.
• William Crookes invents the Crookes tube which produces cathode rays.
• The following English Association football clubs are formed:
• * Everton F.C. in Liverpool, formed as St Domingo.
• * Grimsby Town F.C., formed as Grimsby Pelham.
• * Ipswich Town F.C., formed as Ipswich Amateur Football Club.
• * Newton Heath Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Football Club, the team that will become Manchester United.
• * West Bromwich Albion F.C.
• International Tea Co. Stores established.
• William Frederick Yeames paints And When Did You Last See Your Father?.

Publications

• Thomas Hardy's novel The Return of the Native is serialised.
• Richard Jefferies' collected essays The Gamekeeper at Home.

Births

• 4 January
• * A. E. Coppard, short story writer and poet
• * Augustus John, painter
• 6 January – Marian Ellis, later Marian Cripps, Baroness Parmoor, pacifist
• 7 January – Samuel James Cameron, obstetrician
• 19 January – Herbert Chapman, football manager
• 23 January – Rutland Boughton, composer
• 3 March
• * Richard Meinertzhagen, soldier, intelligence officer and ornithologist
• * Edward Thomas, poet and writer
• 16 April – Owen Thomas Jones, geologist
• 26 April – Eric Campbell, silent film star
• 1 June – John Masefield, poet and novelist
• 28 June – Evan Roberts, preacher
• 20 July – Denis Eden, painter
• 24 July – Lord Dunsany, author
• 23 November – Frank Pick, transport administrator and exponent of industrial design
• 1 September – J. F. C. Fuller, major-general and strategist
• 3 September – Dorothea Douglass Lambert Chambers, née Dorothea Katherine Douglass, tennis player
• 5 September – Barry Domvile, admiral and Nazi sympathiser
• 18 September – Robert Brooke-Popham, air chief marshal
• 31 December – Caradoc Evans, writer

Deaths

• 12 March – Sir William Gibson-Craig, advocate and politician
• 16 March – William Banting, undertaker and dietician
• 19 March – Henry Liddell, 1st Earl of Ravensworth, politician
• 27 March – Sir George Gilbert Scott, architect
• 18 April – Charles Fox, Quaker scientist
• 25 April – Anna Sewell, author
• 28 May – John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
• 6 June – Robert Stirling, clergyman and inventor
• 17 June – Sir William Miles, 1st Baronet, politician
• 22 July – Samuel McGaw, Victoria Cross recipient
• 30 September – Evan James, poet, lyricist of the Welsh national anthem
• 20 November – William Thomas (Islwyn), Welsh poet
• 14 December – Princess Alice, member of the royal family
• 24 December
• * Lucy Anderson, pianist
• * Sister Dora, Anglican nun and nurse
• 31 December – Sir James Matheson, Scottish politician