1891 in the United Kingdom

Events from the year 1891 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

Events

14 February – in the FA Cup quarter final in English Association football, a goal is deliberately stopped by handball on the goal line. An indirect free kick is awarded, since the penalty kick, proposed the previous year by William McCrum, has not yet been implemented. This event probably changes public opinion on the penalty kick, seen previously as 'an Irishman's motion'.
1–28 February – the driest month in the EWP series with an average of only.
9–12 March – the Great Blizzard of 1891 in the south and west of England leads to extensive snow drifts and powerful storms off the south coast, with 14 ships sunk and approximately 220 deaths attributed to the weather conditions.
17 March – the British steamship sinks in the inner harbour of Gibraltar after collision with the battleship HMS Anson, killing 564.
18 March – official opening of the London–Paris telephone link, opening to the public on 1 April.
5 April – census in the United Kingdom: 15.6 million people live in cities of 20,000 or more in England and Wales and cities of 20,000 or more account for 54% of the total English population. The number of Welsh speakers in Wales is recorded for the first time and constitutes 54.4% of the population.
1–9 June – royal baccarat scandal: the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII, appears as a witness in a trial for slander in the case of an army officer accused of cheating in an illegal gambling game at which the Prince was present.
15 June – funeral of explorer Richard Francis Burton; he is laid to rest in a mausoleum in Mortlake, Surrey.
25 June – Arthur Conan Doyle's detective Sherlock Holmes appears in The Strand Magazine for the first time.
c. 26 July – Frederick Bailey Deeming murders his wife and four children in Rainhill, Lancashire, burying them under his kitchen floor. The crime is undiscovered until investigations into his murder, in December, of his second wife in Windsor, Australia, for which he will be hanged.
c. August – Deptford Power Station is fully commissioned, pioneering the use of high voltage alternating current, generating 800 kW for public supply.
5 August – Elementary Education Act abolishes fees for primary schooling.
10 October – First street charity collection in the UK is held in Manchester in aid of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.

Undated

Baptist Union of Great Britain established by merger of the General and Particular Baptists.
Rachel Beer takes over editorship of The Observer, the first woman to edit a national newspaper.

Publications

J. M. Barrie's novel The Little Minister.
George Gissing's novel New Grub Street.
Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles.
William Morris' novel News from Nowhere.
Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray and Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories.
Henry James' short story The Pupil published in Longman's Magazine.Strand Magazine.

Births

25 January – Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, actress
9 February – Ronald Colman, English actor
11 February – J. W. Hearne, English cricketer
23 February – Robert Barrington-Ward, English newspaper editor
2 April – Jack Buchanan, Scottish actor and film director
5 April – Arnold Jackson, Olympic middle-distance runner, British Army officer and lawyer
22 April – Harold Jeffreys, English mathematician
25 April – Ivor Brown, journalist and author
7 May – Harry McShane, Scottish socialist
17 May – Lady Alexandra Duff, later Duchess of Fife suo jure and HRH Princess Arthur of Connaught by marriage, member of the British royal family and nurse
20 June – John A. Costello, third Taoiseach of Ireland, second to use that title
30 June – Stanley Spencer, painter
2 August – Arthur Bliss, composer
6 August – William Slim, Field Marshal
30 August – Henry Tandey, second most highly decorated British private soldier of World War I
5 September – Edward Molyneux, English fashion designer
16 September – Isabel Jeans, actress
25 September – Godfrey Ince, civil servant
8 October – Ellen Wilkinson, English socialist
20 October – James Chadwick, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
17 November – William Coltman, most highly decorated British private soldier of World War I
13 December – Hubert Phillips, economist, journalist, bridge player and composer of puzzles

Deaths

4 January – Charles Keene, illustrator
6 January – Hugh Owen Thomas, orthopaedic surgeon
30 January – Charles Bradlaugh, political activist, founder and first president of the National Secular Society and Member of Parliament for Northampton
15 March – Sir Joseph Bazalgette, sanitary engineer
7 April – J. D. Sedding, ecclesiastical architect
13 April – Edward Austin, cricketer
29 May – William Synge, diplomat and author
2 June – Joseph Thornton, Oxford-based bookseller
7 June – William Bosomworth, cricketer
11 June – Barbara Bodichon, women's rights activist, educationalist and painter
6 October
* Charles Stewart Parnell, Irish nationalist leader
* William Henry Smith, politician and founder of W H Smith
15 October – Gilbert Arthur à Beckett, humorous writer
21 December – William Cavendish, 7th Duke of Devonshire, politician
31 December – Prince Victor of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, officer in the Royal Navy