1896 in the United Kingdom

Events from the year 1896 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

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.
10 January – American-born Birt Acres demonstrates his film projector, the Kineopticon, the first in Britain, to the Lyonsdown Photographic Club in New Barnet, the first film show to an audience in the U.K.
14 January – Acres demonstrates his Kineopticon to the Royal Photographic Society at the Queen's Hall in London.
16 January – Devonport High School for Boys is founded in Plymouth.
28 January
* In an underground explosion at Tylorstown Colliery, Rhondda, 57 miners are killed.
* Engineer Walter Arnold of the Arnold (automobile) company of East Peckham in Kent receives the U.K.'s first speeding conviction for travelling at in a motorised vehicle, thereby exceeding the contemporary speed limit for towns of.
20 February – in London:
* Robert W. Paul demonstrates his film projector, the Theatrograph, 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.
29 March – the Royal College of St Patrick, Maynooth in Ireland is granted the status of pontifical university by charter of the Holy See.
6 April – the Snowdon Mountain Railway commences public operation; however, a derailment leading to one fatality causes services to be suspended for a year.
6–15 April – Great Britain and Ireland compete at the Olympics and win 2 gold, 3 silver and 2 bronze medals.
16 April – the National Trust acquires its first building for preservation, and its first property in England, Alfriston Clergy House in East Sussex.
21 April – Royal Victorian Order instituted.
23 April – Blackpool Pleasure Beach amusement park established.
30 April – Peckfield Colliery disaster in Micklefield, Yorkshire: an underground explosion kills 63 men and boys and 19 pit ponies.
4 May – Daily Mail newspaper founded.
8 May – in 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.
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.
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 up to this date.
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 Highways Act comes into effect, raising the speed limit for road vehicles from 4 to 14 mph and removing the requirement for a man to walk in front of an automobile to give warning. To celebrate this, an 'Emancipation Run' of cars from London to Brighton is held. By this date, Thomas Humber's car factory in Coventry has become the first in Britain to begin series production.
4–5 December – a storm hits Brighton, destroying the old Chain Pier and badly damaging the other piers and the new Brighton and Rottingdean Seashore Electric Railway.
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, begins operations in Glasgow.
17 December – Hereford earthquake.

Undated

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.
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.
H. G. Wells' science fiction novel The Island of Doctor Moreau.

Births

7 January – Arnold Ridley, actor and playwright
25 January - John Moores, businessman and owner of the Littlewoods empire
14 February – Edward Arthur Milne, astrophysicist and mathematician
3 May – Dodie Smith, novelist and playwright
7 May
* John Dunville, army officer, Victoria Cross recipient
* Kathleen McKane Godfree, tennis and badminton player
29 May – Doreen Knatchbull, Baroness Brabourne, aristocrat and socialite
1 June – Sydney Kyte, bandleader
6 June – Henry Allingham, became the oldest surviving British veteran of the First World War and briefly the world's oldest man
19 June
* R. Palme Dutt, communist theoretician
* Wallis Warfield, later Duchess of Windsor, American wife of the Duke of Windsor
25 June – Alfred Anderson, Scottish joiner and veteran of the First World War
28 July – Guy Salisbury-Jones, Army major-general
28 July – Joyce Bishop, educator
19 July – A. J. Cronin, Scottish novelist
14 August – Albert Ball, flying ace
14 October – Bud Flanagan, comedian and singer
16 November – Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists
17 November – Sophie Catherine Theresa Mary Peirce-Evans, later Mary, Lady Heath, aviator and athlete
15 December – Miles Dempsey, general

Deaths

8 January – Colin Blackburn, Baron Blackburn, judge
17 January – Augusta Hall, Baroness Llanover, Welsh patron of the arts
19 January – Bernhard Gillam, political cartoonist
25 January – Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton, painter and sculptor specialising in classical subjects
14 February – George Selwyn Marryat, fly fisherman
10 June – Amelia Dyer, baby farm murderer
23 June – Sir Joseph Prestwich, geologist
7 July – Charles Thomas Wooldridge, soldier and uxoricide commemorated in Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol
23 July – Caroline Martyn, Christian socialist and trade unionist
12 August – Sir Harry Lumsden, general
13 August – Sir John Everett Millais, painter
18 August – Frederick Nicholls Crouch, composer and cellist
2 May – Emma Darwin, née Wedgwood, wife of Charles Darwin
3 October – William Morris, artist, writer and socialist
6 October – Sir James Abbott, army officer and colonial administrator in British India
8 October – George du Maurier, cartoonist and novelist
11 October – Edward White Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury
21 October – James Henry Greathead, engineer and inventor
November – Margaret Eleanor Parker, social activist, first president of the British Women's Temperance Association
26 November – Coventry Patmore, poet
10 December – Sir Alexander Milne, 1st Baronet, admiral of the fleet